I'm not quite sure about this, but nowadays can't you get a USB dock from any company and have it work with any laptop, possibly even a MAC? My only experience is an HP Laptop with an HP USB Dock (VGA, DVI, 6 USB, 1 Firewire, RJ-45) and while it may not work quite as nice as the more standard docks, it is quite functional.
We know that African IQ is small than Japanese/European IQ by about 20 points. Can this large difference in IQ explain the gross failure of all societies dominated by Africans?
News Flash: Africans score lower on tests designed by...well..... Americans and Europeans than well....Americans and Europeans do.
If anything, African intelligence is stunted by poor nutrition from less than ideal agricultural conditions and spending more time worrying about survival than learning how to do logic problems. You can be assured that western societies would have problems if there was not enough usable soil to grow crops and raise animals. Ignoring these important factors to declare Africans intellectually inferior is just plain racism.
There isn't consumer demand because people have come to expect having a tangled mess of power cables in back of their entertainment centers and computer desks. If this technology became nearly as efficient as wired power farther reaching, and reasonably cheap you would see consumers flock to stores to purchase them.
So...why not try to innovate a little? Why not try to push boundries? Once upon a time it seemed ludicrous to think the average person would have a computer in their home. Granted the laws of Physics make this situation a little different but I applaud anyone (Even Sony) who attempts to further our technological options.
I was charged with setting up an installation of Windows Sharepoint Services (The free as in beer version of Sharepoint. We spent $0 to get the Sharepoint part of the solution) with something called "Knowledgelake Capture Server" riding on the top. I was pushing for an open source management system but management felt more comfortable with this solution. I am not affiliated with Knowledgelake in any way but basically it allows us to put a barcode on the front page of a stack of documents and scan them to a network share. Knowledgelake grabs the barcode, hits our MRP system and grabs some Metadata, and files it in a Sharepoint Document library where you can search for the documents by any piece of Metadata (Example: Customer ID, Order ID, Customer Name, Date). The company I am at used to have absolute ridiculous numbers of filing cabinets to keep all these documents. Now we do not save any of that paperwork. It is a heck of a lot quicker than manually filing it and has been a lifesaver.
Getting Data out? You can access all the metadata as well as links to the documents which are simply stored in web folders. I am reasonably sure that I could migrate all of this stuff to a database and write my own little web front end in a relatively short period of time.
Sharepoint isn't a great product and I wouldn't recommended actually buying Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server, but with the right goals and right third party software you can probably accomplish some decent things.
Years ago, when to walk into a store and buy a computer meant you were going to drop at least $1200....probably closer to $2000, having someone to walk you through the buying process seemed pretty natural. Computers were high ticket items. You probably wanted to make sure you were getting the most for your money.
Nowadays, when it is actually pretty silly for an average user to spend more than $400 on a desktop or $600 on a laptop (TOPS) for everyday use, how necessary are "Sales Staff"? At what price point will places say screw it and just toss the stuff out on the shelves like coffee makers and toaster ovens?
That is an interesting idea. I know this is unlikely, but can they tell anything about the age of the dogs that were butchered for food. It would seem sensible that they were domesticated to help hunt food until they were old enough to no longer do, at which point they became food.
This idea would be repulsive to modern day Western Society.....killing and eating your old hunting buddy rover when he couldn't run as well anymore....but it does seem like the type of pragmatic behavior that helped early man survive.
They were actually completely different ideas. The first was illustrating just how bad the average user is with tech. If the are missing the "Date" field from their EMAIL client to them it means their EMAIL is irrevocably broken. Obviously, when dealing with this type of user, under no circumstance is giving them a suggestion of "Recompile your Kernel" an acceptable response to any problem they are having.
Seriously....just because two sentences are close together does not mean they are directly related. Maybe I should have been more explicit but I think the point is clear enough....certainly clearer than bug reports that would be filed if Millions of average users invaded the Linux Community.
(anyone else wonder why Add/Remove programs is called that even though you really can't add in any programs from there).
For what it's worth, you used to be able to Add programs that way. I don't know if you still can. Back in Windows 95/98 you would hit "Add Program" and it would tell you to insert the install disc or something. It would look for "setup.exe" or "install.bat" or a few other similar programs and run it. Also, Add/Remove Programs is where you go to install additional Windows components.
I believe that the Linux desktop share is around 3%. While 3 percent doesn't seem that great, it is 3 percent of a rather large number....not to mention the fact that it is a growing number. I don't think Apple is even near cracking 10% market share and I don't think that anyone thinks that Macs are insignificant. Linux isn't that far behind.
I understand your point but it sort of misses the point of the article. There is a difference between "Can do" and "Can do without wanting to slam my head through the monitor." This is the difference that is being pushed here.
After all, there are legitimate usability complaints and complaints about how bug fixes are handled. Keep in mind that these are complaints heard by current users of Linux, a group that is likely well above average in terms of technical savvy as a whole. I don't know if you do/have done desktop support (not trying to be condescending...there are all different sorts of geeks on Slashdot) but average users get totally bent out of shape about really mundane things. If they delete one of their displayed columns in their EMAIL program they flip out and run around yelling "MY EMAIL IS BROKEN!" Things have to work quickly and easily or you'll lose them in a second. This means no "Just recompile your Kernel" or even "Just use Wine". Definitely don't tell them to "Debug the code yourself", as they won't even know what code is, much less know how to fix it.
Also something to consider, if you started a huge Linux Marketing campaign and it managed to secure a pretty big market share developers would find themselves with 10 times more bug reports/feature requests than they have now. As another complaint is the slow/non existent response time on some projects this problem would be compounded. A few more developers might come with the rest of the huge crowd but I'm guessing that for the most part, anyone who wants to develop FOSS software is already doing so. You might see a flood of for-profit companies jump into the mix with a bunch of closed source software to fill in the gaps, but then you are actually losing a lot of what makes Linux special in the first place.
I mentioned this already myself up a little ways before reading this but I thought of something to add. This is ESPECIALLY important in Netbooks. I got a Netbook for my wife. She does little more than Browse the Internet, Type up a few lesson plans, check EMAIL, check Facebook. It is perfect for her and she hates big bulk equipment. I have used her Netbook on a few occasions but I really have a hard time dealing with how small of an amount of vertical content is shown at any given time. A Ribbon will even chew up more of that precious real estate. I can handle it on my 17" laptop, but not so much on a 10".
I agree. When I first saw it I thought it would be quite a daunting task to figure it out. It really isn't. I'd say using it daily for a month would be sufficient to adapt to it. If you use it for an hour a month...yeah...maybe it would be a little harder to adapt to it but the people who use it once a month probably aren't doing much more than using the sort and fill functions.
That said, I really don't want it in a browser. Will most screen tending towards wide format you are already losing vertical space in a browser window. Horizontal space isn't nearly as important. A ribbon type format for a browser window seems a little silly. How often do people use the menu options in a browser, anyway? Bookmarks perhaps daily? File, Print? Tools, Options on occasion? Maybe Edit - Find, Edit - Select all or Edit - Copy/Paste but I personally use keyboard shortcuts for all of those commands.
I consider myself a pretty honest person. If I am not charged for something at the Register of a Store I usually point that fact out, despite it being just a pittance going into the coffers of a larger corporation. I don't steal from work (Actually, I'm a klepto when it comes to pens. I put at least one of the things in my pocket per week and go home with them. I seriously told my employer and asked them to take the cost of two boxes of pens out of my paycheck to make up for it) and am never really tempted to do so.
However, I have never been put into a situation where I have been offered a substantial bribe. I'd imagine that somewhere along the pay scale someone could convince me to do something unscrupulous. For $2000? Heck no. For $10,000, no. For $100,000? I'd have to think about that. For $1,000,000....I'd be definitely weighing the risk of and duration of time I would have to spend in jail if caught. Unless the information I was bribed to provide was likely to kill people, I'm thinking I'm probably pocketing the Million.
Maybe this makes me sound like a bad person but in reality I'm being pragmatic and pretty honest. I'm not too sure there are many people who wouldn't accept a Million Dollar bribe no matter how many claim they would.
The thing to remember is that all of the really good stuff you did at this job....it is meaningless for your job search. They only things you are going to be taking from this job are the things that you learned over the years. Perspective employers won't know anything besides what skills you can list on your resume (which are likely to be similar to what garbage admins put on their resumes...even if they don't really know how to do the things they list) and how you conduct yourself at your interviews. You sound like you'll do a great job once you get into a position but with a handful of qualified candidates and loads of unqualified candidates, there are a lot of resumes that HR will wade through and gives those they think may fit the bill to the manager in charge of hiring. Good luck! Hope you find something awesome...remember to bring the same level of motivation to a new position that you did at the start of your old one.;)
I'm thinking that this entire discussion may have more bearing on wars that fall under the category that Shutdown suggested, "Cold War Proxy Wars". United States Involvement in Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam....The English/French in the Suez Crisis, USSR invading Afghanistan, etc.... All of these conflicts involved the "Super Powers" indirectly squaring off against each other as both sides wanted to fight the other but were afraid to REALLY fight the other because of MAD. Instead, we see the Super Powers jockeying for position by accumulating allies and attacking the allies of the enemy.
No doubt that all of these Proxy Wars sucked royally, especially for those that were on the front lines but they were nothing compared to what would have happened if the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries had went into a state of full scale war. Let's face it, in terms of discussing WWII nobody really gives a shit about the Japanese Invasion of Indochina. If WWIII would have broke open, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan would have been about as important globally as Indochina was in WWII.
Other local conflicts will exist until all nations have nukes, at which point I can assume SOMEONE will use them which will spell bad bad news for everyone.
Or will it be that we will be begging for Journalists to get back to doing their work?
Despite the fact that most major news outlets provide a lot of garbage content, I think most of us agree that we want to know about major events happening locally, around the country, and around the world. If the Internet Ad Revenue model falls completely apart and it is no longer worth it for news sources to stay in business, they simply will not. As much as I hate to say it, it is in theirs AND our best interests to find a reasonable way for them to get paid appropriately. If all news in the United States ended up funded by tax dollars, it would be an epic disaster.
Probably best not to be poking around trying to find vulnerabilities in Government computer systems at all, even as the Whitest of White hats. With the terrorist labeled being bandied about so freely it seems prudent to find a different target.
I guess I understand your point but I myself have not seen the Peanut/Tree Nut labels become outrageously widespread. For the most part, I have seen them limited to the obvious things like (As you said) a jar of peanuts.;) Funny thing is though, I can eat some peanuts while others give me a mild uncomfortable reaction (inflammed and itchy mouth for an hour or two). I'd imagine it is the difference between peanuts that have come in contact with other nuts, and peanuts that have been processed in a more isolated manner.
But yes, ending up having everything labeled as such would ruin my "System" for determining what foods to avoid and generally put me back at square one, which is sitting down, thinking, and spending a lot of time researching the food I ate in the past few days when I have an outbreak.
Still, if people are that allergic to nuts and companies can get sued without the label, what is the answer? Surely we want to stop accidental deaths from serious alergic reactions. Perhaps different threat levels on the labels? "This Product has a remote chance/may have/likely has been in contact with peanuts or tree nuts?"
Maybe most people don't spend most of their time oiled up, bent over, and spread but almost everyone tries to manipulate their appearance for certain events. Weddings in particular are a good example of this. Brides, and to a lesser extent the Bridesmaids, spend a lot of time picking out things that make them look significantly better than usual. They'll get their nails (fingers and toes) done, they'll go to a profession to get their makeup done, they'll hit the salon to get their hair done, they'll wear a corset under their dress to make them look skinnier, they will wear very high heels to give them a more tall and slender appearance, if a good photographer is hired he will try to find situations that will lead to flattering pictures for the married couple.....
Almost every single time someone goes out into public they "Cheat" to improve their appearance (probably women more than men). People of all ages rarely go from sitting around in their lounging attire with their hair desheveled to out on the town. Again, makeup, hair products, flattering clothing, and maybe some other cosmetic products like "Spray on Tan" will give them an appearance different from the norm.
At what point is something "Contrived"? If the person isn't fresh out of bed they probably enhanced their appearance in some fashion.
Food manufacturers who do not process peanuts or tree nuts are starting to label their product "warning, may contain traces of peanuts or tree nuts"
I actually appreciate this, actually. I am allergic to a very large number of different foods, various nuts being one of the groups that invokes reactions. I don't have it so bad that my throat starts to close, but I do break out in enormous welt like hives all over my body for several days, which generally makes me miserable and feel like shit Sometimes I don't have a clue what caused the reaction. I'll think back to everything I ate in the last few days and nothing makes sense. If I run into a label like that on a product I ate I know the likely culprit and can avoid that particular food in the future (in most cases I don't worry about it because 99% of the time things are labeled as such I can eat them just fine). I wish more foods were labeled as such so I don't have to cut huge chunks of products out of my diet.
It definitely had a stigma at a place I used to work. Every time I brought up a Free product the management immediately got suspicious and shot the idea down. The "Network Manager" was an absolutely worthless individual who, despite having been the "Senior Network Engineer" previously, had absolutely no clue about anything in IT whatsoever. I wanted to dual boot Linux on my laptop to make use of a few network monitoring tools and she absolutely freaked out saying that I was forbidden to do it because it might...break the network(?!?!?! Don't ask, I don't know either.)
After hearing "We are a Microsoft House and that is final" over and over again, I got a good chuckle when we decided to virtualize. They had some salesmen and contractors in to discuss a solution with us which turned out to be Blade Servers with an EMC SAN back end running VMWare ESX Server. The sales people must have known what they were getting into because they were very vague about what platform the product was going to be running on. The look on her face when we got the equipment in and "RED HAT LINUX" flashed across the screen was priceless. A mixture of fear, embarassment, and just generally looking like someone who was duped badly. That was by far the best day I had at that job.
A lot of brick and mortar schools are experimenting with completely online courses, too. Someone I know was in a degree program at a school in the University of Wisconsin system and had to take a statistics course that was online offered online, which the student found to be annoying because it did not fit in with how they learn and expected that going to a brick and mortar school meant, well, having actual classes. Said person was pretty terrible at math and tried to get extra help from the professor, but he didn't answer EMAIL and didn't have office hours. I spent some time trying to teach the person but it was pretty late by then and they needed to pull a pretty respectable grade on the final to get a C in the class. I started guiding them through the final but the clock was ticking down fast and I ended up pretty much doing the test myself. I actually scored 105 (there were some bonus questions or something) and they ended up with a B.
Normally I would object to this type of thing but I saw what was passed off as "Lecture Material" and it was confusing and riddled with holes. I saw the person trying to get in touch with the Professor (there were no T.A. types associated with the class) and getting nowhere. I figured to hell with it, the Professor and the School clearly doesn't care about this class so why on Earth should myself or the student?
Well, "Top-Flight" Admins may not necessarily exist but "Bottom of the Barrel" Admins sure do. It may not be easy initially to spot the difference. Garbage Admins may be able to answer some technical questions that you throw at them if they have dealt with the tech you are discussing. After you hire them on you'll see that they can perform some basic tasks, have no desire to learn anything new, have no idea how to handle problems they have never encountered, and are too lazy to do anything but the absolutely minimum amount of maintenance that they can get by with doing to keep the systems from bursting into flames. Their idea of a job well done will be calling in a consultant to fix a problem while they stand there slack jawed, helpless, and generally not bothering to find out how to fix it themselves if it happens again.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not quite sure about this, but nowadays can't you get a USB dock from any company and have it work with any laptop, possibly even a MAC? My only experience is an HP Laptop with an HP USB Dock (VGA, DVI, 6 USB, 1 Firewire, RJ-45) and while it may not work quite as nice as the more standard docks, it is quite functional.
We know that African IQ is small than Japanese/European IQ by about 20 points. Can this large difference in IQ explain the gross failure of all societies dominated by Africans?
News Flash: Africans score lower on tests designed by...well..... Americans and Europeans than well....Americans and Europeans do.
If anything, African intelligence is stunted by poor nutrition from less than ideal agricultural conditions and spending more time worrying about survival than learning how to do logic problems. You can be assured that western societies would have problems if there was not enough usable soil to grow crops and raise animals. Ignoring these important factors to declare Africans intellectually inferior is just plain racism.
There isn't consumer demand because people have come to expect having a tangled mess of power cables in back of their entertainment centers and computer desks. If this technology became nearly as efficient as wired power farther reaching, and reasonably cheap you would see consumers flock to stores to purchase them.
So...why not try to innovate a little? Why not try to push boundries? Once upon a time it seemed ludicrous to think the average person would have a computer in their home. Granted the laws of Physics make this situation a little different but I applaud anyone (Even Sony) who attempts to further our technological options.
I was charged with setting up an installation of Windows Sharepoint Services (The free as in beer version of Sharepoint. We spent $0 to get the Sharepoint part of the solution) with something called "Knowledgelake Capture Server" riding on the top. I was pushing for an open source management system but management felt more comfortable with this solution. I am not affiliated with Knowledgelake in any way but basically it allows us to put a barcode on the front page of a stack of documents and scan them to a network share. Knowledgelake grabs the barcode, hits our MRP system and grabs some Metadata, and files it in a Sharepoint Document library where you can search for the documents by any piece of Metadata (Example: Customer ID, Order ID, Customer Name, Date). The company I am at used to have absolute ridiculous numbers of filing cabinets to keep all these documents. Now we do not save any of that paperwork. It is a heck of a lot quicker than manually filing it and has been a lifesaver.
Getting Data out? You can access all the metadata as well as links to the documents which are simply stored in web folders. I am reasonably sure that I could migrate all of this stuff to a database and write my own little web front end in a relatively short period of time.
Sharepoint isn't a great product and I wouldn't recommended actually buying Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server, but with the right goals and right third party software you can probably accomplish some decent things.
Years ago, when to walk into a store and buy a computer meant you were going to drop at least $1200....probably closer to $2000, having someone to walk you through the buying process seemed pretty natural. Computers were high ticket items. You probably wanted to make sure you were getting the most for your money.
Nowadays, when it is actually pretty silly for an average user to spend more than $400 on a desktop or $600 on a laptop (TOPS) for everyday use, how necessary are "Sales Staff"? At what price point will places say screw it and just toss the stuff out on the shelves like coffee makers and toaster ovens?
That is an interesting idea. I know this is unlikely, but can they tell anything about the age of the dogs that were butchered for food. It would seem sensible that they were domesticated to help hunt food until they were old enough to no longer do, at which point they became food.
This idea would be repulsive to modern day Western Society.....killing and eating your old hunting buddy rover when he couldn't run as well anymore....but it does seem like the type of pragmatic behavior that helped early man survive.
They were actually completely different ideas. The first was illustrating just how bad the average user is with tech. If the are missing the "Date" field from their EMAIL client to them it means their EMAIL is irrevocably broken. Obviously, when dealing with this type of user, under no circumstance is giving them a suggestion of "Recompile your Kernel" an acceptable response to any problem they are having.
Seriously....just because two sentences are close together does not mean they are directly related. Maybe I should have been more explicit but I think the point is clear enough....certainly clearer than bug reports that would be filed if Millions of average users invaded the Linux Community.
And yes, you're right that they need a single place to find apps...
No doubt. With the Pirate Bay shutting down it WILL be hard to find Windows Apps. ;)
(anyone else wonder why Add/Remove programs is called that even though you really can't add in any programs from there).
For what it's worth, you used to be able to Add programs that way. I don't know if you still can. Back in Windows 95/98 you would hit "Add Program" and it would tell you to insert the install disc or something. It would look for "setup.exe" or "install.bat" or a few other similar programs and run it. Also, Add/Remove Programs is where you go to install additional Windows components.
The Year is 2028
The Good News? 2028 is finally the year of the Linux Desktop.
The Bad News? 2028 is finally the year of the death of Desktop Computers.
I believe that the Linux desktop share is around 3%. While 3 percent doesn't seem that great, it is 3 percent of a rather large number....not to mention the fact that it is a growing number. I don't think Apple is even near cracking 10% market share and I don't think that anyone thinks that Macs are insignificant. Linux isn't that far behind.
I understand your point but it sort of misses the point of the article. There is a difference between "Can do" and "Can do without wanting to slam my head through the monitor." This is the difference that is being pushed here.
After all, there are legitimate usability complaints and complaints about how bug fixes are handled. Keep in mind that these are complaints heard by current users of Linux, a group that is likely well above average in terms of technical savvy as a whole. I don't know if you do/have done desktop support (not trying to be condescending...there are all different sorts of geeks on Slashdot) but average users get totally bent out of shape about really mundane things. If they delete one of their displayed columns in their EMAIL program they flip out and run around yelling "MY EMAIL IS BROKEN!" Things have to work quickly and easily or you'll lose them in a second. This means no "Just recompile your Kernel" or even "Just use Wine". Definitely don't tell them to "Debug the code yourself", as they won't even know what code is, much less know how to fix it.
Also something to consider, if you started a huge Linux Marketing campaign and it managed to secure a pretty big market share developers would find themselves with 10 times more bug reports/feature requests than they have now. As another complaint is the slow/non existent response time on some projects this problem would be compounded. A few more developers might come with the rest of the huge crowd but I'm guessing that for the most part, anyone who wants to develop FOSS software is already doing so. You might see a flood of for-profit companies jump into the mix with a bunch of closed source software to fill in the gaps, but then you are actually losing a lot of what makes Linux special in the first place.
I mentioned this already myself up a little ways before reading this but I thought of something to add. This is ESPECIALLY important in Netbooks. I got a Netbook for my wife. She does little more than Browse the Internet, Type up a few lesson plans, check EMAIL, check Facebook. It is perfect for her and she hates big bulk equipment. I have used her Netbook on a few occasions but I really have a hard time dealing with how small of an amount of vertical content is shown at any given time. A Ribbon will even chew up more of that precious real estate. I can handle it on my 17" laptop, but not so much on a 10".
I agree. When I first saw it I thought it would be quite a daunting task to figure it out. It really isn't. I'd say using it daily for a month would be sufficient to adapt to it. If you use it for an hour a month...yeah...maybe it would be a little harder to adapt to it but the people who use it once a month probably aren't doing much more than using the sort and fill functions.
That said, I really don't want it in a browser. Will most screen tending towards wide format you are already losing vertical space in a browser window. Horizontal space isn't nearly as important. A ribbon type format for a browser window seems a little silly. How often do people use the menu options in a browser, anyway? Bookmarks perhaps daily? File, Print? Tools, Options on occasion? Maybe Edit - Find, Edit - Select all or Edit - Copy/Paste but I personally use keyboard shortcuts for all of those commands.
I consider myself a pretty honest person. If I am not charged for something at the Register of a Store I usually point that fact out, despite it being just a pittance going into the coffers of a larger corporation. I don't steal from work (Actually, I'm a klepto when it comes to pens. I put at least one of the things in my pocket per week and go home with them. I seriously told my employer and asked them to take the cost of two boxes of pens out of my paycheck to make up for it) and am never really tempted to do so.
However, I have never been put into a situation where I have been offered a substantial bribe. I'd imagine that somewhere along the pay scale someone could convince me to do something unscrupulous. For $2000? Heck no. For $10,000, no. For $100,000? I'd have to think about that. For $1,000,000....I'd be definitely weighing the risk of and duration of time I would have to spend in jail if caught. Unless the information I was bribed to provide was likely to kill people, I'm thinking I'm probably pocketing the Million.
Maybe this makes me sound like a bad person but in reality I'm being pragmatic and pretty honest. I'm not too sure there are many people who wouldn't accept a Million Dollar bribe no matter how many claim they would.
The thing to remember is that all of the really good stuff you did at this job....it is meaningless for your job search. They only things you are going to be taking from this job are the things that you learned over the years. Perspective employers won't know anything besides what skills you can list on your resume (which are likely to be similar to what garbage admins put on their resumes...even if they don't really know how to do the things they list) and how you conduct yourself at your interviews. You sound like you'll do a great job once you get into a position but with a handful of qualified candidates and loads of unqualified candidates, there are a lot of resumes that HR will wade through and gives those they think may fit the bill to the manager in charge of hiring. Good luck! Hope you find something awesome...remember to bring the same level of motivation to a new position that you did at the start of your old one. ;)
I'm thinking that this entire discussion may have more bearing on wars that fall under the category that Shutdown suggested, "Cold War Proxy Wars". United States Involvement in Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam....The English/French in the Suez Crisis, USSR invading Afghanistan, etc.... All of these conflicts involved the "Super Powers" indirectly squaring off against each other as both sides wanted to fight the other but were afraid to REALLY fight the other because of MAD. Instead, we see the Super Powers jockeying for position by accumulating allies and attacking the allies of the enemy.
No doubt that all of these Proxy Wars sucked royally, especially for those that were on the front lines but they were nothing compared to what would have happened if the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries had went into a state of full scale war. Let's face it, in terms of discussing WWII nobody really gives a shit about the Japanese Invasion of Indochina. If WWIII would have broke open, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan would have been about as important globally as Indochina was in WWII.
Other local conflicts will exist until all nations have nukes, at which point I can assume SOMEONE will use them which will spell bad bad news for everyone.
Or will it be that we will be begging for Journalists to get back to doing their work?
Despite the fact that most major news outlets provide a lot of garbage content, I think most of us agree that we want to know about major events happening locally, around the country, and around the world. If the Internet Ad Revenue model falls completely apart and it is no longer worth it for news sources to stay in business, they simply will not. As much as I hate to say it, it is in theirs AND our best interests to find a reasonable way for them to get paid appropriately. If all news in the United States ended up funded by tax dollars, it would be an epic disaster.
Probably best not to be poking around trying to find vulnerabilities in Government computer systems at all, even as the Whitest of White hats. With the terrorist labeled being bandied about so freely it seems prudent to find a different target.
I guess I understand your point but I myself have not seen the Peanut/Tree Nut labels become outrageously widespread. For the most part, I have seen them limited to the obvious things like (As you said) a jar of peanuts. ;) Funny thing is though, I can eat some peanuts while others give me a mild uncomfortable reaction (inflammed and itchy mouth for an hour or two). I'd imagine it is the difference between peanuts that have come in contact with other nuts, and peanuts that have been processed in a more isolated manner.
But yes, ending up having everything labeled as such would ruin my "System" for determining what foods to avoid and generally put me back at square one, which is sitting down, thinking, and spending a lot of time researching the food I ate in the past few days when I have an outbreak.
Still, if people are that allergic to nuts and companies can get sued without the label, what is the answer? Surely we want to stop accidental deaths from serious alergic reactions. Perhaps different threat levels on the labels? "This Product has a remote chance/may have/likely has been in contact with peanuts or tree nuts?"
Maybe most people don't spend most of their time oiled up, bent over, and spread but almost everyone tries to manipulate their appearance for certain events. Weddings in particular are a good example of this. Brides, and to a lesser extent the Bridesmaids, spend a lot of time picking out things that make them look significantly better than usual. They'll get their nails (fingers and toes) done, they'll go to a profession to get their makeup done, they'll hit the salon to get their hair done, they'll wear a corset under their dress to make them look skinnier, they will wear very high heels to give them a more tall and slender appearance, if a good photographer is hired he will try to find situations that will lead to flattering pictures for the married couple.....
Almost every single time someone goes out into public they "Cheat" to improve their appearance (probably women more than men). People of all ages rarely go from sitting around in their lounging attire with their hair desheveled to out on the town. Again, makeup, hair products, flattering clothing, and maybe some other cosmetic products like "Spray on Tan" will give them an appearance different from the norm.
At what point is something "Contrived"? If the person isn't fresh out of bed they probably enhanced their appearance in some fashion.
Food manufacturers who do not process peanuts or tree nuts are starting to label their product "warning, may contain traces of peanuts or tree nuts"
I actually appreciate this, actually. I am allergic to a very large number of different foods, various nuts being one of the groups that invokes reactions. I don't have it so bad that my throat starts to close, but I do break out in enormous welt like hives all over my body for several days, which generally makes me miserable and feel like shit Sometimes I don't have a clue what caused the reaction. I'll think back to everything I ate in the last few days and nothing makes sense. If I run into a label like that on a product I ate I know the likely culprit and can avoid that particular food in the future (in most cases I don't worry about it because 99% of the time things are labeled as such I can eat them just fine). I wish more foods were labeled as such so I don't have to cut huge chunks of products out of my diet.
It definitely had a stigma at a place I used to work. Every time I brought up a Free product the management immediately got suspicious and shot the idea down. The "Network Manager" was an absolutely worthless individual who, despite having been the "Senior Network Engineer" previously, had absolutely no clue about anything in IT whatsoever. I wanted to dual boot Linux on my laptop to make use of a few network monitoring tools and she absolutely freaked out saying that I was forbidden to do it because it might...break the network(?!?!?! Don't ask, I don't know either.)
After hearing "We are a Microsoft House and that is final" over and over again, I got a good chuckle when we decided to virtualize. They had some salesmen and contractors in to discuss a solution with us which turned out to be Blade Servers with an EMC SAN back end running VMWare ESX Server. The sales people must have known what they were getting into because they were very vague about what platform the product was going to be running on. The look on her face when we got the equipment in and "RED HAT LINUX" flashed across the screen was priceless. A mixture of fear, embarassment, and just generally looking like someone who was duped badly. That was by far the best day I had at that job.
A lot of brick and mortar schools are experimenting with completely online courses, too. Someone I know was in a degree program at a school in the University of Wisconsin system and had to take a statistics course that was online offered online, which the student found to be annoying because it did not fit in with how they learn and expected that going to a brick and mortar school meant, well, having actual classes. Said person was pretty terrible at math and tried to get extra help from the professor, but he didn't answer EMAIL and didn't have office hours. I spent some time trying to teach the person but it was pretty late by then and they needed to pull a pretty respectable grade on the final to get a C in the class. I started guiding them through the final but the clock was ticking down fast and I ended up pretty much doing the test myself. I actually scored 105 (there were some bonus questions or something) and they ended up with a B.
Normally I would object to this type of thing but I saw what was passed off as "Lecture Material" and it was confusing and riddled with holes. I saw the person trying to get in touch with the Professor (there were no T.A. types associated with the class) and getting nowhere. I figured to hell with it, the Professor and the School clearly doesn't care about this class so why on Earth should myself or the student?
Well, "Top-Flight" Admins may not necessarily exist but "Bottom of the Barrel" Admins sure do. It may not be easy initially to spot the difference. Garbage Admins may be able to answer some technical questions that you throw at them if they have dealt with the tech you are discussing. After you hire them on you'll see that they can perform some basic tasks, have no desire to learn anything new, have no idea how to handle problems they have never encountered, and are too lazy to do anything but the absolutely minimum amount of maintenance that they can get by with doing to keep the systems from bursting into flames. Their idea of a job well done will be calling in a consultant to fix a problem while they stand there slack jawed, helpless, and generally not bothering to find out how to fix it themselves if it happens again.