You are discussing kernel versions a completely different topic.
You've got to be kidding.
That's like saying that Dell and HP and IBM and etc. all sell different versions of windows because they all come prepackaged with different crippling spyware.
No -1 Flamebait from me, but I do wonder why you work for a public school district.
Let's just say that the 'experience required' to work at the school district is proportional to how it pays its positions comparably with the rest of the industry.;) (I need SOMETHING on my resume).
Hey, I'm a former student a current employee of a large school district, and I think I can answer some of your questions:
What is it like to be a school district admin? What kind of unique things do you have to do that are outside the realm of 'normal' IT departments?
One of the things that's a bit quirky, but not much different than most other IT departments is how the users are made to interact with the personel.
Often times you will get a teacher who has done something to their compuer that is outside the scope of the service agreement which the department has with the school, and then wants the IT department to fix it for free.
Because school districts work on tax budgets, our method of dealing with purchases and such is interesting as well. The IT department makes administrative decisions without consulting the school board, and thus, is not allowed, in any part, to be unionized.
We recieve a budget from the school board that we use to pay for our costs, (like buying parts or laptops or a new server), and then the schools, out of their budget, pay the general fund back for any services they buy from us. Certain services, (like internet, printing, etc.), are provided for free. Others cost the school money that they pay back to the district.
When is the most hectic/slow time for you?
By far, the most hectic time is September-November. All the new things that got implemented over the summer are being used for the first time, and things go wrong.
How big of a network do you manage?
I can't really give specifics... but its upwards a quarter million computers over a hundred or so square miles.
Also, do you have any favorite stories about being a school district IT admin?
We use Novell ZEN Works around the district, and by far, the most common misconception among users is that 'snapping' an application, (a network driven installation), means they no longer need the CD to use the program. *rolls eyes* We distribute applications, we don't crack them.
The students usually provide the best stories though. One of the onsite technicians was in a classroom removing sound drivers, (the students had been wasting time in class listening to things and the teacher requested we fix that), and noticed a student attempting to circumvent the security policy and reinstall his sound drivers. The technician remote controlled his computer from across the room and typed into the command prompt "Don't do anything stupid". The kids in the class gathered round in astonishment saying things like "they can't do that... how do they know... can they see everything we type?" They walked over to the technician who had controlled the computer and asked, "Can the district monitor what your computer is doing?" He smiled and answered, "They can monitor everything." Heh.
You completely missed the point of what I was saying: what other company will risk money on something unproven because its a quality product... especially if they weren't the ones that came up with it.
What tech-degree individuals really need is a class which teaches them how to navigate the tens of thousands of frivilous patents and copyrights in the industry.
There's SOME redeeming qualities...
on
Uwe Boll Smash!
·
· Score: 1
Boll confirms that Diff'rent Strokes and Postal star Gary Coleman is already signed up to play himself in the film
C'mon... Gary Coleman? I don't get to see him anywhere but Avenue Q...
The Javascript Debugger - Where is the opera equivilent?
Why that would be Tools > Advanced > Javascript Console. (Something I use routinely).
Web developer toolbar This is something no web developer should be without. You can edit the css of the site you're viewing! You can resize the browser to common sizes to check it renders okay. Opera equivilent?
Nice, but hardly a deal breaker, especially for a web developer that codes by hand like me. I always design in Opera, because I know that if it renders correctly in Opera, I've got it in IE and FF.
Well, you just picked up the worst reason - opera is great when it comes to performance, but firefox + extensions consistently beat opera and IE when it comes to features. I can have the features I want, there're way more extensions that features than opera has, and if I don't want them, I don't need to keep the extra UI involved in those features.
You sound like you've never actually picked up Opera and used it...
Unlike FireFox, Opera's features don't ever seem to add bulk to the interface. I'm continually impressed with the elegance of the UI. The downside on that one is that configuring these features isn't as slap-you-in-the-face obvious as it is in FireFox, although just as powerful.
Opera has a 'feature' just like Thunderbird integrated that I never use... and if I didn't read the development logs, I wouldn't even know it existed.
I've never found a FF extension which added a genuinely useful feature that wasn't already in Opera, with the exception of GreaseMonkey, (which enjoys full support in the upcoming 9.0 release).
or Process Explorer lies when it tells me that Opera is using 160Mb of ram after some surfing
Honestly, I have never, even with 50+ tabs open for hours, exceded 60MB of memory usage with Opera... so possibly. Wouldn't be the first time a MS product has lied.;)
In all seriousness though, just from personal experience with multiple versions on multiple OSs, I would attribute that to your computer itself, not the software. My work computer has been on for 2.5 weeks with over 15 tabs open in Opera at all times... still under 40MB of memory... still no memory leaks...
The only lacking feature is one that was removed some time back: the ability to save an arbitrary session (all it does is save some kind of default as you browse for crash recovery).
And funny enough, all those features you mentioned, including saving sessions, are included in Opera vanilla.:)
The fact that our legal system intentionally makes laws so overly complex that we, as citizens, are generally unable to comprehend them (but still expected to follow them. "Ignorance of the law is no defense" and all that crap) save for a tiny, vastly overpaid subset, speaks more about the quality of our system of laws than the raw numbers of bodies in little boxes could ever hope to.
Just thought I'd note that the standard Libertarian response is something like "well it's not supposed to work that way" or "then let the voters take care of it".;-) The reason that I rarely actually vote Libertarian...
But yes, something with a little more direct responsibility to the people -- another check-and-balance -- is needed to improve the US system of government.
I suspect that some of it may be due to talent. Perhaps Opera programmers are just more talented on average than the typical FF dev. As well, I also suspect that its simple goal orientation. The Opera company works on building a new browser that's better with new features. The MozDevs collaborate on whose got which tickets and how they'll be integrated into the source and such.
This is proof positive, I think, that OSS != the best option in all scenarios. Opera consistently beats FF out on features, security, and speed... and it does it without having to download "extensions".
The problem isn't in how well we catch our criminals, it's in how willing we are to create criminals, by criminalizing ridiculous shit that has nothing to do with the public welfare. The more laws you have, the more criminals you have, whether or not that law should even be a law in the first place.
Many Libertarians believe that the best way to fight crime is by getting rid of laws, (kind of backwards). I don't necessarilly think so however. Does that make me not Libertarian? No. That isn't to say I don't think that the US has many frivilous laws, or laws which should not be laws, but I am grasping to find laws within our government that attack inherent human rights.
It's a human right to choose your lifestyle... that said, as a Libertarian, a person should not be permitted to have a lifestyle which prevents me from choosing my own lifestyle. Or, that is, if their lifestyle is inherently invasively disruptive of society and those around them, consideration should be given to whether or not that lifestyle is within the public welfare. This is the logic behind drug laws, and laws against terrorism, and violent demostrations. I don't agree with all of it, but it is logic and I can at the very least understand it.
Yet, in China, nearly everyone is treated equally under the law while here you only get as much justice as you can pay for.
/lol
If you think everyone in China is treated more equally under the law than in the US, we could "fix" this by:
1: Getting rid of trial by jury! Who needs a trial by your peers when we have those super-smart judges that won't be hoodwinked by those nasty lawyers? (Which the jury that tried OJ obviously was).
2: Changing the concept of "innocent until proven guilty"! You see, this confusing concept forces the government to only prosecute cases which it has a great volume of evidence for, thus putting rich criminals at an unfair advantage than poor criminals! If we didn't have this confusing concept, (like China), then these poor criminals just wouldn't get caught! Problem solved!
3: Convicting people for disagreeing with the government! If we did this, everyone would be treated equally, because everyone would agree!
Who get sto do the classification? If it's George Bush, then all the Chinese prisoners are dissidents and none of the US prisoners are.
Woo! George Bush evilz!!1!oen! This is not a matter of political orientation. A political dissident is a political dissident is a political dissident. Bush made a decision to go into Iraq that was vastly unpopular with some people. Some of these people took to the streets and demonstrated, (most peacefully, some violently), their distaste for his decision. None of them were locked up for it... some were locked up for breaking municipal laws or other laws WHILE protesting, but none of them were locked up for protesting itself.
So do you think it's OK that the USA has more people in prison than any other country in the world? Doesn't that tell you that something is wrong?
No, it doesn't tell me something is wrong. It tells me something is right. If we are catching our criminals and prosecuting them, even though we have a higher standard of evidence than China, I'd say we're doing a fantastic job, because even though you may loathe to admit it, the political process in the US is still largely subject to the will of the people, and it is only as weak as its citizens are shallow... and in that sense, it provides them with exactly the government they deserve.
Meanwhile, why should a minority party be forced to agree to the majority's decisions? How does 'majority rules' help the progression of society? Doesn't that repress the minority party?
I fail to see the part where I ever talked about a two party system. I believe it was.... why yes, yes it was. It seems my post was in regard to the idea that a police force that is correctly funded, cohesive and well organized imprisoning at a moderate conviction rate citizens who break the law is in no way comparable to a police force that has no way to adequately enforce "trivial" laws and has a conviction rate over 95%. Saying that the US has more inmates per capita, and thus is more repressive (while ignorring the fact that we have a moderate conviction rate and things like Miranda Rights) is like saying basketball is a less difficult sport than soccer because more goals are scored.
First of all, on a per-capita basis the U.S is more oppressive to its citizens then the Chinese government. An American is almost four times as likely to be imprisoned then a Chinese citizen. In fact, the US has more total people in jail then the Chinese, despite the fact that china has almost four times as many people as the US.
Nice try, but no. If you measure "repression on a per capita basis" as simply number of people per capita in jail, you are completely ignorring that this is mostly likely not "repression" as much as "enforcing the law". As well, it also ignors that the conviction in rate in China is over 95% and there is no such concept as Jurisprudence or Miranda Rights. Additionally, on a per capita basis, China has many times the number of people imprisoned which would possibly be classified as "political dissidents", even though many would classify our Gitmo detainees this way.
So in short, I call "bullshit" on your "bullshit". read up and comapre.
Seriously, sonys stratagy is: up price, make everyone rebuy everything for 3 times the price they paid before, screw consumers with stealth software.
Or maybe when a corporation is large the people that decide which DRM goes into their music aren't the same people wearing lab coats trying to bring people technology which makes their lives better and easier.:rolls eyes:
Nah, that almost makes it sound like they aren't an evil-money-grubbing-out-to-cut-your-throat-rape-yo ur-wife-and-steal-your-belongings company.
Slashdot Mirror
You are discussing kernel versions a completely different topic.
You've got to be kidding.
That's like saying that Dell and HP and IBM and etc. all sell different versions of windows because they all come prepackaged with different crippling spyware.
No -1 Flamebait from me, but I do wonder why you work for a public school district.
;) (I need SOMETHING on my resume).
Let's just say that the 'experience required' to work at the school district is proportional to how it pays its positions comparably with the rest of the industry.
Hey, I'm a former student a current employee of a large school district, and I think I can answer some of your questions:
... how do they know ... can they see everything we type?" They walked over to the technician who had controlled the computer and asked, "Can the district monitor what your computer is doing?" He smiled and answered, "They can monitor everything." Heh.
What is it like to be a school district admin? What kind of unique things do you have to do that are outside the realm of 'normal' IT departments?
One of the things that's a bit quirky, but not much different than most other IT departments is how the users are made to interact with the personel.
Often times you will get a teacher who has done something to their compuer that is outside the scope of the service agreement which the department has with the school, and then wants the IT department to fix it for free.
Because school districts work on tax budgets, our method of dealing with purchases and such is interesting as well. The IT department makes administrative decisions without consulting the school board, and thus, is not allowed, in any part, to be unionized.
We recieve a budget from the school board that we use to pay for our costs, (like buying parts or laptops or a new server), and then the schools, out of their budget, pay the general fund back for any services they buy from us. Certain services, (like internet, printing, etc.), are provided for free. Others cost the school money that they pay back to the district.
When is the most hectic/slow time for you?
By far, the most hectic time is September-November. All the new things that got implemented over the summer are being used for the first time, and things go wrong.
How big of a network do you manage?
I can't really give specifics... but its upwards a quarter million computers over a hundred or so square miles.
Also, do you have any favorite stories about being a school district IT admin?
We use Novell ZEN Works around the district, and by far, the most common misconception among users is that 'snapping' an application, (a network driven installation), means they no longer need the CD to use the program. *rolls eyes* We distribute applications, we don't crack them.
The students usually provide the best stories though. One of the onsite technicians was in a classroom removing sound drivers, (the students had been wasting time in class listening to things and the teacher requested we fix that), and noticed a student attempting to circumvent the security policy and reinstall his sound drivers. The technician remote controlled his computer from across the room and typed into the command prompt "Don't do anything stupid". The kids in the class gathered round in astonishment saying things like "they can't do that
You completely missed the point of what I was saying: what other company will risk money on something unproven because its a quality product... especially if they weren't the ones that came up with it.
Nintendo has been creating new genres for a while.
all political science degrees do have an ethics requirement.
What tech-degree individuals really need is a class which teaches them how to navigate the tens of thousands of frivilous patents and copyrights in the industry.
Boll confirms that Diff'rent Strokes and Postal star Gary Coleman is already signed up to play himself in the film
C'mon... Gary Coleman? I don't get to see him anywhere but Avenue Q...
The Javascript Debugger - Where is the opera equivilent?
Why that would be Tools > Advanced > Javascript Console. (Something I use routinely).
Web developer toolbar This is something no web developer should be without. You can edit the css of the site you're viewing! You can resize the browser to common sizes to check it renders okay. Opera equivilent?
Nice, but hardly a deal breaker, especially for a web developer that codes by hand like me. I always design in Opera, because I know that if it renders correctly in Opera, I've got it in IE and FF.
Well, you just picked up the worst reason - opera is great when it comes to performance, but firefox + extensions consistently beat opera and IE when it comes to features. I can have the features I want, there're way more extensions that features than opera has, and if I don't want them, I don't need to keep the extra UI involved in those features.
You sound like you've never actually picked up Opera and used it...
Unlike FireFox, Opera's features don't ever seem to add bulk to the interface. I'm continually impressed with the elegance of the UI. The downside on that one is that configuring these features isn't as slap-you-in-the-face obvious as it is in FireFox, although just as powerful.
Opera has a 'feature' just like Thunderbird integrated that I never use... and if I didn't read the development logs, I wouldn't even know it existed.
I've never found a FF extension which added a genuinely useful feature that wasn't already in Opera, with the exception of GreaseMonkey, (which enjoys full support in the upcoming 9.0 release).
or Process Explorer lies when it tells me that Opera is using 160Mb of ram after some surfing
;)
Honestly, I have never, even with 50+ tabs open for hours, exceded 60MB of memory usage with Opera... so possibly. Wouldn't be the first time a MS product has lied.
In all seriousness though, just from personal experience with multiple versions on multiple OSs, I would attribute that to your computer itself, not the software. My work computer has been on for 2.5 weeks with over 15 tabs open in Opera at all times... still under 40MB of memory... still no memory leaks...
The only lacking feature is one that was removed some time back: the ability to save an arbitrary session (all it does is save some kind of default as you browse for crash recovery).
:)
And funny enough, all those features you mentioned, including saving sessions, are included in Opera vanilla.
The fact that our legal system intentionally makes laws so overly complex that we, as citizens, are generally unable to comprehend them (but still expected to follow them. "Ignorance of the law is no defense" and all that crap) save for a tiny, vastly overpaid subset, speaks more about the quality of our system of laws than the raw numbers of bodies in little boxes could ever hope to.
;-) The reason that I rarely actually vote Libertarian...
Just thought I'd note that the standard Libertarian response is something like "well it's not supposed to work that way" or "then let the voters take care of it".
But yes, something with a little more direct responsibility to the people -- another check-and-balance -- is needed to improve the US system of government.
I suspect that some of it may be due to talent. Perhaps Opera programmers are just more talented on average than the typical FF dev. As well, I also suspect that its simple goal orientation. The Opera company works on building a new browser that's better with new features. The MozDevs collaborate on whose got which tickets and how they'll be integrated into the source and such.
This is proof positive, I think, that OSS != the best option in all scenarios. Opera consistently beats FF out on features, security, and speed... and it does it without having to download "extensions".
So lets see.... FireFox duplicates Opera features, then IE duplicates FireFox features...
Whoa! I must be using IE version 9 right now!
You can!!! Just use Opera! (It's the Down->Up Mouse-gensture... produces a tab witht he same history as the one you are currently viewing)
Why does Opera do the same thing faster without the memory penalties?
Does that mean their propaganda will be presented in a "no spin zone"?
The problem isn't in how well we catch our criminals, it's in how willing we are to create criminals, by criminalizing ridiculous shit that has nothing to do with the public welfare. The more laws you have, the more criminals you have, whether or not that law should even be a law in the first place.
Many Libertarians believe that the best way to fight crime is by getting rid of laws, (kind of backwards). I don't necessarilly think so however. Does that make me not Libertarian? No. That isn't to say I don't think that the US has many frivilous laws, or laws which should not be laws, but I am grasping to find laws within our government that attack inherent human rights.
It's a human right to choose your lifestyle... that said, as a Libertarian, a person should not be permitted to have a lifestyle which prevents me from choosing my own lifestyle. Or, that is, if their lifestyle is inherently invasively disruptive of society and those around them, consideration should be given to whether or not that lifestyle is within the public welfare. This is the logic behind drug laws, and laws against terrorism, and violent demostrations. I don't agree with all of it, but it is logic and I can at the very least understand it.
Yet, in China, nearly everyone is treated equally under the law while here you only get as much justice as you can pay for.
/lol
If you think everyone in China is treated more equally under the law than in the US, we could "fix" this by:
1: Getting rid of trial by jury! Who needs a trial by your peers when we have those super-smart judges that won't be hoodwinked by those nasty lawyers? (Which the jury that tried OJ obviously was).
2: Changing the concept of "innocent until proven guilty"! You see, this confusing concept forces the government to only prosecute cases which it has a great volume of evidence for, thus putting rich criminals at an unfair advantage than poor criminals! If we didn't have this confusing concept, (like China), then these poor criminals just wouldn't get caught! Problem solved!
3: Convicting people for disagreeing with the government! If we did this, everyone would be treated equally, because everyone would agree!
Who get sto do the classification? If it's George Bush, then all the Chinese prisoners are dissidents and none of the US prisoners are.
Woo! George Bush evilz!!1!oen! This is not a matter of political orientation. A political dissident is a political dissident is a political dissident. Bush made a decision to go into Iraq that was vastly unpopular with some people. Some of these people took to the streets and demonstrated, (most peacefully, some violently), their distaste for his decision. None of them were locked up for it... some were locked up for breaking municipal laws or other laws WHILE protesting, but none of them were locked up for protesting itself.
So do you think it's OK that the USA has more people in prison than any other country in the world? Doesn't that tell you that something is wrong?
No, it doesn't tell me something is wrong. It tells me something is right. If we are catching our criminals and prosecuting them, even though we have a higher standard of evidence than China, I'd say we're doing a fantastic job, because even though you may loathe to admit it, the political process in the US is still largely subject to the will of the people, and it is only as weak as its citizens are shallow... and in that sense, it provides them with exactly the government they deserve.
Meanwhile, why should a minority party be forced to agree to the majority's decisions? How does 'majority rules' help the progression of society? Doesn't that repress the minority party?
I fail to see the part where I ever talked about a two party system. I believe it was.... why yes, yes it was. It seems my post was in regard to the idea that a police force that is correctly funded, cohesive and well organized imprisoning at a moderate conviction rate citizens who break the law is in no way comparable to a police force that has no way to adequately enforce "trivial" laws and has a conviction rate over 95%. Saying that the US has more inmates per capita, and thus is more repressive (while ignorring the fact that we have a moderate conviction rate and things like Miranda Rights) is like saying basketball is a less difficult sport than soccer because more goals are scored.
First of all, on a per-capita basis the U.S is more oppressive to its citizens then the Chinese government. An American is almost four times as likely to be imprisoned then a Chinese citizen. In fact, the US has more total people in jail then the Chinese, despite the fact that china has almost four times as many people as the US.
Nice try, but no. If you measure "repression on a per capita basis" as simply number of people per capita in jail, you are completely ignorring that this is mostly likely not "repression" as much as "enforcing the law". As well, it also ignors that the conviction in rate in China is over 95% and there is no such concept as Jurisprudence or Miranda Rights. Additionally, on a per capita basis, China has many times the number of people imprisoned which would possibly be classified as "political dissidents", even though many would classify our Gitmo detainees this way.
So in short, I call "bullshit" on your "bullshit". read up and comapre.
...water was proven to be very wet yesterday by officials at the University of Irrelavence.
Ahhh.... higher level education is absolutely amazing.
Sony wrote a brief in favor of the defense in MGM vs. Grokster, even though they had a signifigant interest in seeing piracy be squashed.
Seriously, sonys stratagy is: up price, make everyone rebuy everything for 3 times the price they paid before, screw consumers with stealth software.
:rolls eyes:
o ur-wife-and-steal-your-belongings company.
Or maybe when a corporation is large the people that decide which DRM goes into their music aren't the same people wearing lab coats trying to bring people technology which makes their lives better and easier.
Nah, that almost makes it sound like they aren't an evil-money-grubbing-out-to-cut-your-throat-rape-y