Pretty movie, wonderful soundtrack, unbelievably *STUPID* alleged plot. And, if I remember correctly, *he* isn't the one who destroys the ship - it's the Earth ships chasing him that do.
Almost no company I've ever worked for has had 'em, and the few that did either didn't document those standards, or didn't follow through ("I glanced at your code. Looks ok, that's your peer review.")
What would *I* put in?
Standards: 1) peer review includes full review with comments. "Looks ok" doesn't qualify. 2) institute a central index of functions/programs written in-house or F/OSS that have been brought in and approved, and developers are to use them whereever possible. 3) follow all the "good coding" standards that have been taught in school the last 25 years - no spaghetti code, short functions that do *one* thing, and do it well (encapsulation), etc, etc, etc. 4) "and in chief place": written specs, signed by management and developer. "But I wanted yyy!" "Sorry, I did what you signed off on, and what it says *here*. You want yyy, it'll take almost the same amount of time it took me to do xxx." "here, sign here...."
There are a *ton* of degree mills out there, and their "degrees" are utterly worthless (unless you happen, for example, to be a friend of George Bush, like "Brownie").
On the other hand, there are a number of legitimate, accredited institutions out there. I, personally, got my BS from Excelsior College, which is/was part of the state university of NY. Full, real accreditation.
There's a lot you miss. On the other hand, having gotten an associate's degree, then credits from another college, what I found when I tried to go to another college (pass over moving from Philly to Austin) was that the other college, in spite of both my community college and the other four-year university being fully accredited, wanted to not accept a *lot* of credits, and then there was the compiler design course that "oh, they don't have the same *emphasis* that we do, so we'll only accept it as an anonymous upper-level elective, and you'll have to take our compiler design class"... and this is not uncommon.
Excelsior (formerly Regents'), accepted *all* credits from legitimate, accredited colleges; wherever there was any question, they looked at the syllabus I provided them from the courses, and then there was no problem.
And I did take a software engineering course through an accredited professional organization, then had those results sent to Excelsior, and again, no problem.
If "accreditation" meant that college credits were as portable as high school ones, I'd say go for traditional colleges; since they're not (talk about a scam...), if it works for you, go for it.
As usual, the media demonstrates that they cheated on their college (and probably high school) coursework. Certainly, their vocabulary, as well as their knowledge of reality sucks, since they can't distinguish between science fiction and fantasy.
Also as usual, they confuse skiffy (tv/movies) with SF, probably because they don't read.
Clue: 99.99% of all SF is ->written-. With over 3k sf & fantasy books in my personal library, of which less than a dozen are Trek or SW, etc, I have way more than all the skiffy ever filmed, and I don't have nearly the largest personal library of a good number of other real fans.
*sigh*
mark "do toothpaste and car commercials count
as skiffy (sci-fi)?"
I'd appreciate if whoever's leaving a perfectly good, steady, well-paying job for the hopes of making oodles of money (and working 80-hr weeks) would let me know, since I haven't got either....
Lovely article, that doesn't say huge amounts of anything other than marketspeak.
One of the main points I use when talking about Linux to non-techies is that you don't need to buy new hardware for each new release, the way you do for WinDoze. What are they doing about size and speed (e.g. the Firefox model)?
Further, how much of what they're doing is anything more than eye candy - what actual *functionality* does it need, when at least 75% of everyone uses their computer to email, Websurf, and maybe text message or play games?
Accomplishment, etc, may be nice, but (take it from someone who worked his way to it, according to a psychologist friend) burnout comes from day-in, day-out, week-in, week-out, month-in, month-out exhaustion - working lunches, 10 and 12 and 14 hour days, working under upper management's "whatever it takes" dictum.
But no, we don't need no steenkeeng unions to fight for better working conditions like shorter days, and occasional weekends where you are *NOT* on call, or....
I have older machines on our SOHO. None of them has dual-cores or multiprocessors, and not huge amounts of memory, so I wanted to upgrade from RH 9 to something still fairly lightweight (I don't want bleeding-edge Fedora). A friend suggested KUbuntu.
I d/l it, burned a live CD, and tried it.
I have an old Logitech serial mouse. It refuses to recogize it. The menu doesn't offer a way to configure it, and not having used xorg, it took me a while to find the configuration tool. I used that, and when I finished, it said, "ok"... but Kubuntu *still* doesn't recognize my mouse.
Had I built the distro, it would have expected it to also check your hard drive, and automatically mount the partitions under/mnt. Nope.
In effect, it comes across as, "hi, try me, if I work, but you can't make any changes, even in memory." And yes, I *did* post to the new users' list, several times, and got zero responses.
So no thanks, I'll pass. Now I'm looking at SuSE, esp. since it's now owned by Novell, and is moving up in the US market. Jobs, y'know, esp. when all the companies in the country are full of abysmally clueless HR folks, who think there are some mystical differences between, say, RH and SuSE (which just happened to an aquaintance).
Right. I just heard an interview on Fresh Air on NPR, where the author being interviewed was talking about how the *real* Mafia had had a resurgence after 9/11; there's supposedly terrorists under every bed (like "commies" in the fifties), and multinationals are stealing the country blind... but pr0n is the top of the priority list.
America: the most hypocritical country in human history.
I used to work for Ameritech (one of the Baby Bells), and I was making $53.5k/yr... in 1997.
Consultants make a *lot* more (figure 25% more).
On the other hand, my last paying job was only $50k/yr. But then, what do you expect, 4+ years into the Bush Depression*?
mark
*Isn't it about time, in the midst of a "jobless recovery", to redefine "recession"? Perhaps, instead of "two or more quarters of falling GNP", it should be "two or more quarters of falling median income"...and a depression is four or more quarters. This puts us several years into the worst depression since the thirties.
So tell, me, doc, they put these folks in a kill-or-be-killed situation, with guerillas hiding in the midst of a large number of civilians, and they fired madly, and killed women and children. They're human beings.
And, of course, Bush won't even meet with one guy's mother, and Nixon got pardoned - the folks who put them there.
How do you "make it okay" for them to live with literal unjustified manslaughter and murder, and to think of their dead every day of their lives? Brainwash 'em, make 'em think it's all a dream? Kill their feellings, so that they'll never have a decent human relationship? Toss 'em out, and let them join the homeless?
Video goddamned games. That's what the administration thinks of human life, and you, Mr. Pshrink, want to "make it ok".
At least Dr. Spock spoke out against 'Nam, after his book helped raise so many kids.
What they seem to miss is that we've had most of the last 25 years of (Republican) presidents who didn't care about civilian space, or anything that didn't benefit their corporate friends.
NASA's budget sucks. Up until late under Clinton, never mind that the military budget was half (or more) of the federal budget, *NASA* had to eat the costs for "secret" military launches.
Big companies did the "Japanese" management thing, of flattening management structures. NASA is bloated with overpaid managers who don't want to risk their jobs by signing off on *anything*. But then, some of them don't even have scientific or engineering degrees! (Fact: there is at least one manager in the Q/A/Safety chain of command, high up, who "brags" that he has a "degree in typing".)
Stop privatizing, hire technical people, and stop holding them back. We'll be gone.
I read the notice, and, seeing they didn't have an official email address or Webmail site to submit comments, called them.
I then spoke to one of the lawyers.
She tells me that
- this spring, Congress mandated that they set up to do this "preregistration" business online by late October;
- that they're funded mostly by registration fees, unlike the patent office, and so do not have a huge budge;
- they're, ahhh, somewhat behind the curve on technology (quote from nice person: "I won't say neanderthal, but..."), and
- the department that's implementing this (direct quote) "will guarantee that the forms will work with IE, but won't guarantee that it will work with other browsers."
I explained how, though I am very much not a Macaholic, most of the artists I have read of or know personally use Macs, which would preclude them from using this system. I also pointed out that not a single Website that takes your credit card requires IE.
She and I had a nice conversation, and she requested that I send the letter w/ five copies. So, folks, send the letters, ASAP.
mark
PS I told her, at the end, that I'd heard of this on slashdot, and her response indicated that she may have heard of./, and that she now understood why I'd said that if they had an email address for comments, their server would have crashed....
And how soon will it be before we only have one or two telecoms that control *everything*... except this time, they'll be unregulated.
Bring back Ma Bell!
Alternatively, let me propose an Act for Congress to promote free and fair competition:
1) in any interstate industry, including but not
limited to telecom, transportation, and
retail, if mergers result in less than
four companies controlling at least 85%
of the market, that industry becomes
a regulated monopoly.
2) in those same industries, if further
consolidation results in one company
controlling at least 85% of the market,
it will be nationalized.
The intent is, of course, to scare them into free and fair competition.
SG-1, stale? I suppose, if your sense of humor is that of a low-IQ junior high schooler, who wants crude slapstick.
For those of us who prefer our wit drier, the last couple years of SG-1 have been *great*.
I also like the ending of the storyline, that people *do* get rotated (ex-military friends of mine tell me that happens in reality every two-three years).
And fsck y'all, I was *HAPPY* that Jack and Sam *finally* are an Item.
Battlebarf, on the other hand... sorry, I've seen two episodes, and can *NOT* get past the "it's an alien civilization, and they wear glasses, skirts, high heeled shoes, and jackets and *TIES*.
Wrong answer.
mark
No more dumb-downing, no more mainstreaming
on
Improving Education?
·
· Score: 1
How many kids could pass the tests I took, in the sixties? Stop dumbing down our education - that's why the US is no longer the best in the world.
Mainstreaming is one part of this - forcing really slow kids to try to keep up, and really fast kids to sit there, bored out of their mind (yes, that was me).
Oh, and NO CLASS OVER 24 KIDS under college. Ever. If they're our future, then spend some of those damn billions wasted on the Pentagon on education.
mark
For more on mainstreaming, check out http:http://home.cfl.rr.com/diehardanddragon/dieha rd/edu01.html>
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty movie, wonderful soundtrack, unbelievably *STUPID* alleged plot. And, if I remember correctly, *he* isn't the one who destroys the ship - it's the Earth ships chasing him that do.
mark
I can stop playing solitaire any time I want!
mark "don't want to...."
Which is it?
Almost no company I've ever worked for has had 'em, and the few that did either didn't document those standards, or didn't follow through ("I glanced at your code. Looks ok, that's your peer review.")
What would *I* put in?
Standards:
1) peer review includes full review with comments. "Looks ok" doesn't qualify.
2) institute a central index of functions/programs written in-house or F/OSS that have been brought in and approved, and developers are to use them whereever possible.
3) follow all the "good coding" standards that have been taught in school the last 25 years - no spaghetti code, short functions that do *one* thing, and do it well (encapsulation), etc, etc, etc.
4) "and in chief place": written specs, signed by management and developer. "But I wanted yyy!" "Sorry, I did what you signed off on, and what it says *here*. You want yyy, it'll take almost the same amount of time it took me to do xxx." "here, sign here...."
mark
I do hope they're not duplicating efforts... and whether they even know about Project Gutenberg. http://www.promo.net/pg/>
mark
I can't believe no one's mentioned what I believe is a popular and good piece of software: Bastille Linux. http://www.bastille-linux.org/>
mark "use it, no compromises in five years"
There are a *ton* of degree mills out there, and their "degrees" are utterly worthless (unless you happen, for example, to be a friend of George Bush, like "Brownie").
On the other hand, there are a number of legitimate, accredited institutions out there. I, personally, got my BS from Excelsior College, which is/was part of the state university of NY. Full, real accreditation.
There's a lot you miss. On the other hand, having gotten an associate's degree, then credits from another college, what I found when I tried to go to another college (pass over moving from Philly to Austin) was that the other college, in spite of both my community college and the other four-year university being fully accredited, wanted to not accept a *lot* of credits, and then there was the compiler design course that "oh, they don't have the same *emphasis* that we do, so we'll only accept it as an anonymous upper-level elective, and you'll have to take our compiler design class"... and this is not uncommon.
Excelsior (formerly Regents'), accepted *all* credits from legitimate, accredited colleges; wherever there was any question, they looked at the syllabus I provided them from the courses, and then there was no problem.
And I did take a software engineering course through an accredited professional organization, then had those results sent to Excelsior, and again, no problem.
If "accreditation" meant that college credits were as portable as high school ones, I'd say go for traditional colleges; since they're not (talk about a scam...), if it works for you, go for it.
mark
As usual, the media demonstrates that they cheated on their college (and probably high school) coursework. Certainly, their vocabulary, as well as their knowledge of reality sucks, since they can't distinguish between science fiction and fantasy.
Also as usual, they confuse skiffy (tv/movies) with SF, probably because they don't read.
Clue: 99.99% of all SF is ->written-. With over 3k sf & fantasy books in my personal library, of which less than a dozen are Trek or SW, etc, I have way more than all the skiffy ever filmed, and I don't have nearly the largest personal library of a good number of other real fans.
*sigh*
mark "do toothpaste and car commercials count
as skiffy (sci-fi)?"
And, for extra points, make the input big enough for people to dance on, to make their *own* dance music.
mark
So, when will we see a project to build a robot that can lead pets on a walk?
mark "We Also Walk Dogs"*
* cf. Heinlein
I'd appreciate if whoever's leaving a perfectly good, steady, well-paying job for the hopes of making oodles of money (and working 80-hr weeks) would let me know, since I haven't got either....
mark, Unix/Linux developer, sysadmin, cfg mgr
Lovely article, that doesn't say huge amounts of anything other than marketspeak.
One of the main points I use when talking about Linux to non-techies is that you don't need to buy new hardware for each new release, the way you do for WinDoze. What are they doing about size and speed (e.g. the Firefox model)?
Further, how much of what they're doing is anything more than eye candy - what actual *functionality* does it need, when at least 75% of everyone uses their computer to email, Websurf, and maybe text message or play games?
Why does it need still more crap?
mark
Accomplishment, etc, may be nice, but (take it from someone who worked his way to it, according to a psychologist friend) burnout comes from day-in, day-out, week-in, week-out, month-in, month-out exhaustion - working lunches, 10 and 12 and 14 hour days, working under upper management's "whatever it takes" dictum.
But no, we don't need no steenkeeng unions to fight for better working conditions like shorter days, and occasional weekends where you are *NOT* on call, or....
mark
I have older machines on our SOHO. None of them has dual-cores or multiprocessors, and not huge amounts of memory, so I wanted to upgrade from RH 9 to something still fairly lightweight (I don't want bleeding-edge Fedora). A friend suggested KUbuntu.
/mnt. Nope.
I d/l it, burned a live CD, and tried it.
I have an old Logitech serial mouse. It refuses to recogize it. The menu doesn't offer a way to configure it, and not having used xorg, it took me a while to find the configuration tool. I used that, and when I finished, it said, "ok"... but Kubuntu *still* doesn't recognize my mouse.
Had I built the distro, it would have expected it to also check your hard drive, and automatically mount the partitions under
In effect, it comes across as, "hi, try me, if I work, but you can't make any changes, even in memory." And yes, I *did* post to the new users' list, several times, and got zero responses.
So no thanks, I'll pass. Now I'm looking at SuSE, esp. since it's now owned by Novell, and is moving up in the US market. Jobs, y'know, esp. when all the companies in the country are full of abysmally clueless HR folks, who think there are some mystical differences between, say, RH and SuSE (which just happened to an aquaintance).
mark
Right. I just heard an interview on Fresh Air on NPR, where the author being interviewed was talking about how the *real* Mafia had had a resurgence after 9/11; there's supposedly terrorists under every bed (like "commies" in the fifties), and multinationals are stealing the country blind... but pr0n is the top of the priority list.
America: the most hypocritical country in human history.
mark
But if you think simplification is a Good Thing, let's see the US *finally* go metric.
mark "the inch is what, the length of the
King's thumb, from knuckle to tip?"
I used to work for Ameritech (one of the Baby Bells), and I was making $53.5k/yr... in 1997.
Consultants make a *lot* more (figure 25% more).
On the other hand, my last paying job was only $50k/yr. But then, what do you expect, 4+ years into the Bush Depression*?
mark
*Isn't it about time, in the midst of a "jobless recovery", to redefine "recession"? Perhaps, instead of "two or more quarters of falling GNP", it should be "two or more quarters of falling median income"...and a depression is four or more quarters. This puts us several years into the worst depression since the thirties.
So tell, me, doc, they put these folks in a kill-or-be-killed situation, with guerillas hiding in the midst of a large number of civilians, and they fired madly, and killed women and children. They're human beings.
And, of course, Bush won't even meet with one guy's mother, and Nixon got pardoned - the folks who put them there.
How do you "make it okay" for them to live with literal unjustified manslaughter and murder, and to think of their dead every day of their lives? Brainwash 'em, make 'em think it's all a dream? Kill their feellings, so that they'll never have a decent human relationship? Toss 'em out, and let them join the homeless?
Video goddamned games. That's what the administration thinks of human life, and you, Mr. Pshrink, want to "make it ok".
At least Dr. Spock spoke out against 'Nam, after his book helped raise so many kids.
mark, antiwar then, and antiwar now
What they seem to miss is that we've had most of the last 25 years of (Republican) presidents who didn't care about civilian space, or anything that didn't benefit their corporate friends.
NASA's budget sucks. Up until late under Clinton, never mind that the military budget was half (or more) of the federal budget, *NASA* had to eat the costs for "secret" military launches.
Big companies did the "Japanese" management thing, of flattening management structures. NASA is bloated with overpaid managers who don't want to risk their jobs by signing off on *anything*. But then, some of them don't even have scientific or engineering degrees! (Fact: there is at least one manager in the Q/A/Safety chain of command, high up, who "brags" that he has a "degree in typing".)
Stop privatizing, hire technical people, and stop holding them back. We'll be gone.
mark
I read the notice, and, seeing they didn't have an official email address or Webmail site to submit comments, called them.
./, and that she now understood why I'd said that if they had an email address for comments, their server would have crashed....
I then spoke to one of the lawyers.
She tells me that
- this spring, Congress mandated that they set up to do this "preregistration" business online by late October;
- that they're funded mostly by registration fees, unlike the patent office, and so do not have a huge budge;
- they're, ahhh, somewhat behind the curve on technology (quote from nice person: "I won't say neanderthal, but..."), and
- the department that's implementing this (direct quote) "will guarantee that the forms will work with IE, but won't guarantee that it will work with other browsers."
I explained how, though I am very much not a Macaholic, most of the artists I have read of or know personally use Macs, which would preclude them from using this system. I also pointed out that not a single Website that takes your credit card requires IE.
She and I had a nice conversation, and she requested that I send the letter w/ five copies. So, folks, send the letters, ASAP.
mark
PS I told her, at the end, that I'd heard of this on slashdot, and her response indicated that she may have heard of
...are
1) *what* investigators?
2) *why* were there investigators?
3) who sent them?
And a hearty thanks to all those who voted Republican, and so supported Christian neo-fascist "political correctness".
mark "and libertarian votes help the GOP"
And how soon will it be before we only have one or two telecoms that control *everything*... except this time, they'll be unregulated.
Bring back Ma Bell!
Alternatively, let me propose an Act for Congress to promote free and fair competition:
1) in any interstate industry, including but not
limited to telecom, transportation, and
retail, if mergers result in less than
four companies controlling at least 85%
of the market, that industry becomes
a regulated monopoly.
2) in those same industries, if further
consolidation results in one company
controlling at least 85% of the market,
it will be nationalized.
The intent is, of course, to scare them into free and fair competition.
mark "and what's wrong with socialism?"
So, I can fold and look under something?
Great, now my windowing system can look just like my RW desktop, with piles of crap I can't find stuff under.
Wasn't there something about computers making life *easier*?
mark "art doesn't need to imitate life
*that* closely"
SG-1, stale? I suppose, if your sense of humor is that of a low-IQ junior high schooler, who wants crude slapstick.
For those of us who prefer our wit drier, the last couple years of SG-1 have been *great*.
I also like the ending of the storyline, that people *do* get rotated (ex-military friends of mine tell me that happens in reality every two-three years).
And fsck y'all, I was *HAPPY* that Jack and Sam *finally* are an Item.
Battlebarf, on the other hand... sorry, I've seen two episodes, and can *NOT* get past the "it's an alien civilization, and they wear glasses, skirts, high heeled shoes, and jackets and *TIES*.
Wrong answer.
mark
How many kids could pass the tests I took, in the sixties? Stop dumbing down our education - that's why the US is no longer the best in the world.
a rd/edu01.html>
Mainstreaming is one part of this - forcing really slow kids to try to keep up, and really fast kids to sit there, bored out of their mind (yes, that was me).
Oh, and NO CLASS OVER 24 KIDS under college. Ever. If they're our future, then spend some of those damn billions wasted on the Pentagon on education.
mark
For more on mainstreaming, check out http:http://home.cfl.rr.com/diehardanddragon/dieh
Do they take out sites that specialize in virus and worm creation tools, for the script kiddies?
No. Pirated games.
Right up there with the summer of 2001, when Ashcroft had FBI agents hunting down prostitutes in New Orleans (google for it: they *did*).
More of our tax dollars out of work.
mark