Absolutely. Are you caught up on your offerings to Zeus and Hera? Because their existence hasn't been disproven, you know.
Do you ever ponder on the fact that, disregarding us non-believers, the vast majority of the people who -do- believe in a god, believe that your belief is wrong? That they are just as certain as you are that god exists, but he looks like they want him to? How do you reconcile your belief with the observation that, while religious belief is common, it nearly always manifests itself in a manner that is absolutely inherently contradictory to yours?
When you religious people sort out whether it's christianity, islam, hinduism, zoroastrianism, or the purple spaghetti monster that is the right way, send the rest of us an email so that we can know which orthodoxy to disbelieve. Until then, feel free to continue to ignore what logic tells you.
Sorry, this doesn't make sense. While I am no fan of Prohibition, on the war on some drugs, I believe it makes sense to make it illegal to drive under the influence of alcohol, because alcohol is particularly damaging to coordination, in a way that few other influences are. This impact to coordination, perception and judgement happens to -every- user of alcohol, it happens -every- time you consume a sufficient amount of alcohol, and there is a significant, measurable, contribution to the death rate due to drunken driving. Add to this that the victims are often completely innocent and unconnected to the drinker, and drunk driving starts to look like a very sensible thing to prohibit.
I do NOT feel the same about the zero tolerence laws, or the.08% laws, or similar feel good extensions of the principal. The basic law, however, makes just as much sense as prohibiting people from dumping poisonous chemicals into drinking water. You are prohibiting behavior by one individual that can hurt another individual, who would have no reasonable way of protecting themselves without the prohibition existing. That is absolutely a reasonable place for lawmaking.
Ive been a tech, then I was a manager for a long time, now I'm a geek again, by choice. I was a good and popular manager, with both my bosses, and especially my staff. I have managed teams of up to about 50 people.
Being a manager is about 1) getting things done, 2) with people, 3) more efficiently than if you weren't involved with the process, 4) in a way that is sustainable over the appropriate horizon, 5) as perceived by your superiors. Focus on those things, in about that order, and you'll be fine. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this. Sometimes #3 is best accomplished by you taking off and playing golf. Really. Don't make changes to the way things are done now lightly, and figure out who on your staff would appreciate being asked their opinion. Make sure that you also figure out whose opinion you should listen to. Realize that you team still wants to like you, but needs to respect you as being fair. Pick a moment to do something that is unpopular, but the right thing to do.
I suggest a book called Leader Effectiveness Training, available from amazon, and, if you are leading devs, Controlling Software Projects by Tom DeMarcos. A lot of his stuff is out of date, but a lot isn't.
Have fun. Being a manager means you get to try and focus a group to achieve something that is bigger than what you can do alone. That can be great fun.
The reason science and engineering enrollment has fallen off is lack of demand for US citizens in these fields.
If demand had fallen off for these fields, we wouldn't see the salaries that we do. Four year engineering graduates command the highest salaries of any graduate (four year programs). This is a direct indication of scarcity. The H1-B program allows foreign engineers to come in, and employers use it, despite it's onerous requirements. This is an indication of scarcity. Recruiters in the engineering and IT fields make money sourcing candidates. This is an indication of scarcity.
There is no surer route to a decent job with good pay and good benefits in the US than an engineering degree, IF you have the underlying skills. What Mr Backus(sp) fails to recognize is that there isn't an inexhaustable, untapped pool of people with the intellectual capability and work habits necessary to become a capable engineer. There is no teacher or program, for example, that could turn one of my brothers into an computer programmer. He just doesn't have the horsepower. Money doesn't change that.
I suspect that the majority of people in the US who have the inclination and skill to become an engineer/scientist/mathematician are already doing so today. This program would lower their debt, but I doubt it would affect the supply pool that much.
However, we have seen cupboards, and we have seen pencils, so it is meaningful to discuss whether there might in fact be a pencil in the cupboard. We have never seen a god. We have seen hundreds of cultures that have believed in hundreds of gods, and have seen no evidence of any of them. Absent the existence proof that -a- god exists, I'll pass on using any such belief as a foundation for my world view.
As the bumper sticker reads, "Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby".
so I may be off the mark here, but can someone explain a situation where a computer would need to have its firewall dropped totally merely to transfer data from one system to another?
Easy. The firewall probably prohibited FTP traffic and they wanted to use FTP or similar to move the files, which is generally regarded as a Good Thing. A better approach would have been to put in a rule temporarily that would have allowed the connection, just between the computers in question. Probably the workers in question didn't know how to config the firewalls to do this, so they unplugged it, and forgot to put it back. However, even taking the firewall down for a few minutes is an egregious breach - the mean time to a port scan these days for an exposed machine is on the order of minutes, and the machines would almost certainly have been scanned and compromises attempted during this time.
For as much trash talk I hear about Vista around here I'm not seeing too much of it on the streets. The handful of Vista adopters I know don't seem to be having such a hard time with it and it seems that the situation is only getting better for Vista.
I dunno. A good friend of mine described Vista as making a Core 2 Duo about as fast as a P3 with XP. He won't install it on his parents' computer yet. Oh yeah, he works at MSFT, in one of the OS teams. He recommends XP still. Have we heard that one before?
Generally it's not possible to short stocks that are below $5, at least through my broker (Schwab). As another poster noted, there have to be shares available, too, and I doubt that would have been the case.
We have a new jargon winner, Ladies and Gentlemen!
The parent should either be modded informative or bullshit, and I can't tell which, which I'm finding pretty amusing.
Mod me toasted.
Exactly. Auditors are not in the business of putting you out of business, though it may seem that way. They are simply responsible for certifying that you have a reasonable system in place. For this problem, having a OSS solution will set you up for some effort in educating the auditors in the details of how you solved the problem, which expense needs to be compared to the costs of a commercial solution. If you had a large amount of data, the OSS solution may be much more economical once you are past the onetime costs of developing the solution and educating the auditors.
One thought to consider, though. Have you considered the career implications of developing a custom solution? Do you want to be supporting this for the rest of your life with this outfit. A commerical solution comes with a support infrastructure, which means that a new employee can perhaps be more easily trained. There are job quality implications in pursuing the OSS alternative, make sure you want those.
On a somewhat unrelated point, with regards to SOX in general, this really points out the costs that the current implementation of SOX adds to our costs of doing business. All of this complexity and effort ultimately goes into the cost of the products of a company. Countries that do not implement these types of regulations will have an inherently lower cost of doing business, and production will ultimately flow to those countries.
I hate the enron debacle as much as anyone, but SOX is a great example of killing a fly with a sledgehammer.
On the question of airline security, I encourage you all to perform the same little experiment I do. I will often leave a golf ball mark repair tool in my pocket while going through security. This is a piece of soft steel, about 3 inches long, 1/2 inch wide, and about 1/16 inch thick, with prongs on it. In other words, it has more metal in it than a box cutter.
In my travels, this tool has -never- been detected by the metal detectors. I've run this experiment about 6 times now, through SFO, LAX, DFW and O'hare.
The laptops that flood onto planes have plenty of nooks and crannies in which blades could be secreted. A blade fits in the crevice between my battery and the wall of the case. Since this is vertical when it goes through the Xray, I have no doubt that it would pass.
The much vaunted liquid explosives that are causing us to fear sippy cups are a non-starter. Google the reaction, it starts with instructions on the order of "collect 5 gallons of ice. Mix reagents carefully, and stir for 45 minutes. " I think I can determine a more robust security procedure than forbidding water bottles.
I am right now trying to get two desktops from Dell, for a training program next week. I ordered them last week, and paid for overnight shipping. When they didn't arrive as anticipated, I looked up the status, and found that they were to ship -next- wednesday, the last day of the training. Hm-m-m-m.
When I called the nice lady in India, she informed me that "Overnight shipping sijmply means that, when we ship the computer, it arrices the next day." Oh, really? It was beyond her understanding that the reason that people pay for overnight shipping is that they are hoping to receive the good promptly, and that perhaps customers might not understand the value proposition for overnight shipping taking place two weeks in the future.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but there is a well thought out calculation that can be found with a little googling. You get a certain number of hour equivalents ever day, even cloudy days. It affects the amperage you get out of the panels. On shorter days, you get fewer amps. On darker days, you get fewer amps. I think I figured on getting 6 hours a day in the winter, and up to 14 in the summer. The net-net was that you get useful power, each and every day, even in Seattle.
I was looking into a net metered installation. In this, you remain connected to the grid, and your own generation either powers your house if you are currently using electricity, or runs your meter backwards if you don't need power right now. This is a pretty interesting approach, and it offers a lot of promise for America.
I'm sorry, that's just paranoid. Check out the financial statements of Evergreen Solar, or Corning, two of the producers of panels. They're not printing money. It is a fact that it is not yet economical to power your house with solar, and it's due primarily to the cost of manufacturing the panels. The costs -are- declining, but it's not yet cheaper than coal, hydro, or nuclear. Of course, those sources have significant external costs that are not factored into their market price. When we think through how to tax and charge for these sources of power, the balance will flip over towards more of the solar installations. As production rates rise for these, the cost will drop, and it will become feasible for most of us.
I just priced out a full solar electric replacement for my house in the Seattle area. I think I could power my electric needs (I have gas heat) for a capital investment of about $40k. The payback, even after significant subsidies from the state, was something like 17 years. That's not gonna get Ma and Pa America to convert yet. Once power rates double, and they will, it starts to become close to interesting. When the power rates double again, and they will, the world will convert.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm looking for the -3 bad pun moderation option, but can't find it.
And the existence of God cannot be disproven.
Absolutely. Are you caught up on your offerings to Zeus and Hera? Because their existence hasn't been disproven, you know.
Do you ever ponder on the fact that, disregarding us non-believers, the vast majority of the people who -do- believe in a god, believe that your belief is wrong? That they are just as certain as you are that god exists, but he looks like they want him to? How do you reconcile your belief with the observation that, while religious belief is common, it nearly always manifests itself in a manner that is absolutely inherently contradictory to yours?
When you religious people sort out whether it's christianity, islam, hinduism, zoroastrianism, or the purple spaghetti monster that is the right way, send the rest of us an email so that we can know which orthodoxy to disbelieve. Until then, feel free to continue to ignore what logic tells you.
Sorry, this doesn't make sense. While I am no fan of Prohibition, on the war on some drugs, I believe it makes sense to make it illegal to drive under the influence of alcohol, because alcohol is particularly damaging to coordination, in a way that few other influences are. This impact to coordination, perception and judgement happens to -every- user of alcohol, it happens -every- time you consume a sufficient amount of alcohol, and there is a significant, measurable, contribution to the death rate due to drunken driving. Add to this that the victims are often completely innocent and unconnected to the drinker, and drunk driving starts to look like a very sensible thing to prohibit.
.08% laws, or similar feel good extensions of the principal. The basic law, however, makes just as much sense as prohibiting people from dumping poisonous chemicals into drinking water. You are prohibiting behavior by one individual that can hurt another individual, who would have no reasonable way of protecting themselves without the prohibition existing. That is absolutely a reasonable place for lawmaking.
I do NOT feel the same about the zero tolerence laws, or the
For example, can you say, "tobacco companies"?
You say this like it's a bad thing...
Ive been a tech, then I was a manager for a long time, now I'm a geek again, by choice. I was a good and popular manager, with both my bosses, and especially my staff. I have managed teams of up to about 50 people.
Being a manager is about 1) getting things done, 2) with people, 3) more efficiently than if you weren't involved with the process, 4) in a way that is sustainable over the appropriate horizon, 5) as perceived by your superiors. Focus on those things, in about that order, and you'll be fine. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this. Sometimes #3 is best accomplished by you taking off and playing golf. Really. Don't make changes to the way things are done now lightly, and figure out who on your staff would appreciate being asked their opinion. Make sure that you also figure out whose opinion you should listen to. Realize that you team still wants to like you, but needs to respect you as being fair. Pick a moment to do something that is unpopular, but the right thing to do.
I suggest a book called Leader Effectiveness Training, available from amazon, and, if you are leading devs, Controlling Software Projects by Tom DeMarcos. A lot of his stuff is out of date, but a lot isn't.
Have fun. Being a manager means you get to try and focus a group to achieve something that is bigger than what you can do alone. That can be great fun.
The reason science and engineering enrollment has fallen off is lack of demand for US citizens in these fields.
If demand had fallen off for these fields, we wouldn't see the salaries that we do. Four year engineering graduates command the highest salaries of any graduate (four year programs). This is a direct indication of scarcity. The H1-B program allows foreign engineers to come in, and employers use it, despite it's onerous requirements. This is an indication of scarcity. Recruiters in the engineering and IT fields make money sourcing candidates. This is an indication of scarcity.
There is no surer route to a decent job with good pay and good benefits in the US than an engineering degree, IF you have the underlying skills. What Mr Backus(sp) fails to recognize is that there isn't an inexhaustable, untapped pool of people with the intellectual capability and work habits necessary to become a capable engineer. There is no teacher or program, for example, that could turn one of my brothers into an computer programmer. He just doesn't have the horsepower. Money doesn't change that.
I suspect that the majority of people in the US who have the inclination and skill to become an engineer/scientist/mathematician are already doing so today. This program would lower their debt, but I doubt it would affect the supply pool that much.
Damn, they need to get Linux.
(eom)
However, we have seen cupboards, and we have seen pencils, so it is meaningful to discuss whether there might in fact be a pencil in the cupboard. We have never seen a god. We have seen hundreds of cultures that have believed in hundreds of gods, and have seen no evidence of any of them. Absent the existence proof that -a- god exists, I'll pass on using any such belief as a foundation for my world view.
As the bumper sticker reads, "Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby".
so I may be off the mark here, but can someone explain a situation where a computer would need to have its firewall dropped totally merely to transfer data from one system to another?
Easy. The firewall probably prohibited FTP traffic and they wanted to use FTP or similar to move the files, which is generally regarded as a Good Thing. A better approach would have been to put in a rule temporarily that would have allowed the connection, just between the computers in question. Probably the workers in question didn't know how to config the firewalls to do this, so they unplugged it, and forgot to put it back. However, even taking the firewall down for a few minutes is an egregious breach - the mean time to a port scan these days for an exposed machine is on the order of minutes, and the machines would almost certainly have been scanned and compromises attempted during this time.
Or that her pussy smells like hot meat.
For as much trash talk I hear about Vista around here I'm not seeing too much of it on the streets. The handful of Vista adopters I know don't seem to be having such a hard time with it and it seems that the situation is only getting better for Vista.
I dunno. A good friend of mine described Vista as making a Core 2 Duo about as fast as a P3 with XP. He won't install it on his parents' computer yet. Oh yeah, he works at MSFT, in one of the OS teams. He recommends XP still. Have we heard that one before?
Generally it's not possible to short stocks that are below $5, at least through my broker (Schwab). As another poster noted, there have to be shares available, too, and I doubt that would have been the case.
We have a new jargon winner, Ladies and Gentlemen! The parent should either be modded informative or bullshit, and I can't tell which, which I'm finding pretty amusing. Mod me toasted.
I'm sorry for the worthless post, but that last line was the funniest thing I've read this week. And I've wasted a LOT of time at work this week.
That's not sick, that's funny. I wish I had mod points for you.
I dunno. I don't see us putting a lot of value on the lives of people with Iraqi surnames. We've killed as many of them as Saddam did.
I guess GW might say, "They're dead, but by gum, they're free now!"
You need to add the qualification: "... with another person."
Exactly. Auditors are not in the business of putting you out of business, though it may seem that way. They are simply responsible for certifying that you have a reasonable system in place. For this problem, having a OSS solution will set you up for some effort in educating the auditors in the details of how you solved the problem, which expense needs to be compared to the costs of a commercial solution. If you had a large amount of data, the OSS solution may be much more economical once you are past the onetime costs of developing the solution and educating the auditors.
One thought to consider, though. Have you considered the career implications of developing a custom solution? Do you want to be supporting this for the rest of your life with this outfit. A commerical solution comes with a support infrastructure, which means that a new employee can perhaps be more easily trained. There are job quality implications in pursuing the OSS alternative, make sure you want those.
On a somewhat unrelated point, with regards to SOX in general, this really points out the costs that the current implementation of SOX adds to our costs of doing business. All of this complexity and effort ultimately goes into the cost of the products of a company. Countries that do not implement these types of regulations will have an inherently lower cost of doing business, and production will ultimately flow to those countries.
I hate the enron debacle as much as anyone, but SOX is a great example of killing a fly with a sledgehammer.
On the question of airline security, I encourage you all to perform the same little experiment I do. I will often leave a golf ball mark repair tool in my pocket while going through security. This is a piece of soft steel, about 3 inches long, 1/2 inch wide, and about 1/16 inch thick, with prongs on it. In other words, it has more metal in it than a box cutter.
In my travels, this tool has -never- been detected by the metal detectors. I've run this experiment about 6 times now, through SFO, LAX, DFW and O'hare.
The laptops that flood onto planes have plenty of nooks and crannies in which blades could be secreted. A blade fits in the crevice between my battery and the wall of the case. Since this is vertical when it goes through the Xray, I have no doubt that it would pass.
The much vaunted liquid explosives that are causing us to fear sippy cups are a non-starter. Google the reaction, it starts with instructions on the order of "collect 5 gallons of ice. Mix reagents carefully, and stir for 45 minutes. " I think I can determine a more robust security procedure than forbidding water bottles.
When do we take our country back from the idiots?
I am right now trying to get two desktops from Dell, for a training program next week. I ordered them last week, and paid for overnight shipping. When they didn't arrive as anticipated, I looked up the status, and found that they were to ship -next- wednesday, the last day of the training. Hm-m-m-m.
When I called the nice lady in India, she informed me that "Overnight shipping sijmply means that, when we ship the computer, it arrices the next day." Oh, really? It was beyond her understanding that the reason that people pay for overnight shipping is that they are hoping to receive the good promptly, and that perhaps customers might not understand the value proposition for overnight shipping taking place two weeks in the future.
I used to be a big fan of Dell.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but there is a well thought out calculation that can be found with a little googling. You get a certain number of hour equivalents ever day, even cloudy days. It affects the amperage you get out of the panels. On shorter days, you get fewer amps. On darker days, you get fewer amps. I think I figured on getting 6 hours a day in the winter, and up to 14 in the summer. The net-net was that you get useful power, each and every day, even in Seattle.
I was looking into a net metered installation. In this, you remain connected to the grid, and your own generation either powers your house if you are currently using electricity, or runs your meter backwards if you don't need power right now. This is a pretty interesting approach, and it offers a lot of promise for America.
I'm sorry, that's just paranoid. Check out the financial statements of Evergreen Solar, or Corning, two of the producers of panels. They're not printing money. It is a fact that it is not yet economical to power your house with solar, and it's due primarily to the cost of manufacturing the panels. The costs -are- declining, but it's not yet cheaper than coal, hydro, or nuclear. Of course, those sources have significant external costs that are not factored into their market price. When we think through how to tax and charge for these sources of power, the balance will flip over towards more of the solar installations. As production rates rise for these, the cost will drop, and it will become feasible for most of us.
I just priced out a full solar electric replacement for my house in the Seattle area. I think I could power my electric needs (I have gas heat) for a capital investment of about $40k. The payback, even after significant subsidies from the state, was something like 17 years. That's not gonna get Ma and Pa America to convert yet. Once power rates double, and they will, it starts to become close to interesting. When the power rates double again, and they will, the world will convert.