Lessee, my buddy here tells me the prototype alpha came in around '90...and it's been 64 bit from the git-go. We're talking about a not-yet-release, brand new chip, vs. one that's been in production for nearly ten years.
For that matter, the InfoMagic CD that I picked up in '96 or '97 had a version of linux for the Alpha, and there's a current version, as far as I know...*and* Compaq has dropped all support of NT on Alphas (there was a slashdot item on that, months ago), and has announced support for linux.
Oh, yeh, and I b'lieve that you can get Alpha processor-based systems for the price of Xeons, even from sytem retailers *other* than Compaq.
Hell, where I work, the city's been running on Alphas since '95 or '96...and the new generation system that we've just been testing...well, when I reconfigure DEC UNIX, and it's about to rebuild the kernel, it gives a message that it may take 15 minutes...and then takes (I timed this) a minute and a half! (Old message, obviously)
So, tell me again, why is it that Merced is "new and revolutionary"?
Yeah, so the message out of Seattle is confused, according to the media. Why are you surprised? They don't *want* it to be coherent.
"They"...in '89, Molly Ivins, a syndicated columnist, looked around, and noted that 90% of *all* the media in this country (US) was owned by, count 'em, 29 companies. This past Halloween, she did the count again, and it's *NINE*.
The WTO is *explicitly* about corporations, and the bigger they are, the more they're involved (never heard France, and other countries, complaining about US media dominating their markets, or fear of that?). Even NPR hardly mentioned anyone but the environmentalists - certainly almost *none* of 'em talked about the labor unions.
Just what percentage of the demonstators were violent? More than 5%? As someone who *was* active back in the sixties, including Chicago in '68, let me tell you that even then, the press played up the miniscule numbers of crazies, and ignored the majority of us. They have even more reason now - most of 'em only cover action-adventure news: if it don't involve violence or sex, it ain't news.
And the guys that don't think this involves them, and ain't new fer nerds...whaddya gonna say when *your* job goes overseas, to a linux hacker from Mexico, or China, who will get paid a pittance?
This is news that matters. Just try and find out what the corporate owners of the media don't want you to think about.
as someone who's been a techie for longer than some of these kids has been around, I'm glad that you included the histories of the words. I *knew* where geek came from - the carny slang definition, and I despise being referred to as that. My usual response is that Newt Gingrich fits that definition (bearing in mind that he served his first wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital for chemotherapy), not I.
Recently, though, I realized another reason that these names were applied, and why the folks who run the media are so happy to use 'em: it suggests that we are less than "normal people", and that we have no lives outside of work, so they don't have to feel bad about sticking pagers on us, and putting us on call 24x7x365.25, nor about making us work weekends, nights, etc....
What I'd like to know is when we start hearing about techno-wimps, and mismanagers, and other names for people who know nothing, but feel they can manage *us*.
I had a lot of varying problems, too...I just got my BS in '95...at 46. What I wound up doing was using Regents' College (which is *NOT* that POS that the funnymentalists started in one of the Carolinas), which is part of SUNY (the real thing, not a diploma mill). What they do is accept credits from *accredited* schools and tests (like CLEP, or CCP), though they may ask for a syllabus, eventually, when you get the right number of credits, with the right course spread, you get the degree. They do *NOT* have campus classes...I think they've only recently added onlline courses. They also do *not* play this, "you've got to take your last 30/60/whatever credits here" game - if you've passed accredited courses, with a C or better, it's a good credit.
As I understand it, they were invented in '72, during 'Nam, primarily for folks in the military ("we know you're 3 mos from your degree, sorry, you're going to Dusseldorf for the next year...."), and functioned as a "credit bank". It's gotten a lot bigger, and not just for the military any more, what with the way we all move around. Check it out. I think they're a good deal.
I went over to take the poll. It is *mindbogglingly* STUPID.
It has been *documented* that the first six out of the seven questions are major factors...yet the poll only lets you choose *one*.
With the exception of math...and not always then, there is no "One True Answer" to anything in the universe, and this is a perfect example.
I *will* mention that what *seems* to be the most influential factor affecting the birth rate is the educational level of the mother. I *believe* I heard, a year or two ago, on NPR, that UN demographers had evidence for this.
Nine billion? Ooog. I did some basic calculations, years ago, and optimistically speaking, the max population for the earth of humans is 2gig...which we went over early, I think, in the 19th century. And for those that disagree, I hope you *really* enjoy your traffic, er, drive out the freeway, tonight, to your homes in the far 'burbs....
Costikyan is one of the original group that *invented* D&D...but I s'pose most of y'all are too young to remember *that*.....
mark
excellent, if flawed...
on
Snow Crash
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· Score: 2
The book, *and* this review.
A *major* chunk of the story occurs in cyberspace...and *another* major chunk is mythological...and somehow, Our Reviewer seems to have glossed all of that over.
Stephenson's cyberspace is as impressive as Gibson's, and yet different; to some degree, one can see it as a progression from the current web, where Gibson's view is nowhere in sight.
On the other hand, I have *always* had a problem with Snowcrash, and one of these cons, I mean to tell Stephenson so: he com*pletely* blows the intellectual climax of the novel (don't worry, it doesn't affect the outcome of the "physical" end", so this isn't exactly a spoiler): since obviously, anyone reading it with anything less than the total immersion will see that the mythological queen/Goddess is the culture hero, for freeing the knowledge of self-hacking, rather than the mythological king/God, who tries to keep it hidden.
It *is* an excellent book, and deserved the Hugo it won. Of course, I just hope my son, in his quest for a job, doesn't wind up deliivering pizza for Domino's...I might have to give him some practice with swords, and then enroll him in a kendo class....
I started to read the article...and, as I'm at work, have only gotten a few pages in. What I find is an excellent example of why academia, and academic criticism, has so little respect outside its own little pond.
Among the reasons I say this are his beginning with a false quote...with, of course, no link, *nor* does he offer a bibliography. I first heard that quote (one mistake...) in the early 80s, at *least*, and it was about *commercial*, closed-source code. It makes literally no sense in the open source arena (vide the ping-of-death affair).
He procedes to follow this with continual misquotes, rephrased quotes, and allegations with no evidenciary support.
In addition to all the above faults, he clearly does not even understand either ESR, the profession of programming, nor politics. As someone who *is* a socialist, *and* who has known Eric for something like 20 years, the continual references to him as being a "vulgar Marxist" are both amusing and horrifying.
Amusing, in terms of ESR, because as most folks know, he is what is currently referred to in the US as an active 'libertarian', and extremely anti-socialist. I, on the other hand, find the open source movement much more along the lines of 'real' socialism (as opposed to what the right-wing owned media would like y'all to belive), but that it has nothing to do with any form of Marxism, allegedly vulgar or otherwise.
Horrified, as this ejournal seems to be associated with the U of IL (please correct me if I'm wrong), and that it claims, on its home page, to be peer-reviewed. This says *very* little for the reviewing peers who allowed this article, with such flagrant misstatements, unsubstantiated claims, misspelled quotes ("Experiences is what..."), mostly with incomplete attributions, to be published under their byline.
As soon as I find the time, somewhere in the coming week, I intend to respond to this article in full, and submit that as a letter to the journal...and, as I doubt the auther did, intend to copy both ESR and the author, as well slashdot, if y'all want something that long.
Absolutely, M$ should be broken up. AND the government should set up regulations. The fact that Micro$oft was created demonstrates that it could happen again, and with no regulation it will happen again.
Then, of course, there are the comments I've seen here...way too much typical libertarian bs. If it were could, it'd be endless loops, or crashing more often than M$ products.
M$ *is* a "free market" solution. Are y'all advocating *more* of the same?
Also, since y'all have tossed everything that our parents and grandparents fought for out the window, and shot the 8 hour day, and the 40 hour week for all the rest of us, and helped mgmt decide that a) we don't have a life, and b) 100% of our time is owned by them, gov't regulation is the *only* leverage we have left.
Oh, good, so perhaps, soon, getting knocked out in a dark alley, and waking up in a tub full of icewater and stiches on one's side will be a thing of the past....
Lessee, most places I've worked, and that ranges from county gov't, to small co's, to huge co's, to city gov'ts, *INSIST* on testing, and being as sure as possible that the latest "fix" doesn't break something else.
Anyone want to argue that there are times when it does?
Fixes, where I work now, would *have* to be scheduled a week or two in advance...AT LEAST.
And then there's the problem of large shops. Someone said they worked in a large shop, w/ 200 machines. I have a close friend who works for Walgreens, with something like three thousand UNIX boxen. Anyone who's arguing that each should be applied as soon as they come out, individually, want to discuss what would be involved with 21 patches to 3000 boxes, running 24x7, over remote links?
Emergency fixes, like that on the ping-of-death, are one thing. Smaller fixes should be bundled, and come out a *lot* less frequently. Hell, when I come home, if I want to read my email, or whatever, I don't want to have to spend time, when I could be making dinner, or whatever, putting in the patch-of-the-day.
On the other hand, a regularly scheduled patch-level maintenance would be a Good Idea, if managers could be made to swallow it.
As a number of other posters have pointed out, the article, as is, is on CBNR terrorism, with a global search and replace to add "cyber". Much, if not most, of the article is unrelated to "cyberwarfare" (CW).
For one thing, there is *no* recognition of the direct relation of corporate espionage and warfare to CW. Just last week, for example, a letter was posted by Iambe on the userfriendly web site concerning a sr. IT manager requesting that the co. security & sysadmin perform what, were it done by a political group, instead of a company, would be CW (btw, the author of the letter resigned rather than comply). Clearly, any company is capable of serious CW, and individuals are only slightly less capable. Yet in the article, there is no discussion of corporate CW, both as a training ground for CW agents, and as an instigator of CW. Let us also not forget that merely having been exposed to the idea that it was do-able by ordinary people, *and* *acceptable* *as* *a* *tactic* by socially-acceptable companies, the population of people who would be able and willing to do it is increased dramatically.
Another part of what is wrong with the article is the failure to assimilate the lesson of the Rodney King affair: that a few years after high tech is available, it's old tech, and available on the street, which will find its own uses for it, even as it was suggested in the novels of the cyberpunk genre. Note that, in many cases, those uses will be the same as the "official" uses...just from a different viewpoint.
Refusal to recognize this, while it leads to a terminology that Jane's regular users are familiar with, and perhaps does not cause heart attacks among them, does a great disservice to them, since it does not make clear the real logistical and tactical situation they find themselves in, and with which they may have to deal someday. We do not need another Maginot Line.
Note that "training" is not that important in CW, since any college will provide this, and it is, instead, the intellegence and viewpoint of the people performing the CW.
Consider how easy it is for people to write virii and worms, and that they come from second and third world countries as, or more frequently, as from the first world. Now consider a revolutionary or terrorist group member writing a virus or worm with a timer, which does nothing until the day of their Big Event. All this scenario needs, for the CW side of this, is one college student with net access and any old PC.
Yet another serious issue in security is the dilemma of security vs. inconvenience and obstructionism. Do you force peole to go through all sorts of contortions every time they log on to a machine, or access a file (as in B2 security), all of which slows things down, or do you make it easy for them to do their work, and spend less time in time-waisting contortions?
I also had a problem with the article in the section concerning motivation. What I did *not* notice was anything beyond what I'd hear on tv news. For example, *why* does Hammas have as much support as they do in the West Bank and Gaza? A few years ago, I heard on a news story that Hammas provides half, or more than half, of all the schooling and medical care in those areas.
CW *is* a form of guerilla warfare. The article does not appear to realize this, nor point it out to its readers. I suggest to you that the only real and effective way to counter terrorism, as in any guerilla war, is to reduce the support the local community provides. By doing that, you wind up with a larger base of computer-oriented people who are less willing to perform CW actions, and more willing to fight it on a personal programming and security level.
In fact, I'd like an EMP gun to waste the electronics of the next idiot whose car alarm goes off as I walk by it in a supermarket parking lot, or the second time that night at 0-dark-thirty, because they've got the sensitivity set to, "a pigeon shat on my car!!!"
Instead, I have a *far* more useful device (copyright m. roth-whitworth, 1995-99): a rocket launcher for the front of your car to take out the morons who can't walk and chew gum at the same time, but who insist on permanently attaching their cell phone to their ear, and driving their SUVs (Stupid lUser Vehicles) *badly* in the left lane.... Now what makes *my* rocket device unique is that it uses a vertical-wedge shaped charge. The advantage of this is that it not only takes out the idiot in front of you, but 1) it splits their vehicle in half up the middle, so that it doesn't get in your way as you keep on driving, and 2) depending on the lane you're in, the two halves of the vehicle formerly in front of you (VFiFoY) take out the jerks on either or both sides of you, who, seeing the removal of the idiot, would otherwise attempt to cut in front of you.
See? *Far* more useful, eliminating two or three pollutants from the shallow end of the gene pool for the price of one! Besides, it would make a nice boom!
mark "now, about the FCC-legal white noise generator on cellphone frequencies..."
But, having skimmed through all the others, I've still got a couple of things to say...
first: criticality: this means that a reaction becomes self-sustaining. If it's not, you get a decreasing number of neutrons (like turning off the stove under a boiling pot of water). If it's in the right range, each reaction generates more-or-less an equal number, so it keeps on keepin' on. Where you get *more* neutrons (to "split more atoms") than you put in is what is know in technospeak as, "boom".
Criticality is significant, but the size is a factor. There's a nuclear reactor in Africa that's been running, on and off, for the last 90 million years. No, that's not fiction: there's a large uranium deposit, and the heat it generates in decay lets it slowly pool together, build up a big reaction, run for millenia, deplete itself, and repeat. Notice that there ain't been no "boom"
Secondly, and *really* important, is not "why humans were allowed to do this instead of machinery...any of you *ever* work in a *real* factory? I have. Would I trust unsupervised machines? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR BLOODY MINDS? No, the *real* question is why it happened: 1) were they untrained? 2) were they trained inadequately? 3) whether 1) or 2) is true or untrue, were they being told to ignore some safety standards to meet a deadline? 4) or are they so understaffed/undersized ("downsized") that they were working for *way* too many hours, and so more prone to lapses?
I'd *love* to see *these* questions answered...and if any of 'em is true, I'd like to see management on a cross, where they belong, instead of the victims.
Like maybe there's still infalling dust from the Kuiper belt, or the Oort cloud, and since it's not being swept up by planets or moons, it's fairly constant...and would surely affect a *very* unstreamlined vehicle.
For that matter, if the vehicle was decelerating before, and there was more infalling dust, there might be some backwash (no, I didn't say "something to push against, duhhhh"), radiative or otherwise.
mark "would really prefer something more interesting, Mr. L. Green Man...."
Folks, let's do it *now*, before these things come out, and become common, so that they can put warnings on the box: WARNING: IT IS ILLEAGAL TO USE THIS WHILE DRIVING!!!
mark "wants a legal, 100' range, static generator, for people who can't walk and chew gum, but drive cars (BADLY) and use cellphones at the same time"
If you're supplied the voice-recognition software, why can't you just *tell* it what to do? Maybe have two buttons on the system, for and , to put you into command mode ("menu bar,start email", "attention, email window"...), and the rest, you interact with they programs by speaking.
Of course, then you'd have to be able to read, and you'd, why, you'd save space, not having stupid, fuzzy incomprehensible pictures, but plain words....
mark "I hates meeces to pieces!"
"Icon: a small, fuzzy, indistinct picture, meant to replace a perfectly clear and comprehensible word" - the Engineer's Dictionary
So, d'you think it's a lot better in Chicago?
on
ISP War in the UK
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· Score: 1
Having grown up in Philly, and lived in and around Austin, TX for over seven years, before I moved up here to Chicago, I can say that it's not a lot better here...in Ameritech territory.
Unlike *every* other Baby Bell I've ever dealt with...*and* Mother Bell before that, in "Big A" territory, you pay your monthly fee for a line charge, and there's a charge for Every Single Call.
Every other Baby Bell offers "basic" and "unlimited" service, with "basic" being dialtone, and 72 calls/month, and "unlimited" being not quite twice the price (it used to be $28 or $30/mo) for any number of calls, within the "local calling area", which in every *other* area, meant a calling radius of something on the order of 25 miles.
In Ameritech territory, not only is every call charged individually, but anything over, what, 6.5 miles, or 8.5 miles, I don't remember, is *metered*, just as the article mentions in the UK.
If you ain't got a POP within that radius, it's no different than the UK. C'mon, tell me Ameritech's trying to "limit bandwidth".
Obviously, someone who wants to think they're Important.
*I* don't want to be phone in bed with a lady, or on the john, or when I want a night's sleep, or in the middle of a party, or when I just don't want to be bloody *paged* for the xth time that evening....
I think it's management who promulgates the idea that all us techies have no lives, as an excuse, so that they don't have to feel bad when they can go home, and tell the second, or third, or whatever shift to page us whenever they want, as many times as they want.....
*I* do have a life (well, what's left of it since my wife died), and I do *not* live to make management's bonus'
This is the first time I've ever been a consultant...but I'm also an employee of the consulting firm, not "hourly". *And* I get overtime.
So, what do I think/prefer?
I plan to stay an employee. I don't want to have to deal with taxes, or benefits, etc.
On the other hand, I do like the overtime...I've been a direct employee long enough to truly resent the phrase, "whatever it takes", as though I were an indentured servant. This way, *they* have to consider the cost, not just lay it on me, without any consideration of whether I have a life.
Without that overtime...I see little difference: they force a pager on you, and claim that they're paying you for wearing a ball and chain, and being at their beck and call 24x7x365.25.
On the company's side, it's stupid to not have their own employees build the software, since they'll be the ones maintaining it...but mgmt is utterly clueless (it's the ties - they cut off the blood supply to the brain). Their own employees will tell them something...and several years later, when a crisis hits, and a consultant, brought in, all of a sudden, will tell them the same thing...and they'll listen to them, but not to the employee who told them that, nor will said employee get anything other than an internal "I told 'em so" out of it.
Also, those of you claiming that "all employees are stupid, all contractors are brilliant", are a bunch of young, ignorant assholes, with neither life nor smarts. Consulting firms often hire kids right out of school, with no experience (as I well know, from working at my previous job with folks from half-a-dozen consulting companies, with Andersen being the biggest), who've never written anything big or serious.
Y'all work in a sweatshop, and think working 12 and 15 hour days makes you "important" (and your grandparents, who did the same thing in factories, knew they were being used and abused, and created unions).
Different projects? Hell, of those of you who've worked in the field for 10 or more years, what's the average length at a job, before you move? Three years, isn't it?
Nahh, I'll stay an employee...and I'll be even happier when they finally unionize the field, so we don't *have* to wear fucking pagers all the time, or work 60 and 70 hour weeks.
Besides, a few years back, I looked into it...and heard that every ISP person I knew of would defenestrate you if you used it, since it apparently *ate* system cycles and resources.
I did find something I thought was better...and won an award from PC Mag in 95 or 96 - SLIPKnot, which was a WinDoze-based graphical interface to lynx, that used that, and zmodem, to work the same as any other graphical web browser, from a shell account.
Unlike, oh, at least 90% of you kiddies, I *have* worked on mainframes (which, btw, are not antiques, guys - IBM, just three or four years ago, recorded its best sales of m'frames ever), as well as PCs and UNIX.
This *entire* scare is like the toilet paper shortage of the early 80s (yes, that was a joke, too).
First of all, the *usual* practice on mainframes was to store dates as computer-version *JULIAN*. This means that today would be 25299, or maybe 2521999. Makes it a *hell* of a lot easier to calculate dates, and differences, y'know. Therefore, it'd be *real* unlikely that we'll run into the date 99999...unless we go to a calander that has > 1000 days/year.
Second, y'all folks that have been talking ignorant BS about COBOL...yes, I *have* written more than enough of it, and yes, I have a button suggesting that we can stamp it out in our lifetime...but COBOL has *other* EOF markers than "9999", does *NOT* read data as a stream, but is buffered, and reads only structures, so it won't "find a 9999 in the middle of a record and stop" (sorry, only DOS does that with a -z (0x81)).
Also, a reasonable "no cancellation" date would either be HIVALUES (which came in the version of COBOL I was using in '79, in school), or 99999...which, again, is certainly not a valid date.
Why do y'all believe the media's bs? Why do you think anyone who programmed before you started school was dumber than you?
First, the trivial: now, I haven't seen Opera, but...I've used both Chamelean and Hummingbird's X emulation (at a couple of jobs, including the one I'm at now), and *both* of them have an option in the X setup that specifies all-in-one-window, or seperate windows. Doesn't Opera have this? Anybody know?
Now, the important point: Text browsers are Good. I normally run Netscrape, with auto-image loading turned off. Last year, I b'lieve it was, I saw a study, done at Yahoo, or some equally huge site, and they found that 80%, I believe it was, of *all* the netsurfers passing through had their auto-image loading turned off.
*sigh*
Given that, the only explanation I have is that marketing types, or folks with less of a clue than Steph (from UserFriendly), since something like half to two-thirds of the web sight I run across, including places like DEC and M$ (of course), have NO ALTERNATE LABELS, and so, all you see is a bunch of freakin' boxes, and you have to load images, just to see which one says, "continue", or whatever (so you don't get dragged to some other idiotic sight which proceeds to eat your system with 55 browsers).
So, if Opera's going to have a text-mode version, tables, and other stuff are just fine...but can it take a jpg or gif of the word "next", and translate it to text? If not, what *can* we do about these morons?
Productivity hasn't gone up? Well, just make all those folks salaried employees, including the secretaries (who are all now office managers, and administrative assistants), and then management can tell 'em, "whatever it takes", and they get to work 50, 60, and 70 hour weeks.
So, *how* productive are you, week after week, when you're exhausted? When management keeps changing the specs? When they demand meetings that require *everyone* there, where they go through each person, one after the other, trying to figure out where they are...while *all* the others do nothing (nap time!)? And that, of course, because they don't know what they're doing, or how to manage...or are caught in turf battles between the next level up of management, and *can't* manage.
All this, of course, is after everyone's been undersized (forget downsizing, that *ain't* what happened).
All you do on a computer (except fer us actual programmers & sysadmins, and other techies), is research data, and write about data. It *still* requires a human being to comprehend the data, make sense of the patterns, and decide how to respond to it. *Nothing* increases that speed, except experience, and training. Companies almost *never* want to pay for the experience they need (they'd often rather hire someone, often for less, with a piece of paper that says they know something, over someone who's been *doing* the work for years), and most often, training consists of, "here's your cube, and you can ask questions of so-and-so over there" (who's got their own work to do, and may have no training or ability to teach).
You really want some amount of productivity increase? Downsize the multiple layers of middle management, who know neither the business, nor how to effectively do the work (ever get specs from them, and not be able to talk to the actual people who *do* the work?), nor, often, have *any* power to make any decisions.
Then get rid of the upper management who were hired from another industry, and have no idea what the business is about, nor what's involved in keeping it going, and only care about "reducing costs, and increasing 'profitability' over the course of the next quarter...esp. since they'll leave in about three years, anyway, and go somewhere else, leaving a trail of gutted departments in their wake.
Oh, yes, and treat the people who actually *know* their stuff, and do it *right*, as though you want to keep them going for the long term, not as consumables (a certain well-known consulting company, which shall remain nameless, but whose initials start with A.A., who I've not worked for, but with its people, is famous for the latter).
And yes, I've experienced *all* of the above, in the nearly 19 years I've been programming, and most of the above happened in medium-to-large companies.
But, as the "There Oughta Be A Law" cartoon I saw 15 years ago said, "Problem with hardware? Throw $$ at it. Problem with the building? throw $$ at it. etc... Problem with people? Improve their morale".
mark
"The beating will continue until morale improves"
"The meetings will continue, until we find out why productivity has dropped"
Slashdot Mirror
Lessee, my buddy here tells me the prototype alpha came in around '90...and it's been 64 bit from the git-go. We're talking about a not-yet-release, brand new chip, vs. one that's been in production for nearly ten years.
For that matter, the InfoMagic CD that I picked up in '96 or '97 had a version of linux for the Alpha, and there's a current version, as far as I know...*and* Compaq has dropped all support of NT on Alphas (there was a slashdot item on that, months ago), and has announced support for linux.
Oh, yeh, and I b'lieve that you can get Alpha processor-based systems for the price of Xeons, even from sytem retailers *other* than Compaq.
Hell, where I work, the city's been running on Alphas since '95 or '96...and the new generation system that we've just been testing...well, when I reconfigure DEC UNIX, and it's about to rebuild the kernel, it gives a message that it may take 15 minutes...and then takes (I timed this) a minute and a half! (Old message, obviously)
So, tell me again, why is it that Merced is "new and revolutionary"?
mark
Yeah, so the message out of Seattle is confused, according to the media. Why are you surprised? They don't *want* it to be coherent.
"They"...in '89, Molly Ivins, a syndicated columnist, looked around, and noted that 90% of *all* the media in this country (US) was owned by, count 'em, 29 companies. This past Halloween, she did the count again, and it's *NINE*.
The WTO is *explicitly* about corporations, and the bigger they are, the more they're involved (never heard France, and other countries, complaining about US media dominating their markets, or fear of that?). Even NPR hardly mentioned anyone but the environmentalists - certainly almost *none* of 'em talked about the labor unions.
Just what percentage of the demonstators were violent? More than 5%? As someone who *was* active back in the sixties, including Chicago in '68, let me tell you that even then, the press played up the miniscule numbers of crazies, and ignored the majority of us. They have even more reason now - most of 'em only cover action-adventure news: if it don't involve violence or sex, it ain't news.
And the guys that don't think this involves them, and ain't new fer nerds...whaddya gonna say when *your* job goes overseas, to a linux hacker from Mexico, or China, who will get paid a pittance?
This is news that matters. Just try and find out what the corporate owners of the media don't want you to think about.
mark "been there, done that,
got the tear gas"
Copy of an email to the author:
Dear Ms. Dyrness,
as someone who's been a techie for longer than some of these kids has been around, I'm glad that you included the histories of the words. I *knew* where geek came from - the carny slang definition, and I despise being referred to as that. My usual response is that Newt Gingrich fits that definition (bearing in mind that he served his first wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital for chemotherapy), not I.
Recently, though, I realized another reason that these names were applied, and why the folks who run the media are so happy to use 'em: it suggests that we are less than "normal people", and that we have no lives outside of work, so they don't have to feel bad about sticking pagers on us, and putting us on call 24x7x365.25, nor about making us work weekends, nights, etc....
What I'd like to know is when we start hearing about techno-wimps, and mismanagers, and other names for people who know nothing, but feel they can manage *us*.
mark roth-whitworth
I had a lot of varying problems, too...I just got my BS in '95...at 46. What I wound up doing was using Regents' College (which is *NOT* that POS that the funnymentalists started in one of the Carolinas), which is part of SUNY (the real thing, not a diploma mill). What they do is accept credits from *accredited* schools and tests (like CLEP, or CCP), though they may ask for a syllabus, eventually, when you get the right number of credits, with the right course spread, you get the degree. They do *NOT* have campus classes...I think they've only recently added onlline courses. They also do *not* play this, "you've got to take your last 30/60/whatever credits here" game - if you've passed accredited courses, with a C or better, it's a good credit.
As I understand it, they were invented in '72, during 'Nam, primarily for folks in the military ("we know you're 3 mos from your degree, sorry,
you're going to Dusseldorf for the next year...."), and functioned as a "credit bank". It's gotten a lot bigger, and not just for the military any more, what with the way we all move around. Check it out. I think they're a good deal.
mark roth-whitworth
I went over to take the poll. It is *mindbogglingly* STUPID.
It has been *documented* that the first six out of the seven questions are major factors...yet the poll only lets you choose *one*.
With the exception of math...and not always then, there is no "One True Answer" to anything in the universe, and this is a perfect example.
I *will* mention that what *seems* to be the most influential factor affecting the birth rate is the educational level of the mother. I *believe* I heard, a year or two ago, on NPR, that UN demographers had evidence for this.
Nine billion? Ooog. I did some basic calculations, years ago, and optimistically speaking, the max population for the earth of humans is 2gig...which we went over early, I think, in the 19th century. And for those that disagree, I hope you *really* enjoy your traffic, er, drive out the freeway, tonight, to your homes in the far 'burbs....
mark
Costikyan is one of the original group that *invented* D&D...but I s'pose most of y'all are too young to remember *that*.....
mark
The book, *and* this review.
A *major* chunk of the story occurs in cyberspace...and *another* major chunk is mythological...and somehow, Our Reviewer seems to have glossed all of that over.
Stephenson's cyberspace is as impressive as Gibson's, and yet different; to some degree, one can see it as a progression from the current web, where Gibson's view is nowhere in sight.
On the other hand, I have *always* had a problem with Snowcrash, and one of these cons, I mean to tell Stephenson so: he com*pletely* blows the intellectual climax of the novel (don't worry, it doesn't affect the outcome of the "physical" end", so this isn't exactly a spoiler): since obviously, anyone reading it with anything less than the total immersion will see that the mythological queen/Goddess is the culture hero, for freeing the knowledge of self-hacking, rather than the mythological king/God, who tries to keep it hidden.
It *is* an excellent book, and deserved the Hugo it won. Of course, I just hope my son, in his quest for a job, doesn't wind up deliivering pizza for Domino's...I might have to give him some practice with swords, and then enroll him in a kendo class....
mark
All this bushwah about it...and no link to the revised article? I went over to Jane's, and all I see, in the free section, is still the 9/21 piece.
mark, at work, without hours to search
I started to read the article...and, as I'm at work, have only gotten a few pages in. What I find is an excellent example of why academia, and academic criticism, has so little respect outside its own little pond.
Among the reasons I say this are his beginning with a false quote...with, of course, no link, *nor* does he offer a bibliography. I first heard that quote (one mistake...) in the early 80s, at *least*, and it was about *commercial*, closed-source code. It makes literally no sense in the open source arena (vide the ping-of-death affair).
He procedes to follow this with continual misquotes, rephrased quotes, and allegations with no evidenciary support.
In addition to all the above faults, he clearly does not even understand either ESR, the profession of programming, nor politics. As someone who *is* a socialist, *and* who has known Eric for something like 20 years, the continual references to him as being a "vulgar Marxist" are both amusing and horrifying.
Amusing, in terms of ESR, because as most folks know, he is what is currently referred to in the US as an active 'libertarian', and extremely anti-socialist. I, on the other hand, find the open source movement much more along the lines of 'real' socialism (as opposed to what the right-wing owned media would like y'all to belive), but that it has nothing to do with any form of Marxism, allegedly vulgar or otherwise.
Horrified, as this ejournal seems to be associated with the U of IL (please correct me if I'm wrong), and that it claims, on its home page, to be peer-reviewed. This says *very* little for the reviewing peers who allowed this article, with such flagrant misstatements, unsubstantiated claims, misspelled quotes ("Experiences is what..."), mostly with incomplete attributions, to be published under their byline.
As soon as I find the time, somewhere in the coming week, I intend to respond to this article in full, and submit that as a letter to the journal...and, as I doubt the auther did, intend to copy both ESR and the author, as well slashdot, if y'all want something that long.
mark
Absolutely, M$ should be broken up. AND the government should set up regulations. The fact that Micro$oft was created demonstrates that it could happen again, and with no regulation it will happen again.
Then, of course, there are the comments I've seen here...way too much typical libertarian bs. If it were could, it'd be endless loops, or crashing more often than M$ products.
M$ *is* a "free market" solution. Are y'all advocating *more* of the same?
Also, since y'all have tossed everything that our parents and grandparents fought for out the window, and shot the 8 hour day, and the 40 hour week for all the rest of us, and helped mgmt decide that a) we don't have a life, and b) 100% of our time is owned by them, gov't regulation is the *only* leverage we have left.
mark
Oh, good, so perhaps, soon, getting knocked out in a dark alley, and waking up in a tub full of icewater and stiches on one's side will be a thing of the past....
mark (B-{)}
Lessee, most places I've worked, and that ranges from county gov't, to small co's, to huge co's,
to city gov'ts, *INSIST* on testing, and being as sure as possible that the latest "fix" doesn't break something else.
Anyone want to argue that there are times when it does?
Fixes, where I work now, would *have* to be scheduled a week or two in advance...AT LEAST.
And then there's the problem of large shops. Someone said they worked in a large shop, w/ 200 machines. I have a close friend who works for Walgreens, with something like three thousand UNIX boxen. Anyone who's arguing that each should be applied as soon as they come out, individually, want to discuss what would be involved with 21 patches to 3000 boxes, running 24x7, over remote links?
Emergency fixes, like that on the ping-of-death, are one thing. Smaller fixes should be bundled, and come out a *lot* less frequently. Hell, when I come home, if I want to read my email, or whatever, I don't want to have to spend time, when I could be making dinner, or whatever, putting in the patch-of-the-day.
On the other hand, a regularly scheduled patch-level maintenance would be a Good Idea, if managers could be made to swallow it.
mark
As a number of other posters have pointed out, the article, as is, is on CBNR terrorism, with a global search and replace to add "cyber". Much, if not most, of the article is unrelated to "cyberwarfare" (CW).
For one thing, there is *no* recognition of the direct relation of corporate espionage and warfare to CW. Just last week, for example, a letter was posted by Iambe on the userfriendly web site concerning a sr. IT manager requesting that the co. security & sysadmin perform what, were it done by a political group, instead of a company, would be CW (btw, the author of the letter resigned rather than comply). Clearly, any company is capable of serious CW, and individuals are only slightly less capable. Yet in the article, there is no discussion of corporate CW, both as a training ground for CW agents, and as an instigator of CW. Let us also not forget that merely having been exposed to the idea that it was do-able by ordinary people, *and* *acceptable* *as* *a* *tactic* by socially-acceptable companies, the population of people who would be able and willing to do it is increased dramatically.
Another part of what is wrong with the article is the failure to assimilate the lesson of the Rodney King affair: that a few years after high tech is available, it's old tech, and available on the street, which will find its own uses for it, even as it was suggested in the novels of the cyberpunk genre. Note that, in many cases, those uses will be the same as the "official" uses...just from a different viewpoint.
Refusal to recognize this, while it leads to a terminology that Jane's regular users are familiar with, and perhaps does not cause heart attacks among them, does a great disservice to them, since it does not make clear the real logistical and tactical situation they find themselves in, and with which they may have to deal someday. We do not need another Maginot Line.
Note that "training" is not that important in CW, since any college will provide this, and it is, instead, the intellegence and viewpoint of the people performing the CW.
Consider how easy it is for people to write virii and worms, and that they come from second and third world countries as, or more frequently, as from the first world. Now consider a revolutionary or terrorist group member writing a virus or worm with a timer, which does nothing until the day of their Big Event. All this scenario needs, for the CW side of this, is one college student with net access and any old PC.
Yet another serious issue in security is the dilemma of security vs. inconvenience and obstructionism. Do you force peole to go through all sorts of contortions every time they log on to a machine, or access a file (as in B2 security), all of which slows things down, or do you make it easy for them to do their work, and spend less time in time-waisting contortions?
I also had a problem with the article in the section concerning motivation. What I did *not* notice was anything beyond what I'd hear on tv news. For example, *why* does Hammas have as much support as they do in the West Bank and Gaza? A few years ago, I heard on a news story that Hammas provides half, or more than half, of all the schooling and medical care in those areas.
CW *is* a form of guerilla warfare. The article does not appear to realize this, nor point it out to its readers. I suggest to you that the only real and effective way to counter terrorism, as in any guerilla war, is to reduce the support the local community provides. By doing that, you wind up with a larger base of computer-oriented people who are less willing to perform CW actions, and more willing to fight it on a personal programming and security level.
mark roth-whitworth
whitroth@wwa.com
In fact, I'd like an EMP gun to waste the electronics of the next idiot whose car alarm goes off as I walk by it in a supermarket parking lot, or the second time that night at 0-dark-thirty, because they've got the sensitivity set to, "a pigeon shat on my car!!!"
Instead, I have a *far* more useful device (copyright m. roth-whitworth, 1995-99): a rocket launcher for the front of your car to take out the morons who can't walk and chew gum at the same time, but who insist on permanently attaching their cell phone to their ear, and driving their SUVs (Stupid lUser Vehicles) *badly* in the left lane.... Now what makes *my* rocket device unique is that it uses a vertical-wedge shaped charge.
The advantage of this is that it not only takes out the idiot in front of you, but
1) it splits their vehicle in half up the middle, so that it doesn't get in your way as you keep on driving, and
2) depending on the lane you're in, the two halves of the vehicle formerly in front of you (VFiFoY) take out the jerks on either or both sides of you, who, seeing the removal of the idiot, would otherwise attempt to cut in front of you.
See? *Far* more useful, eliminating two or three pollutants from the shallow end of the gene pool for the price of one! Besides, it would make a nice boom!
mark "now, about the FCC-legal white noise generator on cellphone frequencies..."
But, having skimmed through all the others, I've still got a couple of things to say...
first: criticality: this means that a reaction becomes self-sustaining. If it's not, you get a decreasing number of neutrons (like turning off the stove under a boiling pot of water). If it's in the right range, each reaction generates more-or-less an equal number, so it keeps on keepin' on. Where you get *more* neutrons (to "split more atoms") than you put in is what is know in technospeak as, "boom".
Criticality is significant, but the size is a factor. There's a nuclear reactor in Africa that's been running, on and off, for the last 90 million years. No, that's not fiction: there's a large uranium deposit, and the heat it generates in decay lets it slowly pool together, build up a big reaction, run for millenia, deplete itself, and repeat. Notice that there ain't been no "boom"
Secondly, and *really* important, is not "why humans were allowed to do this instead of machinery...any of you *ever* work in a *real* factory? I have. Would I trust unsupervised machines? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR BLOODY MINDS?
No, the *real* question is why it happened:
1) were they untrained?
2) were they trained inadequately?
3) whether 1) or 2) is true or untrue, were they being told to ignore some safety standards to meet a deadline?
4) or are they so understaffed/undersized ("downsized") that they were working for *way* too many hours, and so more prone to lapses?
I'd *love* to see *these* questions answered...and if any of 'em is true, I'd like to see management on a cross, where they belong, instead of the victims.
mark
Like maybe there's still infalling dust from the Kuiper belt, or the Oort cloud, and since it's not being swept up by planets or moons, it's fairly constant...and would surely affect a *very* unstreamlined vehicle.
For that matter, if the vehicle was decelerating before, and there was more infalling dust, there might be some backwash (no, I didn't say "something to push against, duhhhh"), radiative or otherwise.
mark "would really prefer something more interesting, Mr. L. Green Man...."
Folks, let's do it *now*, before these things come out, and become common, so that they can put warnings on the box:
WARNING: IT IS ILLEAGAL TO USE THIS WHILE DRIVING!!!
mark "wants a legal, 100' range, static generator, for people who can't walk and chew gum, but drive cars (BADLY) and use cellphones at the same time"
Why, on earth, would you want a mouse?
If you're supplied the voice-recognition software, why can't you just *tell* it what to do? Maybe have two buttons on the system, for and , to put you into command mode ("menu bar,start email", "attention, email window"...),
and the rest, you interact with they programs by speaking.
Of course, then you'd have to be able to read, and you'd, why, you'd save space, not having stupid, fuzzy incomprehensible pictures, but plain words....
mark "I hates meeces to pieces!"
"Icon: a small, fuzzy, indistinct picture, meant to replace a perfectly clear and comprehensible word" - the Engineer's Dictionary
Having grown up in Philly, and lived in and around Austin, TX for over seven years, before I moved up here to Chicago, I can say that it's not a lot better here...in Ameritech territory.
Unlike *every* other Baby Bell I've ever dealt with...*and* Mother Bell before that, in "Big A" territory, you pay your monthly fee for a line charge, and there's a charge for Every Single Call.
Every other Baby Bell offers "basic" and "unlimited" service, with "basic" being dialtone, and 72 calls/month, and "unlimited" being not quite twice the price (it used to be $28 or $30/mo) for any number of calls, within the "local calling area", which in every *other* area, meant a calling radius of something on the order of 25 miles.
In Ameritech territory, not only is every call charged individually, but anything over, what, 6.5 miles, or 8.5 miles, I don't remember, is *metered*, just as the article mentions in the UK.
If you ain't got a POP within that radius, it's no different than the UK. C'mon, tell me Ameritech's trying to "limit bandwidth".
mark
Obviously, someone who wants to think they're Important.
*I* don't want to be phone in bed with a lady, or on the john, or when I want a night's sleep, or in the middle of a party, or when I just don't want to be bloody *paged* for the xth time that evening....
I think it's management who promulgates the idea that all us techies have no lives, as an excuse, so that they don't have to feel bad when they can go home, and tell the second, or third, or whatever shift to page us whenever they want, as many times as they want.....
*I* do have a life (well, what's left of it since my wife died), and I do *not* live to make management's bonus'
mark
This is the first time I've ever been a consultant...but I'm also an employee of the consulting firm, not "hourly". *And* I get overtime.
So, what do I think/prefer?
I plan to stay an employee. I don't want to have to deal with taxes, or benefits, etc.
On the other hand, I do like the overtime...I've been a direct employee long enough to truly resent the phrase, "whatever it takes", as though I were an indentured servant. This way, *they* have to consider the cost, not just lay it on me, without any consideration of whether I have a life.
Without that overtime...I see little difference: they force a pager on you, and claim that they're paying you for wearing a ball and chain, and being at their beck and call 24x7x365.25.
On the company's side, it's stupid to not have their own employees build the software, since they'll be the ones maintaining it...but mgmt is utterly clueless (it's the ties - they cut off the blood supply to the brain). Their own employees will tell them something...and several years later, when a crisis hits, and a consultant, brought in, all of a sudden, will tell them the same thing...and they'll listen to them, but not to the employee who told them that, nor will said employee get anything other than an internal "I told 'em so" out of it.
Also, those of you claiming that "all employees are stupid, all contractors are brilliant", are a bunch of young, ignorant assholes, with neither life nor smarts. Consulting firms often hire kids right out of school, with no experience (as I well know, from working at my previous job with folks from half-a-dozen consulting companies, with Andersen being the biggest), who've never written anything big or serious.
Y'all work in a sweatshop, and think working 12 and 15 hour days makes you "important" (and your grandparents, who did the same thing in factories, knew they were being used and abused, and created unions).
Different projects? Hell, of those of you who've worked in the field for 10 or more years, what's the average length at a job, before you move? Three years, isn't it?
Nahh, I'll stay an employee...and I'll be even happier when they finally unionize the field, so we don't *have* to wear fucking pagers all the time, or work 60 and 70 hour weeks.
mark
I would have thought it was preserved there.
Besides, a few years back, I looked into it...and heard that every ISP person I knew of would defenestrate you if you used it, since it apparently *ate* system cycles and resources.
I did find something I thought was better...and won an award from PC Mag in 95 or 96 - SLIPKnot,
which was a WinDoze-based graphical interface to lynx, that used that, and zmodem, to work the same as any other graphical web browser, from a shell account.
mark
Unlike, oh, at least 90% of you kiddies, I *have* worked on mainframes (which, btw, are not antiques, guys - IBM, just three or four years ago, recorded its best sales of m'frames ever), as well as PCs and UNIX.
This *entire* scare is like the toilet paper shortage of the early 80s (yes, that was a joke, too).
First of all, the *usual* practice on mainframes was to store dates as computer-version *JULIAN*.
This means that today would be 25299, or maybe 2521999. Makes it a *hell* of a lot easier to calculate dates, and differences, y'know. Therefore, it'd be *real* unlikely that we'll run into the date 99999...unless we go to a calander that has > 1000 days/year.
Second, y'all folks that have been talking ignorant BS about COBOL...yes, I *have* written more than enough of it, and yes, I have a button suggesting that we can stamp it out in our lifetime...but COBOL has *other* EOF markers than "9999", does *NOT* read data as a stream, but is buffered, and reads only structures, so it won't "find a 9999 in the middle of a record and stop" (sorry, only DOS does that with a -z (0x81)).
Also, a reasonable "no cancellation" date would either be HIVALUES (which came in the version of COBOL I was using in '79, in school), or 99999...which, again, is certainly not a valid date.
Why do y'all believe the media's bs? Why do you think anyone who programmed before you started school was dumber than you?
mark
19 years programming experience
software engineer
m/f (DL/1), pc, & UNIX dba,
technical architect
configuration manager
UNIX sysadmin
First, the trivial:
now, I haven't seen Opera, but...I've used both Chamelean and Hummingbird's X emulation (at a couple of jobs, including the one I'm at now), and *both* of them have an option in the X setup that specifies all-in-one-window, or seperate windows. Doesn't Opera have this? Anybody know?
Now, the important point:
Text browsers are Good. I normally run Netscrape, with auto-image loading turned off. Last year, I b'lieve it was, I saw a study, done at Yahoo, or some equally huge site, and they found that 80%, I believe it was, of *all* the netsurfers passing through had their auto-image loading turned off.
*sigh*
Given that, the only explanation I have is that marketing types, or folks with less of a clue than Steph (from UserFriendly), since something like half to two-thirds of the web sight I run across, including places like DEC and M$ (of course), have NO ALTERNATE LABELS, and so, all you see is a bunch of freakin' boxes, and you have to load images, just to see which one says, "continue", or whatever (so you don't get dragged to some other idiotic sight which proceeds to eat your system with 55 browsers).
So, if Opera's going to have a text-mode version, tables, and other stuff are just fine...but can it take a jpg or gif of the word "next", and translate it to text? If not, what *can* we do about these morons?
mark
And self-serving bs
Productivity hasn't gone up? Well, just make all those folks salaried employees, including the secretaries (who are all now office managers, and administrative assistants), and then management can tell 'em, "whatever it takes", and they get to work 50, 60, and 70 hour weeks.
So, *how* productive are you, week after week, when you're exhausted? When management keeps changing the specs? When they demand meetings that require *everyone* there, where they go through each person, one after the other, trying to figure out where they are...while *all* the others do nothing (nap time!)? And that, of course, because they don't know what they're doing, or how to manage...or are caught in turf battles between the next level up of management, and *can't* manage.
All this, of course, is after everyone's been undersized (forget downsizing, that *ain't* what happened).
All you do on a computer (except fer us actual programmers & sysadmins, and other techies), is research data, and write about data. It *still* requires a human being to comprehend the data, make sense of the patterns, and decide how to respond to it. *Nothing* increases that speed, except experience, and training. Companies almost *never* want to pay for the experience they need (they'd often rather hire someone, often for less, with a piece of paper that says they know something, over someone who's been *doing* the work for years), and most often, training consists of, "here's your cube, and you can ask questions of so-and-so over there" (who's got their own work to do, and may have no training or ability to teach).
You really want some amount of productivity increase? Downsize the multiple layers of middle management, who know neither the business, nor how to effectively do the work (ever get specs from them, and not be able to talk to the actual people who *do* the work?), nor, often, have *any* power to make any decisions.
Then get rid of the upper management who were hired from another industry, and have no idea what the business is about, nor what's involved in keeping it going, and only care about "reducing costs, and increasing 'profitability' over the course of the next quarter...esp. since they'll leave in about three years, anyway, and go somewhere else, leaving a trail of gutted departments in their wake.
Oh, yes, and treat the people who actually *know* their stuff, and do it *right*, as though you want to keep them going for the long term, not as consumables (a certain well-known consulting company, which shall remain nameless, but whose initials start with A.A., who I've not worked for, but with its people, is famous for the latter).
And yes, I've experienced *all* of the above, in the nearly 19 years I've been programming, and most of the above happened in medium-to-large companies.
But, as the "There Oughta Be A Law" cartoon I saw 15 years ago said, "Problem with hardware? Throw $$ at it. Problem with the building? throw $$ at it. etc... Problem with people? Improve their morale".
mark
"The beating will continue until morale improves"
"The meetings will continue, until we find out why productivity has dropped"