""" A car that breaks often and is easy to replace or a car that doesn't break. I know which one saves me more money in the long run. Rememeber that as an IS guy, your time is money. If every computer in your shop could, at any moment, have to be reghosted, then you're probably wasting a lot of money as opposed to setting the machine up once and letting it run for longer periods without human intervention. """
Ah, the IT/IS guy time issue. Look at the second word in "Information Service". The IS team provides a SERVICE. If the users need to be able to use Word in a Windows environment, then you give them that. Try to make it as stable as possible. That may require ghosting hard drive from time to time.
I used to agree with you, telling people, "Just install Linux and everything will be great." Then I worked at an IT help desk at a major university and saw what happens when you do something like this. We had a room full of X terminals hooked up to an AS/400. In the consulting office, there were four PCs that people could use to print. The X terminals almost never crashed. The PCs had to be rebooted almost hourly. Try to guess which computers people were fighting to use.
In my last year, they switched the lab over to PCs. Suddenly, the labs were full of people.
As far as the getting to work smelly thing, there are a few ways to avoid that. First, get some clothes that are made for sweat. People make fun of the "funny" clothes cyclists wear, but they're actually pretty good at doing their job. And one of those jobs is wicking away sweat. With less sweat on you, you don't smell as bad.
Second, don't fear the towel bath. I manage to clean myself up in the morning when I arrive by taking a "sponge" bath in one of the stalls. It takes a few minutes, but it works. Granted, we have pretty clean bathrooms here. YMMV.
As far as riding with insane drivers, I don't know what to tell you. Here in Monterey, people are pretty nice. A word of advice, though: ride your bike like you would drive your car. That means in the street obeying all the traffic laws. It's the only safe way to do it.
andy
with so many good books out there . . .
on
Digital Fortress
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I am constantly disappointed by how many people choose to read this kind of crap. I read DVC with my book club, and it was just plain bad. I don't even really have a problem with a nice, mindless read from time to time, but 400 pages of it? Dear god. And people go out of their way to read more than one of his books?
If you've already read through all of the classics in Western literature, then by all means, read something by Dan Brown. I'm warning you now, you'll feel like you've wasted a few hours when you finish. But if the last ten books you read were featured prominently in airport book stores, and you've never read anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or John Steinbeck, or John Updike, or Cormac McCarthy, or Jane Austen, or Flannery O'Connor, or Jorge Luis Borges, then do yourself a favor and skip Dan Brown's crap.
(Yeah, somebody here is going to tell me that all of the authors that I mentioned suck. Fine. But can you honestly say they suck more than Dan Brown? Or most of the other stuff on the best seller lists these days?)
Could you post this one for us? Otherwise, I'll have to give back my MS in CS, since I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
This should give you some background on the topic. If you have an MS in CS, the information in the link should be enough to figure out "what the hell" he's talking about.
Wouldn't a two-line program that could execute all possible programs make one excessively rich?
I'm not even sure where to start with this one. Well, here's an attempt. Start with Turing and Church. Then move on to the halting problem. By the time you have re-acquainted yourself with these things, you should be able to understand the "program that could execute all possible programs" part of your question, and maybe even the "make one excessively rich" part. Now look into Perl, and also remember that have enough useful functions, anything can be a two line (or one line) program. For example, in my own programing language, Andycal, the following program would give you a hot sandwich:
BringMeAFuckingSandwith(hotness=hot);
I just haven't implemented the necessary functions yet. This should explain the "Wouldn't a two-line program" part.
andy
No offense, but I've been saying that programmers are like mechanics for YEARS. And as for "many thousands of college students, with no degree yet, who are basically screwed"? I started looking for work at the end of 2000, about six months before I graduated, and already the market was pretty bleak. Kids graduating this Summer had just started college in 2000. If not having to scramble to find work was important to them, they had plenty of warning.
I have a job, but my girlfriend and I will be moving when she goes to grad school, and I'm a little scared. But this is the way things go.
Just because people were in denial doesn't mean the writing wasn't on the wall.
Does anybody have any information about the "Freeware Initiative" that the press release talks about? I really don't see the point in debating the press release and how right or wrong it may be until you know what it refers to.
Seriously, the only reference I can find on Google is another rant against it.
I'm inclined to believe that the press release is misrepresenting the facts. In fact, the other press release that I found here [www.softwarechoice.org] says that it will be "an effor requiring that all IT expenditures in 2004 and 2005 be made on open source/Linus software/platforms if possible." This seems a little different that requiring that all systems be open source, which seemed to be implied by the CCAGW press release.
...
I found this[www.miami.com], which gives a very little bit more information, talking about "open standards".
Mod me down if you already knew this. It came as a very pleasant surprise to me. For those who don't know, this book is considered by many to be part of the core of CS books, along with K&R, TAOCP, and the MIT Algorithms book.
DotGNU? Come on guys..Net was a stupid marketoid wet dream. If people are going to chase after tail lights, the least they could do is try to come up with a decent name.
But hey, what do I know. I'm not working on the project, and I guess if I'm not part of the solution then I'm part of the . . . (fizz)
OK, here's the plan. I write a computer virus that installs itself on systems and then propagates. It doesn't do any damage, so most people don't really notice it. I patent it. After a few weeks, when a large number of computers are running my virus, I sue everyone who didn't remove it from their systems. I'm in the money
To quote Katz:
"Nothing is more mysterious in politics than why some issues capture the imagination of idealistic people like college students -- sweatshops in Latin America, for example -- and some don't, like the enormous gap in computer use and Net access between poor and rich kids.
It's tough to imagine a more urgent moral issue than the fate of children without access to computers or the Net, since their educational, economic, cultural and social lives will be directly affected. Wealthier kids have access to research, free music, challenging games, educational and social opportunities online and the better jobs of the new economy. Poorer kids may be slinging burgers."
Hm . . . tough to imagine a more urgent moral issue that who has computers? A while back, Bill Gates took a group of computer experts to task because they were all worried about how poor people would get computers. Gates pointed out that computers don't even factor into your life when you make a dollar a day, which is what a number of people in the world live on. You care about things like what you are going to eat and how you are going to care for a sick child.
Katz, get a clue.
This is interesting. I must say that I, too, am a little disappointed by this. Trademark law shouldn't apply to domain names, in my opinion. Look at the stupid McDonalds and Veronica things. Blah. Here's what I would like to have seen:
1. Linux ignores the domains that use "Linux" (www.linuxbabes.com with naked women at computers).
2. Some company comes up and abuses the "Linux" in another way (Linux dish soap, for example).
3. Linus calls them to court for misusing the copyrighted word Linux.
4. Lawyers for the dish soap argue the Linus did not go after www.linuxbabes.com, so he cannot go after them either.
5. Linux argues that domain names are not protected by copyright, and therefore he cannot go after www.linuxbabes.com, but he can go after the dish soap.
6. Linus wins with this. A legal precedent is set whereby copyright does not cover domain names.
It might be time consuming, but it would be nice to get the whole copyright/domain name thing resolved.
So now I'll sit back and let everybody tell me why I'm wrong.
I keep hearing the arguements that say that Linux does not have productivity software. Someone pointed out that all most people use these days is a web browser, a word processor, and maybe a spread sheet. Having experience at a college, I would add mp3 player to the list, but that's really about it. Linux has all of these things.
But I have also learned something from working at the Unix help desk. Users don't care that the computers have a word processor. They don't care that the computers have a spreadsheet. They all come in and ask, "How do I get to Windows on these machines?" or "How do I start Word out there?" Users like what they know. If it's not Micros~1, they don't want to deal with it.
I'm really not sure that there is any way to get around that. I'm also not sure that it is a problem. Now hear me out. If most people just want Micros~1 Word/Excel/Power Point (PP is THE biggest waste of disk space in existence ever created, a mon avis), then fine. They'll use Windows to type papers, look at the web, and listen to music, and I'll use some sort of unix to do work. Do we really need these people to start using Linux?
Different people have different computing needs, and I don't think that all of this development effort should be spent trying to make Linux easier for Joe Blow to use while still making it powerful enough for me to do what I want. I helped a friend out with his new Linux box the other night. He had installed KDE. He was trying to install an ICQ client. He was frustrated that he couldn't just click on an icon and have it install automatically. Hell, he couldn't figure out how to unzip the thing. I kept trying to show him how to do things at the command line, but he would always ask how you could do the same thing through a GUI. My friend is a smart guy, but he didn't have any desire to learn how to do things from the command line, which I believe is one of the greatest strenghts of the system. He wanted Windows. I have no problem with that.
Now, Linux users, let me ask you this: How many of you use these cross-over products that are designed, at least in part, to get people to make the switch from windows to Linux (Star Office, Applix, that kind of thing)? I am asking out of curiousity, I'm not being critical? Would most Linux users use Star Office or Applix by choice? I only use those things when I want to read Word or Excel attachments that people have sent me, or if I want to send something like that so a Windows user. If I'm writing a paper I use LaTeX. If I need to do some math I use Octave. If we weren't trying to win people away from Windows, would this software even exist? Just wondering.
Um . . . not exactly. Either that or the flight crew doesn't know what you've said. I've been on a number of flights where people around me have been using laptops, CD players, etc., and a flight attendant has asked that person to turn it off. Not to put it away, just to turn it off. I recall this starting a few years ago (early 90's) after somebody determined that signals from these devices MIGHT interfere with the signals that control the plane. Such interference, I would assume, is not a big deal in flight because small disruptions aren't a big deal when you're 30,000 feet up, but when you're 10 feet off the ground and flying at a few hundred miles per hour a small disruption can cause serious problems.
Sure, so you buy the party line about Unix, too. Anyone who has researched it knows that Unix was given to the people of Earth by the intergalactic travellers who colonized this planet. It's true. The source code was kept in the Ark of the Covenant. Think about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in 2001, I worked on something very similar to this as part of my senior project. I think somebody owes me money.
"""
A car that breaks often and is easy to replace or a car that doesn't break. I know which one saves me more money in the long run. Rememeber that as an IS guy, your time is money. If every computer in your shop could, at any moment, have to be reghosted, then you're probably wasting a lot of money as opposed to setting the machine up once and letting it run for longer periods without human intervention.
"""
Ah, the IT/IS guy time issue. Look at the second word in "Information Service". The IS team provides a SERVICE. If the users need to be able to use Word in a Windows environment, then you give them that. Try to make it as stable as possible. That may require ghosting hard drive from time to time.
I used to agree with you, telling people, "Just install Linux and everything will be great." Then I worked at an IT help desk at a major university and saw what happens when you do something like this. We had a room full of X terminals hooked up to an AS/400. In the consulting office, there were four PCs that people could use to print. The X terminals almost never crashed. The PCs had to be rebooted almost hourly. Try to guess which computers people were fighting to use.
In my last year, they switched the lab over to PCs. Suddenly, the labs were full of people.
As far as the getting to work smelly thing, there are a few ways to avoid that. First, get some clothes that are made for sweat. People make fun of the "funny" clothes cyclists wear, but they're actually pretty good at doing their job. And one of those jobs is wicking away sweat. With less sweat on you, you don't smell as bad.
Second, don't fear the towel bath. I manage to clean myself up in the morning when I arrive by taking a "sponge" bath in one of the stalls. It takes a few minutes, but it works. Granted, we have pretty clean bathrooms here. YMMV.
As far as riding with insane drivers, I don't know what to tell you. Here in Monterey, people are pretty nice. A word of advice, though: ride your bike like you would drive your car. That means in the street obeying all the traffic laws. It's the only safe way to do it.
andy
I am constantly disappointed by how many people choose to read this kind of crap. I read DVC with my book club, and it was just plain bad. I don't even really have a problem with a nice, mindless read from time to time, but 400 pages of it? Dear god. And people go out of their way to read more than one of his books?
If you've already read through all of the classics in Western literature, then by all means, read something by Dan Brown. I'm warning you now, you'll feel like you've wasted a few hours when you finish. But if the last ten books you read were featured prominently in airport book stores, and you've never read anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or John Steinbeck, or John Updike, or Cormac McCarthy, or Jane Austen, or Flannery O'Connor, or Jorge Luis Borges, then do yourself a favor and skip Dan Brown's crap.
(Yeah, somebody here is going to tell me that all of the authors that I mentioned suck. Fine. But can you honestly say they suck more than Dan Brown? Or most of the other stuff on the best seller lists these days?)
andy
It works perfectly. I open and close mine a few times a day, and I only reboot when I install updates (once every few weeks).
andy
andy
No offense, but I've been saying that programmers are like mechanics for YEARS. And as for "many thousands of college students, with no degree yet, who are basically screwed"? I started looking for work at the end of 2000, about six months before I graduated, and already the market was pretty bleak. Kids graduating this Summer had just started college in 2000. If not having to scramble to find work was important to them, they had plenty of warning.
I have a job, but my girlfriend and I will be moving when she goes to grad school, and I'm a little scared. But this is the way things go.
Just because people were in denial doesn't mean the writing wasn't on the wall.
andy
Seriously, the only reference I can find on Google is another rant against it.
I'm inclined to believe that the press release is misrepresenting the facts. In fact, the other press release that I found here [www.softwarechoice.org] says that it will be "an effor requiring that all IT expenditures in 2004 and 2005 be made on open source/Linus software/platforms if possible." This seems a little different that requiring that all systems be open source, which seemed to be implied by the CCAGW press release.
I found this[www.miami.com], which gives a very little bit more information, talking about "open standards".
andy
Copyrights. Disney's copyrights get extended routinely.
oh come on people. Was I the ONLY one who nearly burst out laughing at this post? Bravo, PD.
andy
I found the page for the class on SICP, and lo and behold, THE WHOLE BOOK (well, it look like the whole book) is online at
k .h tml
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/boo
Mod me down if you already knew this. It came as a very pleasant surprise to me. For those who don't know, this book is considered by many to be part of the core of CS books, along with K&R, TAOCP, and the MIT Algorithms book.
andy
DotGNU? Come on guys. .Net was a stupid marketoid wet dream. If people are going to chase after tail lights, the least they could do is try to come up with a decent name.
But hey, what do I know. I'm not working on the project, and I guess if I'm not part of the solution then I'm part of the . . . (fizz)
andy
OK, here's the plan. I write a computer virus that installs itself on systems and then propagates. It doesn't do any damage, so most people don't really notice it. I patent it. After a few weeks, when a large number of computers are running my virus, I sue everyone who didn't remove it from their systems. I'm in the money
To quote Katz: "Nothing is more mysterious in politics than why some issues capture the imagination of idealistic people like college students -- sweatshops in Latin America, for example -- and some don't, like the enormous gap in computer use and Net access between poor and rich kids. It's tough to imagine a more urgent moral issue than the fate of children without access to computers or the Net, since their educational, economic, cultural and social lives will be directly affected. Wealthier kids have access to research, free music, challenging games, educational and social opportunities online and the better jobs of the new economy. Poorer kids may be slinging burgers." Hm . . . tough to imagine a more urgent moral issue that who has computers? A while back, Bill Gates took a group of computer experts to task because they were all worried about how poor people would get computers. Gates pointed out that computers don't even factor into your life when you make a dollar a day, which is what a number of people in the world live on. You care about things like what you are going to eat and how you are going to care for a sick child. Katz, get a clue.
Good point. I appolgize for mixing up copyright and trademark.
andy
This is interesting. I must say that I, too, am a little disappointed by this. Trademark law shouldn't apply to domain names, in my opinion. Look at the stupid McDonalds and Veronica things. Blah. Here's what I would like to have seen:
1. Linux ignores the domains that use "Linux" (www.linuxbabes.com with naked women at computers).
2. Some company comes up and abuses the "Linux" in another way (Linux dish soap, for example).
3. Linus calls them to court for misusing the copyrighted word Linux.
4. Lawyers for the dish soap argue the Linus did not go after www.linuxbabes.com, so he cannot go after them either.
5. Linux argues that domain names are not protected by copyright, and therefore he cannot go after www.linuxbabes.com, but he can go after the dish soap.
6. Linus wins with this. A legal precedent is set whereby copyright does not cover domain names.
It might be time consuming, but it would be nice to get the whole copyright/domain name thing resolved.
So now I'll sit back and let everybody tell me why I'm wrong.
andy
Alabama and New York both have laws concerning the carrying of icecream cones in ones back pocket. What's the deal?
[A green terminal monitor in a dark room.]
.]
[root@matrix.net]% ps -a
PID TTY TIME CMD
4008 0 0:25 autorepeat
10564 0:00
11364 pts/8 0:08 checker
11858 0:00
12406 0 14:41 perl
12618 0 33:28 process_clean.v43
12866 0 0:25 autorepeat
13158 0 0:42 logger
14190 0 0:02 afsd
14448 0 1:30 afsd
14706 0 0:16 afsd
14964 0 0:00 afsd
15222 0 0:00 afsd
15480 0 0:00 afsd
15738 0 0:00 afsd
15996 0 0:00 afsd
16254 0 0:00 afsd
16512 0 0:00 afsd
16770 0 0:00 afsd
17028 0 0:00 afsd
17288 0 0:01 afsd
24552 pts/8 0:00 tcsh
25882 pts/6 0:01 xterm
27610 pts/34 0:00 tcsh
164672 pts/80 0:00 tcsh
167322 pts/151 0:02 pine
169066 pts/42 0:00 pine
169508 pts/127 0:00 pine
170946 pts/1 0:01 tcsh
172094 pts/140 0:00 pine
175070 pts/92 0:00 finger
177440 pts/1 0:00 less
178350 pts/9 0:03 tin
178708 pts/2 0:00 script
180902 pts/14 0:06 pine
182848 pts/79 0:00 tcsh
183562 pts/51 0:00 tcsh
184886 pts/8 0:00 checker
185834 pts/124 0:00 pine
186832 pts/75 1:09 xlock
191394 pts/81 0:00 msgs
192376 pts/26 0:00 pine
194258 pts/118 0:00 pine
196736 pts/48 0:00 tset
198690 pts/2 0:00 csh
200358 pts/56 0:00 msgs
200496 pts/37 0:02 pine
203850 pts/87 0:01 pine
206108 pts/0 0:00 pine
208086 pts/30 0:00 pine
208570 pts/132 0:00 fm_misd
209582 pts/142 1:12 neo
[root@matrix.net]% kill -9 209582
[root@matrix.net]%
[The credits roll . .
But I have also learned something from working at the Unix help desk. Users don't care that the computers have a word processor. They don't care that the computers have a spreadsheet. They all come in and ask, "How do I get to Windows on these machines?" or "How do I start Word out there?" Users like what they know. If it's not Micros~1, they don't want to deal with it.
I'm really not sure that there is any way to get around that. I'm also not sure that it is a problem. Now hear me out. If most people just want Micros~1 Word/Excel/Power Point (PP is THE biggest waste of disk space in existence ever created, a mon avis), then fine. They'll use Windows to type papers, look at the web, and listen to music, and I'll use some sort of unix to do work. Do we really need these people to start using Linux?
Different people have different computing needs, and I don't think that all of this development effort should be spent trying to make Linux easier for Joe Blow to use while still making it powerful enough for me to do what I want. I helped a friend out with his new Linux box the other night. He had installed KDE. He was trying to install an ICQ client. He was frustrated that he couldn't just click on an icon and have it install automatically. Hell, he couldn't figure out how to unzip the thing. I kept trying to show him how to do things at the command line, but he would always ask how you could do the same thing through a GUI. My friend is a smart guy, but he didn't have any desire to learn how to do things from the command line, which I believe is one of the greatest strenghts of the system. He wanted Windows. I have no problem with that.
Now, Linux users, let me ask you this: How many of you use these cross-over products that are designed, at least in part, to get people to make the switch from windows to Linux (Star Office, Applix, that kind of thing)? I am asking out of curiousity, I'm not being critical? Would most Linux users use Star Office or Applix by choice? I only use those things when I want to read Word or Excel attachments that people have sent me, or if I want to send something like that so a Windows user. If I'm writing a paper I use LaTeX. If I need to do some math I use Octave. If we weren't trying to win people away from Windows, would this software even exist? Just wondering.
andy
Um . . . not exactly. Either that or the flight crew doesn't know what you've said. I've been on a number of flights where people around me have been using laptops, CD players, etc., and a flight attendant has asked that person to turn it off. Not to put it away, just to turn it off. I recall this starting a few years ago (early 90's) after somebody determined that signals from these devices MIGHT interfere with the signals that control the plane. Such interference, I would assume, is not a big deal in flight because small disruptions aren't a big deal when you're 30,000 feet up, but when you're 10 feet off the ground and flying at a few hundred miles per hour a small disruption can cause serious problems.
andy
Score: 0, not funny, off-topic, blasphemous
Andy