I cna't believe you follow that viepoint and can honestly say I'm sorry for you that your world view is so limited.
Inventing things is often applying technology or in fact anything in a new manner. There's very little in our present current society that was actually invented from scratch and not a collection of other already existing parts.
If we had to wait for someone to invent everything from scratch then I can guarantee that we'd never be typing on/. or even using computers at all.
It's not in what they said it, it's in how it was presented. The title to the CNN article sets the tone for the whole article as the results of an "attack" (a BadThing(tm)) and anyone mentioned is therefor mentally related and thus "attackers" except for the poor-defensless-major-US-corporation-which-was-not -seriously-affected-by-the-DOS-attack.
The solution to this type of article is the same as the solution to _any_ sort of article like this - MORE REGULAR PEOPLE NEED TO BE INVOLVED!
The more "normal" people who contact x news agency, the greater the change in how x news agency will report the story. This is true of almost any news agency and almost any news story.
Here's an idea - use one of the embedded versions of Linux to run an ultra-small server - (/. has run several articles on this including one about the Worlds Smallest Server) - and use a standard industrial box to enclose the whole thing. Digi-Key or Resource Electronics or just about anybody has those.
Since we're talking about a wireless network you're probably not going to get off cheap but you can almost certainly manage to produce something stable and with a long up-time that's affordable.
Absolutely! I can't find hardly anything IN Win-CE, or Windows for that matter, that isn't proprietary. The only things that seem to get made in some semblance of standardness are those that get crammed down Micro$oft's throat! (Can you say JAVA?)
Re-nameing WINCE won't help all that much. A properly written version would. (Yes, I KNOW a properly written piece of software is beyond the scope of Micro$oft but it's still true.)
Somewhat Off-Topic: The only thing that I had a problem with was that most manufacturers have, until recently, put WINCE into ROM giving us no other option. If it's flashable at least we'd have the choice to test it for ourselves and decide which we want to use.
Does anybody know if the ROM thing was a MS requirement early on?
Regardless of all that - unless the O/S has changed much they'll probably continue to lose out to Palm(tm) or Visor(tm) on sales. It's hoggish for resources and very proprietary - end of story.
I think it's the "If we can't dazzle them with brilliance..." routine.
First, there a far more people out there that are _totally_ capable of cleaning up their bodies so as to be in good shape. Period. Quite a number of people, myself included, just don't take care of their body properly.
Second, there is a general level of health for the human body. Doctors know it, nutritionists know it, event the people with bodily problems know it. This is something that can be quantified and checked for. If the person is not maintaining that standard then they should - FOR THEIR OWN SAKE IF NOTHING ELSE!!!
Third, I said nothing about removing medical benefits. HOWEVER, if the person is not up to the basic standards of health then something has to be done. This, in reality, is the responsibility of the person in question. It's their body - they have to live with it every day - so they should be required to maintain it.
As for providing a statement of their general health being an invasion of privacy - didn't you have to get a physical and drug test before starting a job? I did. If the person has a TRUE medical condition and _can't_ get healthy then that person should not mind providing that information to the employer.
And finally, before you flame me on that last statement, the employer should not be able to dismiss/refuse to hire the person because of a medical condition. The employer should work with the employee in getting himself/herself up to snuff so that both parties can be productive and happy. If, and only if, the person has a true medical condition that can not otherwise be solved should the employer make a large amount of special arrangements.
Should the employer optimize the environment for his employees - yes absolutely.
Should he be made to alter every little thing to fit every type of person - no. It's impossible to do that.
The point is NOT to penalize the employers but to get them to change the environment. Currently many employers figure that they don't have to worry about changing the environment because they feel that they can always hire someone else more desperate than the previous employee to do the same job. This is one of those cases where self-regulation either is not being applied or hasn't worked. When your company can't regulate itself - you can sure bet that someone from the outside will regulate it for you. As for physically unfit employees I feel the same way you do. If the injury is because of bad fitness then yes, the employer should be able to say "get healthy" and not pay a dime. Sounds cruel but it's how is needs to be done. We clamor about how people are taking responsibility out of our hands but we don't do anything to take charge of our own situations. And in case someone wants to say "sure he's probably healthy" I'm 5 feet 8 inches and weigh 240 lbs with a 200 count of cholesterol. Do I have health problems - yes. Do I let them interfere with my job - no.
No. He just wants to make sure the guy understands that he *needs* a lawyer if he's going to try and make a deal with the university. It's hard enough to get your cable company to fix your line, imagine what a long-established-and-prestigious university would be like without help!
That's funny - allmost all the servers we had hooked up to the Cybex boxes were Proliants. The one small thing that did happen was that we had a mouse go flakey on us and had to actually power-cycle the Cybex unit a couple of times for everything to come back up. Other than that all was Ok.
Monitor only switches are available from just about anywhere. However if you do this then you will be moving from location to location working each machine, unless you're totally just "monitoring" the systems and only plug in a keyboard/mouse during maintenance.
The whole point is to get a complete integrated solution where you don't have to move from the control location very much.
What would be a _very_ cool soution would be something like an IR keyboard/mouse that has several channels for several different recievers. The receivers would then switch the video upon IR input on its "channel". 8-)
This works fine as long as your network is running. I prefer to have a solution that works as long as the _hardware_ is running. I've gone through too times of wondering if "b" was working when it was "a" all along.;-)
The mouse thing is _not_ surprising. Sometimes several brands of mice, especially on notebooks, change modes from Micro$oft to Mouse Systems or something else. A friend of mine couldn't get his KVM brand kvm switch to work well with his Logitech wheel mouse under Win-Doze. I've heard that this sort of thing happens even if all computers are _exactly_ the same.
Now that you mention it, I do recall that the Cybex units I was working with wouldn't do above 1024x768, 60hz. (Colors didn't matter.) Per the manufacturer's manual/sales slicks it has more to do with refresh rate than anything.
I've worked for a year or more using the Cybex Commander KVM units. (Sorry, don't have URL handy - CDW or someone has them.) They worked flawlessly during the time I was using them and I _never_ had problems with them. However, they do cost more than the others but if what you want is reliability (donning asbestos underwear) _sometimes_ a higher price is warranted.
Thanks! I'll take a closer look at this. It's really the only reason why I don't have OpenLinux 2.3 on my current workstation at home. The Mandrake 6 let me install over two drives while the OpenLinux 2.3 would only let me do one drive or the other but not both.
I've been using and supporting PCs and networks for almost 10 years now. I started working with DOS 3 and Lantastic when it came out. (I even got close to an OS/2 install once - still sends shivers down my spine.)
After all of that I find that OpenLinux is by far THE easiest operating system to install. It just starts and goes. Period.
My ONLY complaint with OpenLinux is that as far as I can tell there is no way to spread the installation of the distro over several drives. (If anybody knows how to do that let me know.)
Other than that it is by FAR the easiest of the Linux distros to install as well as any other operating system. (My pick for people that want to install and learn Linux.) It may not be the most initially configurable installation but it is by far the fastest and easiest to understand. The LIZARD will support all but the most unintelligent users - and it will even give those a chance to guess what they might need to do. It's that good.
I think in the long run it has a good chance of taking the ball away from RedHat as the Linux distro for the masses. This doesn't mean that I will stop buying RedHat from CheapBytes ( http://www.cheapbytes.com ) or that I will load EVERYTHING with OpenLinux, but in the long run most workstations could be loaded with OpenLinux instead of RedHat and be up and running in X within minutes (newer systems) and be totally user-friendly within a day or so. (If the administrator is of any worth.)
I ask you to look at what you said. You stated that she had no awareness of cultural concensus. That is both untrue and, even if true, not necessarily a Bad Thing(tm).
If Cultural.Awarness=True then Writer writes about things that relate to the real world like relationships, weapons and war, economic problems, politics, etc.
If Cultural.Awareness=False then Writer has no boundries to confine them to what the culture deems "fitting" or "normal".
MZB had a mix of both of these qualities.
She had the understanding about what was happening in the world and put it into her writings, the weapons policy on Darkover, the Renunciates, the everyday relationships of people, etc.
And she also had very little boundries when she wrote. (She created a ship, which crashed on a world, which mutated people, which created a technology, which caused a great society, which came to war, which broke itself, which went throught a dark age, which stabilized, which was found, which went through political/social upheaval, which is still growing...) Think she could have done that with boudries?
A good author is able to take something that's soft and unformed and make it into something real that they want to give to others. They're able to create whole universes from scratch. Universes that are real to the people reading them, sometimes more real than this planet we live on. This is not a talent suited to the "normal" boundries set by the "Cultural Awareness" police.
Don't make the mistake that most people do and kill something that you don't understand or that's not "normal" according to your views.
You do that and you'll become exactly what you're accusing her of being.
It's amazing that regardless of how many beautiful or fantastic things a person produces they are attacked for the tools they use or the one small thing they did wrong.
We as geeks hate it when others do that to us - I think we should not do that to others if at all possible.
Regardless! Marion Zimmer Bradley was one of the most imaginative and insightful writers this sorry ball of mud has produced. I for one am not about to destroy the flower that is making our world smell and look better because it's growing in a pile of dung.
She will most definitely be missed and I wish her all the best fortune on her journey regardless of the destination she has chosen.
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I cna't believe you follow that viepoint and can honestly say I'm sorry for you that your world view is so limited.
/. or even using computers at all.
Inventing things is often applying technology or in fact anything in a new manner. There's very little in our present current society that was actually invented from scratch and not a collection of other already existing parts.
If we had to wait for someone to invent everything from scratch then I can guarantee that we'd never be typing on
Ok. Ok. I'll learn the HTML tags....mutter mutter...old farts...think they know everything....
It's not in what they said it, it's in how it was presented. The title to the CNN article sets the tone for the whole article as the results of an "attack" (a BadThing(tm)) and anyone mentioned is therefor mentally related and thus "attackers" except for the poor-defensless-major-US-corporation-which-was-not -seriously-affected-by-the-DOS-attack.
The solution to this type of article is the same as the solution to _any_ sort of article like this - MORE REGULAR PEOPLE NEED TO BE INVOLVED!
The more "normal" people who contact x news agency, the greater the change in how x news agency will report the story. This is true of almost any news agency and almost any news story.
Here's the URLs I should have provided in the first place:
h tml
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/07/31/1654210.s
and my favorite:
http://wearables.stanford.edu/
(Pardon me for not making them links - I'm hadicapped at work [drum roll] I use Microsoft.)
Here's an idea - use one of the embedded versions of Linux to run an ultra-small server - (/. has run several articles on this including one about the Worlds Smallest Server) - and use a standard industrial box to enclose the whole thing. Digi-Key or Resource Electronics or just about anybody has those.
Since we're talking about a wireless network you're probably not going to get off cheap but you can almost certainly manage to produce something stable and with a long up-time that's affordable.
I disagree - Cobalt at least designs the systems with an orientation towards being used as a server.
Gateway, especially in generic form, is almost certainly not stable enough to handle long-term server use.
Gateway produces some fine machine but for the most part Cobalt, VA, and even Compaq produce better servers.
Absolutely! I can't find hardly anything IN Win-CE, or Windows for that matter, that isn't proprietary. The only things that seem to get made in some semblance of standardness are those that get crammed down Micro$oft's throat! (Can you say JAVA?)
Re-nameing WINCE won't help all that much. A properly written version would. (Yes, I KNOW a properly written piece of software is beyond the scope of Micro$oft but it's still true.)
Somewhat Off-Topic: The only thing that I had a problem with was that most manufacturers have, until recently, put WINCE into ROM giving us no other option. If it's flashable at least we'd have the choice to test it for ourselves and decide which we want to use.
Does anybody know if the ROM thing was a MS requirement early on?
Regardless of all that - unless the O/S has changed much they'll probably continue to lose out to Palm(tm) or Visor(tm) on sales. It's hoggish for resources and very proprietary - end of story.
I think it's the "If we can't dazzle them with brilliance..." routine.
Let me clarify.
First, there a far more people out there that are _totally_ capable of cleaning up their bodies so as to be in good shape. Period. Quite a number of people, myself included, just don't take care of their body properly.
Second, there is a general level of health for the human body. Doctors know it, nutritionists know it, event the people with bodily problems know it. This is something that can be quantified and checked for. If the person is not maintaining that standard then they should - FOR THEIR OWN SAKE IF NOTHING ELSE!!!
Third, I said nothing about removing medical benefits. HOWEVER, if the person is not up to the basic standards of health then something has to be done. This, in reality, is the responsibility of the person in question. It's their body - they have to live with it every day - so they should be required to maintain it.
As for providing a statement of their general health being an invasion of privacy - didn't you have to get a physical and drug test before starting a job? I did. If the person has a TRUE medical condition and _can't_ get healthy then that person should not mind providing that information to the employer.
And finally, before you flame me on that last statement, the employer should not be able to dismiss/refuse to hire the person because of a medical condition. The employer should work with the employee in getting himself/herself up to snuff so that both parties can be productive and happy. If, and only if, the person has a true medical condition that can not otherwise be solved should the employer make a large amount of special arrangements.
Should the employer optimize the environment for his employees - yes absolutely.
Should he be made to alter every little thing to fit every type of person - no. It's impossible to do that.
The point is NOT to penalize the employers but to get them to change the environment. Currently many employers figure that they don't have to worry about changing the environment because they feel that they can always hire someone else more desperate than the previous employee to do the same job. This is one of those cases where self-regulation either is not being applied or hasn't worked. When your company can't regulate itself - you can sure bet that someone from the outside will regulate it for you. As for physically unfit employees I feel the same way you do. If the injury is because of bad fitness then yes, the employer should be able to say "get healthy" and not pay a dime. Sounds cruel but it's how is needs to be done. We clamor about how people are taking responsibility out of our hands but we don't do anything to take charge of our own situations. And in case someone wants to say "sure he's probably healthy" I'm 5 feet 8 inches and weigh 240 lbs with a 200 count of cholesterol. Do I have health problems - yes. Do I let them interfere with my job - no.
Great! Maybe I can finally get the corporation to install somthing besides cubes and bad chairs. (http:\\www.poetictech.com) :-)
No. He just wants to make sure the guy understands that he *needs* a lawyer if he's going to try and make a deal with the university. It's hard enough to get your cable company to fix your line, imagine what a long-established-and-prestigious university would be like without help!
That's funny - allmost all the servers we had hooked up to the Cybex boxes were Proliants. The one small thing that did happen was that we had a mouse go flakey on us and had to actually power-cycle the Cybex unit a couple of times for everything to come back up. Other than that all was Ok.
Monitor only switches are available from just about anywhere. However if you do this then you will be moving from location to location working each machine, unless you're totally just "monitoring" the systems and only plug in a keyboard/mouse during maintenance.
The whole point is to get a complete integrated solution where you don't have to move from the control location very much.
What would be a _very_ cool soution would be something like an IR keyboard/mouse that has several channels for several different recievers. The receivers would then switch the video upon IR input on its "channel". 8-)
Anybody got a hardware hack?
This works fine as long as your network is running. I prefer to have a solution that works as long as the _hardware_ is running. I've gone through too times of wondering if "b" was working when it was "a" all along. ;-)
Do you have any idea who makes Black Box's switch? (I've noticed that Black Box often re-sells generic boxes made by other companies.)
The mouse thing is _not_ surprising. Sometimes several brands of mice, especially on notebooks, change modes from Micro$oft to Mouse Systems or something else. A friend of mine couldn't get his KVM brand kvm switch to work well with his Logitech wheel mouse under Win-Doze. I've heard that this sort of thing happens even if all computers are _exactly_ the same.
Now that you mention it, I do recall that the Cybex units I was working with wouldn't do above 1024x768, 60hz. (Colors didn't matter.) Per the manufacturer's manual/sales slicks it has more to do with refresh rate than anything.
I've worked for a year or more using the Cybex Commander KVM units. (Sorry, don't have URL handy - CDW or someone has them.) They worked flawlessly during the time I was using them and I _never_ had problems with them. However, they do cost more than the others but if what you want is reliability (donning asbestos underwear) _sometimes_ a higher price is warranted.
:-)
Just MHO.
P.S. I didn't see this option the first time but I will look again - Thanks!
Thanks! I'll take a closer look at this. It's really the only reason why I don't have OpenLinux 2.3 on my current workstation at home. The Mandrake 6 let me install over two drives while the OpenLinux 2.3 would only let me do one drive or the other but not both.
I've been using and supporting PCs and networks for almost 10 years now. I started working with DOS 3 and Lantastic when it came out. (I even got close to an OS/2 install once - still sends shivers down my spine.)
After all of that I find that OpenLinux is by far THE easiest operating system to install. It just starts and goes. Period.
My ONLY complaint with OpenLinux is that as far as I can tell there is no way to spread the installation of the distro over several drives. (If anybody knows how to do that let me know.)
Other than that it is by FAR the easiest of the Linux distros to install as well as any other operating system. (My pick for people that want to install and learn Linux.) It may not be the most initially configurable installation but it is by far the fastest and easiest to understand. The LIZARD will support all but the most unintelligent users - and it will even give those a chance to guess what they might need to do. It's that good.
I think in the long run it has a good chance of taking the ball away from RedHat as the Linux distro for the masses. This doesn't mean that I will stop buying RedHat from CheapBytes ( http://www.cheapbytes.com ) or that I will load EVERYTHING with OpenLinux, but in the long run most workstations could be loaded with OpenLinux instead of RedHat and be up and running in X within minutes (newer systems) and be totally user-friendly within a day or so. (If the administrator is of any worth.)
Said my peace. Any comments?
So the Almighty Culture is the be-all, end-all?
Somehow I doubt it.
I ask you to look at what you said. You stated that she had no awareness of cultural concensus. That is both untrue and, even if true, not necessarily a Bad Thing(tm).
If Cultural.Awarness=True then
Writer writes about things that relate to the real world like relationships, weapons and war, economic problems, politics, etc.
If Cultural.Awareness=False then
Writer has no boundries to confine them to what the culture deems "fitting" or "normal".
MZB had a mix of both of these qualities.
She had the understanding about what was happening in the world and put it into her writings, the weapons policy on Darkover, the Renunciates, the everyday relationships of people, etc.
And she also had very little boundries when she wrote. (She created a ship, which crashed on a world, which mutated people, which created a technology, which caused a great society, which came to war, which broke itself, which went throught a dark age, which stabilized, which was found, which went through political/social upheaval, which is still growing...)
Think she could have done that with boudries?
A good author is able to take something that's
soft and unformed and make it into something real that they want to give to others. They're able to create whole universes from scratch. Universes that are real to the people reading them, sometimes more real than this planet we live on. This is not a talent suited to the "normal" boundries set by the "Cultural Awareness" police.
Don't make the mistake that most people do and kill something that you don't understand or that's not "normal" according to your views.
You do that and you'll become exactly what you're accusing her of being.
Don't just "Get Real" - "Be" real.
You're entitled to your opnion but I think it's in very poor taste to speak so harshly of someone who brought so much to so many.
Was she strong. Yes.
Did she promote women to step out of where they are and on to better things. Yes.
Did she speak out openly about her feelings and beliefs. Yes.
She did these things and many others. Mostly when those actions were considered "unpopular" and even caused her problems.
My question to you is this:
How could someone who spoke freely, believed that people should be equal, and stood up for what she believed in - suck?
"Nuff said."
It's amazing that regardless of how many beautiful or fantastic things a person produces they are attacked for the tools they use or the one small thing they did wrong.
We as geeks hate it when others do that to us - I think we should not do that to others if at all possible.
Regardless! Marion Zimmer Bradley was one of the most imaginative and insightful writers this sorry ball of mud has produced. I for one am not about to destroy the flower that is making our world smell and look better because it's growing in a pile of dung.
She will most definitely be missed and I wish her all the best fortune on her journey regardless of the destination she has chosen.