Ah yes - we must all bemoan the lack of defrag for ext2 - it does make that particular troll memorable:)
And having worked for IBM I can attest that token ring is still quite usable (but not that that realy matters - I'm sure IBM is the only company in the world that still has working token ring networks in use)
Actually it was done shortly after the dvd release - someone removed all th jar jar scenes and a few of the other more pathetic ones
I think it took out about 25 minutes of the film however it was a significant improvement on the original and a lot more watchable
They did the same with the second and removed that love scene in the middle (frankly I think cinema's should have put subtitles advertising use of the bathroom or the concession stand during that scene as they used to in intermissions)
They are suggestive and pressent a different culture and set of morals - which is why I put the books forward - it was a reply to my original post that started advocating Gor - I'm assuming as derogatory irony
Thanks for the mention of Venus in Furs, I couldn't think of any titles at the time that represented that orinetation and being in the office wasn't in a position to search for it!!
I know I SHOULD do that - but you rarely remember to
What would be nice is matching to photo to their profile photo using the search of their name, email address and phone number that you do have stored - now that would be useful!
Well if they can give me a phone that lets me easily remember which girls name and number is which from my phone book I might be interested... all that search experiance has to be good for something!!
RTFP - I was suggesting letting it get up to speed and THEN putting people on board
I also rather like the other comment here of speeding it up even further by doing solar orbits before you actually put people on board - that might start to challenge how quickly we can accellerate a small ship to rendevous... but it would be very interesting!!
Lets wait until they are at least 18 for reading strictly adult material shall we?
Besides Gor is a rather rediculous portrayal of a purely male dominated society - whats even worse are those that follow it litterally in real life, and I do know a few that fall into that category.
Long before advocating ANYONE read any Gor novels I'd be suggesting The Story of O and probably the works of the Marquis de Sade - its better to see some middle ground on a topic before going right to the extreme end.
Any manned mission would need a huge amount of support equipment and probably a very large ship. Putting enough fuel in orbit to speed it up would be expensive. Speeding it up this way and then shuttling the human personel in using a much smaller ship (eg a shuttle) that could catch up to that speed ansd rendevous without needing anywhere near as much fuel would certainly be possible
If its just going in a circle while it speeds up it doesn't mean its out of range for us.
I would certainly recommend Heinlein, especially some of his later work.
I will fear no evil and stranger in a strange land are definitely worth a read
But thats more about adjusting the moral compass of todays youth to a more enlightened philosophy than it is about the science.
Most science fiction tends to ignore science - insofar as changing it goes - they may extrapolate something into the future, or even define their own entire universe - but once thats done they tend to ignore it and concentrate on the people. If you took out the futuristic settings most sci fi would simply be classed as drama, occssionally romance, or for the likes of Heinlein, porn.
actually using something as trivial as password (or passw0rd since many things refuse password when setting one) is not always a bad thing
Take all these shops that you have to sign up with before buying something, all they store is your address, your email address, your email and on rare occasions order history (the ones that also store credit cards are a different matter but those are less common and I'm not talking about those here)
Why should I use one of my more secure passwords? I dont like to change passwords too often - it means writing them down.
I also dont want to use one of my more secure ones (8-16 char upper lower number and other chars) if there is a good chance they are going to be in plain text on the other side.
So I use something trivial - and I use it on any site where I could not care if someone guesses my password for my email address and finds the same information for me thats listed on whois look ups, half a dozen websites and the phone book!
On sites that store sensitive information I have other passwords which are much more secure, but I have a separate set that I use within my trusted area - ie servers either I control or I kow the person that controls them so I know how they are stored, I don't overlap the two.
But yes trivial passwords have their place - ie when you are being asked for a password for something you really could not care less about and they are probably only wanting a password for tracking purposes
There are a few similar cluases in my contract - most are completely unenforcable under EU and Dutch law - to follow them to the letter would force all my future work to go through the same agency, and not be able to work elsewhere without their permission - obviously nonsense.
About the only things they can enforce is that it would be very very difficult for me to switch to a different agency but still work in the same job at the same company (and its probably 50-50 in switching agency to do a different job at the same company) and it would probably be equally difficult to switch to a permanant rather than contracting role while doing the same job here.
Since as agencies go mine isn't too bad I can live with those limitations - and if they happen to be offering the next job I want then I would have no issue with signing with them again - but it certainly won't stop me signing with other agencies/companies if they have a better offer and I highly doubt they would even attempt to enforce it in court let alone have a snow flakes chance in hell of them winning.
Freezers are not dsigned to move a large amount of heat that is being continuously generated - theyare designed to cool a space then keep it cool.
This is one of the reasons that putting a PC in a freezer is not a good idea. Asside from the condensation you need a huge chest freezer to even have a hope of keeping an average PC cool, even then the pump will be running at max so you will have a lot of noise and its likely to fail sooner since those ones are not selected for continuous running.
There are much better ways of cooling your system - peltiers are ok... but they have their drawbacks - they can only pass so much heat (though with chip wattage decreasing a little now thats not as bad as it was with the fast P4s) but they also generate heat so you have to do extra work to cool them.
Phase change cooling is also an option in amore direct fashion (phase change is how freezers work) just for cooling the cpu - look up vaporchill for an example.
Personally I'm for fairly cool and very quite so I go for a hybrid passive/active watercooling system (ie a huge passive rad, but with low noise fans for backup if the temperature rises) it isn't cheap though - 700 quid for the case and cooling - but its quiet!
However watercooling the ram is useful if you are trying to have zero (or close to it) noise - zero noise means zero fans (preferably) so you need to get the heat out of there some how.
You will probably also encase the hard disks in sound insulated water blocks and put the pump inside accoustically damping foam.
Cooling is all a question of planning and know what you want to get out of it
Your direct report is to the sales manager and you are a programmer?
Unless you are contracting on a very attractive rate then personally I'd be looking for something else.
You are going to be in a position where you will get all the blame when things go wrong, be given riduclous deadlines with the assumption that just by pressuring you harder they can get better software faster, no assistance from your manager, vague and contradictory statements of requirements from your users and since they won't be earning comission while they sit down with you for you to slowly guide them through stating what they actually need they will probably resist doing it.
Oh and while you get all the blame, you probably won't get any of the credit.
Frankly there is no way I would want to be in that position as an employee - if I'm working as an employee I either want to be the technical/project manager or working under a competant one, with the authority to get the resources needed and the sign offs in advance.
Of course if I am contracting on a daily rate then as long as they are offering enough I'd put up with most things and do my best to deliver something useful though I would expect it to be an uphill battle.
I've always prefered Ezekiel 4:12 And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it in their sight with dung that cometh out of man
thats one of the more amusing translations - there are several less literal (to the original language) but more accurate translations - but they are half as amusing to misconstrue
From the diagrams they seemed to immerse the objects in a conductive liquid.
There was some debate as to whether or not they also used electrolosis but I cannot remember if there was a conclusive outcome and I'd rather not post speculation.
The electro plating theory was also rather useful in explaining how they managed to coat some of the items they did which such extremely thin layers of metals
Actually the egyptians had electricity - they used it for electro plating gold onto stone or wood - quite an advanced process really - it does make you wonder what else they were capable of.
(The evidence of this is from hyroglyphs found picturing the process if you want to try and verify it)
A lot of what was known in science 2000+ years ago has been lost only to be rediscovered far more recently, through war, genocide, various cultural dark ages in different regions but 1 person can be given quite a large part of the blame - that rather famous (and egotistical) arsonist, Alexander the Great
I'm now a senior engineer (not bad at 26) and I've sat on the other side in a few interviews to try to get the technical side of the person for the manager (its good when managers know their limitations) I've been told the same things by a couple of different managers so I thought I'd share them here:
They like to see that people have done different roles - different roles means picking up different skills. 3-4 years in each position seems to be the magic number. 2 is quite aceptable but lots of positions with only 1 year at a time raises warning bells. Equally 5 years or more can set off alarms for other reasons - is the person pushing themself, are they keeping their skills up to date etc. Contractors its a little different since some contracts are 6 months for a job that will last that long so renewal wouldn't even be offered - but there is always the question of why this person wasn't (or chose not to be) renewed.
One or two short stints isn't a problem - its the overall pattern they want to see (and frequently try to read more into it than their actually is)
As far as jumping for pay rises goes I seriously doubt you could pick up the skills or experiance to get a significant rise (20% or more vs your last job) without staying in a place for atleast 2 years - so if you are getting offered that kind of increase its quite likely (as somone else above noted) that you underpriced yourself in the first role.
As for me? I did a grad role for 2 1/2 years, a 50% rise into a senior engineering role for another 2 1/2 years then slightly more than double into a senior contracting role - I'll probably be here for 1-2 years - atleast thats the plan right now - I'll always hear an offer out - but I'll rarely go for them unles they sound very good
While being nice may not (yet) be agains the laws of physics, it does seem to be against the laws of corporations.
Yes something like your suggestion would be a lot nicer and perhaps it should be "Amazon's only action if the customer will not voluntarily return the item is..."
But frankly if I went to order 2 boxed sets I liked on a buy one get one free and the checkout ended up charging me near zero for both sets (that I was going to buy anyway) I'd keep them and do the chargeback. I certainly wouldn't complain if they contacted me before charging and shipping to say the price was wrong and offered me at the higher price (with then my option to accept the offer) but once its shipped then thats it.
On the other hand if it was a small local 1 man opperation I'd probably be a lot more sympathetic - but then it works both ways.
Its the same if starbucks gives me too much change - their loss. But if the small italian cafe next to my office does it I give them the excess back. On the other hand that small cafe knows my name, gives personal service and doesn't mind me putting drinks on a tab for a day or two - its the difference between the small business and the mega corp - and I treat them differently
It comes down to offer and acceptance of contract.
Many people confuse this point - they think that the website selling the item is the offer and you accept by paying. It isn't - You making the payment is deemed to be the offer and then the company reviewing the purchase, charging the card and shipping the product is the acceptance.
This is why all the usual too good to be true offers are never honoured - as they don't have to be.
This case is different. Amazon shipped the goods out after reviewing the purchase thereby accepting the offer. Charging the card again is all out fraud and were they a small company would possibly risk losing merchant status for doing so - being such a big company they'll probably just get a fine and a slap on the wrists.
If I were someone that had purchased this I would issue a chargeback on the second payment immediatly - it wasn't authorised therefore its fraud - that simple - it then is up to amazon to prove otherwise.
About the only thing amazon could have done is tried to get the goods back by persuing it through the courts - but I don't think they would have had much of a chance atleast in the uk. Not to mention costs and loss of reputation.
Basically they screwed up - and they should just swallow the loss.
Its not that much different to them having the wrong price for $40 for an item, you buying it (thinking it still wasn't much more than the highstreet and saved you a trip to go buy it) and the next day they fix the price and set it at $20 - do you think you would have much chance of getting the $20 refunded from them? They why should they think they can bully their customers and do it the other way around!!
IANAL (but I speak as someone that has dragged more than a few companies through small claims procedings on the grounds that I know enough uk law and I don't like to take the shit companies feel they can give their customers)
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Ah yes - we must all bemoan the lack of defrag for ext2 - it does make that particular troll memorable :)
And having worked for IBM I can attest that token ring is still quite usable (but not that that realy matters - I'm sure IBM is the only company in the world that still has working token ring networks in use)
Actually it was done shortly after the dvd release - someone removed all th jar jar scenes and a few of the other more pathetic ones
I think it took out about 25 minutes of the film however it was a significant improvement on the original and a lot more watchable
They did the same with the second and removed that love scene in the middle (frankly I think cinema's should have put subtitles advertising use of the bathroom or the concession stand during that scene as they used to in intermissions)
Heinlein novels don't
They are suggestive and pressent a different culture and set of morals - which is why I put the books forward - it was a reply to my original post that started advocating Gor - I'm assuming as derogatory irony
Thanks for the mention of Venus in Furs, I couldn't think of any titles at the time that represented that orinetation and being in the office wasn't in a position to search for it!!
I know I SHOULD do that - but you rarely remember to
What would be nice is matching to photo to their profile photo using the search of their name, email address and phone number that you do have stored - now that would be useful!
Well if they can give me a phone that lets me easily remember which girls name and number is which from my phone book I might be interested... all that search experiance has to be good for something!!
RTFP - I was suggesting letting it get up to speed and THEN putting people on board
I also rather like the other comment here of speeding it up even further by doing solar orbits before you actually put people on board - that might start to challenge how quickly we can accellerate a small ship to rendevous... but it would be very interesting!!
Lets wait until they are at least 18 for reading strictly adult material shall we?
Besides Gor is a rather rediculous portrayal of a purely male dominated society - whats even worse are those that follow it litterally in real life, and I do know a few that fall into that category.
Long before advocating ANYONE read any Gor novels I'd be suggesting The Story of O and probably the works of the Marquis de Sade - its better to see some middle ground on a topic before going right to the extreme end.
I prefered his earlier works myself - I just found his later works to have a high smut content in general
As for his later works "The cat who walked through walls" is just a little too sureal for me!! I think I got a headache when I read it!
Actually the morals I was advocating was the anarchisticand self responsibility view of politics and the rather open and polygamous view of sexuality
As I said good reading for a girls school, given them a sound basis for when they hit their 20's
Um why not a manned space craft?
Any manned mission would need a huge amount of support equipment and probably a very large ship. Putting enough fuel in orbit to speed it up would be expensive. Speeding it up this way and then shuttling the human personel in using a much smaller ship (eg a shuttle) that could catch up to that speed ansd rendevous without needing anywhere near as much fuel would certainly be possible
If its just going in a circle while it speeds up it doesn't mean its out of range for us.
I would certainly recommend Heinlein, especially some of his later work.
I will fear no evil and stranger in a strange land are definitely worth a read
But thats more about adjusting the moral compass of todays youth to a more enlightened philosophy than it is about the science.
Most science fiction tends to ignore science - insofar as changing it goes - they may extrapolate something into the future, or even define their own entire universe - but once thats done they tend to ignore it and concentrate on the people. If you took out the futuristic settings most sci fi would simply be classed as drama, occssionally romance, or for the likes of Heinlein, porn.
actually using something as trivial as password (or passw0rd since many things refuse password when setting one) is not always a bad thing
Take all these shops that you have to sign up with before buying something, all they store is your address, your email address, your email and on rare occasions order history (the ones that also store credit cards are a different matter but those are less common and I'm not talking about those here)
Why should I use one of my more secure passwords? I dont like to change passwords too often - it means writing them down.
I also dont want to use one of my more secure ones (8-16 char upper lower number and other chars) if there is a good chance they are going to be in plain text on the other side.
So I use something trivial - and I use it on any site where I could not care if someone guesses my password for my email address and finds the same information for me thats listed on whois look ups, half a dozen websites and the phone book!
On sites that store sensitive information I have other passwords which are much more secure, but I have a separate set that I use within my trusted area - ie servers either I control or I kow the person that controls them so I know how they are stored, I don't overlap the two.
But yes trivial passwords have their place - ie when you are being asked for a password for something you really could not care less about and they are probably only wanting a password for tracking purposes
There are a few similar cluases in my contract - most are completely unenforcable under EU and Dutch law - to follow them to the letter would force all my future work to go through the same agency, and not be able to work elsewhere without their permission - obviously nonsense.
About the only things they can enforce is that it would be very very difficult for me to switch to a different agency but still work in the same job at the same company (and its probably 50-50 in switching agency to do a different job at the same company) and it would probably be equally difficult to switch to a permanant rather than contracting role while doing the same job here.
Since as agencies go mine isn't too bad I can live with those limitations - and if they happen to be offering the next job I want then I would have no issue with signing with them again - but it certainly won't stop me signing with other agencies/companies if they have a better offer and I highly doubt they would even attempt to enforce it in court let alone have a snow flakes chance in hell of them winning.
Freezers are not dsigned to move a large amount of heat that is being continuously generated - theyare designed to cool a space then keep it cool.
This is one of the reasons that putting a PC in a freezer is not a good idea. Asside from the condensation you need a huge chest freezer to even have a hope of keeping an average PC cool, even then the pump will be running at max so you will have a lot of noise and its likely to fail sooner since those ones are not selected for continuous running.
There are much better ways of cooling your system - peltiers are ok... but they have their drawbacks - they can only pass so much heat (though with chip wattage decreasing a little now thats not as bad as it was with the fast P4s) but they also generate heat so you have to do extra work to cool them.
Phase change cooling is also an option in amore direct fashion (phase change is how freezers work) just for cooling the cpu - look up vaporchill for an example.
Personally I'm for fairly cool and very quite so I go for a hybrid passive/active watercooling system (ie a huge passive rad, but with low noise fans for backup if the temperature rises) it isn't cheap though - 700 quid for the case and cooling - but its quiet!
However watercooling the ram is useful if you are trying to have zero (or close to it) noise - zero noise means zero fans (preferably) so you need to get the heat out of there some how.
You will probably also encase the hard disks in sound insulated water blocks and put the pump inside accoustically damping foam.
Cooling is all a question of planning and know what you want to get out of it
Cool, quiet, cheap - pick two!
These seem appropriate
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http://www.monolithic.com/pres/tree_swing/treeswi
http://www.jroller.com/resources/behrangsa/softwa
Your direct report is to the sales manager and you are a programmer?
Unless you are contracting on a very attractive rate then personally I'd be looking for something else.
You are going to be in a position where you will get all the blame when things go wrong, be given riduclous deadlines with the assumption that just by pressuring you harder they can get better software faster, no assistance from your manager, vague and contradictory statements of requirements from your users and since they won't be earning comission while they sit down with you for you to slowly guide them through stating what they actually need they will probably resist doing it.
Oh and while you get all the blame, you probably won't get any of the credit.
Frankly there is no way I would want to be in that position as an employee - if I'm working as an employee I either want to be the technical/project manager or working under a competant one, with the authority to get the resources needed and the sign offs in advance.
Of course if I am contracting on a daily rate then as long as they are offering enough I'd put up with most things and do my best to deliver something useful though I would expect it to be an uphill battle.
However the translation I gave above has been used to suggest that the dung was used as an ingrediant, rather than the cooking medium.
I've always prefered Ezekiel 4:12 And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it in their sight with dung that cometh out of man
thats one of the more amusing translations - there are several less literal (to the original language) but more accurate translations - but they are half as amusing to misconstrue
From the diagrams they seemed to immerse the objects in a conductive liquid.
There was some debate as to whether or not they also used electrolosis but I cannot remember if there was a conclusive outcome and I'd rather not post speculation.
The electro plating theory was also rather useful in explaining how they managed to coat some of the items they did which such extremely thin layers of metals
Actually the egyptians had electricity - they used it for electro plating gold onto stone or wood - quite an advanced process really - it does make you wonder what else they were capable of.
(The evidence of this is from hyroglyphs found picturing the process if you want to try and verify it)
A lot of what was known in science 2000+ years ago has been lost only to be rediscovered far more recently, through war, genocide, various cultural dark ages in different regions but 1 person can be given quite a large part of the blame - that rather famous (and egotistical) arsonist, Alexander the Great
I'm now a senior engineer (not bad at 26) and I've sat on the other side in a few interviews to try to get the technical side of the person for the manager (its good when managers know their limitations) I've been told the same things by a couple of different managers so I thought I'd share them here:
They like to see that people have done different roles - different roles means picking up different skills.
3-4 years in each position seems to be the magic number. 2 is quite aceptable but lots of positions with only 1 year at a time raises warning bells. Equally 5 years or more can set off alarms for other reasons - is the person pushing themself, are they keeping their skills up to date etc.
Contractors its a little different since some contracts are 6 months for a job that will last that long so renewal wouldn't even be offered - but there is always the question of why this person wasn't (or chose not to be) renewed.
One or two short stints isn't a problem - its the overall pattern they want to see (and frequently try to read more into it than their actually is)
As far as jumping for pay rises goes I seriously doubt you could pick up the skills or experiance to get a significant rise (20% or more vs your last job) without staying in a place for atleast 2 years - so if you are getting offered that kind of increase its quite likely (as somone else above noted) that you underpriced yourself in the first role.
As for me? I did a grad role for 2 1/2 years, a 50% rise into a senior engineering role for another 2 1/2 years then slightly more than double into a senior contracting role - I'll probably be here for 1-2 years - atleast thats the plan right now - I'll always hear an offer out - but I'll rarely go for them unles they sound very good
While being nice may not (yet) be agains the laws of physics, it does seem to be against the laws of corporations.
Yes something like your suggestion would be a lot nicer and perhaps it should be "Amazon's only action if the customer will not voluntarily return the item is..."
But frankly if I went to order 2 boxed sets I liked on a buy one get one free and the checkout ended up charging me near zero for both sets (that I was going to buy anyway) I'd keep them and do the chargeback. I certainly wouldn't complain if they contacted me before charging and shipping to say the price was wrong and offered me at the higher price (with then my option to accept the offer) but once its shipped then thats it.
On the other hand if it was a small local 1 man opperation I'd probably be a lot more sympathetic - but then it works both ways.
Its the same if starbucks gives me too much change - their loss. But if the small italian cafe next to my office does it I give them the excess back. On the other hand that small cafe knows my name, gives personal service and doesn't mind me putting drinks on a tab for a day or two - its the difference between the small business and the mega corp - and I treat them differently
It comes down to offer and acceptance of contract.
Many people confuse this point - they think that the website selling the item is the offer and you accept by paying. It isn't - You making the payment is deemed to be the offer and then the company reviewing the purchase, charging the card and shipping the product is the acceptance.
This is why all the usual too good to be true offers are never honoured - as they don't have to be.
This case is different. Amazon shipped the goods out after reviewing the purchase thereby accepting the offer. Charging the card again is all out fraud and were they a small company would possibly risk losing merchant status for doing so - being such a big company they'll probably just get a fine and a slap on the wrists.
If I were someone that had purchased this I would issue a chargeback on the second payment immediatly - it wasn't authorised therefore its fraud - that simple - it then is up to amazon to prove otherwise.
About the only thing amazon could have done is tried to get the goods back by persuing it through the courts - but I don't think they would have had much of a chance atleast in the uk. Not to mention costs and loss of reputation.
Basically they screwed up - and they should just swallow the loss.
Its not that much different to them having the wrong price for $40 for an item, you buying it (thinking it still wasn't much more than the highstreet and saved you a trip to go buy it) and the next day they fix the price and set it at $20 - do you think you would have much chance of getting the $20 refunded from them? They why should they think they can bully their customers and do it the other way around!!
IANAL (but I speak as someone that has dragged more than a few companies through small claims procedings on the grounds that I know enough uk law and I don't like to take the shit companies feel they can give their customers)
It should be perfectly reasonable to ban the use of red or green network cables being used to connect to the network!!
Just think, the network manager trying to see which computer connected the the 4 port hub in the dorm room might be colour blind!