I think this attitude is even more dangerous when dealing with this type of person. How long would you allow upbringing to be an excuse? Until she is 25? 30? 40? 50? To get along decent in life at some point an individual has to say "It doesn't matter that as a child mom was a drunk/daddy left/daddy told me I was a precious princess/Mommy never made us do our laundry, I'm an adult now and that means figuring out how things work, doing things for myself, and owning up to my own failures and taking credit for my accomplishments.
There probably is a difference between the bad childhood crowd and the good childhood crowd but the basic premise is there....
I started to see the "Its not their fault" card start to be played with people that I knew when I was a kid. I'm 30 now and some people my own age still use their bad childhood as an excuse (other people will even say it is not their fault). I can't stand that because I myself had a pretty screwed up childhood but decided reasonably early on in life that I wasn't going to let it ruin my future. I'm willing to give leeway in cases where a person was beaten a lot or sexually assaulted as a child. Outside of those things....you just need to grow up.
Yeah, the people that keep guns loaded up in the house are obviously a bit paranoid and put their families in more danger than the possibility of an intruder. No doubt. However, people can do it right I think....especially in a two story house.
Random Scenario....If you hear someone busting windows/rummaging around downstairs that should give you adequate time to unlock your gun cabinet and load the weapon AND get your family as far away from the staircase as possible while your wife/friend/whomever dials 911 and you go stand near the top of the stairs ready to make a stand in case the criminals actually intend to harm your family.
There is the possibility of an UNLOADED gun being effective enough to deter also. When I was in college I was significantly more naive and left my doors unlocked. I was taking a nap one Sunday afternoon and my girlfriend shook me awake saying someone was in the apartment. I didn't really believe her but I grabbed the hunting knife I kept on my headboard and went to look. Sure enough, there was a very large man obviously strung out on drugs standing in the doorway of my apartment. He looked at me, looked at the knife, and backed out slowly. If he would have attacked me, I'm not sure I could have handled him but the possibility of getting stabbed seemed to trump the possibility of grabbing my stack of CD's (Stealing CD's was real common back in those days. The used music stores would buy them for at least a dollar each)
I myself have rifles and shotguns in my apartment. I have no kids so I just have trigger locks on them, no cabinet, and the ammo is almost always locked up in the basement. My guns are for hunting and trap shooting (And of course, rising up against the establishment when the revolution comes...or whatever). I don't even consider them as intruder protection as the layout of my apartment dictates that if someone burst through the door when I was sleeping they'd be on me waaaaay before the guns came into play. I count on a deadbolt, a lock, and a sliding chain to keep them occupied long enough to get out the back door.
If you increase the pay of the police drastically, I think it could have a pretty bad effect on law enforcement. Right now I think that some people go into that line of work because they want the power to dole out justice. Add a large sum of money to that equation and you are offering power AND money. Needless to say that combination may not be the best way to attract the most moral police force.
And then the cop will arrest you for manslaughter. You do realize that self defense requires the application of only that amount of force necessary?
That is a very dangerous caveat to the self defense law. If an intruder comes into your home looking like he is there to steal by any means necessary it is unlikely that you will have time to analyze his overall health and state of mind do determine how much force is necessary. In most cases, being awake and alert and standing in the same room as the person will be enough to make them want to leave. Other times, all of those things plus holding a gun will do it. Sometimes, clipping the person on the arm with a.22 caliber pistol will be enough. In the most extreme cases, you'd have to unload a clip of.22 ammo do stop them.
If the criminal is indeed a threat to your life or health, the last thing you need is to hesitate pulling the trigger trying to decide how much force is needed. That could very likely lead to the gun being turned around and pointed at you and yours. Of course, telling people to fire away as soon as they see an intruder could lead to things like the really drunk guy who actually thinks he is in his home taking a slug to the chest or something like that.
The "Necessary Force" idea may work if we could assume that we are always dealing with reasonable people (in terms of both the property owner, the authorities, and the judge/jury presiding over a case.) Of course, people are not always reasonable, as evidenced by the need for such laws in the first place.;)
Not to mention the fact that just owning the audio equipment doesn't make you capable of producing anything of quality. I watched a guy who runs a small one man studio (he used to work for a small label and now just does it in his free time) and was astonish at how much effort and know how it actually took for him to record and clean up some tracks. I'm sure it took him a long time to learn it all. So...musicians can spend their time learning how to lay tracks or they can spend their time perfecting their singing/instrument playing/songwriting/stage presence.
Then there is the issue of marketing. A lot of guys get an idea to get a band together, write some tunes, and start getting radio play and selling out huge stadiums. They know how to do the getting the band together and writing tunes part....clueless how to get to point B. Yeah, the internet gives you a venue to advertise your music but even that requires a little knowledge of how to get people to start looking for you. A band member could probably go to school for marketing and get some experience somewhere....or he could spend his time...writing songs and perfecting his craft.
I'm sure there are plenty of bands out there that are not expecting to make it big and just play because they like to play music but most people want to be paid money for their efforts. This idea of the "Starving Artist" singing on the street hoping someone throws him some money so he can guy a loaf of bread is romantic but unrealistic. For some bizarre reason Slashdotters (A demographic that I would guess are probably above average one the wage scale as a whole) seem to think that everyone else should just do crap for free while they get paid for their work (Yes, I know a lot of people here contribute to FOSS projects but I'm pretty sure they are either in school, have a full time job, or are comfortably retired). I can guarantee that most musicians, if they were told signing with this label would make them 10 times the money they currently make, wouldn't even blink before inking the contract.
I myself avoid Internet Explorer as much as possible. I use it on Windows machines only to go and download Firefox and if I want to use Outlook Web Access. I agree that IE6 was just terrible.
But...saying that it isn't "fair" for Microsoft to give its own product preferential treatment is really laughable. Of course they will. It is THEIR product being installed along with......their product. They should be able to do what they want with it. If they release Windows 7 and it turns out to be the buggiest, slowest, least usable OS ever that doesn't allow the user to install any browser but Internet Explorer 6..fine. People will get sick of their crap eventually and look for alternatives.
I would like to see IE usage drop to a single digit percentage, but I do not want to see it happen due to compulsion. If Firefox/Chrome/Opera are going to beat all the market share out of Internet Explorer....if Linux/OSX are going to beat the market share out of Windows I want it to happen because the general public saw a superior product and chose to go with it, not because government mandates forced Microsoft to do self destructive things (above and beyond self destructive actions that they choose for themselves). For a site that constantly complains about the evils of big government regulation, there is an awful lot of support for governments telling Microsoft what they can do with their own product.
Also, a default installation of Windows contains no third party software (Maybe drives...I really don't know if the drivers built into Windows are just "Signed by Microsoft" or actually written by Microsoft) currently. Sure, you'll buy a new HP with some absurd amount of added software not written by Microsoft, but that really is the responsibility of the OEM. If you Start forcing Microsoft to include seven browsers all written by different companies/groups they somewhat become responsible for them. If Firefox 4, when it arrives, is a complete piece of junk and it is listed first...the User is going to load it, realize its crap, and complain about how bad Microsoft's new Firefox thingy is. They will be held responsible for making sure that code written outside of their company works with their code. How is that fair?
It seems that a lot of us want things to be fair for everyone....but things to be more fair for others.
I know four people pretty well that ended up getting their GED. They vary in their reasons for quitting High School. One wanted to spend more time getting wasted/chasing girls, one didn't see the point because he was taking car repair classes and was learning more there about what he wanted to do than he would at school, one wanted to start working, and one....I don't know....he was a 3.8-3.9 type student with just over 1/2 a year left and suddenly decided to move in with his sister in California for awhile.
The one that wanted to spend more time getting wasted turned out to be an over the road trucker when he hit 19 and is sitting at age 40 doing local runs and getting ready to retire. The one that wanted to fix cars was managing a Firestone Service Center by age 22 and makes over six figures (Unless bonuses are bad one year), the one who wanted to work had his own HVAC company by 25 and has made plenty of cash, and the one that moved to California is an airplane mechanic (Actually by far the least successful financially of the four...it is kind of surprising how little airplane mechanics actually make).
All four of them shared a common thread as far as not graduating went....they all wanted to get their G.E.D. after securing their jobs and making a decent amount of money. The reason? A bit of self worth and a bit but mostly so they could tell their kids that they are "High School Graduates". Oddly, when asked what they would do differently about their lives, they say they would have finished High School but all are happy in their chosen fields. I figure I should mention that the truck driver and mechanic spend more time reading/learning as adults than a lot of the College Grads I know.
I guess you could say "Yeah, but they all had to take Blue Collar positions and do actual work.." or something. I'm sure that the statistics show that graduating high school is very important to future financial success but in my person opinion I think that the type of person you are is going to dictate your success if you graduate High School or do not.
Go fuck yourself and your condescending superior attitude. My bankruptcy was mainly incurred by medical problems. You ever need to have emergency surgery without medical insurance? Give it a try sometime and let me know how it works out for you.
It is pretty amazing how fast people are to judge you when they hear you have went through a bankruptcy. Most of the people I know who had to file was due to medical expenses (Some that had insurance but required some really ridiculously expensive tests/procedures/care and had medical insurance that covered 80% or something like that.)
I filed years ago, most due to two things - I went to college and didn't trust myself with my two shiny new credit cards ($1500 limit) so I left them at home (parents house). I never used them but knew they were there in case of emergency. I came home one day and got a bill. $24,000. Huh? Somewhere along the line my mom went berzerk and developed a gambling problem. She started using my cards and kept getting them to jack the credit up. All told I had limits of $30,000 (owed $34,000 after late fees) and $21,500 (Owed $24,000 after late fees). I was just a kid then really....19 years old. I sure never got along with dear old mom the same after that but I wasn't going to have her thrown in jail, although I probably should have. That and in the three months between getting too old for my father's insurance and getting my own job upon graduation, I racked up a $20,000 medical bill. Getting out of college and having $78,000 worth of debt on top of a $40,000 student loan is pretty daunting but I spent two years trying to chip away at it before I had to give in.
So yeah. My mistake to trust someone (Even a parent) with my credit card....but the company raising the limit to well over 10 times the original amount without ever speaking to me? That's a little shady, too.
That isn't an option for everyone. 90% of fruits and vegetables cause me to develop huge nasty hives all over my body. I'm talking emergency room level hives. That is unless I boil them/they are processed to the point where they are robbed of nearly all nutritional value.
I'd say another 5% of them cause minor allergic reactions...causing only my mouth to swell up. It doesn't appear to be life threatening but it sure as hell is not pleasant.
So...I eat as many Watermelons, Tomatos, Bananas, and Green Beans as I can stomach. It is really hard to subsist on those four items alone, so I end up eating tons and tons of meet and trying to supplement my diet with vitamins.
Here is the thing though....especially in places with three lane highways most people try to avoid the right lane because of the on ramps. Therefore grandma occupies the middle lane, going 62 in a 65. Me? I want to go 70, 71. Everyone in an SUV? They want to go 80 and have no problem bearing down on you. Now, I want that person tailing me about as much as they want to slow down so I look to see if I can get over. Sometimes there is too much traffic. I put on my signal to say I will be leaving the lane when an opportunity presents itself. In the meantime, said SUV makes sure to pin himself 3 feet behind my car.
Who is really the hazard here? Me for not going as fast as humanly possible in the fast lane or not going barely legal slow in the middle lane, or the guy that is very blatant in his disregard for the law?
I think people have varying levels of what they believe to be a reasonable MPH above the speed limit...usually in relation to the number of times they have been ticketed and for how fast.
I really cannot understand why LucasArts has not done something new with this series in the last decade. I would have thought with the release of Star Wars Episodes I-III something like this would have been forthcoming.
The story lines were not enormously deep in detail but they were enough to really immerse me in the game. Things like balancing power between shields and speed, choosing the types of rockets for the mission, adjusting forward and rear shields, all that stuff made the games a really great experience all around. Oh, and it is freaking Star Wars. Sorry, Battlegrounds just did not do it for me in the way The X-Wing/Tie Fighter games did. The way they handled space vehicles was just outright dull.
I've wondered myself how they could work actual playable capital ships into the equation to great effect. It would be awesome to haul a Star Destroyer into combat, but it would lack the exciting dogfighting element. Perhaps if they could integrate some cool strategy elements....
Well, a lot of smaller business' still run on some older hardware like a Compaq DL380 G4 or something and yeah, no SAN backend or anything. A DL380 has space for 6 U320 SCSI Drives....they probably have mirrored two drives for the OS so they are left with four, which are probably a RAID-5 configuration. U320 Maxes out at 300 GB or something. Realistically, the largest I have seen in production are the 148 GB variety. So....450 GB of usable storage.
Obviously if you only get 50 MB for your mailbox that is a little absurd, but I can see the need for mailbox limits using servers like that.
Back a lifetime ago when I was still a Biochemist, I worked for a Gene Therapy lab in Madison that was not part of the University system. There were two branches of the company which were almost completely separate entites, the "Commercial" side which sold closed proprietary products (Things like Restriction Enzymes, Gene Delivery Systems...) that were developed as part of our research and the "Academic" side which focused purely on research. While the "Commercial" side pulled in quite a bit of money over half of the cash that ran the place was in the form of government grants which needed to be reapplied for every three years.
It was well known that if either source of revenue was taken away the research would be forced to stop. Obviously most of the customers on the commercial side were other academic labs and thus it was pretty much a reprovisioning of taxpayer resources so at first glance it seems like a waste of taxpayer money to copyright these things.
However, the fear really was not that some other lab would figure out what the stuff was and create it on it's own instead of buying from us. After all, the manufacture of some of our products required special equipment that may not have been found elsewhere. The fear was that a corporation would step in and start creating and selling our product lines. Then the flow of money would be from Taxpayer, to Academic institution to megacorp. Keeping the stuff closed ensured that Taxpayer money stayed in the Academic system, at least.
Perhaps there is a better way to do this sort of thing, but I think it would be very complex to get off the ground.
I agree whole heartedly. This applies to all aspects of IT, actually. I'm mostly a network admin type but I do write some small in house applications at times (I'm not really a very good programmer, but I try to learn as much and as quickly as possible). My current employer was implementing a new business process and had over a dozen meetings over the span of a month or so...not a single one was I asked to sit in on.
In the end they thought they had it all together and came to me with what they needed done. Turns out what they needed was for me to create three applications that interacted with our MRP system because they were something not inside the system itself. It was about noon and they told me their "Go Live" date was the next day and told me what they needed. They figured I could just click some buttons and have it ready..no problem. I told them that 2 weeks was a very optimistic time frame and they just gave me blank stares and could not figure out why. Funny thing is a guy from the shop floor that was in the meeting had been pleading with the others to bring me in because he figured it may be complex. He isn't a big computer guy but he is savvy to understand that I don't simply perform magic but actually have to work to get things done.
I think the problem is that some things that seem complex from a non-techie POV CAN be put together in an hour and some things that seem very simple can take a very long time to accomplish.
Now, I am asked to sit in meetings on occasion when something new starts being bandied about so I can give that reality check. It is nice because I learn something about the business which makes me much better at my job. On some rare occasions I have even helped by giving input on (Gasp) business issues instead of just technological issues.
Yes, and so is the Moon, as its cratered far side will show you (the far side is much more cratered than the front side which shows how the Earth attracts asteroids towards the far side and away from the near side).
Next question?
Wait.....seriously? The Dark Side of the Moon is cratered more than the Light Side because of how Earth attracts asteroids?
How about.....since the light side is always facing the Earth, the Earth protects the light side from bombardment. It is a lot tougher for an asteroid to go around the Earth and strike the light side (Which is always facing the Earth) than it is to merely barrel into the dark side.
don't forget the unexplained brain features that haven't been documented because science can't explain them - like twins feeling what the other feels and people with transplanted organs perceiving memories of the donor.
Explain?! It hasn't even been observed yet.
You might as well say "But your precious science has yet to explain psychic powers and zombies!"
I'll be honest...I only heard of this briefly and did not do more than glance over this wikipedia entry....but there is some type of study conducted by some Minnesota based researchers about "Twins reared apart". I remember hearing some pretty crazy stuff about it so you may want to look it over before positively saying such things have not been observed yet.
We have reached an odd age in warfare though, where the goal of wars may NOT necessarily be to hold the land that you "Take". A good example of this would be the first Iraqi War. The United States went in, bombed the crap out of the Iraqi military and went home despite the fact that there was no question of who was the victor. Honestly I have no facts or figures but I would have to wager that the number of actual infantry who saw any actual combat was quite low (I say this not to marginalize those who did fight and die). I think that the first war in Iraq pretty much was a complete victory for the United States and allies.
The wars that are going on now where more and more troops are being sent over with no clear intent of "holding" the countries except perhaps ideologically (or of course, holding it while claiming to not hold it or something...I don't really want to debate this point) are quite bizarre actually. Eight years of war and the stated goals become less concrete with each passing year (Republicans, Democrats, Its everyone's fault. I do not wish this to become a partisan debate either). I would honestly hope that any future conflicts yield more hesitation in terms of prolonged occupation.
While I agree that computers (hardware) are not more complex than cars in regards to repair, I have spent time helping a friend learn how to fix computers. When I started with him, he was still using AOL and had no clue what a hard drive was. He is a bar owner and always had people that wanted their computers fixed. I charged a modest price and he watched as I explained it to him as I went along. When he started to get competent enough to do it himself, he started fixing his patron's computers for free and called me when he ran into problems.
Now. This guy isn't the brightest guy but he isn't an idiot. It took a good 2 years before I stopped getting calls from him twice a week. I'm talking about "I'm trying to replace this video card but it doesn't fit", "I am reloading Windows and there are three partitions. I don't get it." "Why does the time reset every time I shut this thing down?" Until you see an AGP 2x only slot and have an AGP 8x card in your hand you just don't necessarily know these things. It actually takes a decent amount of effort for the average person to go from computer ignorant to competent.
Back in the day, I got one tip for $50 once for going to set up a PC at an obviously wealthy and insane woman's home.
She had five large and expensive birds (some type of parrot type as they could talk a little bit). She interrupted my setting up the PC's several times to show me tricks her birds could do. "Chester! Go Make a baby!" ("Chester" proceeds to go attack one of the female birds.) She would not let me leave until I did this thing where the bird bit my finger and I flipped him around so he landed on my wrist. She told me that I should bring my girlfriend over because the birds were going to outlive her and she had nobody to pass them on to after her death.
It was good for the company too. I told her that the store owner would want to bill her for any time I spent there. I don't know what it was. $80-$100 an hour or so back then? She gladly forked over three hours labor for me to hang out with her for awhile.
The other near time I nearly got a "tip" was when I walked into this house in a less than palatable neighborhood. The first room was the kitchen and.....the floor was all dirt. I do not know if there was actually like, a real floor beneath it and it was simply that dirty or if it was just something cobbled together in the back of the house. There was a huge metal pot of boiling water and some white substance all over the kitchen table. The three men playing with said white stuff were all twitchy and sweating and Offered me "A bump". A kindly old woman came and showed me where her computer was...in a very classy room farther in the house. Nobody seemed to care that I walked in on them cooking up large amounts of crack. Unless they were making dumplings and having a joke at my expense but somehow, I don't think so.
100 Workstations and 40 servers? You sound like a candidate for Spiceworks, if you have any Windows Servers in the environment.
Spicworks is a free (As in Beer) Hardware/Software Inventory management system with a built in help desk system. It picks up Windows Machines, Linux Machines, Switches/Hubs/Routers/Firewalls, Network Printers, etc and displays what information it can glean from them (Software installed, Hardware Serial Numbers, IP addresses, Model Numbers, etc.) You can create your own custom reports (In their own environment...but I believe they have added support so you can work directly with MSSQL and MySQL as well. Don't quote me on that though. You can set parameters in the program to alert you when a certain condition is reached (A Hard drive has less than 10% free space or Stefan in accounting has installed Limewire AGAIN). The most recent version will create a network map for you, although I already have a network map and have not had a chance to play with that part of the program.
I think it's a pretty nice program for Environments with less than 250 total network devices. The interface does seem to slow as you add more devices. All in all, I think it's a pretty nice little system to use for smaller businesses. There is a small community that pitches in to contribute reports and "Dashboard Widgets" that you may download if they appear helpful.
You don't understand what Sharepoint is, do you? We rolled out MOSS Sharepoint and used it for a few months. Even Windows users preferred email because the interface made it so painful to find things. Sharepoint does not have any of the functionality you list, either. There is an add-on that includes access control, but guess what? Client machines much be logged into the same domain (or have a a trust set up). In other words, Sharepoint has no access control functionality that can be used any differently than a Windows Server fileshare! It also stores documents in a database, and as you get a lot of documents (say, 1000) performance degrades.)
What do you mean Sharepoint has no access control? It is built right into every Sharepoint Library.
And Client machines do not have to be logged into the same domain! You don't have to use the Active Directory User authentication either, you can use "Forms Based Authentication" to create non-domain login accounts, which you can access from any computer you want.
The search in Sharepoint does stink. Luckily, without too much effort, you can write you own search web parts.
When you get a lot of documents in a single library performance does degrade, but it is not absolutely horrible. Maybe an extra half second here and there.
A guy I work with gets loads of mail from Citrix. I don't know if he was invited to a GoTo Meeting or something and checked some box to agree to receive messages but other than that he would have had no exposure to Citrix nor reason to communicate with them.
He was a higher up and demanded that I block this "Shady company" from sending anyone in the organization messages. I wrote the person sending the message five EMAIL's over the course of weeks pleading with him to remove this user from the list. No response. Messages kept coming. We were going to buy five Goto Express subscriptions but decided not to because of this.
I do like those types of interview questions but some people can take them in the wrong direction and focus on (What I believe) is the wrong thing. I remember years back I had worked as a Novell Administrator and was applying for a more lucrative Novell Admin job. I had worked with 3.x, 4.x, and 5.x using Zen and other tools (For the life of me I don't remember a thing about Novell at this point as I found a job doing Active Directory administration and have not seen a Novell server since).
Anyway, at the interview the lady wanted me to describe setting up an NDPS printing Environment. There were three components to it and I simply couldn't remember the name of one of them (Agent, Broker, and something else...see...I still don't remember). She just wouldn't let it die. Instead of maybe shifting to more Novel Trivia she kept going back to it. It is something I could have found out in 1 minute online...and setting up NDPS printing was pretty easy anyway. I did not get called back for that job.
In retrospect, although I ended up as a Microsoft Admin and would have preferred eventually getting into a Unix/Linux Admin role, I sure am glad I did not get that Novel 5.1 Admin position. As far as I know that company is still running....Novell 5.1. Would have been a dead end.
I guess my point is, the questions can be good but you can happen to pick an aspect of a technology that the person has done and they still might not be able to answer correctly.;) Although it sounds like you come up with more interesting things than describing NDPS printing.
I agree that someone with a passion for working with computers is probably going to do a better job, but it can be difficult to find out the guys who REALLY installed every distro and the guys that know just enough to get them by the interview...unless you dedicate a lot of time to the interview process.
Keep in mind also, that there are some applicants with degrees that ALSO sat at home and loaded every distro....doing their classroom work and doing their own side projects.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this attitude is even more dangerous when dealing with this type of person. How long would you allow upbringing to be an excuse? Until she is 25? 30? 40? 50? To get along decent in life at some point an individual has to say "It doesn't matter that as a child mom was a drunk/daddy left/daddy told me I was a precious princess/Mommy never made us do our laundry, I'm an adult now and that means figuring out how things work, doing things for myself, and owning up to my own failures and taking credit for my accomplishments.
There probably is a difference between the bad childhood crowd and the good childhood crowd but the basic premise is there....
I started to see the "Its not their fault" card start to be played with people that I knew when I was a kid. I'm 30 now and some people my own age still use their bad childhood as an excuse (other people will even say it is not their fault). I can't stand that because I myself had a pretty screwed up childhood but decided reasonably early on in life that I wasn't going to let it ruin my future. I'm willing to give leeway in cases where a person was beaten a lot or sexually assaulted as a child. Outside of those things....you just need to grow up.
Yeah, the people that keep guns loaded up in the house are obviously a bit paranoid and put their families in more danger than the possibility of an intruder. No doubt. However, people can do it right I think....especially in a two story house.
Random Scenario....If you hear someone busting windows/rummaging around downstairs that should give you adequate time to unlock your gun cabinet and load the weapon AND get your family as far away from the staircase as possible while your wife/friend/whomever dials 911 and you go stand near the top of the stairs ready to make a stand in case the criminals actually intend to harm your family.
There is the possibility of an UNLOADED gun being effective enough to deter also. When I was in college I was significantly more naive and left my doors unlocked. I was taking a nap one Sunday afternoon and my girlfriend shook me awake saying someone was in the apartment. I didn't really believe her but I grabbed the hunting knife I kept on my headboard and went to look. Sure enough, there was a very large man obviously strung out on drugs standing in the doorway of my apartment. He looked at me, looked at the knife, and backed out slowly. If he would have attacked me, I'm not sure I could have handled him but the possibility of getting stabbed seemed to trump the possibility of grabbing my stack of CD's (Stealing CD's was real common back in those days. The used music stores would buy them for at least a dollar each)
I myself have rifles and shotguns in my apartment. I have no kids so I just have trigger locks on them, no cabinet, and the ammo is almost always locked up in the basement. My guns are for hunting and trap shooting (And of course, rising up against the establishment when the revolution comes...or whatever). I don't even consider them as intruder protection as the layout of my apartment dictates that if someone burst through the door when I was sleeping they'd be on me waaaaay before the guns came into play. I count on a deadbolt, a lock, and a sliding chain to keep them occupied long enough to get out the back door.
If you increase the pay of the police drastically, I think it could have a pretty bad effect on law enforcement. Right now I think that some people go into that line of work because they want the power to dole out justice. Add a large sum of money to that equation and you are offering power AND money. Needless to say that combination may not be the best way to attract the most moral police force.
And then the cop will arrest you for manslaughter. You do realize that self defense requires the application of only that amount of force necessary?
That is a very dangerous caveat to the self defense law. If an intruder comes into your home looking like he is there to steal by any means necessary it is unlikely that you will have time to analyze his overall health and state of mind do determine how much force is necessary. In most cases, being awake and alert and standing in the same room as the person will be enough to make them want to leave. Other times, all of those things plus holding a gun will do it. Sometimes, clipping the person on the arm with a .22 caliber pistol will be enough. In the most extreme cases, you'd have to unload a clip of .22 ammo do stop them.
If the criminal is indeed a threat to your life or health, the last thing you need is to hesitate pulling the trigger trying to decide how much force is needed. That could very likely lead to the gun being turned around and pointed at you and yours. Of course, telling people to fire away as soon as they see an intruder could lead to things like the really drunk guy who actually thinks he is in his home taking a slug to the chest or something like that.
The "Necessary Force" idea may work if we could assume that we are always dealing with reasonable people (in terms of both the property owner, the authorities, and the judge/jury presiding over a case.) Of course, people are not always reasonable, as evidenced by the need for such laws in the first place. ;)
You know...this won't work for me as I have not a single shred of musical talent, but I have to say what you said was actually really cool.
Not to mention the fact that just owning the audio equipment doesn't make you capable of producing anything of quality. I watched a guy who runs a small one man studio (he used to work for a small label and now just does it in his free time) and was astonish at how much effort and know how it actually took for him to record and clean up some tracks. I'm sure it took him a long time to learn it all. So...musicians can spend their time learning how to lay tracks or they can spend their time perfecting their singing/instrument playing/songwriting/stage presence.
Then there is the issue of marketing. A lot of guys get an idea to get a band together, write some tunes, and start getting radio play and selling out huge stadiums. They know how to do the getting the band together and writing tunes part....clueless how to get to point B. Yeah, the internet gives you a venue to advertise your music but even that requires a little knowledge of how to get people to start looking for you. A band member could probably go to school for marketing and get some experience somewhere....or he could spend his time...writing songs and perfecting his craft.
I'm sure there are plenty of bands out there that are not expecting to make it big and just play because they like to play music but most people want to be paid money for their efforts. This idea of the "Starving Artist" singing on the street hoping someone throws him some money so he can guy a loaf of bread is romantic but unrealistic. For some bizarre reason Slashdotters (A demographic that I would guess are probably above average one the wage scale as a whole) seem to think that everyone else should just do crap for free while they get paid for their work (Yes, I know a lot of people here contribute to FOSS projects but I'm pretty sure they are either in school, have a full time job, or are comfortably retired). I can guarantee that most musicians, if they were told signing with this label would make them 10 times the money they currently make, wouldn't even blink before inking the contract.
I myself avoid Internet Explorer as much as possible. I use it on Windows machines only to go and download Firefox and if I want to use Outlook Web Access. I agree that IE6 was just terrible.
But...saying that it isn't "fair" for Microsoft to give its own product preferential treatment is really laughable. Of course they will. It is THEIR product being installed along with......their product. They should be able to do what they want with it. If they release Windows 7 and it turns out to be the buggiest, slowest, least usable OS ever that doesn't allow the user to install any browser but Internet Explorer 6..fine. People will get sick of their crap eventually and look for alternatives.
I would like to see IE usage drop to a single digit percentage, but I do not want to see it happen due to compulsion. If Firefox/Chrome/Opera are going to beat all the market share out of Internet Explorer....if Linux/OSX are going to beat the market share out of Windows I want it to happen because the general public saw a superior product and chose to go with it, not because government mandates forced Microsoft to do self destructive things (above and beyond self destructive actions that they choose for themselves). For a site that constantly complains about the evils of big government regulation, there is an awful lot of support for governments telling Microsoft what they can do with their own product.
Also, a default installation of Windows contains no third party software (Maybe drives...I really don't know if the drivers built into Windows are just "Signed by Microsoft" or actually written by Microsoft) currently. Sure, you'll buy a new HP with some absurd amount of added software not written by Microsoft, but that really is the responsibility of the OEM. If you Start forcing Microsoft to include seven browsers all written by different companies/groups they somewhat become responsible for them. If Firefox 4, when it arrives, is a complete piece of junk and it is listed first...the User is going to load it, realize its crap, and complain about how bad Microsoft's new Firefox thingy is. They will be held responsible for making sure that code written outside of their company works with their code. How is that fair?
It seems that a lot of us want things to be fair for everyone....but things to be more fair for others.
I know four people pretty well that ended up getting their GED. They vary in their reasons for quitting High School. One wanted to spend more time getting wasted/chasing girls, one didn't see the point because he was taking car repair classes and was learning more there about what he wanted to do than he would at school, one wanted to start working, and one....I don't know....he was a 3.8-3.9 type student with just over 1/2 a year left and suddenly decided to move in with his sister in California for awhile.
The one that wanted to spend more time getting wasted turned out to be an over the road trucker when he hit 19 and is sitting at age 40 doing local runs and getting ready to retire. The one that wanted to fix cars was managing a Firestone Service Center by age 22 and makes over six figures (Unless bonuses are bad one year), the one who wanted to work had his own HVAC company by 25 and has made plenty of cash, and the one that moved to California is an airplane mechanic (Actually by far the least successful financially of the four...it is kind of surprising how little airplane mechanics actually make).
All four of them shared a common thread as far as not graduating went....they all wanted to get their G.E.D. after securing their jobs and making a decent amount of money. The reason? A bit of self worth and a bit but mostly so they could tell their kids that they are "High School Graduates". Oddly, when asked what they would do differently about their lives, they say they would have finished High School but all are happy in their chosen fields. I figure I should mention that the truck driver and mechanic spend more time reading/learning as adults than a lot of the College Grads I know.
I guess you could say "Yeah, but they all had to take Blue Collar positions and do actual work.." or something. I'm sure that the statistics show that graduating high school is very important to future financial success but in my person opinion I think that the type of person you are is going to dictate your success if you graduate High School or do not.
Go fuck yourself and your condescending superior attitude. My bankruptcy was mainly incurred by medical problems. You ever need to have emergency surgery without medical insurance? Give it a try sometime and let me know how it works out for you.
It is pretty amazing how fast people are to judge you when they hear you have went through a bankruptcy. Most of the people I know who had to file was due to medical expenses (Some that had insurance but required some really ridiculously expensive tests/procedures/care and had medical insurance that covered 80% or something like that.)
I filed years ago, most due to two things - I went to college and didn't trust myself with my two shiny new credit cards ($1500 limit) so I left them at home (parents house). I never used them but knew they were there in case of emergency. I came home one day and got a bill. $24,000. Huh? Somewhere along the line my mom went berzerk and developed a gambling problem. She started using my cards and kept getting them to jack the credit up. All told I had limits of $30,000 (owed $34,000 after late fees) and $21,500 (Owed $24,000 after late fees). I was just a kid then really....19 years old. I sure never got along with dear old mom the same after that but I wasn't going to have her thrown in jail, although I probably should have. That and in the three months between getting too old for my father's insurance and getting my own job upon graduation, I racked up a $20,000 medical bill. Getting out of college and having $78,000 worth of debt on top of a $40,000 student loan is pretty daunting but I spent two years trying to chip away at it before I had to give in.
So yeah. My mistake to trust someone (Even a parent) with my credit card....but the company raising the limit to well over 10 times the original amount without ever speaking to me? That's a little shady, too.
That isn't an option for everyone. 90% of fruits and vegetables cause me to develop huge nasty hives all over my body. I'm talking emergency room level hives. That is unless I boil them/they are processed to the point where they are robbed of nearly all nutritional value.
I'd say another 5% of them cause minor allergic reactions...causing only my mouth to swell up. It doesn't appear to be life threatening but it sure as hell is not pleasant.
So...I eat as many Watermelons, Tomatos, Bananas, and Green Beans as I can stomach. It is really hard to subsist on those four items alone, so I end up eating tons and tons of meet and trying to supplement my diet with vitamins.
Here is the thing though....especially in places with three lane highways most people try to avoid the right lane because of the on ramps. Therefore grandma occupies the middle lane, going 62 in a 65. Me? I want to go 70, 71. Everyone in an SUV? They want to go 80 and have no problem bearing down on you. Now, I want that person tailing me about as much as they want to slow down so I look to see if I can get over. Sometimes there is too much traffic. I put on my signal to say I will be leaving the lane when an opportunity presents itself. In the meantime, said SUV makes sure to pin himself 3 feet behind my car.
Who is really the hazard here? Me for not going as fast as humanly possible in the fast lane or not going barely legal slow in the middle lane, or the guy that is very blatant in his disregard for the law?
I think people have varying levels of what they believe to be a reasonable MPH above the speed limit...usually in relation to the number of times they have been ticketed and for how fast.
I really cannot understand why LucasArts has not done something new with this series in the last decade. I would have thought with the release of Star Wars Episodes I-III something like this would have been forthcoming.
The story lines were not enormously deep in detail but they were enough to really immerse me in the game. Things like balancing power between shields and speed, choosing the types of rockets for the mission, adjusting forward and rear shields, all that stuff made the games a really great experience all around. Oh, and it is freaking Star Wars. Sorry, Battlegrounds just did not do it for me in the way The X-Wing/Tie Fighter games did. The way they handled space vehicles was just outright dull.
I've wondered myself how they could work actual playable capital ships into the equation to great effect. It would be awesome to haul a Star Destroyer into combat, but it would lack the exciting dogfighting element. Perhaps if they could integrate some cool strategy elements....
Well, a lot of smaller business' still run on some older hardware like a Compaq DL380 G4 or something and yeah, no SAN backend or anything. A DL380 has space for 6 U320 SCSI Drives....they probably have mirrored two drives for the OS so they are left with four, which are probably a RAID-5 configuration. U320 Maxes out at 300 GB or something. Realistically, the largest I have seen in production are the 148 GB variety. So....450 GB of usable storage.
Obviously if you only get 50 MB for your mailbox that is a little absurd, but I can see the need for mailbox limits using servers like that.
Back a lifetime ago when I was still a Biochemist, I worked for a Gene Therapy lab in Madison that was not part of the University system. There were two branches of the company which were almost completely separate entites, the "Commercial" side which sold closed proprietary products (Things like Restriction Enzymes, Gene Delivery Systems...) that were developed as part of our research and the "Academic" side which focused purely on research. While the "Commercial" side pulled in quite a bit of money over half of the cash that ran the place was in the form of government grants which needed to be reapplied for every three years.
It was well known that if either source of revenue was taken away the research would be forced to stop. Obviously most of the customers on the commercial side were other academic labs and thus it was pretty much a reprovisioning of taxpayer resources so at first glance it seems like a waste of taxpayer money to copyright these things.
However, the fear really was not that some other lab would figure out what the stuff was and create it on it's own instead of buying from us. After all, the manufacture of some of our products required special equipment that may not have been found elsewhere. The fear was that a corporation would step in and start creating and selling our product lines. Then the flow of money would be from Taxpayer, to Academic institution to megacorp. Keeping the stuff closed ensured that Taxpayer money stayed in the Academic system, at least.
Perhaps there is a better way to do this sort of thing, but I think it would be very complex to get off the ground.
I agree whole heartedly. This applies to all aspects of IT, actually. I'm mostly a network admin type but I do write some small in house applications at times (I'm not really a very good programmer, but I try to learn as much and as quickly as possible). My current employer was implementing a new business process and had over a dozen meetings over the span of a month or so...not a single one was I asked to sit in on.
In the end they thought they had it all together and came to me with what they needed done. Turns out what they needed was for me to create three applications that interacted with our MRP system because they were something not inside the system itself. It was about noon and they told me their "Go Live" date was the next day and told me what they needed. They figured I could just click some buttons and have it ready..no problem. I told them that 2 weeks was a very optimistic time frame and they just gave me blank stares and could not figure out why. Funny thing is a guy from the shop floor that was in the meeting had been pleading with the others to bring me in because he figured it may be complex. He isn't a big computer guy but he is savvy to understand that I don't simply perform magic but actually have to work to get things done.
I think the problem is that some things that seem complex from a non-techie POV CAN be put together in an hour and some things that seem very simple can take a very long time to accomplish.
Now, I am asked to sit in meetings on occasion when something new starts being bandied about so I can give that reality check. It is nice because I learn something about the business which makes me much better at my job. On some rare occasions I have even helped by giving input on (Gasp) business issues instead of just technological issues.
Yes, and so is the Moon, as its cratered far side will show you (the far side is much more cratered than the front side which shows how the Earth attracts asteroids towards the far side and away from the near side).
Next question?
Wait.....seriously? The Dark Side of the Moon is cratered more than the Light Side because of how Earth attracts asteroids?
How about.....since the light side is always facing the Earth, the Earth protects the light side from bombardment. It is a lot tougher for an asteroid to go around the Earth and strike the light side (Which is always facing the Earth) than it is to merely barrel into the dark side.
don't forget the unexplained brain features that haven't been documented because science can't explain them - like twins feeling what the other feels and people with transplanted organs perceiving memories of the donor.
Explain?! It hasn't even been observed yet.
You might as well say "But your precious science has yet to explain psychic powers and zombies!"
I'll be honest...I only heard of this briefly and did not do more than glance over this wikipedia entry....but there is some type of study conducted by some Minnesota based researchers about "Twins reared apart". I remember hearing some pretty crazy stuff about it so you may want to look it over before positively saying such things have not been observed yet.
We have reached an odd age in warfare though, where the goal of wars may NOT necessarily be to hold the land that you "Take". A good example of this would be the first Iraqi War. The United States went in, bombed the crap out of the Iraqi military and went home despite the fact that there was no question of who was the victor. Honestly I have no facts or figures but I would have to wager that the number of actual infantry who saw any actual combat was quite low (I say this not to marginalize those who did fight and die). I think that the first war in Iraq pretty much was a complete victory for the United States and allies.
The wars that are going on now where more and more troops are being sent over with no clear intent of "holding" the countries except perhaps ideologically (or of course, holding it while claiming to not hold it or something...I don't really want to debate this point) are quite bizarre actually. Eight years of war and the stated goals become less concrete with each passing year (Republicans, Democrats, Its everyone's fault. I do not wish this to become a partisan debate either). I would honestly hope that any future conflicts yield more hesitation in terms of prolonged occupation.
While I agree that computers (hardware) are not more complex than cars in regards to repair, I have spent time helping a friend learn how to fix computers. When I started with him, he was still using AOL and had no clue what a hard drive was. He is a bar owner and always had people that wanted their computers fixed. I charged a modest price and he watched as I explained it to him as I went along. When he started to get competent enough to do it himself, he started fixing his patron's computers for free and called me when he ran into problems.
Now. This guy isn't the brightest guy but he isn't an idiot. It took a good 2 years before I stopped getting calls from him twice a week. I'm talking about "I'm trying to replace this video card but it doesn't fit", "I am reloading Windows and there are three partitions. I don't get it." "Why does the time reset every time I shut this thing down?" Until you see an AGP 2x only slot and have an AGP 8x card in your hand you just don't necessarily know these things. It actually takes a decent amount of effort for the average person to go from computer ignorant to competent.
Back in the day, I got one tip for $50 once for going to set up a PC at an obviously wealthy and insane woman's home.
She had five large and expensive birds (some type of parrot type as they could talk a little bit). She interrupted my setting up the PC's several times to show me tricks her birds could do. "Chester! Go Make a baby!" ("Chester" proceeds to go attack one of the female birds.) She would not let me leave until I did this thing where the bird bit my finger and I flipped him around so he landed on my wrist. She told me that I should bring my girlfriend over because the birds were going to outlive her and she had nobody to pass them on to after her death.
It was good for the company too. I told her that the store owner would want to bill her for any time I spent there. I don't know what it was. $80-$100 an hour or so back then? She gladly forked over three hours labor for me to hang out with her for awhile.
The other near time I nearly got a "tip" was when I walked into this house in a less than palatable neighborhood. The first room was the kitchen and.....the floor was all dirt. I do not know if there was actually like, a real floor beneath it and it was simply that dirty or if it was just something cobbled together in the back of the house. There was a huge metal pot of boiling water and some white substance all over the kitchen table. The three men playing with said white stuff were all twitchy and sweating and Offered me "A bump". A kindly old woman came and showed me where her computer was...in a very classy room farther in the house. Nobody seemed to care that I walked in on them cooking up large amounts of crack. Unless they were making dumplings and having a joke at my expense but somehow, I don't think so.
100 Workstations and 40 servers? You sound like a candidate for Spiceworks, if you have any Windows Servers in the environment.
Spicworks is a free (As in Beer) Hardware/Software Inventory management system with a built in help desk system. It picks up Windows Machines, Linux Machines, Switches/Hubs/Routers/Firewalls, Network Printers, etc and displays what information it can glean from them (Software installed, Hardware Serial Numbers, IP addresses, Model Numbers, etc.) You can create your own custom reports (In their own environment...but I believe they have added support so you can work directly with MSSQL and MySQL as well. Don't quote me on that though. You can set parameters in the program to alert you when a certain condition is reached (A Hard drive has less than 10% free space or Stefan in accounting has installed Limewire AGAIN). The most recent version will create a network map for you, although I already have a network map and have not had a chance to play with that part of the program.
I think it's a pretty nice program for Environments with less than 250 total network devices. The interface does seem to slow as you add more devices. All in all, I think it's a pretty nice little system to use for smaller businesses. There is a small community that pitches in to contribute reports and "Dashboard Widgets" that you may download if they appear helpful.
You don't understand what Sharepoint is, do you? We rolled out MOSS Sharepoint and used it for a few months. Even Windows users preferred email because the interface made it so painful to find things. Sharepoint does not have any of the functionality you list, either. There is an add-on that includes access control, but guess what? Client machines much be logged into the same domain (or have a a trust set up). In other words, Sharepoint has no access control functionality that can be used any differently than a Windows Server fileshare! It also stores documents in a database, and as you get a lot of documents (say, 1000) performance degrades.)
What do you mean Sharepoint has no access control? It is built right into every Sharepoint Library.
And Client machines do not have to be logged into the same domain! You don't have to use the Active Directory User authentication either, you can use "Forms Based Authentication" to create non-domain login accounts, which you can access from any computer you want.
The search in Sharepoint does stink. Luckily, without too much effort, you can write you own search web parts.
When you get a lot of documents in a single library performance does degrade, but it is not absolutely horrible. Maybe an extra half second here and there.
A guy I work with gets loads of mail from Citrix. I don't know if he was invited to a GoTo Meeting or something and checked some box to agree to receive messages but other than that he would have had no exposure to Citrix nor reason to communicate with them.
He was a higher up and demanded that I block this "Shady company" from sending anyone in the organization messages. I wrote the person sending the message five EMAIL's over the course of weeks pleading with him to remove this user from the list. No response. Messages kept coming. We were going to buy five Goto Express subscriptions but decided not to because of this.
I do like those types of interview questions but some people can take them in the wrong direction and focus on (What I believe) is the wrong thing. I remember years back I had worked as a Novell Administrator and was applying for a more lucrative Novell Admin job. I had worked with 3.x, 4.x, and 5.x using Zen and other tools (For the life of me I don't remember a thing about Novell at this point as I found a job doing Active Directory administration and have not seen a Novell server since).
Anyway, at the interview the lady wanted me to describe setting up an NDPS printing Environment. There were three components to it and I simply couldn't remember the name of one of them (Agent, Broker, and something else...see...I still don't remember). She just wouldn't let it die. Instead of maybe shifting to more Novel Trivia she kept going back to it. It is something I could have found out in 1 minute online...and setting up NDPS printing was pretty easy anyway. I did not get called back for that job.
In retrospect, although I ended up as a Microsoft Admin and would have preferred eventually getting into a Unix/Linux Admin role, I sure am glad I did not get that Novel 5.1 Admin position. As far as I know that company is still running....Novell 5.1. Would have been a dead end.
I guess my point is, the questions can be good but you can happen to pick an aspect of a technology that the person has done and they still might not be able to answer correctly. ;) Although it sounds like you come up with more interesting things than describing NDPS printing.
I agree that someone with a passion for working with computers is probably going to do a better job, but it can be difficult to find out the guys who REALLY installed every distro and the guys that know just enough to get them by the interview...unless you dedicate a lot of time to the interview process.
Keep in mind also, that there are some applicants with degrees that ALSO sat at home and loaded every distro....doing their classroom work and doing their own side projects.