"Now I have a friend who has a state-job in Family Services. The rule in his office states that you may have no more than three pictures in your cubicle."
What's disturbing about this is the idea that there are enough people who would be willing to take his job, that the people who make such rules can expect compliance.
The difficulty and expense of obtaining tin (atomic number 50) foil means only the most motivated people will be safe. It's a terrible thing that so many people believe aluminum (atomic number 13) foil can be substituted for tin, tragically leaving so many unprotected.
"I was subject to extreme derision from fellow Unix nerds for occaisionally wearing a suit to work"
I wore a suit to an offsite team meeting once a couple of years ago, and I have yet to hear the end of it. My photo on the company website was replaced with one of me in my suit (clandestine!) and I remain to this day, the only person ever to have done it.
"If a place doesn't wanna hire me and utilize my many years of programming experience because of my tattoos and piercings, then that's their loss."
Yes, but, if *no place* wants to hire you, it may start to look more like your loss...
Contrary to myth, jobs weren't exactly growing on trees even at the peak of the so-called bubble period. The good old days kind of sucked, and really kind of lasted about overnight.
>This gives more ammunition to the rabid right in >their attempt to make the ACLU the bogeyman for >everything "evil" in this world.
The problem with the ACLU is that they stand out as one of the very few high profile organizations that do what they do, as opposed to being among so many others that they risk being lost in the noise.
"That is if you believe that superior insights must lead to money"
I think I didn't say anything about money, but I know where you're coming from. I work in an industry where being normal can be a definite handicap. It can definitely be a hardship in the sexual domain, in certain circles.
I've always seen the body-mod scene as a way of opting out of the mainstream; things like office jobs are pretty much the last thing you'd want in your life, so there's this "have your cake and eat it too" assumption in the original question. Not sure how I feel about that.
For the record, I've made numerous hiring decisions, and I've never based it on appearance. But then, I work for a company that's best characterized as "over the top" on issues like dress codes and so on. It used to be completely open, until a few bad apples "pushed the envelope" to nuisance levels (but that goes way further than simple dress and appearance issues).
So I'm lucky that my day job is like that.
As a musician, it's never been much of a problem, but I'm sure there are people that I'd look so straight playing with that it might be a problem. I'll let you know if it's ever an issue.
Option A: Become successful enough to set policy for a corporation. Go further, and become successful and influential enough to set policy requirements for anyone wishing to do business with your corporation. (Why do all complaints of this nature come from people who work for someone else? Why is everyone so smart and insightful, yet that superiority hasn't been a path to power and influence?)
Option B: Elect members of Congress who are sensitive to the issues of the counterculture. Persuade them to pass laws protecting your interests. Have Congress and/or the Supreme Court rule this a First Amendment concern, rights which must be expressly protected.
Option C: Get enough momentum in the counterculture movement to actually bring a (peaceful or otherwise) revolution. Then you can be The Culture instead of merely the counterculture.
I'm on your side. I really am. But I don't understand why the old culture still prevails, and I'm holding you responsible for that.
"However, the people who sign your paychecks very rarely have tat's, peircings, or any bizzarre hair cuts."
Evidence that the counterculture doesn't *really* have superior insights, or else they'd have taken over and this argument would be on its head.
Re:Which distros can resize partitions?
on
Test Driving Linux
·
· Score: 1
"QTparted runs as a frontend for parted and ntfsresize seamlessly, or at least the version on Knoppix does."
I realize that Knoppix makes it fairly simple, but to make something like this depend on QT, which depends on an environment that can run QT, is pretty crazy for a tool that needs to be run before installing the system.
I don't think I ever heard the argument against chalboards. Alcohol pens are much more expensive than chalk, they can't be refilled, and they are made of plastic. That's not an improvement over chalkboards.
A friend of mine in Oregon has voodoo lilies (Amorphophallus) bordering his driveway every spring and summer. Stinky, nasty skanky huge disgusting flowers. They serve a purpose, of course; they attract pollinators and deter varmints.
"Why are red leader and gold leader the leaders? They don't know what they're doing..."
Point men... Expendable. Call them "heros" or "leaders" or whatever it takes to get them to fly in front, or detect land mines, or draw out the enemy fire, or whatever suicidal thing you want them to do.
You can enjoy a production of Hamlet knowing that the prince goes mad. I don't think it spoils anything to know the surprise in Empire.
I was not surprised -- not saying I saw it coming, exactly, but it was one of the possibilities that had crossed my mind. I thought it was more likely that Obi-Wan *was* Vader. That was the twist I was expecting. I had a whole argument for it and everything, back then. I was a little bummed to find out I was wrong.
Depending on the requirements in your lab, before you toss it, you record the results in your (admissible as evidence) notes.
What you don't do, is you don't leave a gap in your otherwise consistent records to make a failed trial disappear, and you also don't write it down with fabricated results.
Not every experiment is subject to strict requirements for recordkeeping, but if yours is, you know better than to screw around.
"Wasn't it Diebolds CEO that said he would do anything to make sure George W. Bush would win Ohio."
Well, not exactly. He said he was committed to helping the state deliver its electoral votes to the President next year. It's just plausible enough that he was talking about "whoever the next president is", and certainly not the slam-dunk treason charge that the opposition would like.
More disturbing is the fact that he seems not to understand the electoral votes are delivered to *Congress*, not the President...
"Yeah - it's wonderful to see good wholesome not-at-all-corrupt legal systems at work."
Anyone who willingly travels from a relatively free country, to this kind of place, does assume a certain amount of responsibility for supporting it.
In some cases, the responsibility will actually be placed on you as an explicit burden (e.g., if you travel from the US to Cuba or North Korea). In other cases, it is left to your discretion (e.g., if you travel from Belgium to Malaysia.)
I understand where you're coming from and I don't disagree, but getting good evidence as a researcher is not as easy as we would hope. And no, there's not a chemical company paying money to keep the results under wraps;-)
We don't know as much as we'd like about the mechanisms involved in metastasis. There is still quite a bit to be discovered in the basic mechanisms of carcinogenesis, and there are huge opportunities in the research of tumor metabolism.
I'm close to someone who spends her life doing this research, and the insights I receive from the pure science side of cancer research, give me a very effective filter for the information that comes from the public health and pharmaceutical areas.
I'm not arguing with your points -- there are clearly environmental triggers that are responsible for the majority of cancers. Only 20% of cancers can be shown to be the result of inheritable genomic mutations or alterations. That leaves 80% unaccounted for.
The trouble is, identifying the environmental causes with good repeatable results is not as easy as you may have been led to believe. There are some really strange, poorly understood mechanisms at work. And research is being done in this area by people with solid integrity, definitely not within that dishonest 15%. The people doing this particular reasearch really want to understand the processes. Funding is always a problem, but the notion of fabricating results is a nonstarter in this environment.
>I have no idea what a "cyclic dependency" is nor do > I want to know.
It's plain English.
>I've flirted with the idea of installing Linux on a > spare box. Is this nonesense the kind of stuff I >should expect?
Of course not. It's just a possible consequence associated with the complications of having the wide variety of packages with the huge number of possible combinations that Debian has. But that's a GOOD thing, even if it can be a little overwhelming. There are other distributions where choices are firmly made for you. I prefer one that lets me make choices. I can accept the potential consequence that my choices may make things a little more complex.
Initial installation on Debian, especially if you start with a live Debian-based distro like Knoppix or Ubuntu, is really quite easy. If you're starting from scratch on a spare box, it's super easy.
The only nonsense you shoud really *expect* are:
1. Be prepared to do some research on any wi-fi hardware, and try to find out in advance if you need NDISWrapper. This is one of my pet peeves, since wireless networking is quite the killer app these days, and the community seems comfortable passing the buck. 2. It might not magically put your window manager at the resolution that you want. This shouldn't take more than a little googling to fix, but it can be annoying. 3. Audio, particularly if you plan to record audio, is a subsystem with its own issues. Audio playback tends to be much easier these days, but I'm into multitrack recording, making synthesizers, etc. It's pretty tough to follow, even with a lot of experience. 4. DVD video playback. Aggressively suppressed by the motion picture industry; community is rebellious enough to have useable players on the fringe, but remains willing to pass the buck. Perfectly understandable, but still quite a nuisance. 5. Laptop power management - I have yet to see it work well on a linux laptop. The latest Ubuntu's hibernate command just crashes my Toshiba. Power management is on the short list of really important features of a laptop. Maybe it can be made to work, but I have not managed it for years of trying.
I have a long, long list of annoyances with every system, so don't get me wrong here. I'm just trying to point out a few items that I can pretty much guarantee will get in your way at some point. A lot of work is being done in all these areas, but some things like WiFi and DVD playback have some very solid showstoppers (like the threat of prison).
Slashdot Mirror
"Now I have a friend who has a state-job in Family Services. The rule in his office states that you may have no more than three pictures in your cubicle."
What's disturbing about this is the idea that there are enough people who would be willing to take his job, that the people who make such rules can expect compliance.
> The answer is of course TINFOIL.
The difficulty and expense of obtaining tin (atomic number 50) foil means only the most motivated people will be safe. It's a terrible thing that so many people believe aluminum (atomic number 13) foil can be substituted for tin, tragically leaving so many unprotected.
"I was subject to extreme derision from fellow Unix nerds for occaisionally wearing a suit to work"
I wore a suit to an offsite team meeting once a couple of years ago, and I have yet to hear the end of it. My photo on the company website was replaced with one of me in my suit (clandestine!) and I remain to this day, the only person ever to have done it.
I was just being contrary.
"If a place doesn't wanna hire me and utilize my many years of programming experience because of my tattoos and piercings, then that's their loss."
Yes, but, if *no place* wants to hire you, it may start to look more like your loss...
Contrary to myth, jobs weren't exactly growing on trees even at the peak of the so-called bubble period. The good old days kind of sucked, and really kind of lasted about overnight.
>This gives more ammunition to the rabid right in
>their attempt to make the ACLU the bogeyman for
>everything "evil" in this world.
The problem with the ACLU is that they stand out as one of the very few high profile organizations that do what they do, as opposed to being among so many others that they risk being lost in the noise.
FSF has a similar problem.
> I can't think of *anything* that linux can do and
> BSD can't, much less "many" things.
How is the audio support, from a production perspective?
"That is if you believe that superior insights must lead to money"
I think I didn't say anything about money, but I know where you're coming from. I work in an industry where being normal can be a definite handicap. It can definitely be a hardship in the sexual domain, in certain circles.
I've always seen the body-mod scene as a way of opting out of the mainstream; things like office jobs are pretty much the last thing you'd want in your life, so there's this "have your cake and eat it too" assumption in the original question. Not sure how I feel about that.
For the record, I've made numerous hiring decisions, and I've never based it on appearance. But then, I work for a company that's best characterized as "over the top" on issues like dress codes and so on. It used to be completely open, until a few bad apples "pushed the envelope"
to nuisance levels (but that goes way further than simple dress and appearance issues).
So I'm lucky that my day job is like that.
As a musician, it's never been much of a problem, but I'm sure there are people that I'd look so straight playing with that it might be a problem. I'll let you know if it's ever an issue.
Option A: Become successful enough to set policy for a corporation. Go further, and become successful and influential enough to set policy requirements for anyone wishing to do business with your corporation. (Why do all complaints of this nature come from people who work for someone else? Why is everyone so smart and insightful, yet that superiority hasn't been a path to power and influence?)
Option B: Elect members of Congress who are sensitive to the issues of the counterculture. Persuade them to pass laws protecting your interests. Have Congress and/or the Supreme Court rule this a First Amendment concern, rights which must be expressly protected.
Option C: Get enough momentum in the counterculture movement to actually bring a (peaceful or otherwise) revolution. Then you can be The Culture instead of merely the counterculture.
I'm on your side. I really am. But I don't understand why the old culture still prevails, and I'm holding you responsible for that.
I wear suits to our meetings *because* my company has a (mandatory) casual dress code.
"However, the people who sign your paychecks very rarely have tat's, peircings, or any bizzarre hair cuts."
Evidence that the counterculture doesn't *really* have superior insights, or else they'd have taken over and this argument would be on its head.
"QTparted runs as a frontend for parted and ntfsresize seamlessly, or at least the version on Knoppix does."
I realize that Knoppix makes it fairly simple, but to make something like this depend on QT, which depends on an environment that can run QT, is pretty crazy for a tool that needs to be run before installing the system.
I for one welcome our new high-speed proton overlords.
I don't think I ever heard the argument against chalboards. Alcohol pens are much more expensive than chalk, they can't be refilled, and they are made of plastic. That's not an improvement over chalkboards.
A friend of mine in Oregon has voodoo lilies (Amorphophallus) bordering his driveway every spring and summer. Stinky, nasty skanky huge disgusting flowers. They serve a purpose, of course; they attract pollinators and deter varmints.
"First: Shakespeare compared to Star Wars/George Lucas's writing?"
I wish the Star Wars epic had been written with the completeness and continuity of the Wagner operas.
"Why are red leader and gold leader the leaders? They don't know what they're doing..."
Point men... Expendable. Call them "heros" or "leaders" or whatever it takes to get them to fly in front, or detect land mines, or draw out the enemy fire, or whatever suicidal thing you want them to do.
You can enjoy a production of Hamlet
knowing that the prince goes mad. I don't think
it spoils anything to know the surprise in Empire.
I was not surprised -- not saying I saw it coming, exactly, but it was one of the possibilities that had crossed my mind. I thought it was more likely that Obi-Wan *was* Vader. That was the twist I was expecting. I had a whole argument for it and everything, back then. I was a little bummed to find out I was wrong.
>So, to be frank, you TOSS it.
Depending on the requirements in your lab, before you toss it, you record the results in your (admissible as evidence) notes.
What you don't do, is you don't leave a gap in your otherwise consistent records to make a failed trial disappear, and you also don't write it down with fabricated results.
Not every experiment is subject to strict requirements for recordkeeping, but if yours is, you know better than to screw around.
"Wasn't it Diebolds CEO that said he would do anything to make sure George W. Bush would win Ohio."
Well, not exactly. He said he was committed to helping the state deliver its electoral votes to the President next year. It's just plausible enough that he was talking about "whoever the next president is", and certainly not the slam-dunk treason charge that the opposition would like.
More disturbing is the fact that he seems not to understand the electoral votes are delivered to *Congress*, not the President...
"This makes you wonder why there isn't a FEDERAL agency establishing standards and tests for voting machines."
It's not far down that road that you can abandon the argument for having individual states.
> Did you see the first link ?
I'm speaking only for the research lab that I actually have an association with.
"Yeah - it's wonderful to see good wholesome not-at-all-corrupt legal systems at work."
Anyone who willingly travels from a relatively free country, to this kind of place, does assume a certain amount of responsibility for supporting it.
In some cases, the responsibility will actually be placed on you as an explicit burden (e.g., if you travel from the US to Cuba or North Korea). In other cases, it is left to your discretion (e.g., if you travel from Belgium to Malaysia.)
I understand where you're coming from and I don't disagree, but getting good evidence as a researcher is not as easy as we would hope. And no, there's not a chemical company paying money to keep the results under wraps ;-)
> We know the cause of cancer.
We don't know as much as we'd like about the mechanisms involved in metastasis. There is still quite a bit to be discovered in the basic mechanisms of carcinogenesis, and there are huge opportunities in the research of tumor metabolism.
I'm close to someone who spends her life doing this research, and the insights I receive from the pure science side of cancer research, give me a very effective filter for the information that comes from the public health and pharmaceutical areas.
I'm not arguing with your points -- there are clearly environmental triggers that are responsible for the majority of cancers. Only 20% of cancers can be shown to be the result of inheritable genomic mutations or alterations. That leaves 80% unaccounted for.
The trouble is, identifying the environmental causes with good repeatable results is not as easy as you may have been led to believe. There are some really strange, poorly understood mechanisms at work. And research is being done in this area by people with solid integrity, definitely not within that dishonest 15%. The people doing this particular reasearch really want to understand the processes. Funding is always a problem, but the notion of fabricating results is a nonstarter in this environment.
>I have no idea what a "cyclic dependency" is nor do
> I want to know.
It's plain English.
>I've flirted with the idea of installing Linux on a
> spare box. Is this nonesense the kind of stuff I
>should expect?
Of course not. It's just a possible consequence associated with the complications of having the wide variety of packages with the huge number of possible combinations that Debian has. But that's a GOOD thing, even if it can be a little overwhelming. There are other distributions where choices are firmly made for you. I prefer one that lets me make choices. I can accept the potential consequence that my choices may make things a little more complex.
Initial installation on Debian, especially if you start with a live Debian-based distro like Knoppix or Ubuntu, is really quite easy. If you're starting from scratch on a spare box, it's super easy.
The only nonsense you shoud really *expect* are:
1. Be prepared to do some research on any wi-fi hardware, and try to find out in advance if you need NDISWrapper. This is one of my pet peeves,
since wireless networking is quite the killer app these days, and the community seems comfortable passing the buck.
2. It might not magically put your window manager at the resolution that you want. This shouldn't take more than a little googling to fix, but it can be annoying.
3. Audio, particularly if you plan to record audio, is a subsystem with its own issues. Audio playback tends to be much easier these days, but I'm into multitrack recording, making synthesizers, etc. It's pretty tough to follow, even with a lot of experience.
4. DVD video playback. Aggressively suppressed by the motion picture industry; community is rebellious enough to have useable players on the fringe, but remains willing to pass the buck. Perfectly understandable, but still quite a nuisance.
5. Laptop power management - I have yet to see it work well on a linux laptop. The latest Ubuntu's hibernate command just crashes my Toshiba. Power management is on the short list of really important features of a laptop. Maybe it can be made to work, but I have not managed it for years of trying.
I have a long, long list of annoyances with every system, so don't get me wrong here. I'm just trying to point out a few items that I can pretty much guarantee will get in your way at some point.
A lot of work is being done in all these areas, but some things like WiFi and DVD playback have some very solid showstoppers (like the threat of prison).