The Finnish business landscape is highly monopolistic and duopolistic, and every new thing consolidates into such much sooner than later. The duopolies, when they're not fighting, often collaborate with one another behind the scenes on a broad range of issues, including making it virtually impossible for new competitors to enter the market.
There is very little doubt in my mind that this "traffic plan", if realised, would turn into the same sort of price-fixing duopoly designed to extract the maximum amount of disposable income from the maximum amount of people in order to buy sailboats and coastal islands for the board of directors.
Your view of Helsinki car ownership is rather distorted, you ought to visit the city when you get a chance. Journeys in one's own car within the Helsinki metropolitan area are not some kind of cherished activity; the popularity of driving one's own car has already waned drastically due to the expense of petrol and parking.
I live in Helsinki. I can attest that the popularity of driving one's own car is only increasing, not decreasing in the least. All you need to do is drive on Ring 1 or go to any supermarket to witness this phenomena. Additionally, petrol prices have remained almost unchanged in Finland for nearly two years now (after several years of extreme hikes) - and it's cheaper and easier to find a parking spot in Helsinki than it is, for example, in Tampere.
Elsewhere, most people, even the well-off, just take the train or metro to get to work or do their shopping
If that's the case, then why do I need to circle the parking lot looking for a spot every time I go to the supermarkets? Only single people can get by doing their food shopping with a backpack. I need to go shopping two or three times a week because it all won't fit inside of our Honda Civic.
This story has been circulating around the internet, mostly on the treehugging sites, for several months already. Funny that I live in Helsinki and never once heard of this nonsense from any local media.
They've also been working on a train from the city center to the airport - for over 15 years. No signs of that track yet. They've also been working on the Länsimetro (west Helsinki metro) for over 15 years. No signs of that yet, either. They've also been trying to ban smoking in Finland, as in entirely, but it's only served to increase smoking (despite what the numbers say, I see it).
Bottom line: Finnish government will not give up their car tax revenues and Helsinki residents will not give up their cars.
The statistics are only referring to the normal police, not the intelligence services. In the USA, the intelligence services tap 100% of the people. In the USA, the police don't even need a warrant to do a "wiretap" so there is no oversight. In the USA, county police departments routinely monitor the positions of people on probation via warrantless cellphone tracking.
Amsterdam is to global intelligence agencies what Las Vegas is to gamblers - they all go there at least once and many of them maintain a constant presence there. Amsterdam is the global exchange for the drug, money laundering, prostitution and human trafficking market. Intelligence services around the world fund their covert activities via the illegal business deals they carry out in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam has always been a trading city. The Dutch police keep a pretty close watch on things but they are largely unintrusive. If a tourist is being harassed, though, a burly plainclothes policeman will appear almost out of thin air to handle the situation.
Anyone that's taken an introductory Red Hat (or Microsoft) course could do that. Why on earth would you pay them $100K?
If you truly believe that, then you also have no clue.
If you think that a person who has taken an introductory course can subnet a large office network, segregate and switch it with vlans, route it all together, and get dhcp and tftp working reliably over all that, then you are sadly mistaken. In fact, you are probably an IT manager.
OK, so you want to run my IT shop for 100k a year?
You'd better know how to do the following:
- register and renew domain names
- setup a pair of properly configured DNS servers for multiple domain names
- setup a properly configured mail server for multiple domain names
- setup and maintain a mailing list manager
- configure a packet filtering firewall
- configure a router and get ISP connectivity
- subnet an office network
- configure a DHCP server
- configure a switch
- setup a tftp server to install images of OS of choice to workstations, over the network
- setup an LDAP server with a properly designed DIT
- configure all network services to use the LDAP server for authentication
- setup a database server, file server, web server, remote access server, etc...
- setup a network monitoring solution to make sure you or your team get alerted if any of these services goes down
- make sure that all of this runs at an acceptable level of performance
- be able to automate tasks with shell scripts and perl
- ensure the security of all network services is constantly at the level which the business requires
I have put up a site a few months ago to start to track cyberattack related news, events, etc. I plan to build it out as I get more information, right now it's fairly basic. However, I hope that it will help someone who is looking for info.
Cyber Attack Information Center
--
podz
I can't wait to hook one of these babies up as the brain of my house and run concurrent multimedia streams everywhere.
Already dreaming of little wireless touch screen terminals next to the toilet, and a waterproof one in the shower:-)
"Be a generalist" is really bad advice, and I hope nobody honestly pays attention to it.
If you are after job security and the benjamins, then you damned well need to be a specialist. A specialist being someone who is a solid expert with at least one core technology, and more than competent with at least two others.
If you're a generalist, then you can expect lower salary as well as decreased job security.
When choosing something to specialize in, do not pick java, which is overcrowded with so called experts. After all, the entire purpose of java was to allow corporations to begin treating programmers as commodities so they could be hired and fired according to the rise and fall of the economy, instead of paying them the Porsche buying salaries of good C programmers of yesteryear.
You want a good tip for an area to specialize in? Scalability. Scalability is the most difficult problem facing all heavily used systems. Learn how to design scalable systems and you will have a good paying job for a long time.
The fat borders around the screen are really not nice, IMO. I wait for the day when somebody makes a monitor with zero border.
I just bought a Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleoview C19-1W, same design as the W19-1 in the picture, and it only has a 1.5cm border.
Oh man, I just start to drool whenever I read something like this that I know will piss the MPAA off!
OTOH, these technological advances just fuel the argument for removing end-to-end internet access, which is what the big boys are starting to push for.
Power to the people!!!
Check out Rob Pike's thoughts on code commenting
on
How to Write Comments
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Rob Pike, a former powergeek at ATT&T labs, and a present powergeek at Google, has the following to say about code commenting. In general, I agree with him.
You would think that they could build packages for at least the most popular linux package management systems. Wonder how long til this shows up on the DAG repository...
If you ever happen to run for election, you've got my vote. Seriously, you put up a very convincing argument and I am not easily convinced about many things. I hope things go exactly the way you predict.
when they read the news every other week about major tech companies laying off 10k or 20k employees. Same goes for airline workers; it's a volatile market and not a good choice for one who is seeking stable employment and wants to build or support a family.
I was laid off in 2002, after I made (in hindsight) a stupid decision to go to work for a small tech company in 2000 when things were looking really good. Although I have an outstanding resume, it took me more than 5 months to get a new job because absolutely no small companies were hiring and nearly all of the large companies had hiring freezes in place as well. Finally, I got hired by a large company into a specialty field which not many people understand well. I was lucky.
When was the last time you read about a hospital or a fire department laying off 10% of it's staff? Career choices such as IT, which do not offer very good job security are not very attractive choices for most folks.
a spiked club used by warring african tribes to beat enemies to death with.
It is a seriously stupid sounding name for a linux distribution, regardless of it's meaning. And it's just the latest "fad" distro. Two years ago, it was Gentoo. I suspect many Gentoo users have jumped to Ubuntu now, just to be "cool".
I have used Slackware, Redhat, Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, Knoppix, and Fedora, when it comes to linux distros. I've spent a lot of time managing HP-UX, Solaris, Digital, FreeBSD, and NetBSD. I'll stick to Fedora on my desktop, now that rpm finally doesn't self corrupt it's databases anymore, and it's easy to manage and keep updated. I manage unix boxes all day long, the last thing I want to do when I come home is spend all night managing one more (happened constantly with Gentoo).
As Fedora works and is free, I couldn't care less about using the "cool distro of the day" to impress young geeks.
--
podz
If you were really a professional developer, you would have learned the answers to the questions which you are asking back in your "junior level" days.
If you don't keep up with advances in technology and keep aware of the state of the art, then you can hardly be called a professional.
--
podz
Or has the term "geek" lost all of it's value and come to mean anyone who knows how to double-click GoogleEarth.exe and follow a graphical wizard?
--
podz
This thing is being railroaded through by big business, and there is very little that a crowd of 1 million people can do to stop it - short of tearing down the EU parliament building before the vote.
Also,the use of openldap in linux distros has meant it's really been hammered hard on the security front, and is now rather secure.
Oh, you mean the same linux distro with openldap that is used in secure banking networks?
Please. This has been the domain of Solaris/HP-UX and Netscape and Sun Directory Server for 8 years already.
In other related news, OSDL recently announced that it has relocated most of it's workforce outside of the USA, and that all open source software projects are now in the process of being outsourced to India.
The company is investigating how to relocate it's massive software project hosting facility, sourceforge.net, to the new Indian headquarters, and how many ships it will take to transport all of the equipment and backups to the bandwidth constrained country which has public power grids controlled by microsoft servers.
Sorry, I was just having a really strange dream...
No, you really don't get it. Microsoft has managed to wedge themselves into the PC market, mainly through vendor lock-in strategies like proprietary file formats for things people depend on. It's damned difficult for PC vendors to not deliver PCs installed with microsoft, because understandably some percentage of a PC vendor's customers will want microsoft installed, but unless the vendor agrees to ship _ALL_ PCs with microsoft installed, microsoft threatens to pull the vendors license to ship microsoft. If the vendor gets their license pulled, they lose a lot of business. What would be fair is if microsoft just let the vendor decide which OS they want to ship for which proportion of their PCs. Microsoft is pointing a gun at the PC vendors heads and telling them what to sell.
There are plenty of people and companies today who really want to switch away from microsoft for very legitimate and understandable reasons, like the constant barrage of security holes, increasingly agressive licensing policies, etc., but they can't because they are locked in by the formats on the documents which they have invested so much time and effort into.
Microsoft is a bully to everyone it deals with, and it's time that the bully is dealt with by those who have the power to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
The Finnish business landscape is highly monopolistic and duopolistic, and every new thing consolidates into such much sooner than later. The duopolies, when they're not fighting, often collaborate with one another behind the scenes on a broad range of issues, including making it virtually impossible for new competitors to enter the market.
There is very little doubt in my mind that this "traffic plan", if realised, would turn into the same sort of price-fixing duopoly designed to extract the maximum amount of disposable income from the maximum amount of people in order to buy sailboats and coastal islands for the board of directors.
Your view of Helsinki car ownership is rather distorted, you ought to visit the city when you get a chance. Journeys in one's own car within the Helsinki metropolitan area are not some kind of cherished activity; the popularity of driving one's own car has already waned drastically due to the expense of petrol and parking.
I live in Helsinki. I can attest that the popularity of driving one's own car is only increasing, not decreasing in the least. All you need to do is drive on Ring 1 or go to any supermarket to witness this phenomena. Additionally, petrol prices have remained almost unchanged in Finland for nearly two years now (after several years of extreme hikes) - and it's cheaper and easier to find a parking spot in Helsinki than it is, for example, in Tampere.
Elsewhere, most people, even the well-off, just take the train or metro to get to work or do their shopping
If that's the case, then why do I need to circle the parking lot looking for a spot every time I go to the supermarkets? Only single people can get by doing their food shopping with a backpack. I need to go shopping two or three times a week because it all won't fit inside of our Honda Civic.
This story has been circulating around the internet, mostly on the treehugging sites, for several months already. Funny that I live in Helsinki and never once heard of this nonsense from any local media. They've also been working on a train from the city center to the airport - for over 15 years. No signs of that track yet. They've also been working on the Länsimetro (west Helsinki metro) for over 15 years. No signs of that yet, either. They've also been trying to ban smoking in Finland, as in entirely, but it's only served to increase smoking (despite what the numbers say, I see it). Bottom line: Finnish government will not give up their car tax revenues and Helsinki residents will not give up their cars.
They had the same system in downtown Frankfurt already 15 years ago. I know because I used it.
The statistics are only referring to the normal police, not the intelligence services. In the USA, the intelligence services tap 100% of the people. In the USA, the police don't even need a warrant to do a "wiretap" so there is no oversight. In the USA, county police departments routinely monitor the positions of people on probation via warrantless cellphone tracking.
Amsterdam is to global intelligence agencies what Las Vegas is to gamblers - they all go there at least once and many of them maintain a constant presence there. Amsterdam is the global exchange for the drug, money laundering, prostitution and human trafficking market. Intelligence services around the world fund their covert activities via the illegal business deals they carry out in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam has always been a trading city. The Dutch police keep a pretty close watch on things but they are largely unintrusive. If a tourist is being harassed, though, a burly plainclothes policeman will appear almost out of thin air to handle the situation.
Anyone that's taken an introductory Red Hat (or Microsoft) course could do that. Why on earth would you pay them $100K?
If you truly believe that, then you also have no clue.
If you think that a person who has taken an introductory course can subnet a large office network, segregate and switch it with vlans, route it all together, and get dhcp and tftp working reliably over all that, then you are sadly mistaken. In fact, you are probably an IT manager.
OK, so you want to run my IT shop for 100k a year?
You'd better know how to do the following:
- register and renew domain names
- setup a pair of properly configured DNS servers for multiple domain names
- setup a properly configured mail server for multiple domain names
- setup and maintain a mailing list manager
- configure a packet filtering firewall
- configure a router and get ISP connectivity
- subnet an office network
- configure a DHCP server
- configure a switch
- setup a tftp server to install images of OS of choice to workstations, over the network
- setup an LDAP server with a properly designed DIT
- configure all network services to use the LDAP server for authentication
- setup a database server, file server, web server, remote access server, etc...
- setup a network monitoring solution to make sure you or your team get alerted if any of these services goes down
- make sure that all of this runs at an acceptable level of performance
- be able to automate tasks with shell scripts and perl
- ensure the security of all network services is constantly at the level which the business requires
Got it? Or do you?
I have put up a site a few months ago to start to track cyberattack related news, events, etc. I plan to build it out as I get more information, right now it's fairly basic. However, I hope that it will help someone who is looking for info. Cyber Attack Information Center -- podz
I can't wait to hook one of these babies up as the brain of my house and run concurrent multimedia streams everywhere. Already dreaming of little wireless touch screen terminals next to the toilet, and a waterproof one in the shower :-)
"Man man" is good :-)
"Be a generalist" is really bad advice, and I hope nobody honestly pays attention to it.
If you are after job security and the benjamins, then you damned well need to be a specialist. A specialist being someone who is a solid expert with at least one core technology, and more than competent with at least two others.
If you're a generalist, then you can expect lower salary as well as decreased job security.
When choosing something to specialize in, do not pick java, which is overcrowded with so called experts. After all, the entire purpose of java was to allow corporations to begin treating programmers as commodities so they could be hired and fired according to the rise and fall of the economy, instead of paying them the Porsche buying salaries of good C programmers of yesteryear.
You want a good tip for an area to specialize in? Scalability. Scalability is the most difficult problem facing all heavily used systems. Learn how to design scalable systems and you will have a good paying job for a long time.
The fat borders around the screen are really not nice, IMO. I wait for the day when somebody makes a monitor with zero border. I just bought a Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleoview C19-1W, same design as the W19-1 in the picture, and it only has a 1.5cm border.
Oh man, I just start to drool whenever I read something like this that I know will piss the MPAA off!
OTOH, these technological advances just fuel the argument for removing end-to-end internet access, which is what the big boys are starting to push for.
Power to the people!!!
Rob Pike, a former powergeek at ATT&T labs, and a present powergeek at Google, has the following to say about code commenting. In general, I agree with him.
The same thing happened to me when I submitted an article about the Fedora Directory Server release as GPL... It happens :-)
You would think that they could build packages for at least the most popular linux package management systems. Wonder how long til this shows up on the DAG repository...
If you ever happen to run for election, you've got my vote. Seriously, you put up a very convincing argument and I am not easily convinced about many things. I hope things go exactly the way you predict.
when they read the news every other week about major tech companies laying off 10k or 20k employees. Same goes for airline workers; it's a volatile market and not a good choice for one who is seeking stable employment and wants to build or support a family.
I was laid off in 2002, after I made (in hindsight) a stupid decision to go to work for a small tech company in 2000 when things were looking really good. Although I have an outstanding resume, it took me more than 5 months to get a new job because absolutely no small companies were hiring and nearly all of the large companies had hiring freezes in place as well. Finally, I got hired by a large company into a specialty field which not many people understand well. I was lucky.
When was the last time you read about a hospital or a fire department laying off 10% of it's staff? Career choices such as IT, which do not offer very good job security are not very attractive choices for most folks.
a spiked club used by warring african tribes to beat enemies to death with. It is a seriously stupid sounding name for a linux distribution, regardless of it's meaning. And it's just the latest "fad" distro. Two years ago, it was Gentoo. I suspect many Gentoo users have jumped to Ubuntu now, just to be "cool". I have used Slackware, Redhat, Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, Knoppix, and Fedora, when it comes to linux distros. I've spent a lot of time managing HP-UX, Solaris, Digital, FreeBSD, and NetBSD. I'll stick to Fedora on my desktop, now that rpm finally doesn't self corrupt it's databases anymore, and it's easy to manage and keep updated. I manage unix boxes all day long, the last thing I want to do when I come home is spend all night managing one more (happened constantly with Gentoo). As Fedora works and is free, I couldn't care less about using the "cool distro of the day" to impress young geeks. -- podz
If you were really a professional developer, you would have learned the answers to the questions which you are asking back in your "junior level" days. If you don't keep up with advances in technology and keep aware of the state of the art, then you can hardly be called a professional. -- podz
Or has the term "geek" lost all of it's value and come to mean anyone who knows how to double-click GoogleEarth.exe and follow a graphical wizard? -- podz
This thing is being railroaded through by big business, and there is very little that a crowd of 1 million people can do to stop it - short of tearing down the EU parliament building before the vote.
Although Sun claims that you need a license to use more than 100,000 entries, they don't do anything to enforce it. ;)
Not until the SBA comes a knocking with audit papers in hand.
Also,the use of openldap in linux distros has meant it's really been hammered hard on the security front, and is now rather secure.
Oh, you mean the same linux distro with openldap that is used in secure banking networks? Please. This has been the domain of Solaris/HP-UX and Netscape and Sun Directory Server for 8 years already.
In other related news, OSDL recently announced that it has relocated most of it's workforce outside of the USA, and that all open source software projects are now in the process of being outsourced to India.
The company is investigating how to relocate it's massive software project hosting facility, sourceforge.net, to the new Indian headquarters, and how many ships it will take to transport all of the equipment and backups to the bandwidth constrained country which has public power grids controlled by microsoft servers.
Sorry, I was just having a really strange dream...
--
podz
No, you really don't get it. Microsoft has managed to wedge themselves into the PC market, mainly through vendor lock-in strategies like proprietary file formats for things people depend on. It's damned difficult for PC vendors to not deliver PCs installed with microsoft, because understandably some percentage of a PC vendor's customers will want microsoft installed, but unless the vendor agrees to ship _ALL_ PCs with microsoft installed, microsoft threatens to pull the vendors license to ship microsoft. If the vendor gets their license pulled, they lose a lot of business. What would be fair is if microsoft just let the vendor decide which OS they want to ship for which proportion of their PCs. Microsoft is pointing a gun at the PC vendors heads and telling them what to sell.
There are plenty of people and companies today who really want to switch away from microsoft for very legitimate and understandable reasons, like the constant barrage of security holes, increasingly agressive licensing policies, etc., but they can't because they are locked in by the formats on the documents which they have invested so much time and effort into.
Microsoft is a bully to everyone it deals with, and it's time that the bully is dealt with by those who have the power to do it.
--
podz