What do Slashdot readers use to keep... their wives happy?
A. Most slashdot readers are sadly (?) not constrained by this requirement. Perhaps you could explain to the majority of the readership here, what a wife is, and how you get one.
B. Most slashdot wifes probably accept the cable mess as "one of those things I love about him." Anyhow, I suspect slashdot wives in general have a fairly high tolerance of cable messes.
C. Which those married readers with wives who aren't particularly tolerant of the mess.
I've found buying shiny things are helpful for generating tolerance.
Just buy a few ClearCom headsets. If wireless costs too much for you, get the old-style models and some lengths of XLR cable. Why waste time with all this computer stuff? It just complicates things. Use the simplest solution.
I'll second this suggestion.
When I was in high school, we used RadioShack walkie-talkie type headsets, with both press-to-talk (PTT) and voice activated mikes. We were always dealing with dead batteries, dropouts, and the voice activated took turns being either too sensitive, or not sensitive enough for volume the stage manager neeed to speak at (fairly quiet, sitting just off stage in the wings).
We even had interference from a Fischer-Price baby monitor, and spent an afternoon walking around the neighbourhood near the school, knocking on doors and asking people if they had any babies. I don't want to know what they thought.
The next year, we got a set of wired ClearCom headsets, and all was good in the world.
The signal was clear, and reliable.
Because they were "the" standard brand, we were able to borrow extra equipment from the local theatre company when we needed an extra headset or something.
They are also good, 'cause unlike the walkie-talkies, they come either with 1 or 2 earmuffs and do a good job of cutting down on outside noise (useful if you do bands or concerts).
Spend the money. It's not that much, espcially when you consider (1) that they'll still be chugging along in 20 years, when the RadioShack stuff is lucky to make it through 20 weeks, and (2)over those 20 years, how much are you going to be spending on batteries which you need to replace each show (you are using a fresh set each show right?)
Also, we rented them out to other groups occassionally, so you get a source of income.
"Later this week all of the IT department at my company (50-80 people) is having a dinner with the company President and VP/CIO. One major reason for this is so that they can get a better understanding of what is going on in IT and how it impacts the company overall.
Do you think that the President and CIO really want detailed feedback from an intimate dinner of 50 - 80 people?
No.
Ideally, with the ideas and sharing, these guys will have a better appreciation for us, adjust our budgets appropriately, and help us in our business.
Now, they may want to get the pulse of the group, an overall feeling. They may want to put some faces to email addresses. They may want you to know how your work affects the other groups (or get a feeling for how much dependencies you feel with other groups). But they aren't interested in "I need a new 30-inch Cinema Display." They aren't even interested in "My boss is an idiot," (unless EVERYONE thinks that ALL 6 managers in your department are idiots.)
Keep it very high level -- we don't have sufficient visibility on upcoming projects, we're having problems prioritizing between demands from the CxO and the CyO.
Also, try to phrase things so the manager is on your side -- "my manager is having trouble saying no to the CxO, and we all could use a little support here." You may not really beleive he's on your side, or not want him on your side, but at least when your comments get back to him, you can claim you were looking out for everyone's best interests.
Ah, what you want is some kind of data store, where you can classify arbitrary data by arbitrary categories, dynamically.
The good news is, that while the Window's file system may not support this, if you wait until 2005 (2006, 2007?), this highly demanded feature will be in the next release of Windows -- yes, everyone's favourite Longhorn will turn everything into a database.
Frankly, I don't think turning an OS into a DBMS is the right thing to do, but for certain applications, having this functionality omnipresent will be useful. Well, OK, for this one application, I'm still waiting to see examples of others.
Actually, from my experience, universities are done in May, so your theory doesn't quite work.
However, grade schools and high schools finish then end of June, so you may not be totally off track.
But grade/high schools aren't likely equipped with T-3s, so your theory isn't working again.
However, kids who normally would be downloading via DSL at home, are now heading out on family vacations, going to camp, getting summer jobs, and doing other things that will take them away from the computer for the next while.
On the whole, I agree with your subject line "easy: school's out", but not your reasoning.
That's fine for applications. However, the trick will lie with porting the O/S itself. You know, the stuff that the CLR depends on!
I'm not sure if it is MS marketing effluent or not, but I did hear that MS is moving towards implementing all but the lowest level of the OS via the CLR.
This would allow them to quickly move to new CPUs as they become available, and except for limited routines, will require no customization.
Also the point I was trying to make wasn't about any non-MS OS's ability to run on the Opteron, but rather MS's ability to easily run Opteron and other CPUs.
Microsoft is supposedly moving all their code to run on the CLR, which is similar in many ways to the Java runtime. Programs are compiled to processor independent byte code, and then before being run are put through a JIT compiler to produce PROCESSOR-SPECIFIC machine code.
Thus, all MS has to do is distribute a version of the CLR for AMD or Intel, and suddenly all applications have optimal support for those processors. Also, when a chip manufacterer releases a new chip, or adds to the instruction set, or your machine has some other hardware change, all you need is, at most, a new CLR, and suddenly all of you applications, from any developement house, have improved performance.
This is actually a neat idea, and allows MS to loosen its ties with any specific platform.
I can think of several difficulties with this idea (There must be some way of doing architecture specific P-Invokes (native calls) for performance reasons, but I don't know enough of the details.), and have only heard disappointing things about.NET performance, but I think as an idea it's actually pretty good.
She possibly *can't* spell or construct proper sentences when she rights, and depends on an editor to fix her writing.
...
But just so you know, I too later discover grammar errors in my writing, and I too use my writing skills professionally. My most common mistake is to use "to" where "two" or "too" belongs.
You might want to check for other common mistakes in your rightings.
Sorry, what you are describing is not public space, like a sidewalk, but private-space-open-to-the-public, much like a shopping mall.
If you check (and naturally I'm to lazy to do it right now), you'll find that what a person can say/do in a private-public space is not as wide as in a true public space. If I were a mall owner, I'd be able to do things like kick people out who were begging, wearing gang colors (as a/. article from a while ago discussed, IIRC), bad-mouthing my mall or tennants, or just not shopping.
Similarly, if I put up a website and open it up to the public, I should be able to kick off people who are behaving in a way I disagree with. It's my web site after all.
However, given that, Seltzer still has a strong point -- where are the true public spaces in cyberspace? Are government hosted discussion forums the same as public property? (I'm not sure but I think that there are also varying degrees of public spaces -- protesting inside City Hall is different from protesting on the lawn outside.) If a gov't forum and public property aren't the same, then have we built ourselves a new world without public spaces? Is every sidewalk and park in cyberspace owned by some corporation or organization? How do we find/build true public spaces?
What is it about the US system that demand an automated system? Computerized, punch cards, touch screens, OCR -- any of them -- why are they needed?
In Canada, we use a simple paper and pencil ballot, that you mark off, and deposit into a ballot box. At the end of the day, they open the box, and count ballots. Within an hour votes start coming in, and within a couple of hours enough have usually come in that the winner can be accurately predicted. By the end of the night, all are counted.
This is a secure, auditable, verifiable, robust system. During counting, each candidate has the right to have a representative verify the count. If there is a dispute about how a ballot is marked, it can be put aside for review by a judge. And in any event, you can always recount. You don't have to worry about hanging chads, or OCR, or layouts not matching up with the location of buttons.
Why doesn't this work in the States? It can't be the population difference -- since there are 10 times as many people, there should be 10 times as many volunteers to help count. It can't be security (or what ever) -- you can't tell me that an opaque machine is more secure than having both (or more) sides looking over my shoulder as I count.
I know this is heresy for the Slashdot crowd, but why go for costly, problem riddled, high-tech solutions when perfectly good, simple low-tech ones work as well, if not better?
That's what the GPL is trying to promote and
incentivize.
I won't go so far as to say incentivize is not a word, but why use bastardized, management-speakized, elongatized, usurpized, verbized words when perfectly good words already exist?
Did you mean encourage? develop? inspire? Well, how about using one of verbs, instead of enlargizing the innocent little noun, incentive.
The fact that a majority of the opinions are against the settlement is really a testament to common sense.
When the news about 90% opposing the settlement(or whatever ridiculous number it was), something bothered me. Every one assumed that this meant people believed that the settlement was too lenient. Did anyone ever think that this could have been people feeling that the agreement was too strict?
Was it 10% support the agreement, 80% want something more, 10% want less? Or was it 10% support the agreement, 10% want more, and 80% want less? I know where I and most of the rest of/. stand, but maybe MS got together a campaign to push for a more lenient agreement.
Reading over some of the major comments, I don't think this is the case, but has this crossed anyone else's mind? Or am I being just too literal/suspicious/cynical in my interpretation of the numbers?
From a quick look, the patent is designed for wider use than stopping you from sharing your MP3s.
From the patent:
If a computer can be booted only into an operating system that itself honors content rights, and allows only compliant applications to access rights-restricted data, then data integrity within the machine can be assured. This stepping-stone to a secure operating system is sometimes called "Secure Boot." If secure boot cannot be assured, then whatever rights management system the secure OS provides, the computer can always be booted into an insecure operating system as a step to compromise it.
This can be seen as a response to MS agreeing to allow OEMs to produce dual-boot machines -- sure you can do a dual boot machine, but our OS will kick and scream as soon as it realizes that it's not the only thing on this machine, and you won't be able to run any media player (or anything with rights management built in -- like the next release of Word.)
You might not even be able to log in if it can't guarantee a clean boot.
Aside: makes one wonder how it will handle the pcode drivers in I20.
They also talk about needing a secret value from the hardware. So anyone wanting to turn off the CPU serial number won't be able to boot either.
Perhaps I'm misreading the patent application. It may be after log in that the rights management kicks in. Again, according to the patent, if an untrusted process tries to run while a trusted one is running the untrusted process will be killed. So, I try to start up my favourite Untrusted Player, the OS notices, also determines that WMP is running (it's always running, it's part of the OS), and refuses to launch my alternative player.
And then there is the question of how a software developer can get it's product trusted. A large cheque to MS, perhaps?
Look at all the fun things MS can do in the name of enhancing the user experience. Sure they'll agree to the consent decree, who cares what their contracts say when they can enforce the same policy in the actual OS.
Rampant optimism -- many engineers (and managers) will typically estimate how long they think it should take to do a specific task but will not add in a buffer in case somthing goes wrong. And something always goes wrong.
I got in to an argument with a friend over this one. I recently slipped on a schedule I had proposed, and we were discussing why. I said that I had estimated how long it should take, and then added a number of days, 'cause "something always goes wrong."
Now I thought I was being smart, taking this into account. The friend, however, pointed out that if I schedule for the something I know will go wrong, I also need to add additional slack to allow slippage for something (else) to go wrong. Her point was that since I know there will be a problem, and I schedule for that problem, then I haven't really given myself any extra room.
It feels to me too much like the start of a calculus problem (what is the limit of 3 weeks + (20% slippage)^n as n approaches infinity?) or a Dilbert cartoon (make me a list of all the unknown problems we'll run into), but it did leave me wondering -- does she have a point, and how do you express it in practise?
I just did a quick search at the US Patent Office, and the only patent that I could find that these guys have is
"6,098,106: Method for controlling a computer with an audio signal." My, albeit uneducated, reading of the abstract leads me to believe it has nothing to do with the substance of their claims.
If you wish to check out the patent, you can find it here.
They make reference to another application filed at the same time, but I can't seem to find it online.
Slashdot Mirror
A. Most slashdot readers are sadly (?) not constrained by this requirement. Perhaps you could explain to the majority of the readership here, what a wife is, and how you get one.
B. Most slashdot wifes probably accept the cable mess as "one of those things I love about him." Anyhow, I suspect slashdot wives in general have a fairly high tolerance of cable messes.
C. Which those married readers with wives who aren't particularly tolerant of the mess.
I've found buying shiny things are helpful for generating tolerance.
I'll second this suggestion.
When I was in high school, we used RadioShack walkie-talkie type headsets, with both press-to-talk (PTT) and voice activated mikes. We were always dealing with dead batteries, dropouts, and the voice activated took turns being either too sensitive, or not sensitive enough for volume the stage manager neeed to speak at (fairly quiet, sitting just off stage in the wings).
We even had interference from a Fischer-Price baby monitor, and spent an afternoon walking around the neighbourhood near the school, knocking on doors and asking people if they had any babies. I don't want to know what they thought.
The next year, we got a set of wired ClearCom headsets, and all was good in the world.
The signal was clear, and reliable.
Because they were "the" standard brand, we were able to borrow extra equipment from the local theatre company when we needed an extra headset or something.
They are also good, 'cause unlike the walkie-talkies, they come either with 1 or 2 earmuffs and do a good job of cutting down on outside noise (useful if you do bands or concerts).
Spend the money. It's not that much, espcially when you consider (1) that they'll still be chugging along in 20 years, when the RadioShack stuff is lucky to make it through 20 weeks, and (2)over those 20 years, how much are you going to be spending on batteries which you need to replace each show (you are using a fresh set each show right?)
Also, we rented them out to other groups occassionally, so you get a source of income.
Do it the right way, you won't regret it.
E.
Do you think that the President and CIO really want detailed feedback from an intimate dinner of 50 - 80 people?
No.
Ideally, with the ideas and sharing, these guys will have a better appreciation for us, adjust our budgets appropriately, and help us in our business.
Now, they may want to get the pulse of the group, an overall feeling. They may want to put some faces to email addresses. They may want you to know how your work affects the other groups (or get a feeling for how much dependencies you feel with other groups). But they aren't interested in "I need a new 30-inch Cinema Display." They aren't even interested in "My boss is an idiot," (unless EVERYONE thinks that ALL 6 managers in your department are idiots.)
Keep it very high level -- we don't have sufficient visibility on upcoming projects, we're having problems prioritizing between demands from the CxO and the CyO.
Also, try to phrase things so the manager is on your side -- "my manager is having trouble saying no to the CxO, and we all could use a little support here." You may not really beleive he's on your side, or not want him on your side, but at least when your comments get back to him, you can claim you were looking out for everyone's best interests.
The good news is, that while the Window's file system may not support this, if you wait until 2005 (2006, 2007?), this highly demanded feature will be in the next release of Windows -- yes, everyone's favourite Longhorn will turn everything into a database.
Frankly, I don't think turning an OS into a DBMS is the right thing to do, but for certain applications, having this functionality omnipresent will be useful. Well, OK, for this one application, I'm still waiting to see examples of others.
However, grade schools and high schools finish then end of June, so you may not be totally off track.
But grade/high schools aren't likely equipped with T-3s, so your theory isn't working again.
However, kids who normally would be downloading via DSL at home, are now heading out on family vacations, going to camp, getting summer jobs, and doing other things that will take them away from the computer for the next while.
On the whole, I agree with your subject line "easy: school's out", but not your reasoning.
Just to complete your list, that should read C#'s metadata.
I'm not sure if it is MS marketing effluent or not, but I did hear that MS is moving towards implementing all but the lowest level of the OS via the CLR.
This would allow them to quickly move to new CPUs as they become available, and except for limited routines, will require no customization.
Also the point I was trying to make wasn't about any non-MS OS's ability to run on the Opteron, but rather MS's ability to easily run Opteron and other CPUs.
The key to this whole issue is .Net, and the CLR.
.NET performance, but I think as an idea it's actually pretty good.
Microsoft is supposedly moving all their code to run on the CLR, which is similar in many ways to the Java runtime. Programs are compiled to processor independent byte code, and then before being run are put through a JIT compiler to produce PROCESSOR-SPECIFIC machine code.
Thus, all MS has to do is distribute a version of the CLR for AMD or Intel, and suddenly all applications have optimal support for those processors. Also, when a chip manufacterer releases a new chip, or adds to the instruction set, or your machine has some other hardware change, all you need is, at most, a new CLR, and suddenly all of you applications, from any developement house, have improved performance.
This is actually a neat idea, and allows MS to loosen its ties with any specific platform.
I can think of several difficulties with this idea (There must be some way of doing architecture specific P-Invokes (native calls) for performance reasons, but I don't know enough of the details.), and have only heard disappointing things about
But just so you know, I too later discover grammar errors in my writing, and I too use my writing skills professionally. My most common mistake is to use "to" where "two" or "too" belongs.
You might want to check for other common mistakes in your rightings.
Sorry. I had to.
Sorry, what you are describing is not public space, like a sidewalk, but private-space-open-to-the-public, much like a shopping mall.
/. article from a while ago discussed, IIRC), bad-mouthing my mall or tennants, or just not shopping.
If you check (and naturally I'm to lazy to do it right now), you'll find that what a person can say/do in a private-public space is not as wide as in a true public space. If I were a mall owner, I'd be able to do things like kick people out who were begging, wearing gang colors (as a
Similarly, if I put up a website and open it up to the public, I should be able to kick off people who are behaving in a way I disagree with. It's my web site after all.
However, given that, Seltzer still has a strong point -- where are the true public spaces in cyberspace? Are government hosted discussion forums the same as public property? (I'm not sure but I think that there are also varying degrees of public spaces -- protesting inside City Hall is different from protesting on the lawn outside.) If a gov't forum and public property aren't the same, then have we built ourselves a new world without public spaces? Is every sidewalk and park in cyberspace owned by some corporation or organization? How do we find/build true public spaces?
I don't know.
elsilver.
This 9 Beet Strech is a not bad piece, but it would really rock if they sped it up about 18 times.
Sorry, had to be said.
What is it about the US system that demand an automated system? Computerized, punch cards, touch screens, OCR -- any of them -- why are they needed?
In Canada, we use a simple paper and pencil ballot, that you mark off, and deposit into a ballot box. At the end of the day, they open the box, and count ballots. Within an hour votes start coming in, and within a couple of hours enough have usually come in that the winner can be accurately predicted. By the end of the night, all are counted.
This is a secure, auditable, verifiable, robust system. During counting, each candidate has the right to have a representative verify the count. If there is a dispute about how a ballot is marked, it can be put aside for review by a judge. And in any event, you can always recount. You don't have to worry about hanging chads, or OCR, or layouts not matching up with the location of buttons.
Why doesn't this work in the States? It can't be the population difference -- since there are 10 times as many people, there should be 10 times as many volunteers to help count. It can't be security (or what ever) -- you can't tell me that an opaque machine is more secure than having both (or more) sides looking over my shoulder as I count.
I know this is heresy for the Slashdot crowd, but why go for costly, problem riddled, high-tech solutions when perfectly good, simple low-tech ones work as well, if not better?
elsilver.
I won't go so far as to say incentivize is not a word, but why use bastardized, management-speakized, elongatized, usurpized, verbized words when perfectly good words already exist?
Did you mean encourage? develop? inspire? Well, how about using one of verbs, instead of enlargizing the innocent little noun, incentive.
elsilver.
We've been here before:
2 31
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/30/137
I've seen the links back to the story from last year, but didn't see any posts for David. Can you provide more information?
When the news about 90% opposing the settlement(or whatever ridiculous number it was), something bothered me. Every one assumed that this meant people believed that the settlement was too lenient. Did anyone ever think that this could have been people feeling that the agreement was too strict?
Was it 10% support the agreement, 80% want something more, 10% want less? Or was it 10% support the agreement, 10% want more, and 80% want less? I know where I and most of the rest of /. stand, but maybe MS got together a campaign to push for a more lenient agreement.
Reading over some of the major comments, I don't think this is the case, but has this crossed anyone else's mind? Or am I being just too literal/suspicious/cynical in my interpretation of the numbers?
From the patent:
If a computer can be booted only into an operating system that itself honors content rights, and allows only compliant applications to access rights-restricted data, then data integrity within the machine can be assured. This stepping-stone to a secure operating system is sometimes called "Secure Boot." If secure boot cannot be assured, then whatever rights management system the secure OS provides, the computer can always be booted into an insecure operating system as a step to compromise it.
This can be seen as a response to MS agreeing to allow OEMs to produce dual-boot machines -- sure you can do a dual boot machine, but our OS will kick and scream as soon as it realizes that it's not the only thing on this machine, and you won't be able to run any media player (or anything with rights management built in -- like the next release of Word.)
You might not even be able to log in if it can't guarantee a clean boot.
Aside: makes one wonder how it will handle the pcode drivers in I20.
They also talk about needing a secret value from the hardware. So anyone wanting to turn off the CPU serial number won't be able to boot either.
Perhaps I'm misreading the patent application. It may be after log in that the rights management kicks in. Again, according to the patent, if an untrusted process tries to run while a trusted one is running the untrusted process will be killed. So, I try to start up my favourite Untrusted Player, the OS notices, also determines that WMP is running (it's always running, it's part of the OS), and refuses to launch my alternative player.
And then there is the question of how a software developer can get it's product trusted. A large cheque to MS, perhaps?
Look at all the fun things MS can do in the name of enhancing the user experience. Sure they'll agree to the consent decree, who cares what their contracts say when they can enforce the same policy in the actual OS.
I got in to an argument with a friend over this one. I recently slipped on a schedule I had proposed, and we were discussing why. I said that I had estimated how long it should take, and then added a number of days, 'cause "something always goes wrong."
Now I thought I was being smart, taking this into account. The friend, however, pointed out that if I schedule for the something I know will go wrong, I also need to add additional slack to allow slippage for something (else) to go wrong. Her point was that since I know there will be a problem, and I schedule for that problem, then I haven't really given myself any extra room.
It feels to me too much like the start of a calculus problem (what is the limit of 3 weeks + (20% slippage)^n as n approaches infinity?) or a Dilbert cartoon (make me a list of all the unknown problems we'll run into), but it did leave me wondering -- does she have a point, and how do you express it in practise?
If you wish to check out the patent, you can find it here. They make reference to another application filed at the same time, but I can't seem to find it online.