Someone I know told me that her husband, who interviewed with the cpanel guys, was given top secret insider information that they were developing cpanel for windows. She added that I should keep quiet about this 'privileged' information.
My reply was silence. Partly because interviewees don't get insider information. The other part came from looking at their website and noticing that they publically announced windows cpanel development. The last reason why I was silent was --- CPANEL FOR WINDOWS? YOU NEED CPANEL FOR WINDOWS?
Seriously - why put cpanel behind a product you MUST pay a license for? Isn't the beauty of web control panels making free as in beer linux admin-friendly? I hope some fellow geeks side with me on my response.
Have you honestly ever seen a piece of text that was not biased? In my opinion, Universities, Colleges, Schools, Employers and so forth should stay out of facebook and personal web pages; however, in real life that just does not happen. Employers actually spend some time researching their applicants. Two former employers of mine have actually told me they liked my personal web page. I am happy that they found my electronics projects very interesting but it does make me wonder if I have been rejected for a job because of someone not liking my hair style in 2001. Don't buy into my anectodal evidence until you experience this for yourself.
New college students are not stupid. My job allows me to witness thousands of them coping with a new environment every semester. While their culture is "radically" different from three decades ago, it is no indication of decadence. New college students are, however, detached from the hiring class. Employers have wrist watches; applicants have loud cell phones. Employers wore hip clothes back in the day; applicants showed their underwear to the world. It's true that these new whippersnappers may not survive in the wilderness, be able to construct a shelter or grow vegetables -- but they will be able to assimilate into the workforce easily as the industry branches out and expands.
So, as someone in position of administering policies I feel that it is my duty to (at the very least) inform students of dangers of putting out an informal portfolio. I feel that they aren't aware of the real dangers in life - discrimination. In theory facebook is just personal expression. In practice, it's a nice source of dirt for sinister employers and as a bonus to them, it is neatly cataloged. Does the University know what's better for their own students? I don't think so. I do think that the Universities are trying to protect their alumni from being haunted by the past - even though they are doing it the wrong way.
For example, I have seen internship applications shredded on the spot because the brilliant, colorful and well-qualified applicant put down their email address on the application as "halfpimp69@.. whatever.com". I do not know what a half pimp is, but I do know discrimination when I see it and I feel powerless to stop it. Prevention and information just might be the key.
Some reform is desparately needed; I suppose this is as good of a start as any. Software patents can severely diminish small companies and individuals from releasing software without fear and making some money out of it.
Imagine someone taking a patent out on a device that by means of a spring and plastic somehow disables and enables a machine by use of what is coined in the patent declaration as a "power" switch.
Talk about absurd! A similar analogy can be drawn from some software patents and as much as I hate to defend the borg, some of the recent Microsoft court loses seemed absurd at first look. Common procedures done in "office" software. Can someone really patent part of a document-database-exchange? See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/17/06 38233&from=rss
There are many variations of this aphorism coming from many cultures. I distinctly recall seeing an earlier slashdot posting (many moons ago) where the fishing version was claimed as having come from the bible; however, moments later the mistaken slashdotter was corrected by a man familiar with Chinese philosophy.
..of power to weight ratios. A bigger vehicle with a small engine will not be as efficient as with a mid-size engine. On the other hand, same small engine will be more efficient in a smaller vehicle. If you follow that trend to a vehicle size of a skateboard, you get some "incredible efficiencies," but they are unrealistic as they cannot be applied to a modern day concept of vehicles. Having said that, it's important to recognize that there are better and worse engine designs out there; it is not just a simple matter of weight and power ratios when it comes to the consumer.
This headline is wishful thinking. I suddenly got reminded of the "500 ghz chip" news story from earlier this week. Most people started drooling over that headline thinking a new CPU speed barrier has been reached, when in actuality the speed referred to a single switching transistor running at ridiculously controlled conditions.
Of course, the 100 mile per gallon carb lives in every last romantic one of us.
1- Limit access to a dungeon to players who are within +/- 5 levels of each other (to prevent people from farming equipment for their "twink" characters)
2- Restrict enchant levels. Why should a level 19 rogue have crusader or life stealing?
For a comprehensive list of complaints see my hate site:
For me, the most confusing thing about linux is the variance of licenses.
I can understand the variations of programs: window managers, desktop managers, mp3 players, video players, etc, etc. However, I can't even begin to grasp the variation in licenses associated with linux programs. Anyone else as clueless as me?
What people fail to understand is that the Renaissance was started in Italy because of a vacuum, more or less. The black plague swept through Europe, starting from Italy and spreading outward. Therefore, Italy was the first to recover from it and also the first to recover its economic situation and its population. What happened afterwards was the good old case of arts following financing.
As for the Silicon Valley, this is my speculative side talking now: I believe it was the level of regional education and sound economic framework that allowed it to develop there. Think, why hippie California and not Bangladesh? I don't think introducing a plague would help us recreate it. On the other hand, another world war just might do the trick.
Scurvy is a vitamin defficiency, not a contagious disease.
My favorite scurvy quote: "I had a horrible rash, and I was afraid that it was scurvy! I couldn't understand it because I had been making sure to eat lots of spinach. Then I went to the doctor and he said that it was just genital herpes. What a relief!"
Seriously, how accurate do you want a first shooter video game to be? While playing www.americasarmy.com should you be able to: desert while in a campaign, start a family, dig irrigation ditches for your farm, build your own mud brick house from materials found in the "map", convert to Islam, buy a lamb every year to be slaughtered for your neighbors?
I can understand some frustrations with gamers over "inaccurate physics" as they put it; namely, the indestructible door, the kevlar walking plank, but you should ignore those in favor of having:
an inexhaustible amount of energy for movement
an ability to carry multiple weapons unimpeded
a lack of shoulder wear due to firing recoil
a lack of sunburn damage and related skin cancer in outdoor "maps"
a heads-up display (do you want to count bullet firing sounds?)
a non-existant gastro-intestinal system
a lack of dehydration and pathogens
Would you really want to play a game so "accurate" that you could die from diseases?
*** dino213b was killed by an e-coli infection he contracted while drinking contaminated water provided to him
Suspension of disbelief works for movies, why shouldn't it work for games too? I would personally like to be able to blow up every standing building in every game, but, from a programming perspective that would require way too much of hardware and development time.
That is an excellent point. Who would examine damages upon returning the vehicle? Most people think of a car as a huge object and examine it as a whole. If the bumper isn't smashed in, there are no damages and we can ignore the 15 dents around the body of the car. The actual value of the vehicle depreciates based on cosmetics just as it does on the drivetrain condition. Why is it that insurance companies will not (as a whole) help get your engine rebuilt, but, they will pay insane amounts for small scratches on the bumpers? The answer is: superficial values of cars.
The general idea (at least in the US) is this : the industry is geared towards pretty cars. Without human beings inspecting conditions of vehicles upon leaving+return, it is very easy to blame someone else on issues. Not all damages are spotted every time even in cases where vehicles are inspected by professionals, so just imagine how amateurs would do it. If the last guy ignored the problem, so may the next guy until more problems show up-- and then YOU just may be blamed for all of them at once.
Another comment to ponder is conditions of vehicles. Cleaning a vehicle once per week is downright terrible. The rental vehicles in traditional companies are cleaned more frequently than that, and they are still unacceptably dirty. It costs a lot of $$ to detail a vehicle and cleaners are simply not paid enough to work harder nor are they given proper machinery to get everything spiffy. I thought it was amusing how the advertisements mention fancy cars, "if you want a mazda convertible, blah blah,..", "or if you want a fast muscle car you can alter your plans by an hour". In my experiences, people are more upset about fancy cars being slightly dirty than by mundane cars being completely dirty.
For example, this is what I have seen over the years:
Un-vacuumed, unwashed Dodge Magnum (say $40/day): no problem
Shiny clean Mercedes C280 or a Cadillac DeVille (say $115/day): THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. THESE TIRES LOOK EMBARASSINGLY DIRTY. TIRE SHINE HAS NOT BEEN PUT ON THESE TIRES. I DEMAND TO SPEAK WITH YOUR MANAGER.
I can understand the convenience of self-serve car rental, but, I am horrified by the possibilities of problems and inconveniences of service. Then again, how do you complain about the vehicle? Must be interesting not to have someone to yell at upon returning a vehicle.
..I think this parent thread is a whacky conspiracy theory.
First of all, the White House can't even prevent its own leaks. What would have stopped AP, Reuters and many legions of reporters from mentioning this news about a pyramid discovery? Secondly, the "Pyramid" has not been actually discovered yet. In fact, there is no discovery. Local citizens have always referred to the site as a potential pyramid; I remember these legends being told to me since I was a child. The name of the site, Visoko, is a conjugated form of "tall".
This latest publicity stunt is just that - a publicity stunt. The person who is currently digging, gospodin Semir Osmanagic, should be given credit for revitalizing the interest in the site. In the name of science, he is going to need all the help he can get to push past the resistance of both skeptics and the local land speculators (yes, that is already happening in anticipation of discovery related tourism). In my opinion, he is a valued spearhead in the search for knowledge.
If there is a pyramid out there, let us all discover it patiently; conspiracy theories and quick conclusions are not helping. Bosnia has gone through waves of cultures over the years, from Illyrians to Ottomans. A Roman fortification was once built on top of the location; going through layers of discovery will take some time. This project needs careful support in terms of excavation and other logistics before the Bosnian winter sets in. How about a public call for archeological internships?
On the other hand, it would be nice to see an onslaught of frenzied Egyptologists pump up the Bosnian economy!
For programmers, networking is a nightmare. Forget the difficult part of making a complex game. Networking is a nightmare all by itself. There are simply game design limitations attributed to that.
Being aware of these limitations, Blizzard should have known better. On my webpage criticizing World of Warcraft, http://www.redrival.com/hateown/ I postulated that Blizzard's design team is to blame for network instability. In a graph on that website I've shown my view of Blizzard's design team constantly increasing massive interaction throughout their worlds. I suspect this is the sole reason why they are unable to cope with volume of customers. As more and more people fight a single super-monster, the networking takes a beating. If the monster hits someone in a particular dungeon (aka instance), aside from the obvious the server has to:
- cycle through 40 players to see if anyone else got hit by splash damage - notify each of the 40 players that someone or more people got hit
furthermore, when a single player whacks at the monster with their sword (or what have you), the server has to notify every other client about it.
In their design, Blizzard made use of a synchronized clock "aka tick" that is used for synchronizing actions. Good thinking, but it has a breaking point. I believe they are now reaching that point by causing more and more and more players to "chunk". Now, they are dumping the task of making everything better on network admins and scapegoating network issues as opposed to content design issues. It is too late now to take back multiple instances added through patches.
See website for more complaints or to add your 2c:
Hm, no, that is not my argument at all. My argument was that efficiency is important, at least to some users who don't feel like upgrading hardware senselessly. Deeper you get into electrical engineering, more invisible the dividing line between hardware and software gets. I merely invoked the windows vs linux performance issue as proof that efficiency is important.
However, you are right to read that my point was unclear -- just as it is unclear how the master point will affect us all in the long term. Further studies are needed, and I made an early biased decision to side with Linus for some odd reason. Do you think Linus tried a similar model in the past and saw disastrous results? Without speculating on those possibilities, his response is very fiery and I bought it.
Time will tell how this issue develops. Thanks for reminding me that I, like many others, polarize on beliefs instead of tested facts.
I can appreciate Linus' devotion to lean code. I have seen the results. My workstation (at work, no less, duh) in 1999 was so incredibly slow and my company was bitten in the pockets by the ram price surges that Windows would barely run on it. The company that I worked for used a web-based system, so a gui web browser would be vital to my needs. Without waiting for a miracle (that never came) I fixed the problem by installing linux on the machine.
The difference in performance between windows and linux on that machine was night and day. Even with only 32 megs of ram, the machine was responsive enough for me to be able to do much more than surf the company's internal web management site. Linux worked where windows 95, 98, nt failed miserably. I ran xfree86 on it, latest version of Mozilla at the time, gaim (was gaim even around back then? surely so), and psdoom (everyone must have it!). Windows versions of these programs would drain so much memory, it wasn't funny.
Needless to say, I can appreciate any angry rants revolving around computer performance. Larger the operating system and the apps get, every bit counts.
This experiment has already been performed, although on a much smaller scale. In the experiment, the monkeys resorted to flinging feces at the machine. If you extrapolate their performance, that's a lot of feces.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone I know told me that her husband, who interviewed with the cpanel guys, was given top secret insider information that they were developing cpanel for windows. She added that I should keep quiet about this 'privileged' information.
My reply was silence. Partly because interviewees don't get insider information. The other part came from looking at their website and noticing that they publically announced windows cpanel development. The last reason why I was silent was --- CPANEL FOR WINDOWS? YOU NEED CPANEL FOR WINDOWS?
Seriously - why put cpanel behind a product you MUST pay a license for? Isn't the beauty of web control panels making free as in beer linux admin-friendly? I hope some fellow geeks side with me on my response.
Saw it too..
You should add your sig into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decatur,_Georgia
Have you honestly ever seen a piece of text that was not biased? In my opinion, Universities, Colleges, Schools, Employers and so forth should stay out of facebook and personal web pages; however, in real life that just does not happen. Employers actually spend some time researching their applicants. Two former employers of mine have actually told me they liked my personal web page. I am happy that they found my electronics projects very interesting but it does make me wonder if I have been rejected for a job because of someone not liking my hair style in 2001. Don't buy into my anectodal evidence until you experience this for yourself.
New college students are not stupid. My job allows me to witness thousands of them coping with a new environment every semester. While their culture is "radically" different from three decades ago, it is no indication of decadence. New college students are, however, detached from the hiring class. Employers have wrist watches; applicants have loud cell phones. Employers wore hip clothes back in the day; applicants showed their underwear to the world. It's true that these new whippersnappers may not survive in the wilderness, be able to construct a shelter or grow vegetables -- but they will be able to assimilate into the workforce easily as the industry branches out and expands.
So, as someone in position of administering policies I feel that it is my duty to (at the very least) inform students of dangers of putting out an informal portfolio. I feel that they aren't aware of the real dangers in life - discrimination. In theory facebook is just personal expression. In practice, it's a nice source of dirt for sinister employers and as a bonus to them, it is neatly cataloged. Does the University know what's better for their own students? I don't think so. I do think that the Universities are trying to protect their alumni from being haunted by the past - even though they are doing it the wrong way.
For example, I have seen internship applications shredded on the spot because the brilliant, colorful and well-qualified applicant put down their email address on the application as "halfpimp69@.. whatever.com". I do not know what a half pimp is, but I do know discrimination when I see it and I feel powerless to stop it. Prevention and information just might be the key.
Just my 2c.
Imagine someone taking a patent out on a device that by means of a spring and plastic somehow disables and enables a machine by use of what is coined in the patent declaration as a "power" switch.
Talk about absurd! A similar analogy can be drawn from some software patents and as much as I hate to defend the borg, some of the recent Microsoft court loses seemed absurd at first look. Common procedures done in "office" software. Can someone really patent part of a document-database-exchange? See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/17/0
There are many variations of this aphorism coming from many cultures. I distinctly recall seeing an earlier slashdot posting (many moons ago) where the fishing version was claimed as having come from the bible; however, moments later the mistaken slashdotter was corrected by a man familiar with Chinese philosophy.
A real dad would be playing America's Army.
http://www.americasarmy.com/
Developed by uncle Sam, for the people.
http://www.redrival.com/hateown/
partially anti-wow anyway
On a side note, Bears and Robots are natural enemies.
http://www.angryflower.com/
..of power to weight ratios. A bigger vehicle with a small engine will not be as efficient as with a mid-size engine. On the other hand, same small engine will be more efficient in a smaller vehicle. If you follow that trend to a vehicle size of a skateboard, you get some "incredible efficiencies," but they are unrealistic as they cannot be applied to a modern day concept of vehicles. Having said that, it's important to recognize that there are better and worse engine designs out there; it is not just a simple matter of weight and power ratios when it comes to the consumer.
This headline is wishful thinking. I suddenly got reminded of the "500 ghz chip" news story from earlier this week. Most people started drooling over that headline thinking a new CPU speed barrier has been reached, when in actuality the speed referred to a single switching transistor running at ridiculously controlled conditions.
Of course, the 100 mile per gallon carb lives in every last romantic one of us.
Blizzard should do two things
1- Limit access to a dungeon to players who are within +/- 5 levels of each other (to prevent people from farming equipment for their "twink" characters)
2- Restrict enchant levels. Why should a level 19 rogue have crusader or life stealing?
For a comprehensive list of complaints see my hate site:
http://www.redrival.com/hateown/
They just about guesstimate.
For me, the most confusing thing about linux is the variance of licenses.
I can understand the variations of programs: window managers, desktop managers, mp3 players, video players, etc, etc. However, I can't even begin to grasp the variation in licenses associated with linux programs. Anyone else as clueless as me?
Unrelated to the main topic, here is why WoW is the devil.
http://www.redrival.com/hateown/
What people fail to understand is that the Renaissance was started in Italy because of a vacuum, more or less. The black plague swept through Europe, starting from Italy and spreading outward. Therefore, Italy was the first to recover from it and also the first to recover its economic situation and its population. What happened afterwards was the good old case of arts following financing.
As for the Silicon Valley, this is my speculative side talking now: I believe it was the level of regional education and sound economic framework that allowed it to develop there. Think, why hippie California and not Bangladesh? I don't think introducing a plague would help us recreate it. On the other hand, another world war just might do the trick.
I believe we now have the world's smelliest pedometer.
I stand corrected.
Scurvy is a vitamin defficiency, not a contagious disease.
My favorite scurvy quote:
"I had a horrible rash, and I was afraid that it was scurvy! I couldn't understand it because I had been making sure to eat lots of spinach. Then I went to the doctor and he said that it was just genital herpes. What a relief!"
Seriously, how accurate do you want a first shooter video game to be? While playing www.americasarmy.com should you be able to: desert while in a campaign, start a family, dig irrigation ditches for your farm, build your own mud brick house from materials found in the "map", convert to Islam, buy a lamb every year to be slaughtered for your neighbors?
I can understand some frustrations with gamers over "inaccurate physics" as they put it; namely, the indestructible door, the kevlar walking plank, but you should ignore those in favor of having:
Would you really want to play a game so "accurate" that you could die from diseases?
*** dino213b was killed by an e-coli infection he contracted while drinking contaminated water provided to himSuspension of disbelief works for movies, why shouldn't it work for games too? I would personally like to be able to blow up every standing building in every game, but, from a programming perspective that would require way too much of hardware and development time.
That is an excellent point. Who would examine damages upon returning the vehicle? Most people think of a car as a huge object and examine it as a whole. If the bumper isn't smashed in, there are no damages and we can ignore the 15 dents around the body of the car. The actual value of the vehicle depreciates based on cosmetics just as it does on the drivetrain condition. Why is it that insurance companies will not (as a whole) help get your engine rebuilt, but, they will pay insane amounts for small scratches on the bumpers? The answer is: superficial values of cars. The general idea (at least in the US) is this : the industry is geared towards pretty cars. Without human beings inspecting conditions of vehicles upon leaving+return, it is very easy to blame someone else on issues. Not all damages are spotted every time even in cases where vehicles are inspected by professionals, so just imagine how amateurs would do it. If the last guy ignored the problem, so may the next guy until more problems show up-- and then YOU just may be blamed for all of them at once. Another comment to ponder is conditions of vehicles. Cleaning a vehicle once per week is downright terrible. The rental vehicles in traditional companies are cleaned more frequently than that, and they are still unacceptably dirty. It costs a lot of $$ to detail a vehicle and cleaners are simply not paid enough to work harder nor are they given proper machinery to get everything spiffy. I thought it was amusing how the advertisements mention fancy cars, "if you want a mazda convertible, blah blah,..", "or if you want a fast muscle car you can alter your plans by an hour". In my experiences, people are more upset about fancy cars being slightly dirty than by mundane cars being completely dirty. For example, this is what I have seen over the years: Un-vacuumed, unwashed Dodge Magnum (say $40/day): no problem Shiny clean Mercedes C280 or a Cadillac DeVille (say $115/day): THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. THESE TIRES LOOK EMBARASSINGLY DIRTY. TIRE SHINE HAS NOT BEEN PUT ON THESE TIRES. I DEMAND TO SPEAK WITH YOUR MANAGER. I can understand the convenience of self-serve car rental, but, I am horrified by the possibilities of problems and inconveniences of service. Then again, how do you complain about the vehicle? Must be interesting not to have someone to yell at upon returning a vehicle.
..I think this parent thread is a whacky conspiracy theory.
First of all, the White House can't even prevent its own leaks. What would have stopped AP, Reuters and many legions of reporters from mentioning this news about a pyramid discovery? Secondly, the "Pyramid" has not been actually discovered yet. In fact, there is no discovery. Local citizens have always referred to the site as a potential pyramid; I remember these legends being told to me since I was a child. The name of the site, Visoko, is a conjugated form of "tall".
This latest publicity stunt is just that - a publicity stunt. The person who is currently digging, gospodin Semir Osmanagic, should be given credit for revitalizing the interest in the site. In the name of science, he is going to need all the help he can get to push past the resistance of both skeptics and the local land speculators (yes, that is already happening in anticipation of discovery related tourism). In my opinion, he is a valued spearhead in the search for knowledge.
If there is a pyramid out there, let us all discover it patiently; conspiracy theories and quick conclusions are not helping. Bosnia has gone through waves of cultures over the years, from Illyrians to Ottomans. A Roman fortification was once built on top of the location; going through layers of discovery will take some time. This project needs careful support in terms of excavation and other logistics before the Bosnian winter sets in. How about a public call for archeological internships?
On the other hand, it would be nice to see an onslaught of frenzied Egyptologists pump up the Bosnian economy!
For programmers, networking is a nightmare. Forget the difficult part of making a complex game. Networking is a nightmare all by itself. There are simply game design limitations attributed to that.
Being aware of these limitations, Blizzard should have known better. On my webpage criticizing World of Warcraft, http://www.redrival.com/hateown/ I postulated that Blizzard's design team is to blame for network instability. In a graph on that website I've shown my view of Blizzard's design team constantly increasing massive interaction throughout their worlds. I suspect this is the sole reason why they are unable to cope with volume of customers. As more and more people fight a single super-monster, the networking takes a beating. If the monster hits someone in a particular dungeon (aka instance), aside from the obvious the server has to:
- cycle through 40 players to see if anyone else got hit by splash damage
- notify each of the 40 players that someone or more people got hit
furthermore, when a single player whacks at the monster with their sword (or what have you), the server has to notify every other client about it.
In their design, Blizzard made use of a synchronized clock "aka tick" that is used for synchronizing actions. Good thinking, but it has a breaking point. I believe they are now reaching that point by causing more and more and more players to "chunk". Now, they are dumping the task of making everything better on network admins and scapegoating network issues as opposed to content design issues. It is too late now to take back multiple instances added through patches.
See website for more complaints or to add your 2c:
http://www.redrival.com/hateown/
Hm, no, that is not my argument at all. My argument was that efficiency is important, at least to some users who don't feel like upgrading hardware senselessly. Deeper you get into electrical engineering, more invisible the dividing line between hardware and software gets. I merely invoked the windows vs linux performance issue as proof that efficiency is important.
However, you are right to read that my point was unclear -- just as it is unclear how the master point will affect us all in the long term. Further studies are needed, and I made an early biased decision to side with Linus for some odd reason. Do you think Linus tried a similar model in the past and saw disastrous results? Without speculating on those possibilities, his response is very fiery and I bought it.
Time will tell how this issue develops. Thanks for reminding me that I, like many others, polarize on beliefs instead of tested facts.
-cheers!
spork = fatter
I can appreciate Linus' devotion to lean code. I have seen the results. My workstation (at work, no less, duh) in 1999 was so incredibly slow and my company was bitten in the pockets by the ram price surges that Windows would barely run on it. The company that I worked for used a web-based system, so a gui web browser would be vital to my needs. Without waiting for a miracle (that never came) I fixed the problem by installing linux on the machine.
The difference in performance between windows and linux on that machine was night and day. Even with only 32 megs of ram, the machine was responsive enough for me to be able to do much more than surf the company's internal web management site. Linux worked where windows 95, 98, nt failed miserably. I ran xfree86 on it, latest version of Mozilla at the time, gaim (was gaim even around back then? surely so), and psdoom (everyone must have it!). Windows versions of these programs would drain so much memory, it wasn't funny.
Needless to say, I can appreciate any angry rants revolving around computer performance. Larger the operating system and the apps get, every bit counts.
This experiment has already been performed, although on a much smaller scale. In the experiment, the monkeys resorted to flinging feces at the machine. If you extrapolate their performance, that's a lot of feces.