You might have intended it that way, but it's very ambiguous. Every time I read your statement it just sounds to me (and obviously everyone else that read it!) that you are implying that only non geeks would be interested in computers that work like appliances.
I can see how logically it doesn't really say anything about geeks, but 1) you split people into 'geeks and non geeks', 2) you say that it makes sense for not geeks to prefer appliance like devices. That implies that 3) geeks are less likely to like appliance like devices, or possibly that they don't like them at all. Otherwise, why bother to split people into 2 categories in the first place?
Generally 3 might seem true since often geeks like to fiddle with stuff, but as we have seen, plenty of geeks got offended because they are too busy wanting to fiddle with other stuff without worrying about how the underpinnings are - same as when I'm using a car to drive somewhere I'd prefer if the wheels didn't fall off.
So this just goes to show that natural language isn't an entirely logical thing - people naturally fill in any gaps with reasonable assumptions if you haven't made explicitly clear what you meant. Happens to everyone..
Yeah I guess I overlooked that, but consider that CentOS won't have the same level of official support that both RedHat and Ubuntu offer. You could still support yourselves, or call in some third party linux gurus if you have issues, but you won't be able to get support direct from the original coders, or submit bugs or anything like that (AFAIK). I don't think that's very suitable for a project as large as wikipedia..
it looks like you have Slashdot confused with your children, your (inept) friends, YOUR GRANDMA'S BINGO CLUB, etc
And it looks like you have slashdot confused with hundreds of thousands of clones of yourself.
You can keep choosing to build everything yourself, that's fine. Good for you if you have nothing better to do! However, a lot of geeks have these things called 'jobs' meaning that they start to value their time, and then are actually happy to come home to a package manager that can update the kernel and all necessary components and configurations automatically, without then having to then go and fine tune everything manually. Again.
Your statement for "that makes sense if he's not a geek" was what insulted me and apparently all these other people.
Saying a geek shouldn't want computers to work as appliances is like saying scientists who have landed on Mars should only be interested in the craft they landed in. Once the spacecraft has got the scientists to Mars, that's it's job done as far as they are concerned. It's time to move on to new frontiers. Engineers can continue to optimise spacecraft design and build even better models if they wish - and the scientists who are already on Mars will still think that's cool and all, and make use of the better spacecraft if they are flying anywhere, but their main interest lies in terraforming and so on.*
Geeks often are a combination of engineers and scientists, but we're not all identical. Some of us don't want to have to even think how the computer is working, we just want it to get on with it. Even those that do want to know the OS code inside out may not be interested in the intricate design details of their CPU. There are many different levels of geekiness, and very few of us have the time, resources or even inclination to work in depth on all these different levels.
* Possibly the first non car analogy on/. for a long time there!
Re: nothing wrong with wanting it to just work....
on
Linux 2.6.27 Out
·
· Score: 1
I know what you mean about the guilt too, we're always told that geeks are interested in overcoming every challenge they face. And it's true that solving new problems is fun because you're always learning. There comes a point though, where there isn't too much more to learn and you're just going through the motions. That's when it becomes 'work'. That point for me came after 3 summer jobs and a year or two of full time IT support and sysadmin work, with occasional programming. The servers were working pretty, breaking very little compared to when I was working over summers (with someone else in charge of IT), I had run out of programming tasks and was only left with crappy little driver problems and people who didn't know how to operate a computer.
I knew I wasn't getting the same kick out of it anymore, so I was either going to have to get a different job, or set new goals and priorities for my current job so that I kept learning and facing new challenges. I chose the latter, and my employer was pretty good with considering which of their systems could be improved by converting them into applications, even letting me choose what languages and platforms I wanted to use for development, as long as I provide adequate documentation. I've written most stuff as web apps - which I used to find quite dull compared to fully fledged GUI based apps to be honest - but they're great when applicable because they're completely cross platform if you do them correctly (which is preparing the company for the inevitable move over to Linux.. mwahahahaaa!!)
I think things are converging like you say - Windows Server is getting more stable with each release, and likewise Linux is getting easier to configure through wizards and other automated processes. There will probably always be unforeseen issues with software updates breaking compatibility, and issues with bad user configuration messing things up. So things will never be perfect, but they should be constantly improving - ideally at a logarithmic rate.. ever approaching perfection, but with the human element still getting in the way.
Ya I get that, but the company means more to me than that (was going to go into all the reasons why but meh), so I want to do what is least likely to result in losing our data, and IMO that is for me to take the tapes. If we were keeping anything other than our own data then then of course it could be worth calling in a third party, but our backups are more about making sure our data is safe than keeping it private. That doesn't mean privacy is of no concern though, which is obviously why I decided to take action myself. If I did get mugged then I don't think I could or would be blamed. I guess I should have a word with upper management to establish exactly what their opinions are on the matter of liability though!
How is it a questionable practice? Fires may not be very likely, and the servers are on the first floor (second in American terms) so we're not likely to have problems in a flood, but it's always better safe than sorry.
What would you do personally if you had ~250GB of data from various servers that needed to be regularly backed up? Would you still backup to tape but then just store them in a fireproof safe onsite? That should protect the tapes from most disasters, but you just never know, do you? We regularly have large cranes in the yard - if one of them were to topple or swing a heavy 20 foot container through the server room wall or something crazy like that, it could do some serious damage.
We're primarily a research and design company so we don't hold big databases of customer credit card numbers etc - I'm not overly concerned about the risk of being held liable for patented company designs or past financial history becoming available - especially when you compare the consequences of that to the consequences of losing all our data for the last 20 years!
I'm the only full time IT staffer at the company, so it's basically up to just me to make sure that all of our data is safe, and seeing the tapes lying out in a car like that freaked me out. We actually had someone break into an employee's carin the car park - in broad daylight - a couple of years ago, so I don't think I'm being too paranoid in just taking over responsibility myself. Don't know how many years that guy had been in charge of the tapes, but he was far too relaxed about it.
The ones in power are interested in adding everyone to different lists so they can then control and profiling groups of people, so they can then use divide and conquer tactics, to break groups of people up. The goal is that the fragmented groups cannot then stand and oppose the point of view of the ones in power. That is why they data mine.
The US and the UK both have governments with powerful spying ability, and yet both countries only have 2 political parties that are likely to win general elections.. so I don't really get your reasoning on this. Seems to me like if this were happening, we'd have a lot more competition going on in politics. Perhaps your reasoning is that it will happen if we're not careful? Personally I'd be quite happy for people to be thinking for themselves more and not just splitting every issue into diametrically opposed viewpoints.
That would be a clever way to operate if you are in power and want to keep it though - creating distrust among the opposition so that they split into groups. Then they have less voting power. Just saying "we are better, vote for us" - as politicians and their fanboys so often seem to be doing - doesn't really get results very quickly.
Technically there are easy ways to do that (at least for individuals since the data protection act shouldn't let you see if data is being held on other people), but you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe that any company was using such a system properly. You also have to take into account backups being made of data, or possible malware on their systems that is taking a copy of data before they erase it themselves, and so on.
It was standard practice for our head of accounting to take our backup tapes home for a few years. This year I saw some of our tapes just lying out in plain view on the passenger seat of his car, so I politely showed him a couple of stories about data loss when tapes were stolen from cars, and have been taking the tapes home myself now..
I got a PS3 this year and got used to aiming with the joysticks a little. I still much prefer the accuracy of a mouse, but I don't mind being limited by the sticks as long as I know my opponents have the same limitation.
The main problem is that you can basically 'stop on a dime' with your aiming with a mouse. Just compare how natural and accurate you can be when using a laptop with a mouse or even a trackpad, compared to one of those little nub joysticks you get in the keyboard sometimes. The nub is great for being lazy and not moving your hand around much, but for games where you are playing against others online, you want to have the best accuracy you can get.
Similarly, I would prefer to fly a plane with a joystick than a mouse (though again I can do okay with the mouse if required).
its not exactly the same, than again it is similir, I to think I will loose my mind I want too take the live of all this stupid ignorant mutherfsckers who can knot spell too saev there live
You could make a batch file to do all that stuff and call it sudo. I use that technique to make my own 'ls' command on XP boxes. It just containts something like "dir %1" I think..
This was the entire outside of the toaster, not the inside.
I'd guessed it would be something like that, I was just being dramatic. My point was that other countries have safety regulations too. I can't account for every country in the world, but I know of several countries that currently have not been incinerated by poorly designed toasters. I can give you a list of these countries if you are worried about it.
South Africa is definitely not the norm when it comes to safety. Road safety in Africa for example is meant to be pretty awful. I have a friend who grew up there (her dad was a missionary), and she says that it was quite common for people to just be mown down in traffic, and nobody would even stop. Another friend who went to Uganda witnessed at least one car accident there (2 cars colliding rather than someone getting run over) - at least people stopped, but then everyone around just went to kick the shit out of the person that caused accident (apparently to the death:S ). She said that happens with every accident but I don't know whether to believe that. One thing's for sure: if I were going out to Africa, I'd be less worried about the toasters and more worried about the roads, or being kidnapped and held to ransom.
PS I always move stuff out of the way when operating devices such as kettles, toasters, ovens etc, as they tend to get quite hot.
Apologies for that - sometimes I get completely on an unjustifiable rant without noticing..:/ I was just trying to point out that I would have done the same thing, as I think Ubuntu is better integrated and more exciting than a lot of the main distros, while at the same time still being professional quality and easy to use.
Indeed. I've tried Ubuntu a few times over the years and they do seem to have done a great job at making everything feel well put together. The first version of Ubuntu I used kind of had the same problem as some of the other distros I have used where you didn't feel like all the toolbars on the desktop were really meant to be used side by side, but they started modding everything to fit together and improved pretty quickly.. if I wasn't using OSX right now I'd probably be using Ubuntu.
I recently set up a Windows VM as well for all the proprietary apps I have to use for work (basically only Outlook and Delphi), so I could move to whatever host OS I want without too much fuss, and am going to keep trying Ubuntu occasionally:)
Oh, hello! I couldn't help but overhearing you, and I feel I must expound some smug knowledge I have gained by actually R'ingTFA..
Behold the quote!
Wikipedia could just as easily have made the switchover to all Red Hat, but that would have cost more money, he said. "It would seem to me that if money weren't an issue here, there wouldn't be anything keeping them from upgrading everything to Red Hat."
It isn't just going from other versions of Ubuntu, they are consolidating from several different Linux distributions. I found it interesting news anyway.. I'm even about to go and RTFA!
I think it likely that Wikipedia started out as a small pet project, and just happened to grow piecemeal as they needed more and more resources as they grew in popularity. They wouldn't have been sure to start with just how popular they were going to become, how could they? Also take into account that perhaps they had been using different OSes in a consistent way (though I don't expect that to be likely), like some were just for webserving, some held a quick database of current articles, some machines held compressed archives, some were for intended for virtualisation and testing out of new designs, that kind of thing?
Anyone who has written a small well planned (or perhaps not so well planned) application but then been asked to make many, many, many changes over the years will be able to sympathise I expect. It's much easier to design a large coherent system than grow one out of a smaller system..
The good thing is that this will be a great example to smaller organisations (basically.. everyone) that DRM is a waste of money for the proprietors as well as a PITA for clients.
Ever bought a toaster outside of the US. You'll burn you hand the first time you use it. Not in America. The only toasters you find will be more carefully designed and labeled
Would this label say "do not insert hand into toaster while in operation?". Yeesh..
There is a big difference between "outside of the US" and "South Africa". Please stop making such crazy generalisations. I don't think I've ever burned my hand on a toaster..
Slashdot Mirror
You might have intended it that way, but it's very ambiguous. Every time I read your statement it just sounds to me (and obviously everyone else that read it!) that you are implying that only non geeks would be interested in computers that work like appliances.
I can see how logically it doesn't really say anything about geeks, but 1) you split people into 'geeks and non geeks', 2) you say that it makes sense for not geeks to prefer appliance like devices. That implies that 3) geeks are less likely to like appliance like devices, or possibly that they don't like them at all. Otherwise, why bother to split people into 2 categories in the first place?
Generally 3 might seem true since often geeks like to fiddle with stuff, but as we have seen, plenty of geeks got offended because they are too busy wanting to fiddle with other stuff without worrying about how the underpinnings are - same as when I'm using a car to drive somewhere I'd prefer if the wheels didn't fall off.
So this just goes to show that natural language isn't an entirely logical thing - people naturally fill in any gaps with reasonable assumptions if you haven't made explicitly clear what you meant. Happens to everyone..
Yeah I guess I overlooked that, but consider that CentOS won't have the same level of official support that both RedHat and Ubuntu offer. You could still support yourselves, or call in some third party linux gurus if you have issues, but you won't be able to get support direct from the original coders, or submit bugs or anything like that (AFAIK). I don't think that's very suitable for a project as large as wikipedia..
it looks like you have Slashdot confused with your children, your (inept) friends, YOUR GRANDMA'S BINGO CLUB, etc
And it looks like you have slashdot confused with hundreds of thousands of clones of yourself.
You can keep choosing to build everything yourself, that's fine. Good for you if you have nothing better to do! However, a lot of geeks have these things called 'jobs' meaning that they start to value their time, and then are actually happy to come home to a package manager that can update the kernel and all necessary components and configurations automatically, without then having to then go and fine tune everything manually. Again.
Your statement for "that makes sense if he's not a geek" was what insulted me and apparently all these other people.
Saying a geek shouldn't want computers to work as appliances is like saying scientists who have landed on Mars should only be interested in the craft they landed in. Once the spacecraft has got the scientists to Mars, that's it's job done as far as they are concerned. It's time to move on to new frontiers. Engineers can continue to optimise spacecraft design and build even better models if they wish - and the scientists who are already on Mars will still think that's cool and all, and make use of the better spacecraft if they are flying anywhere, but their main interest lies in terraforming and so on.*
Geeks often are a combination of engineers and scientists, but we're not all identical. Some of us don't want to have to even think how the computer is working, we just want it to get on with it. Even those that do want to know the OS code inside out may not be interested in the intricate design details of their CPU. There are many different levels of geekiness, and very few of us have the time, resources or even inclination to work in depth on all these different levels.
* Possibly the first non car analogy on /. for a long time there!
I know what you mean about the guilt too, we're always told that geeks are interested in overcoming every challenge they face. And it's true that solving new problems is fun because you're always learning. There comes a point though, where there isn't too much more to learn and you're just going through the motions. That's when it becomes 'work'. That point for me came after 3 summer jobs and a year or two of full time IT support and sysadmin work, with occasional programming. The servers were working pretty, breaking very little compared to when I was working over summers (with someone else in charge of IT), I had run out of programming tasks and was only left with crappy little driver problems and people who didn't know how to operate a computer.
I knew I wasn't getting the same kick out of it anymore, so I was either going to have to get a different job, or set new goals and priorities for my current job so that I kept learning and facing new challenges. I chose the latter, and my employer was pretty good with considering which of their systems could be improved by converting them into applications, even letting me choose what languages and platforms I wanted to use for development, as long as I provide adequate documentation. I've written most stuff as web apps - which I used to find quite dull compared to fully fledged GUI based apps to be honest - but they're great when applicable because they're completely cross platform if you do them correctly (which is preparing the company for the inevitable move over to Linux.. mwahahahaaa!!)
I think things are converging like you say - Windows Server is getting more stable with each release, and likewise Linux is getting easier to configure through wizards and other automated processes. There will probably always be unforeseen issues with software updates breaking compatibility, and issues with bad user configuration messing things up. So things will never be perfect, but they should be constantly improving - ideally at a logarithmic rate.. ever approaching perfection, but with the human element still getting in the way.
Ya I get that, but the company means more to me than that (was going to go into all the reasons why but meh), so I want to do what is least likely to result in losing our data, and IMO that is for me to take the tapes. If we were keeping anything other than our own data then then of course it could be worth calling in a third party, but our backups are more about making sure our data is safe than keeping it private. That doesn't mean privacy is of no concern though, which is obviously why I decided to take action myself. If I did get mugged then I don't think I could or would be blamed. I guess I should have a word with upper management to establish exactly what their opinions are on the matter of liability though!
How is it a questionable practice? Fires may not be very likely, and the servers are on the first floor (second in American terms) so we're not likely to have problems in a flood, but it's always better safe than sorry.
What would you do personally if you had ~250GB of data from various servers that needed to be regularly backed up? Would you still backup to tape but then just store them in a fireproof safe onsite? That should protect the tapes from most disasters, but you just never know, do you? We regularly have large cranes in the yard - if one of them were to topple or swing a heavy 20 foot container through the server room wall or something crazy like that, it could do some serious damage.
We're primarily a research and design company so we don't hold big databases of customer credit card numbers etc - I'm not overly concerned about the risk of being held liable for patented company designs or past financial history becoming available - especially when you compare the consequences of that to the consequences of losing all our data for the last 20 years!
I'm the only full time IT staffer at the company, so it's basically up to just me to make sure that all of our data is safe, and seeing the tapes lying out in a car like that freaked me out. We actually had someone break into an employee's carin the car park - in broad daylight - a couple of years ago, so I don't think I'm being too paranoid in just taking over responsibility myself. Don't know how many years that guy had been in charge of the tapes, but he was far too relaxed about it.
The ones in power are interested in adding everyone to different lists so they can then control and profiling groups of people, so they can then use divide and conquer tactics, to break groups of people up. The goal is that the fragmented groups cannot then stand and oppose the point of view of the ones in power. That is why they data mine.
The US and the UK both have governments with powerful spying ability, and yet both countries only have 2 political parties that are likely to win general elections.. so I don't really get your reasoning on this. Seems to me like if this were happening, we'd have a lot more competition going on in politics. Perhaps your reasoning is that it will happen if we're not careful? Personally I'd be quite happy for people to be thinking for themselves more and not just splitting every issue into diametrically opposed viewpoints.
That would be a clever way to operate if you are in power and want to keep it though - creating distrust among the opposition so that they split into groups. Then they have less voting power. Just saying "we are better, vote for us" - as politicians and their fanboys so often seem to be doing - doesn't really get results very quickly.
Technically there are easy ways to do that (at least for individuals since the data protection act shouldn't let you see if data is being held on other people), but you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe that any company was using such a system properly. You also have to take into account backups being made of data, or possible malware on their systems that is taking a copy of data before they erase it themselves, and so on.
It was standard practice for our head of accounting to take our backup tapes home for a few years. This year I saw some of our tapes just lying out in plain view on the passenger seat of his car, so I politely showed him a couple of stories about data loss when tapes were stolen from cars, and have been taking the tapes home myself now..
On the other hand, all those sports, theatre and music personalities are actually getting some.
You gotta teach those kids how to unlock the bra in "algebra", bra'!
I got a PS3 this year and got used to aiming with the joysticks a little. I still much prefer the accuracy of a mouse, but I don't mind being limited by the sticks as long as I know my opponents have the same limitation.
The main problem is that you can basically 'stop on a dime' with your aiming with a mouse. Just compare how natural and accurate you can be when using a laptop with a mouse or even a trackpad, compared to one of those little nub joysticks you get in the keyboard sometimes. The nub is great for being lazy and not moving your hand around much, but for games where you are playing against others online, you want to have the best accuracy you can get.
Similarly, I would prefer to fly a plane with a joystick than a mouse (though again I can do okay with the mouse if required).
Could that perhaps be why he said "PC/mac" instead of just "PC" in the sentence you quoted?
No wait, maybe he just got confused and started talking about McDonalds, that's got to be it.
its not exactly the same, than again it is similir, I to think I will loose my mind I want too take the live of all this stupid ignorant mutherfsckers who can knot spell too saev there live
You could make a batch file to do all that stuff and call it sudo. I use that technique to make my own 'ls' command on XP boxes. It just containts something like "dir %1" I think..
This was the entire outside of the toaster, not the inside.
I'd guessed it would be something like that, I was just being dramatic. My point was that other countries have safety regulations too. I can't account for every country in the world, but I know of several countries that currently have not been incinerated by poorly designed toasters. I can give you a list of these countries if you are worried about it.
South Africa is definitely not the norm when it comes to safety. Road safety in Africa for example is meant to be pretty awful. I have a friend who grew up there (her dad was a missionary), and she says that it was quite common for people to just be mown down in traffic, and nobody would even stop. Another friend who went to Uganda witnessed at least one car accident there (2 cars colliding rather than someone getting run over) - at least people stopped, but then everyone around just went to kick the shit out of the person that caused accident (apparently to the death :S ). She said that happens with every accident but I don't know whether to believe that. One thing's for sure: if I were going out to Africa, I'd be less worried about the toasters and more worried about the roads, or being kidnapped and held to ransom.
PS I always move stuff out of the way when operating devices such as kettles, toasters, ovens etc, as they tend to get quite hot.
Apologies for that - sometimes I get completely on an unjustifiable rant without noticing.. :/ I was just trying to point out that I would have done the same thing, as I think Ubuntu is better integrated and more exciting than a lot of the main distros, while at the same time still being professional quality and easy to use.
Indeed. I've tried Ubuntu a few times over the years and they do seem to have done a great job at making everything feel well put together. The first version of Ubuntu I used kind of had the same problem as some of the other distros I have used where you didn't feel like all the toolbars on the desktop were really meant to be used side by side, but they started modding everything to fit together and improved pretty quickly.. if I wasn't using OSX right now I'd probably be using Ubuntu.
I recently set up a Windows VM as well for all the proprietary apps I have to use for work (basically only Outlook and Delphi), so I could move to whatever host OS I want without too much fuss, and am going to keep trying Ubuntu occasionally :)
Ye gods, toasters are HOT? We must warn the world! Who knew? Quick, get me my label making kit.. you know - the one with the highly flammable glue?
*whistles nonchalantly*
Oh, hello! I couldn't help but overhearing you, and I feel I must expound some smug knowledge I have gained by actually R'ingTFA..
Behold the quote!
Wikipedia could just as easily have made the switchover to all Red Hat, but that would have cost more money, he said. "It would seem to me that if money weren't an issue here, there wouldn't be anything keeping them from upgrading everything to Red Hat."
It isn't just going from other versions of Ubuntu, they are consolidating from several different Linux distributions. I found it interesting news anyway.. I'm even about to go and RTFA!
I think it likely that Wikipedia started out as a small pet project, and just happened to grow piecemeal as they needed more and more resources as they grew in popularity. They wouldn't have been sure to start with just how popular they were going to become, how could they? Also take into account that perhaps they had been using different OSes in a consistent way (though I don't expect that to be likely), like some were just for webserving, some held a quick database of current articles, some machines held compressed archives, some were for intended for virtualisation and testing out of new designs, that kind of thing?
Anyone who has written a small well planned (or perhaps not so well planned) application but then been asked to make many, many, many changes over the years will be able to sympathise I expect. It's much easier to design a large coherent system than grow one out of a smaller system..
The good thing is that this will be a great example to smaller organisations (basically.. everyone) that DRM is a waste of money for the proprietors as well as a PITA for clients.
Ever bought a toaster outside of the US. You'll burn you hand the first time you use it. Not in America. The only toasters you find will be more carefully designed and labeled
Would this label say "do not insert hand into toaster while in operation?". Yeesh..
There is a big difference between "outside of the US" and "South Africa". Please stop making such crazy generalisations. I don't think I've ever burned my hand on a toaster..