As employee #3 of Andover.Net I want to personally thank you Rob (and Jeff) for selling out and thus giving me a role in keeping my favorite web site running, except for the time the router went nuts, that sucked.... and the first set of load balancers we attempted... in fact let's not remember the downtime, instead let's remember ripping it up in NYC and Vegas. Good luck in your future ventures! I'm sure that whatever you choose to work next will be just as successful.
I enjoyed my years working behind the scenes on Andover/OSDN/VA's network admin and much of that because Rob and Jeff were fun to work with. For example there was LinuxWorld in NYC, when we drank a few too many Gin & Midori concoctions to the point where [name withheld] couldn't remember his hotel room, or what floor it was on, or even coherently explain where the jacket he was wearing came from. Good times.
BTW: The fish restaurant in Boston mentioned in history of Slashdot part 3 was Anthony's Pier 4, a good place in its day but Boston has better nowadays.
You turn on the computer. You are greeted by an angelic chime that gets progressively louder until your speakers shake. You attempt to adjust the volume but it only gets louder still. A full screen Window icon ripples across the screen then all goes black. The product activation screen prompts you to enter your activation keys, printed on 27 pages of holographic alloy glue to the inside of the aluminum DVD case. For the next 3 hours you enter the activation key, taking breaks to use the bathroom, eat, and make phone calls.
After entering the correct activation keys, a dialog appears prompting you to select your social login profile group. You have no idea what that is so you click "Other Networks" The next dialog says "Connecting to networks..." for the next 5 minutes. A message apears saying "New Hardware Found" but it can't find the driver. Another popup appears "No networks found". Then your desktop appears. The wallpaper is stunning. The Internet Explorer icon appears to majestically float above the screen. You click it. A message appears warning you that the Internet can harm your computer, do you want to continue? You click "Yes". You are prompted to enter your administrator key. This key is on the sticker on the inside of your PC case. You shutdown the PC, get a screwdriver, open the case, write down the 18 digit administrator code, put the case back together and reboot.
After rebooting, blocking your ears during the chime assault, and oggling the amazing wallpaper, ignoring the "live folders server not found" error, you try Internet Explorer again. You dutifully enter the administrator key. You are asked if you want to save this key to your "universal keyring" You click OK. You are warned that the universal keyring is encrypted and your sending encrypted information. You click OK. After 3 minutes you get an error saying "No key server found"... and so on...
You never do get to see the Internet. But the wallpaper is amazing.
...is when the retail rep asks "What are you going to use the computer for?" I try to toss out a generic answer like "Programming" but that invites more annoying questions like "Well, what type of programming?" It's obvious to me the sales person wants to dazzle me with their expertise in recommending the perfect model for "programming". So whatever, I say "Web programming." Then fun starts because then the ever knowledgable sales person actually points at a specific computer further down the shelf (where the screens are little bigger and the price tags have a few extra digits) and declares "This is one is the best for web programs." Why? I have to ask, purely curious as to how skillfully they can massage a pile of crap into an answer. "That other one is not as fast. See this one is faster for web programs. And this one also has more graphics which is better for like web..." and so on. For my further amusement I have to ask "Does this one have more internet? I need more internet." just to hear incredibly stupid answers like "Yes, this one has more internet." Ok, let's click up the stupidity dial even further: "What about like, email? Does this one have email?" Now the sales person is going to be honest and assure you that "They all have email... but this one has better email." And so on.
So what? I found unauthorized copies of all my files at IP address 127.0.0.1 which I was able to login into using the same password as my machine. Whoever has that IP address will be hearing from the FBI very soon and then they will sorry.
As I understand it this is to block incoming messages to @aol.com addresses and that's fine. Who cares if someone@aol.com didn't get your email? Suppose you have an online store and someone makes a purchase using an @aol.com, I'd simply warn the purchaseer that "we don't send mail to @aol.com, use another email address." I imagine this will become the standard practice for treating aol.com users and they will complain or start using gmail or yahoo mail or whatever and so on.
Didn't Microsoft already release a patch for this on Nov 8th? According to Symantec's info page on this attack directs you to this Microsoft bulletin links to patches for each Windows release.
VC Express is a free download too... but getting VC Express to install correctly and compile a simple app is another story. Seems you have to download and install Visual Studio, then VC Express... almost a 1GB of downloads so far and you're not done yet! You also have to downlaod and install the MSDN libraries because VC Express does not include the standard Windows header files like windows.h!!! Screw that. I went back good 'ol lcc: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32/
From the TFA it seems that the inventor (and partners) had "expectations" of how Lucent would compensate him but no signed agreement. The moral of the story is get a very clear signed agreement before doing the work.
They could also nail Lucent if Lucent tries to sell this connector on the commerical market.
When a company first goes public people are excited and the possibilites are limitless. But as time goes by Google will be increasingly pressured to cut costs, lose the fat, concentrate on the core revenue earner (ads) and kill off any development projects that are not generating revenue, and maximize the revenue of popular features like Google Maps (expect to see advertising attached to the maps sometime in the near future).
What it comes down to is Google sells ads. That's its core business. Google is a media company. Reinventing a company is expensive and dangerous, few survive reinvention, that's why Google will always be a media company and Microsoft will always be a software company and Ford will always sell cars.
ESR's only valid response should have been to accept an interview and show up roaring drunk.
That would've been hilarious. I can imagine what sort of answers he would give to their logic puzzle test questions and "where do yourself in five years" career questions.
I predict that in ten years tech pundits will repeat the same predictions they made ten years before... and we'll still be using desktop PCs and not flying cars.
To an investor a stock may as well be a baked potato. Stock prices are based solely on perceptions: it is not about what the company is actualy worth but how other investors feel about the longevity of the brand and how much are they willing to pay to add that brand to their portfolio.
Compare the cost of Picasso's art supplies to the average auction price of his works... or the cost of designer label suit to the cost of materials plus sweatshop labor... it's all about perception and how much people are willing to pay.
Google is still in a honeymoon period with the market, it's a new yet well known brand untainted by scandals, perceived as having longevity.
Market bubbles seem to occure every 3 generations. The big ones that come to mind are Dot-com, 1929, the railroads, the colonies,... Dutch tulips... seems every 3 generation(s) that has their savings wiped out and dreams dashed wise up to the chants of "this changes everything", "this market is different", "these properties will only gain value", "these prices will last forever". I think it will be another 50 to 75 years before there is a new buzzword technology and enough new suckers who can't remember the previous crash.
From my experience companies use the same IT equipment with minimal upgrades for x amount of years before tossing them in the boneyard:
Workstations: 3 years Monitors: 4 years Laptops: 2 years Printers: 4 years Servers: 4 years Phone system: 4 years...so for example if a phone system is going to cost $60k to buy or $20k to lease for 4 years well then consider leasing.
I would advise waiting on Win64 until software and hardware publishers catch up with their own Win64 releases.
In my case I use Lightwave in Windows XP to produce CG animations. Rendering a detailed CG scene can sometimes take an hour per frame, 20 seconds of video = 600 frames = 600 hours of rendering... I am looking forward to using Lightwave for Win64 which is in beta now.
Photoshop CS's recent and upcoming features are very useful to a lot of people. I dig CS and I am looking forward to CS2.
HDR support is key. In a typical 24-bit image you have just 8-bits per channel: 8-bits Red, 8-bits Green, 8-bits Blue = 24-bit color. RAW and HDR image support goes beyond 8-bits per channel to capture more information hiding in the highlights and shadows meaning your Levels, Curves, and Hue/Saturation adjustments can go much deeper and you have room to adjust it over to much better highlight/shadow balance.
CS's Color Match feature is great too. You can apply the color balance of one photo to another.
...and there's the support for other pixel aspect ratios. I'm currently working on a widescreen 16:9 format digital film and it helps a lot that Photoshop can deal with stills at a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio.
Showing an example of a typeface in the font selection list will help.
Being able to apply filters such as Blur as a Filter Layer instead of directly to the source image lets you save and readjust your filter settings. It's about time.
Amen. Shred everything. Use a cross cut shredder. All credit card companies I've dealt with send those blank checks too, not just Discover.
From personal experience my wife once had her purse lifted from a restaurant. The thieves charged $2200 of electronics at a store nearby in less than 15 minutes. The local police were called but the cops didn't seem interested in details. The restaurant manager mentioned they might have the crooks on video, the cop didn't care, didn't want to see it. We mentioned we have the name of the store they used the card at just 10 minutes ago. The cop didn't care. "Just fill out this report. Tell your banks to drop the charge and they'll send you knew cards." And that was that. No gratifying foot chases or hard take downs, just sign the report.
I just want to point out that during my tenure at a certain Linux company, the name of which rhymes with "VA Linux".... OK it was VA Linux, back in the heady days of year 2000 I was telling certain key members of upper management there that if VA is going to sell high proced Linux boxen then they ought to consider building and selling boxen specifically for FILM PRODUCTION. I repeated myself more than once. I was told by certain key players in upper management who no longer work there that "We're not interested in going after niche markets."
VA no longer sells heavy Linux boxes but obviously someone is, and they're selling them to Hollywood.
Slashdot Mirror
As employee #3 of Andover.Net I want to personally thank you Rob (and Jeff) for selling out and thus giving me a role in keeping my favorite web site running, except for the time the router went nuts, that sucked. ... and the first set of load balancers we attempted ... in fact let's not remember the downtime, instead let's remember ripping it up in NYC and Vegas. Good luck in your future ventures! I'm sure that whatever you choose to work next will be just as successful.
I enjoyed my years working behind the scenes on Andover/OSDN/VA's network admin and much of that because Rob and Jeff were fun to work with. For example there was LinuxWorld in NYC, when we drank a few too many Gin & Midori concoctions to the point where [name withheld] couldn't remember his hotel room, or what floor it was on, or even coherently explain where the jacket he was wearing came from.
Good times.
BTW: The fish restaurant in Boston mentioned in history of Slashdot part 3 was Anthony's Pier 4, a good place in its day but Boston has better nowadays.
You turn on the computer. You are greeted by an angelic chime that gets progressively louder until your speakers shake. You attempt to adjust the volume but it only gets louder still. A full screen Window icon ripples across the screen then all goes black. The product activation screen prompts you to enter your activation keys, printed on 27 pages of holographic alloy glue to the inside of the aluminum DVD case. For the next 3 hours you enter the activation key, taking breaks to use the bathroom, eat, and make phone calls.
... and so on...
After entering the correct activation keys, a dialog appears prompting you to select your social login profile group. You have no idea what that is so you click "Other Networks" The next dialog says "Connecting to networks..." for the next 5 minutes. A message apears saying "New Hardware Found" but it can't find the driver. Another popup appears "No networks found". Then your desktop appears. The wallpaper is stunning. The Internet Explorer icon appears to majestically float above the screen. You click it. A message appears warning you that the Internet can harm your computer, do you want to continue? You click "Yes". You are prompted to enter your administrator key. This key is on the sticker on the inside of your PC case. You shutdown the PC, get a screwdriver, open the case, write down the 18 digit administrator code, put the case back together and reboot.
After rebooting, blocking your ears during the chime assault, and oggling the amazing wallpaper, ignoring the "live folders server not found" error, you try Internet Explorer again. You dutifully enter the administrator key. You are asked if you want to save this key to your "universal keyring" You click OK. You are warned that the universal keyring is encrypted and your sending encrypted information. You click OK. After 3 minutes you get an error saying "No key server found"
You never do get to see the Internet. But the wallpaper is amazing.
...is when the retail rep asks "What are you going to use the computer for?" I try to toss out a generic answer like "Programming" but that invites more annoying questions like "Well, what type of programming?" It's obvious to me the sales person wants to dazzle me with their expertise in recommending the perfect model for "programming". So whatever, I say "Web programming." Then fun starts because then the ever knowledgable sales person actually points at a specific computer further down the shelf (where the screens are little bigger and the price tags have a few extra digits) and declares "This is one is the best for web programs." Why? I have to ask, purely curious as to how skillfully they can massage a pile of crap into an answer. "That other one is not as fast. See this one is faster for web programs. And this one also has more graphics which is better for like web..." and so on. For my further amusement I have to ask "Does this one have more internet? I need more internet." just to hear incredibly stupid answers like "Yes, this one has more internet." Ok, let's click up the stupidity dial even further: "What about like, email? Does this one have email?" Now the sales person is going to be honest and assure you that "They all have email... but this one has better email." And so on.
More like "The letters done broke again."
So what? I found unauthorized copies of all my files at IP address 127.0.0.1 which I was able to login into using the same password as my machine. Whoever has that IP address will be hearing from the FBI very soon and then they will sorry.
Running the web dameon as root, now that's ugly.
As I understand it this is to block incoming messages to @aol.com addresses and that's fine. Who cares if someone@aol.com didn't get your email? Suppose you have an online store and someone makes a purchase using an @aol.com, I'd simply warn the purchaseer that "we don't send mail to @aol.com, use another email address." I imagine this will become the standard practice for treating aol.com users and they will complain or start using gmail or yahoo mail or whatever and so on.
Didn't Microsoft already release a patch for this on Nov 8th? According to Symantec's info page on this attack directs you to this Microsoft bulletin links to patches for each Windows release.
VC Express is a free download too... but getting VC Express to install correctly and compile a simple app is another story. Seems you have to download and install Visual Studio, then VC Express... almost a 1GB of downloads so far and you're not done yet! You also have to downlaod and install the MSDN libraries because VC Express does not include the standard Windows header files like windows.h!!! Screw that. I went back good 'ol lcc: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32/
From the TFA it seems that the inventor (and partners) had "expectations" of how Lucent would compensate him but no signed agreement. The moral of the story is get a very clear signed agreement before doing the work.
They could also nail Lucent if Lucent tries to sell this connector on the commerical market.
When a company first goes public people are excited and the possibilites are limitless. But as time goes by Google will be increasingly pressured to cut costs, lose the fat, concentrate on the core revenue earner (ads) and kill off any development projects that are not generating revenue, and maximize the revenue of popular features like Google Maps (expect to see advertising attached to the maps sometime in the near future).
What it comes down to is Google sells ads. That's its core business. Google is a media company. Reinventing a company is expensive and dangerous, few survive reinvention, that's why Google will always be a media company and Microsoft will always be a software company and Ford will always sell cars.
ESR's only valid response should have been to accept an interview and show up roaring drunk.
That would've been hilarious. I can imagine what sort of answers he would give to their logic puzzle test questions and "where do yourself in five years" career questions.
I predict that in ten years tech pundits will repeat the same predictions they made ten years before... and we'll still be using desktop PCs and not flying cars.
Hans Bwix you're busting my baws here! I told you we don't have any piwated pwogwams!
To an investor a stock may as well be a baked potato. Stock prices are based solely on perceptions: it is not about what the company is actualy worth but how other investors feel about the longevity of the brand and how much are they willing to pay to add that brand to their portfolio.
Compare the cost of Picasso's art supplies to the average auction price of his works... or the cost of designer label suit to the cost of materials plus sweatshop labor... it's all about perception and how much people are willing to pay.
Google is still in a honeymoon period with the market, it's a new yet well known brand untainted by scandals, perceived as having longevity.
Here's a radical idea for LA Times:
How about reviewing each wikitorial submission *BEFORE* it gets posted on the web site?
I know, I should've patented this idea before suggesting it but Amazon already filed for it an hour ago.
Market bubbles seem to occure every 3 generations. The big ones that come to mind are Dot-com, 1929, the railroads, the colonies, ... Dutch tulips... seems every 3 generation(s) that has their savings wiped out and dreams dashed wise up to the chants of "this changes everything", "this market is different", "these properties will only gain value", "these prices will last forever". I think it will be another 50 to 75 years before there is a new buzzword technology and enough new suckers who can't remember the previous crash.
Dear Bill, I love having Windows so that I can run Cygwin! It's almost like having a real Linux system!
From my experience companies use the same IT equipment with minimal upgrades for x amount of years before tossing them in the boneyard:
...so for example if a phone system is going to cost $60k to buy or $20k to lease for 4 years well then consider leasing.
Workstations: 3 years
Monitors: 4 years
Laptops: 2 years
Printers: 4 years
Servers: 4 years
Phone system: 4 years
I would advise waiting on Win64 until software and hardware publishers catch up with their own Win64 releases.
In my case I use Lightwave in Windows XP to produce CG animations. Rendering a detailed CG scene can sometimes take an hour per frame, 20 seconds of video = 600 frames = 600 hours of rendering... I am looking forward to using Lightwave for Win64 which is in beta now.
Photoshop CS's recent and upcoming features are very useful to a lot of people. I dig CS and I am looking forward to CS2.
...and there's the support for other pixel aspect ratios. I'm currently working on a widescreen 16:9 format digital film and it helps a lot that Photoshop can deal with stills at a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio.
HDR support is key. In a typical 24-bit image you have just 8-bits per channel: 8-bits Red, 8-bits Green, 8-bits Blue = 24-bit color. RAW and HDR image support goes beyond 8-bits per channel to capture more information hiding in the highlights and shadows meaning your Levels, Curves, and Hue/Saturation adjustments can go much deeper and you have room to adjust it over to much better highlight/shadow balance.
CS's Color Match feature is great too. You can apply the color balance of one photo to another.
Showing an example of a typeface in the font selection list will help.
Being able to apply filters such as Blur as a Filter Layer instead of directly to the source image lets you save and readjust your filter settings. It's about time.
Amen. Shred everything. Use a cross cut shredder. All credit card companies I've dealt with send those blank checks too, not just Discover.
From personal experience my wife once had her purse lifted from a restaurant. The thieves charged $2200 of electronics at a store nearby in less than 15 minutes. The local police were called but the cops didn't seem interested in details. The restaurant manager mentioned they might have the crooks on video, the cop didn't care, didn't want to see it. We mentioned we have the name of the store they used the card at just 10 minutes ago. The cop didn't care. "Just fill out this report. Tell your banks to drop the charge and they'll send you knew cards." And that was that. No gratifying foot chases or hard take downs, just sign the report.
I just want to point out that during my tenure at a certain Linux company, the name of which rhymes with "VA Linux".... OK it was VA Linux, back in the heady days of year 2000 I was telling certain key members of upper management there that if VA is going to sell high proced Linux boxen then they ought to consider building and selling boxen specifically for FILM PRODUCTION. I repeated myself more than once. I was told by certain key players in upper management who no longer work there that "We're not interested in going after niche markets."
VA no longer sells heavy Linux boxes but obviously someone is, and they're selling them to Hollywood.
*sigh*
No joke. Dr. Sloan is a bonified Lightwave 3D user and has even self-produced a few effects shots for his show Diagnosis Murder.