was a student at a big public university, and i admin'd 12 or 15 websites at the time, all hosted on an SGI Indy (woot! irix!)
one day i'm in class and i get a page that a site is down. and then another, and another. cruise over to my office, and it takes about.2 seconds to see what's wrong.
the ceiling has leaked onto the sgi + 20" monitor. the system is still on, something smells like smoke, and i can hear what sounds like crackling. the case is sitting in a puddle....
got a broomstick, got some rubber gloves, used broomstick to unplug system from UPS, and then unplug UPS from wall. system spun down and i called SGI support. hours later only the keyboard and monitor had died -- the cpu and all drives lived on (with about 4 hours of paper towels and hair dryers)
the system never seemed exactly right after that, but it was still running 2 years later when i graduated!
when i drive about 50/50 with city and highway, I never, ever get close to the EPA ratings. I'm always lower than the city stat, but most of that (if not all) is attributable to driving style.
On long, long highway stints I have hit the EPA highway stat for my car. (2001 vw jetta 1.8t, 5 speed)
if i drive it 'right' i'm sure i could kill the EPA stats though.
first -- the schools make a HUGE difference. if you go to a really large public school (40,000+ students) there tend to be a LOT of jobs that a state school needs done and can't afford to staff with full time techs.
at rutgers there were students whose 'part-time' jobs included configuring routers, firewalls, and switches -- doing system administration on systems with anywhere from 50-1000 users, and maintaining and developing web sites for virtually every department. some of the larger scientific departments had their own IS / IT staff, and those jobs ranged even further in level of technical challenge.
as others have mentioned (and it's a great suggestion) is to hang out with other tech's. the LUG's are a good place to start -- almost everyone in the LUG had a 'part-time' sysadmin / network engineer / network ops / coder position. MOST of them could have stayed on full-time upon graduation if they chose to.
the reason why i keep quoting 'part-time' is that even though i was a 'part-time' employee, i really spent 2+ years of college carrying a pager 24x7, being paged away from classes and exams, and in reality worked much more than my alloted 37.5 hour maximum. the upside was: great pay, experience beyond belief, great people, and the ability to do most of the work remotely.
Apple's Tablet Computer Might Finally Be That Link Between Your PC and TV By Robert X. Cringely
High-tech is relentlessly optimistic and for good reason: the good times -- ALL the good times -- are caused by product transitions. New stuff costs more, has higher profit margins, and occasionally leads to changes in market leadership. A year or two later, these products will have been commoditized, the profit sucked out of them by intense competition, and it will be time to move on to the next big thing. Four years ago, the cheapest 802.11b access point you could buy cost $299. This week, I saw one advertised that with rebates brought the final cost down to zero, nothing, nada, zilch. Time to move on. So high-tech is always looking forward, never back, and taking a gamble on something new isn't perceived so much as a gamble but as a way of life.
The techniques for getting us to buy new stuff vary. In the best of cases, these new sales are driven by new functionality -- a color printer instead of black-and-white, a notebook computer instead of a desktop, a DVD instead of a VCR. At other times, the upgrade is driven by bloat as new MIPS-burning applications and operating systems make our old stuff too painfully slow. This doesn't happen by accident, folks. And into this performance abyss we throw not just new products but new TYPES of products, because industrial dynasties come from defining new market niches. Hewlett-Packard, for all its glorious history, is more than anything else a laser printer company. Cisco Systems, for all its desire to be something more, is a router company. These are niches they defined and that have led to decades of success.
And that brings us to the tablet computer, a tightly-defined product still in search of success.
Tablet computers have been around in various forms for years. Back in the early 1990s, we called it Pen Computing, and VCs lost a lot of money trying to get us to exchange our keyboard for a touchscreen and a stylus. The product success that emerged from that experiment was something both more and less than what was expected -- the Palm Pilot and later Windows CE. We didn't replace our desktops and notebooks with pen computers, but we added a new type of little computer to our lives. It was that perfect technical play -- the chance to replace a seven dollar, little black book with a $399 PDA.
A couple years ago, pen computers re-emerged as tablets with a larger form factor, supposedly expanded functionality and definitely expanded pricing. Microsoft made a special version of Windows just for tablet PCs, and most of the big hardware OEMs churned out tablet designs. But we haven't been buying them. In a U.S. market that supports sales of 50+ million PCs and notebooks per year, total tablet PC sales from all manufacturers this year will be less than 100,000 units. The screens are bigger and brighter, the applications smarter and the handwriting recognition better, but tablet computers are still looking for their killer app.
Apple Computer has been decidedly absent from the tablet game. In part, this has to do with the failure of the Newton, which will always be associated in the mind of Steve Jobs with his former friend and nemesis John Sculley. "Real computers have keyboards," Steve has said a zillion times, and he'll mean it right up to the moment he changes his mind.
That moment appears to be coming soon.
Quanta, the Taiwanese company that makes many Apple notebooks, has been apparently switching its production to the new tablets, or at least that has been reported in the Taipei press since early this year. If this is the case that Apple is introducing such a machine as early as January, how is it likely to be different from the Windows-based tablet machines that have so far failed to excite buyers? And why, in the face of such lackluster sales, has Microsoft done another rev of its tablet operating system? What is it about this product niche that makes it so attracti
a friend of ours has had a prius (got totalled) and now has a civic hybrid. i personally thought the civic felt more like a 'normal' car, but the prius was more fun to goof around with.
i think they like the civic better for day-to-day things.
one thing i learned is that during 4 years of college, you have a LOT of time to work -- and if you go to a large school, there are usually TONS of computer jobs to be had -- simply because they can't get all of the tasks done with full-time staff alone. i carried a pager and was on call 24x7 for 3 years of college -- but how many people graduate college at age 23 and have 3 or 4 years of production system admin experience, on systems with 4000+ users? not too many!
i think college is the single best place to learn more and get 'real world' experience... you get to leave in a few years and jump into a much different area of the job market..
I know my folks had signed up for ADSL through Bell Atlantic where they live in central NJ. After working for about a month the link went down -- and after an entire month of talking to people on the phone and trying to convince them that it wasn't a problem with the computer, they finally had the line shut off. Two days later a bell tech came out to check the line, and had a fix in 10 minutes. Now they're looking into cable...
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" in reference to MS putting out this new CE with all the bells and whistles -- and in reference to MS stating that you can watch video clips and listen to MP3's on these pocket PCs.
This is a very different vibe considering most of you cheer when someone talks about porting linux to a toilet or a calculator watch... why is this different?
Prior to slashdot, an in between a million other gigs -- katz used to write for hotwired.com. each summer he'd do a few articles where he'd go see like the 10 big summer movies and review them. i always though the reviews were fairly good.
I was there for the first ever digital showing of Phantom Menace. I saw it in Seacaucus NJ and the theater was using Texas Instruments' DLP Technology.
They ran a few DLP trailers before the movie, and people were knocked over. The difference was amazing. Even the familiar green "this preview has been whatever for all ages" screen was a brilliant, even, scratch free green. The lack of scratches is what noticed the most. In one or two scenes you could see the limitations of the resolution, but overall -- it was much, much more impressive than a regular film. (It was also in Dolby Digital EX -- 6.1 channels)
I can only imagine what things would look like if actually shot digitally.
Last year at the New York International Car Show at Javits Cadillac had a booth where you could demo this. It was quite strange to say the least.... but I could see in 2 or 3 minutes that it would work good once you're used to it.
If you go here I've got a picture called "Night Vision Evoq" that has a good picture of where the night vision scope reads from on the car. There are also other pictures from the car show.
With the supposed 'death' of ISA comes PCI sound cards and PCI modems (ala WinModem.) Now perhaps I haven't been keeping score, but are WinModems working in Linux yet?
I'm personally still betting on GeForce... that being said, can anyone comment on ATI's position as far as either releasing hardware spec or working on drivers for linux? I'd like to be informed in case some of my linux-using friends get all worked up about this card...
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regardless of market-share, if you're not logged into the mac as root, there's only so much a virus could do.
haven't heard anyone mention one of those yet!
.2 seconds to see what's wrong.
was a student at a big public university, and i admin'd 12 or 15 websites at the time, all hosted on an SGI Indy (woot! irix!)
one day i'm in class and i get a page that a site is down. and then another, and another. cruise over to my office, and it takes about
the ceiling has leaked onto the sgi + 20" monitor. the system is still on, something smells like smoke, and i can hear what sounds like crackling. the case is sitting in a puddle....
got a broomstick, got some rubber gloves, used broomstick to unplug system from UPS, and then unplug UPS from wall. system spun down and i called SGI support. hours later only the keyboard and monitor had died -- the cpu and all drives lived on (with about 4 hours of paper towels and hair dryers)
the system never seemed exactly right after that, but it was still running 2 years later when i graduated!
you need to read: Grassroots Motorsports
and of course:
Sports Car
I also read Weird NJ, Macworld, and a few others...
when i drive about 50/50 with city and highway, I never, ever get close to the EPA ratings. I'm always lower than the city stat, but most of that (if not all) is attributable to driving style.
On long, long highway stints I have hit the EPA highway stat for my car. (2001 vw jetta 1.8t, 5 speed)
if i drive it 'right' i'm sure i could kill the EPA stats though.
first -- the schools make a HUGE difference. if you go to a really large public school (40,000+ students) there tend to be a LOT of jobs that a state school needs done and can't afford to staff with full time techs.
at rutgers there were students whose 'part-time' jobs included configuring routers, firewalls, and switches -- doing system administration on systems with anywhere from 50-1000 users, and maintaining and developing web sites for virtually every department. some of the larger scientific departments had their own IS / IT staff, and those jobs ranged even further in level of technical challenge.
as others have mentioned (and it's a great suggestion) is to hang out with other tech's. the LUG's are a good place to start -- almost everyone in the LUG had a 'part-time' sysadmin / network engineer / network ops / coder position. MOST of them could have stayed on full-time upon graduation if they chose to.
the reason why i keep quoting 'part-time' is that even though i was a 'part-time' employee, i really spent 2+ years of college carrying a pager 24x7, being paged away from classes and exams, and in reality worked much more than my alloted 37.5 hour maximum. the upside was: great pay, experience beyond belief, great people, and the ability to do most of the work remotely.
i wonder if someone scanning for the newest webdav worm of the week shows up as a little bank robber running around the town, checking every door....
in 1996, my girlfriend and i designed a website for a local sporting goods shop. all the coding, all of the images, all of the design.
we each got a big $$ mountain bike out of the deal, and store discounts on future purchases.
not a bad deal at all.
NOVEMBER 27, 2003
Digital Hubris:
Apple's Tablet Computer Might Finally Be That Link Between Your PC and TV
By Robert X. Cringely
High-tech is relentlessly optimistic and for good reason: the good times -- ALL the good times -- are caused by product transitions. New stuff costs more, has higher profit margins, and occasionally leads to changes in market leadership. A year or two later, these products will have been commoditized, the profit sucked out of them by intense competition, and it will be time to move on to the next big thing. Four years ago, the cheapest 802.11b access point you could buy cost $299. This week, I saw one advertised that with rebates brought the final cost down to zero, nothing, nada, zilch. Time to move on. So high-tech is always looking forward, never back, and taking a gamble on something new isn't perceived so much as a gamble but as a way of life.
The techniques for getting us to buy new stuff vary. In the best of cases, these new sales are driven by new functionality -- a color printer instead of black-and-white, a notebook computer instead of a desktop, a DVD instead of a VCR. At other times, the upgrade is driven by bloat as new MIPS-burning applications and operating systems make our old stuff too painfully slow. This doesn't happen by accident, folks. And into this performance abyss we throw not just new products but new TYPES of products, because industrial dynasties come from defining new market niches. Hewlett-Packard, for all its glorious history, is more than anything else a laser printer company. Cisco Systems, for all its desire to be something more, is a router company. These are niches they defined and that have led to decades of success.
And that brings us to the tablet computer, a tightly-defined product still in search of success.
Tablet computers have been around in various forms for years. Back in the early 1990s, we called it Pen Computing, and VCs lost a lot of money trying to get us to exchange our keyboard for a touchscreen and a stylus. The product success that emerged from that experiment was something both more and less than what was expected -- the Palm Pilot and later Windows CE. We didn't replace our desktops and notebooks with pen computers, but we added a new type of little computer to our lives. It was that perfect technical play -- the chance to replace a seven dollar, little black book with a $399 PDA.
A couple years ago, pen computers re-emerged as tablets with a larger form factor, supposedly expanded functionality and definitely expanded pricing. Microsoft made a special version of Windows just for tablet PCs, and most of the big hardware OEMs churned out tablet designs. But we haven't been buying them. In a U.S. market that supports sales of 50+ million PCs and notebooks per year, total tablet PC sales from all manufacturers this year will be less than 100,000 units. The screens are bigger and brighter, the applications smarter and the handwriting recognition better, but tablet computers are still looking for their killer app.
Apple Computer has been decidedly absent from the tablet game. In part, this has to do with the failure of the Newton, which will always be associated in the mind of Steve Jobs with his former friend and nemesis John Sculley. "Real computers have keyboards," Steve has said a zillion times, and he'll mean it right up to the moment he changes his mind.
That moment appears to be coming soon.
Quanta, the Taiwanese company that makes many Apple notebooks, has been apparently switching its production to the new tablets, or at least that has been reported in the Taipei press since early this year. If this is the case that Apple is introducing such a machine as early as January, how is it likely to be different from the Windows-based tablet machines that have so far failed to excite buyers? And why, in the face of such lackluster sales, has Microsoft done another rev of its tablet operating system? What is it about this product niche that makes it so attracti
they do make one with a soft grip, it's all i use:
http://www.pilotpen.us/detail.asp?PenID=42
if you buy a vw, you can get a vag-com and hack your car.
a friend of ours has had a prius (got totalled) and now has a civic hybrid. i personally thought the civic felt more like a 'normal' car, but the prius was more fun to goof around with.
i think they like the civic better for day-to-day things.
i'm in an exodus facility quite often, and would have loved to peek into their cage sometime...
his cue::cat to really do it geek justice.
one thing i learned is that during 4 years of college, you have a LOT of time to work -- and if you go to a large school, there are usually TONS of computer jobs to be had -- simply because they can't get all of the tasks done with full-time staff alone. i carried a pager and was on call 24x7 for 3 years of college -- but how many people graduate college at age 23 and have 3 or 4 years of production system admin experience, on systems with 4000+ users? not too many!
i think college is the single best place to learn more and get 'real world' experience... you get to leave in a few years and jump into a much different area of the job market..
I know my folks had signed up for ADSL through Bell Atlantic where they live in central NJ. After working for about a month the link went down -- and after an entire month of talking to people on the phone and trying to convince them that it wasn't a problem with the computer, they finally had the line shut off. Two days later a bell tech came out to check the line, and had a fix in 10 minutes. Now they're looking into cable...
I see this echo'ed in a lot of your comments.
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" in reference to MS putting out this new CE with all the bells and whistles -- and in reference to MS stating that you can watch video clips and listen to MP3's on these pocket PCs.
This is a very different vibe considering most of you cheer when someone talks about porting linux to a toilet or a calculator watch... why is this different?
Prior to slashdot, an in between a million other gigs -- katz used to write for hotwired.com. each summer he'd do a few articles where he'd go see like the 10 big summer movies and review them. i always though the reviews were fairly good.
The US has convicted people younger than 16 as adults. Many times.
[john@darwin ~]$ uptime
7:10am up 141 days, 21:25, 1 user, load average: 0.02, 0.02, 0.00
141 days = 8,000 emails passed, 3,000 web hits, and around 250 SQL queries. Not too bad for an old celeron desktop machine....
I was there for the first ever digital showing of Phantom Menace. I saw it in Seacaucus NJ and the theater was using Texas Instruments' DLP Technology.
They ran a few DLP trailers before the movie, and people were knocked over. The difference was amazing. Even the familiar green "this preview has been whatever for all ages" screen was a brilliant, even, scratch free green. The lack of scratches is what noticed the most. In one or two scenes you could see the limitations of the resolution, but overall -- it was much, much more impressive than a regular film. (It was also in Dolby Digital EX -- 6.1 channels)
I can only imagine what things would look like if actually shot digitally.
If Dave Miller (now redhat) were still at Rutgers I bet he'd have SparcLinux running on this by now...
http://www.caip.rutgers.edu/~e10k/
Last year at the New York International Car Show at Javits Cadillac had a booth where you could demo this. It was quite strange to say the least.... but I could see in 2 or 3 minutes that it would work good once you're used to it.
If you go here I've got a picture called "Night Vision Evoq" that has a good picture of where the night vision scope reads from on the car. There are also other pictures from the car show.
With the supposed 'death' of ISA comes PCI sound cards and PCI modems (ala WinModem.) Now perhaps I haven't been keeping score, but are WinModems working in Linux yet?
I think we killed it already...
I'm personally still betting on GeForce... that being said, can anyone comment on ATI's position as far as either releasing hardware spec or working on drivers for linux? I'd like to be informed in case some of my linux-using friends get all worked up about this card...