My '99 Audi A3 is still pristine as well, running flawlessly to this day. The '76 Golf Diesel passed down from my parents was pristine and ran flawlessly until I decided to replace it with a second hand Golf Syncro in the nineties. There are still many pristine 70s and 80s cars on the road around here, but not that many American models (except complete rebuilds, of course).
Yeah, their decline had nothing to do with top level management spending $3.5bn to bury Cobalt. Nor had it anything to do with management/marketing changing the specs every other day for processors, firmwares or many other products. It definitely had nothing to do with them spending a fortune converting to 6 sigma only to ignore all the processes that were streamlined during the implementation. It also had nothing to do with the successive RIFs between 2001 and now, where employees got replaced by external service providers and/or contractors.
Let's say that you are a Sun customer, they're becoming a rare breed around here. If you get "random freelance contractor" coming on site for $500 a day or the same "random freelance contractor" with a Sun sticker coming on site for $1500 a day, which one would you select? From my past dealings with Sun, I would pick the $500/day guy as I would then be able to select based on his resume (and not the tweaked version Sun would give me) and the contractor would actually get more money that way.
From the 3 years I spent at Sun, in Support Services, Professional Services or Presales, I could write an Encyclopedia Britannica sized document on how not to run a business or a project.
PS: about the soda thing, they were also free at Sun until 2002 or 2003.
I switched to Yiggdrasil Beta as soon as it was available to order and then Debian 0.93 (IIRC, need to check the CDs). I still have the pressed CDs for all the distributions I installed until broadband finally became accessible in my neck of the woods.
What did I do first? I fell in love with Linux and changed career path from code monkey to console monkey. No regrets whatsoever, those years have been a blast and brought me cash aplenty.
Believe it or not, for decently sized rooms, 300W of incandescent/halogen lighting isn't that much... especially when GLW doesn't like dark corners in a room.
When we still used GU10 halogens in the living room, 200W only provided ambient soft light (massive room). We switched to tube and you can now read anywhere in that room. We also replaced 200W of halogen inserts in the master bathroom by a single 18W tube, night and day light-wise.
For what it is worth, we currently rarely have more than 80W worth of lighting powered up at anytime... we still need to replace the unused yet spotlights on the master bedroom ceiling fan, we currently use GU10 LED fixtures as reading lights instead of the ceiling light.
Great logic there... "I'll stick to incandescent 60W seeing that CFLs consume 28W and won't last longer than me".
For what it is worth, I switched to neon tubes in most of the house... a single 36W TL totally pwns a 300W setup of incandescent or halogen bulbs, more light and more accurate colours. Those can be bought for a song nowadays and they are almost instant-on. The conversion actually made me money as I was able to sell two of the previous fixtures at a flea market for more cash than all the neon kits I bought.
I also have a couple of 1.2W LEDs for the night lights in the main hall, but the electronics are quite flakey in my experience.
Unfortunately the desktop/AD/Exchange bit is really mandatory;)
To make it short, we had a person in that position that was a regular Linux system administrator and he couldn't cope with the day-to-day tasks involved in getting a running prototype out of the door.
Seriously, we can't be the first site trying to get everything running along in a mixed environment...
Are you willing to relocate? Do you have a minimum of 3 years Linux experience, especially desktop linux experience in an AD/Exchange environment? Can you package debs and rpms?
If so, there is a position in my department that has been open for more than 12 months: -the salary is decent -there are 2 restaurants, a newsagent, a travel agent, a bank, a post office and a supermarket on site -you get 25 days paid holidays + the site holidays -the average work week is 37.5 hours (Friday afternoon off most weeks)
Also, last I checked, it's impossible without the help of 3rd party software to (easily) recover music from your iPod in the event of your computer's hard drive failing.
Damn 3rd party software required to display hidden files/folders (one checkbox in your file manager) or do a search for all media files on a hard disk (one keypress in your file manager).
Actually there is this thing called the Corn Lobby. They are quite good at getting subsidies for their products and huge levies on products of their competitors. They are the reason why HFCS products are cheaper than normal sugar products.
Ex-Sun PS talking... That may depend on your location. In some countries, PS is staffed with the cheapest contractors available. I was having a few pints with an ex customer last week and the service they have received from Sun PS in the last 3 years is appalling. Hint to Sun: if the daily rate you offer is inferior to what the contractor can expect as an employee, don't expect miracles.
How they managed to avoid lawsuits for breach of contract for so long is a mystery to me.
The last time it happened, the populace roughly had the same level of armament as the army. The effective range of the firearms was also far lower than the current one. Another big difference was that the people relied far less on the government way back.
How many bombers, jet fighters, armored vehicles and assault helicopters are you allowed to own under the 2nd Amendment?
If the populace woke up and the tree of liberty was to be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots at this point, I foresee a dead tree with a score panel indicating "Tyrants 1 - Patriots 0".
The recommended speed on the autobahn is 130 Km/h, there are indeed unlimited sections on the autobahn. There are also many sections which are limited to 110 Km/h or even less, depending on the road condition.
The national limit for country roads is 100 Km/h except at the approach of an intersection where it is 70 Km/h or for small winding roads where the speed limit can be as low as 30 Km/h.
Cities are normally 50 Km/h with most residential areas limited at 30 Km/h.
German highways are usually relatively safe as long as you really watch the traffic coming behind you and know your braking distances. The lower accidents rate might also be related to harder driving tests, properly maintained cars or even simply the politeness of the German driver on the road.
Keep downloading. Bleed 'em dry - that's what I say.
I replied instead of modding you down...
Stop consuming their products and be vocal about it, support the alternatives: Magnatunes, Jamendo, independent labels,...
That is the only course of action that doesn't give them the kind of legal powers you don't want them to have. "Keep downloading. Bleed'em dry" as you advocate will give them the excuse for the power grab.
It is well past time to tell them "We're mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore". Boycott their music and movies... read a book, explore the outside world and interact with other human beings. Spread the message. Anything else is playing the copyright holders' game.
So if I borrow your ladder, use it to get into someone's house, you should be held partly accountable. Don't be silly.
Actually yeah, if you borrow something from me and use it to break the law I do share responsability in the eye of the law in most countries. If you take something from me without my approval, on the other hand...
I think it is time for some action... be vocal about it and boycott anything touched by the MAFIAA for the whole summer. No music on the radio, no movies on the TV, no downloading any of their crap either... just flat out refuse to consume anything they produced under any form for the next two months. It's time we collectively tell them I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!
If you are vocal enough about it and enough people join in, they will have a hard time blaming the money loss of those two months on "evil pirates".
And this is exactly why so many politicians were happy when the EU constitution was shot down. One of the most important bits in the constitution was redistributing the power between the Commission and the Parliament.
I would like to know which country isn't planning to go down that route so I can sell all my stuff and move out of the way.
Having worked as a contractor for other European Institutions, I know absolutely nothing gets in the way of the Commission once it decided something. After all, it's not like they have to be re-elected or anything.
I can't believe that somebody modded that drivel +3: Insightful...
1) we KNOW for a FACT that it was warmer in the 1200-1400 years than it is today. They grew grapes and made wine on the British Isles then. We're still at least 5 degrees C from being able to do that today. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jun/30/foodanddrink.shopping
Bloody cheats, they must have used a time machine to send grapes that can't possibly be grown locally back to 2005 (or maybe they took them from the medieval warm times!). Reality called, the british wine industry has been producing locally from the 70s. The climate has been so good lately that an English red wine won an international prize in 2006.
3) CO2 is not nearly as potent a greenhouse gas as H2O or methane. It accounts for a tiny fraction of the atmosphere. In short, marginally speaking, increased CO2 levels will have a very small effect on temperature compared to a similar increase in H20 or methane. Why aren't we regulating those gasses?
If only the atmosphere had a way to regulate its H2O content... that would be swell. Maybe we could call it rain!
Point 2, 4 and 5 are left as an exercise to the reader... they have been brought up and discussed/debunked to death in any climate discussion for the last two years.
Not sure what this one is about. I don't hear people in favor of Anwr drilling, for example.
The only way to not hear people in favor of ANWR drilling is to take a page from this administration's book. I can't see it if I don't look at it and I can't hear it if I plug my ears while singing la-la-la.
After 4 years of satellite management, I can say the following:
The configuration channels suck so much in practice that we are developing our own internal solution to replace it.
The RHEL5 support is a mystery to me as well, it might be related to the issues encountered running the Sat inside a xen guest. I need to check with my TAM, but the last official message I had was "not supported".
I'm in the process of migrating from Sat 5.0 to Sat 5.1, to take advantage of the sub-org delegation. That was one of the biggest pains in the previous versions as my customer is split into 20-ish independent entities and I get to manage the satellite that maintains them all. After the migration, I fully intend to just maintain the channel staging, the common custom packages and the kickstart templates. I will delegate the actual kickstart part to the sysadmins without having to give them complete control over all the machines of the site.
I am also very excited by the new RHN API, maybe I will finally be able to fully automate the errata management with automated regression testing for our supported use cases. As it stands now, the errata staging consumes most of my work week...
Hint: OSAD is used to push updates or commands to the client from the satellite. The clients subscribe to a jabber channel and do what the satellite tells them to. Chances are the old hostname is still in the jabber configuration file... happened to me during the Sat5 upgrade.
Slashdot Mirror
My '99 Audi A3 is still pristine as well, running flawlessly to this day. The '76 Golf Diesel passed down from my parents was pristine and ran flawlessly until I decided to replace it with a second hand Golf Syncro in the nineties. There are still many pristine 70s and 80s cars on the road around here, but not that many American models (except complete rebuilds, of course).
Actually, we do
FWIW, I never said I ever believed they were such white knights ;)
nobody would have believed that Microsoft was the good guys.
Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.
Yeah, their decline had nothing to do with top level management spending $3.5bn to bury Cobalt. Nor had it anything to do with management/marketing changing the specs every other day for processors, firmwares or many other products. It definitely had nothing to do with them spending a fortune converting to 6 sigma only to ignore all the processes that were streamlined during the implementation. It also had nothing to do with the successive RIFs between 2001 and now, where employees got replaced by external service providers and/or contractors.
Let's say that you are a Sun customer, they're becoming a rare breed around here. If you get "random freelance contractor" coming on site for $500 a day or the same "random freelance contractor" with a Sun sticker coming on site for $1500 a day, which one would you select? From my past dealings with Sun, I would pick the $500/day guy as I would then be able to select based on his resume (and not the tweaked version Sun would give me) and the contractor would actually get more money that way.
From the 3 years I spent at Sun, in Support Services, Professional Services or Presales, I could write an Encyclopedia Britannica sized document on how not to run a business or a project.
PS: about the soda thing, they were also free at Sun until 2002 or 2003.
My lawn, get off it ;)
I switched to Yiggdrasil Beta as soon as it was available to order and then Debian 0.93 (IIRC, need to check the CDs). I still have the pressed CDs for all the distributions I installed until broadband finally became accessible in my neck of the woods.
What did I do first? I fell in love with Linux and changed career path from code monkey to console monkey. No regrets whatsoever, those years have been a blast and brought me cash aplenty.
Believe it or not, for decently sized rooms, 300W of incandescent/halogen lighting isn't that much... especially when GLW doesn't like dark corners in a room.
When we still used GU10 halogens in the living room, 200W only provided ambient soft light (massive room). We switched to tube and you can now read anywhere in that room. We also replaced 200W of halogen inserts in the master bathroom by a single 18W tube, night and day light-wise.
For what it is worth, we currently rarely have more than 80W worth of lighting powered up at anytime... we still need to replace the unused yet spotlights on the master bedroom ceiling fan, we currently use GU10 LED fixtures as reading lights instead of the ceiling light.
Great logic there... "I'll stick to incandescent 60W seeing that CFLs consume 28W and won't last longer than me".
For what it is worth, I switched to neon tubes in most of the house... a single 36W TL totally pwns a 300W setup of incandescent or halogen bulbs, more light and more accurate colours. Those can be bought for a song nowadays and they are almost instant-on. The conversion actually made me money as I was able to sell two of the previous fixtures at a flea market for more cash than all the neon kits I bought.
I also have a couple of 1.2W LEDs for the night lights in the main hall, but the electronics are quite flakey in my experience.
Unfortunately the desktop/AD/Exchange bit is really mandatory ;)
To make it short, we had a person in that position that was a regular Linux system administrator and he couldn't cope with the day-to-day tasks involved in getting a running prototype out of the door.
Seriously, we can't be the first site trying to get everything running along in a mixed environment...
Are you willing to relocate?
Do you have a minimum of 3 years Linux experience, especially desktop linux experience in an AD/Exchange environment?
Can you package debs and rpms?
If so, there is a position in my department that has been open for more than 12 months:
-the salary is decent
-there are 2 restaurants, a newsagent, a travel agent, a bank, a post office and a supermarket on site
-you get 25 days paid holidays + the site holidays
-the average work week is 37.5 hours (Friday afternoon off most weeks)
Also, last I checked, it's impossible without the help of 3rd party software to (easily) recover music from your iPod in the event of your computer's hard drive failing.
Damn 3rd party software required to display hidden files/folders (one checkbox in your file manager) or do a search for all media files on a hard disk (one keypress in your file manager).
[/sarcasm]
Why is it always corn
Actually there is this thing called the Corn Lobby. They are quite good at getting subsidies for their products and huge levies on products of their competitors. They are the reason why HFCS products are cheaper than normal sugar products.
competent Professional Services.
Ex-Sun PS talking...
That may depend on your location. In some countries, PS is staffed with the cheapest contractors available. I was having a few pints with an ex customer last week and the service they have received from Sun PS in the last 3 years is appalling. Hint to Sun: if the daily rate you offer is inferior to what the contractor can expect as an employee, don't expect miracles.
How they managed to avoid lawsuits for breach of contract for so long is a mystery to me.
The last time it happened, the populace roughly had the same level of armament as the army. The effective range of the firearms was also far lower than the current one. Another big difference was that the people relied far less on the government way back.
How many bombers, jet fighters, armored vehicles and assault helicopters are you allowed to own under the 2nd Amendment?
If the populace woke up and the tree of liberty was to be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots at this point, I foresee a dead tree with a score panel indicating "Tyrants 1 - Patriots 0".
As an expat living in Germany...
The recommended speed on the autobahn is 130 Km/h, there are indeed unlimited sections on the autobahn. There are also many sections which are limited to 110 Km/h or even less, depending on the road condition.
The national limit for country roads is 100 Km/h except at the approach of an intersection where it is 70 Km/h or for small winding roads where the speed limit can be as low as 30 Km/h.
Cities are normally 50 Km/h with most residential areas limited at 30 Km/h.
German highways are usually relatively safe as long as you really watch the traffic coming behind you and know your braking distances. The lower accidents rate might also be related to harder driving tests, properly maintained cars or even simply the politeness of the German driver on the road.
Keep downloading. Bleed 'em dry - that's what I say.
I replied instead of modding you down...
Stop consuming their products and be vocal about it, support the alternatives: Magnatunes, Jamendo, independent labels, ...
That is the only course of action that doesn't give them the kind of legal powers you don't want them to have. "Keep downloading. Bleed'em dry" as you advocate will give them the excuse for the power grab.
It is well past time to tell them "We're mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore". Boycott their music and movies... read a book, explore the outside world and interact with other human beings. Spread the message. Anything else is playing the copyright holders' game.
So if I borrow your ladder, use it to get into someone's house, you should be held partly accountable. Don't be silly.
Actually yeah, if you borrow something from me and use it to break the law I do share responsability in the eye of the law in most countries. If you take something from me without my approval, on the other hand...
I think it is time for some action... be vocal about it and boycott anything touched by the MAFIAA for the whole summer. No music on the radio, no movies on the TV, no downloading any of their crap either... just flat out refuse to consume anything they produced under any form for the next two months. It's time we collectively tell them I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!
If you are vocal enough about it and enough people join in, they will have a hard time blaming the money loss of those two months on "evil pirates".
My point exactly ;)
And this is exactly why so many politicians were happy when the EU constitution was shot down. One of the most important bits in the constitution was redistributing the power between the Commission and the Parliament.
I would like to know which country isn't planning to go down that route so I can sell all my stuff and move out of the way.
Having worked as a contractor for other European Institutions, I know absolutely nothing gets in the way of the Commission once it decided something. After all, it's not like they have to be re-elected or anything.
I can't believe that somebody modded that drivel +3: Insightful...
1) we KNOW for a FACT that it was warmer in the 1200-1400 years than it is today. They grew grapes and made wine on the British Isles then. We're still at least 5 degrees C from being able to do that today. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jun/30/foodanddrink.shoppingBloody cheats, they must have used a time machine to send grapes that can't possibly be grown locally back to 2005 (or maybe they took them from the medieval warm times!). Reality called, the british wine industry has been producing locally from the 70s. The climate has been so good lately that an English red wine won an international prize in 2006.
3) CO2 is not nearly as potent a greenhouse gas as H2O or methane. It accounts for a tiny fraction of the atmosphere. In short, marginally speaking, increased CO2 levels will have a very small effect on temperature compared to a similar increase in H20 or methane. Why aren't we regulating those gasses?If only the atmosphere had a way to regulate its H2O content... that would be swell. Maybe we could call it rain!
Point 2, 4 and 5 are left as an exercise to the reader... they have been brought up and discussed/debunked to death in any climate discussion for the last two years.
The only way to not hear people in favor of ANWR drilling is to take a page from this administration's book. I can't see it if I don't look at it and I can't hear it if I plug my ears while singing la-la-la.
After 4 years of satellite management, I can say the following:
The configuration channels suck so much in practice that we are developing our own internal solution to replace it.
The RHEL5 support is a mystery to me as well, it might be related to the issues encountered running the Sat inside a xen guest. I need to check with my TAM, but the last official message I had was "not supported".
I'm in the process of migrating from Sat 5.0 to Sat 5.1, to take advantage of the sub-org delegation. That was one of the biggest pains in the previous versions as my customer is split into 20-ish independent entities and I get to manage the satellite that maintains them all. After the migration, I fully intend to just maintain the channel staging, the common custom packages and the kickstart templates. I will delegate the actual kickstart part to the sysadmins without having to give them complete control over all the machines of the site.
I am also very excited by the new RHN API, maybe I will finally be able to fully automate the errata management with automated regression testing for our supported use cases. As it stands now, the errata staging consumes most of my work week...
Hint: OSAD is used to push updates or commands to the client from the satellite. The clients subscribe to a jabber channel and do what the satellite tells them to. Chances are the old hostname is still in the jabber configuration file... happened to me during the Sat5 upgrade.
It wouldn't impact anyone in the Commission as they are appointed and not elected.
Easy solution: point a dish at Astra 2 and watch Dr who on the BBC... it's not encrypted.