To be sure, if you only read what bsDaemon reads, you would also think that FoxNews watchers, talk radio listeners, and WSJ readers would probably be white nationalists. The intersections of those groups is a lot lower than you think it is.
Fox News watcher, talk radio listener, WSJ reader.
I work for a bank, and we get audited by both the Feds and the state every two years. Usually they alternate years, so we are either getting ready for an audit, getting audited, or responding to an audit.
There's nothing like having someone over your shoulder saying things like: "How would this look if I had to explain this to an auditor?" "If the auditor were to ask about this, what would I say?"
Banks will pay the extra money to secure an ATM because if we don't, we get screwed. Our board of directors finds out that the IT department didn't secure the ATMs, bringing down our overall audit score. Our bosses boss gets questioned. We spend money. We fix the problem. We look at everything else that could go wrong, and try to fix it ahead of time. We test, and prove that we fixed it with documentation.
Meanwhile, independant private auditors that we hire scan our network and tell us things we need to fix. Sometimes what they suggest that we do defies reason. We either have to do it, or explain why we can't. We then have to explain to several layers of management why those suggestions are bunk. Sometimes its easier to go with the suggestions after all.
Now, elections are local matters. City by city, county by county, state by state. Who audits them? Which voting jurisdiction wants to spend the money to have someone point out that the new machines they just bought are vulnerable to such-and-such condition using tin foil and fingerprint molds made of jello? The local officals then look bad, spend more money, and then lose the next election for overspending. The idea of something being "good enough" happens here.
And let's face it, let's say the feds set up a auditing board for state and local elections. Several things will happen: + Local government officials may go nuts at having federal officials show up at their local town hall trying to run things. + If a bank fails an audit, the Feds will take it over. If it's really bad, they'll shut the doors that day and the bank may never re-open. If the county voting machines don't pass federal muster, what will the Feds do? Invalidate the votes? Shut down the voting? You can always go to another bank, or not bank at all. Where else can you go vote? Voting is a right, banking is not.
Simply put, banks have to compete with each other, and are highly regulated. If the Feds don't like how we do things, we change them. If we can't give the customer what they want, they go elsewhere. You have to vote under your local government, and there is nowhere else to go unless you move. Voting is not regulated by the Feds because of separation of powers between the states and the Feds. So, yeah, ATMs will be more secure than voting machines, and will be for the foreseeable future.
The only fix is to have an enforceable Federal audit, with penalties for mismangement. I beleive that people who tend to think that will happen tend to beleive that we are a government with fifty administrative districts, rather than fifty states that have a common government.
I beleive that if you want to give the Feds the power to regulate elections, you then give the Feds to power to rig the elections. The hue and cry over Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 will be minor compared to the fits people will have when their favorite candidate loses nationally when the "exit polls" said otherwise, and it just so happens that the previous President was of the same party as the "winner". But the Feds said everything was kosher, because they controlled every part of the process, and invalidated votes from places that just happen to be predominantly voting the other party.
A precinct in New Hampshire that is considered "blacker" than others would have sixty black people. No joke.
The percentage of black people in NH in 2006 was 1.1%, which out of 1,314,895 people would be about 15,000. Take 301 voting precincts, and there is an average of fifty per precinct.
Instead of automatically assuming that racism is involved, consider that there may be other factors involved.
Article 1. The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The socialist system is the basic system of the People's Republic of China. Sabotage of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited.
Article 28. The state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter- revolutionary activities; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.
Article 53. Citizens of the People's Republic of China must abide by the constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property and observe labour discipline and public order and respect social ethics.
I'll leave it to you to decide what constitutes "sabotage of the socialist system", "other counter-revolutionary activities", and observing "labour discipline and public order" means.
What one hand gives, the other takes away.
From the same link:
Article 1. The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The socialist system is the basic system of the People's Republic of China. Sabotage of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited.
Article 28. The state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter- revolutionary activities; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.
Article 53. Citizens of the People's Republic of China must abide by the constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property and observe labour discipline and public order and respect social ethics.
I'll leave it to you to decide what constitutes "sabotage of the socialist system", "other counter-revolutionary activities", and observing "labour discipline and public order" means.
I have looked into the link you provided. It mentions the articles that the source came from, and talks about the differing stories. Yes, some of the stories are inconsistent. Yes, some people have taken this story, "improved" upon it, and used it for partisan purposes. In the end, we can argue over the number of Oreos, if they were thrown or simple passed out, or if any hit the stage, or hit him directly. It probably wasn't "thick in the air" like Schurick said, or "raining down". I can agree that there is murkiness here. The cleanup staff member says that there weren't any on the ground, which doesn't rule out the symbolism of them being there at all.
Some people have been known to make "hate crimes" allegations only to be found out that the stories weren't true, and the damage was inflicted by themselves. But from what I know of Steele, if he says that a cookie rolled to his feet during the debate, I think I'm inclined to beleive him, despite other versions of the story being so wrong.
In the end, we can disagree on what exactly happened that night. I welcome your debate.
You know, it could be that that part about Ken Mehlman being gay might have been cut out for several reasons.
1) It wasn't true, and the producers of Larry King (or CNN) didn't want to promote such a rumor (more likely).
2) CNN didn't want to contribute to a forced outing of a gay person (less likely).
Mehlman's party just lost the House and the Senate. Remember all those stories about the Diebold machines being able to be hacked and fixing the election for Republicans? Maybe Melhman forgot the master password;) Sometimes the first thing to happen after an election is that scapegoats are found and the window dressing changed.
Seriously, the two events (the "outing" and Melhman leaving) I believe are coincidental. The Republicans losing the Senate became "official" just yesterday. They lost the House two days before. Don't you think that would be a more likely reason to lose the head of your political party than, say, a cable talk show host (Maher) questioning your sexuality the night before? What a wonderful weapon Maher has discovered! Next, he'll claim Cheney is gay, and Cheney will be removed overnight too. All hail the power of gay-outing!
If Maher has the sympathy towards gay people that he claims to, he shouldn't be forcibly outing people just to make a political point. But sometimes when it comes to politics, patience and tolerance are discarded, and revenge and power are the highest values. Some people are just not the caring people that they beleive themselves to be.
What strikes me the hardest about this whole thing is the idea that to Maher, being gay means by definition you can't be a good Republican. Take it from me (an atheist), there is room in the Republican party for more than just white Christian fundamentalists. Just ask Michael Steele, the Republican that ran for a senate seat in Maryland, and just barely lost. He's black and Republican, so he has had his party identification mislabelled on CNN (D vs. R), and he's had Oreos thrown at him (Oreos are black on the outside, white on the inside). The Republican party was so impressed with his campaign that he has been brought up as a possible replacement to Mehlman as the leady of the party. If "George Bush doesn't care about black people", you'd think he'd prevent his party from being run by one. But it turns out that he's already has a black woman as Secretary of State that he himself appointed. And remember, while Bush pushed for the gay marriage amendment to the Constitution, he would have allowed states to retain "civil unions". The gay marriage idea is so popular that thirty-nine states now have such amendments to their Constitutions banning the practice. Bush isn't nearly as opposed to gay people as you might think, and neither are a good deal of Republicans.
Yes, there are some in the Republican party that do not like gay people. In our two-party system, there are only two main options for people with points of view to go. Some white Christian fundamentalists go with the Republican party, and some vote Democrat. I beleive that the Republican party welcomes their support, while some Democrats only go to church during campaign season. I don't agree with the fundamentalists, however, and some of them do not like gay people. Disagreeing with the fundamentalists doesn't make me a bad Republican. And being a Republican doesn't make me a bad person, despite what some "open minded" people would have you beleive.
I have a bachelors degree in Philosophy. I was going for my Masters when one of our PHD candidates (total 9 years in college combined) had to get a job at the Piggy Wiggly because she had no skills. Then I switched to computer science. I later dropped out of CS and went into professional IT, and haven't looked back.
The thing that interested me most about both studies is that they seemed to be both sides of the same coin. Not because of liberal arts vs. hard science, but in the way they had to deal with reality.
In a nutshell: Philosophy tries to develop, enumerate, and proof basic concepts of existence. Platonic Forms, the monads, and Descartes dialouges are examples of literally trying to get the basic concepts of reality and use them to build bigger structures. Eventually, you could prove more and more complex ideas based on those basic priniciples, which hopefully corresponded with reality.
So, Philosophy tries to take reality and break it down into its individual elements.
Computer science taught about programming languages, algorithms, and circuit design. From those basic parts, we were to make mini CPUs, applications, and so forth. Then we would learn about Artifical Intelligence, and the issues with that.
Computer Science starts with the basic blocks, and tries to create 'reality' from it.
So, there is some curiosity (to me) in that one of the hardest issues in Computer Science is how to create 'intelligence' from basic building blocks. Then, one of the hardest issues in Philosophy is to derive the basic building blocks out of 'intelligence'.
The sequence between step 3 and 4 don't have corrolation between each other. Just because the dollar is weak does not that interest rates will be raised to encourage foreign investment. If the ecomony continues as it has, foreigners would still see the US stock market and private industry as some of the better bets available. A 5-10% increase is the same no matter what currency you are talking about. Besides, if you make money in a particular currency, there is no need to translate it into your native currency, if you can buy more stuff in that country. See the eighties for what the Japanese were supposedly going to do to the US (make US dollars, buy US companies, buy US real estate, make more US dollars, all without any yen).
Plus, why would the Fed raise interest rates to appease foreign investment if it would lead like night into day to a real estate collapse? Don't think they don't know about things like this, which is while the Fed only raises a 1/4 point when it does it at all.
Some people in the eighties were predicting economic disaster by the late 1990, by assuming that all negative economic factors would run like a snowball going downhill and cause trillion-dollar deficits and economic collapse. And then it didn't happen. When the dot-com boom happened, the reverse occured ("Dow Jones 50,000"). Some people make a living making extreme predictions.
Chances are a low dollar means more foreigners will visit the US and buy US goods. That isn't bad. Besides, people have been complaining about the "trade deficit". Now others will have a stronger reason to buy American, since our good will be cheaper than before.
PABX is what private phone systems are called in Europe. PBX is what they are called in North America. Otherwise, they are exactly the same (except for the telco interfaces that they accept, example: E1 in Europe vs. T1 in NA).
It was a lucrative job that involved a high level of certification with a vendor. I got to go to different job sites every other week or so, learn the latest technologies, and get free training. In the beginning it seemed like the culmination of several years or training.
The entire time I had the job, I didn't feel like I belonged there. I found journals of mine from two years ago, and I'd said then that I didn't know if I would be there in six months. I could do the technical part ok. I just didn't have the personality to do the job. I didn't like BS'ing the customer into purchasing a solution when I couldn't prove that the solution would work because I had never done that before. When a recent project involved over $175,000 in labor and materials, and the number of things of unknowns that would have ruined the project ran over a page long, I knew I didn't have it in me to keep doing this.
I used to read 300-page books about my vendor's products while I was *on vacation*. The stuff just fascinated me. Now I don't read it at all anymore. Maybe one day I'll be back, but that day isn't today.
Plus, the job helped stress out my marriage, and when a computer guy tries to force "ones and zeroes" thinking on a liberal arts creative singer, well things go wrong.
The main logistical issue is to make sure that you will have enough money to ride out an extended time while unemployed. You may have to consider cancelling recurring services, such as digital cable, or certain long-distance plans. You might have to consider that you may have to move back in with family, or somehow signing up for state assistance.
The rule for success (I forget who say it first): Figure out what price you would pay for what you want, and then pay that price. If you've got the money, then leaving a job because the color of the carpet disagrees with your flesh tones is a possibility. If the money isn't there, then learning what goes into a Taco Bell Chalupa may be in your future.
Ultimately, the only time that you will not have any problems is when you're dead. Part of realizing that I was a "grown up" was seeing that there are always more problems, and that waiting for those to go away before you become happy will never work.
Happiness is not the absence of problems. Happiness is what you have to bring to your problems in order to improve your life.
P.S. I have a job possibility on the horizon with a 40% pay cut. But it is a great work environment, and I have money stashed away. I can reduce my lifestyle, now that I know that I am not what I own.
I work for a Cisco reseller, and I see Cisco sales guys all the time.
There are rumors that the CallManager software (Cisco's IP PBX) will be ported from Windows 2000 to Linux. As it is, to run this box safely today requires having the box on its own subnet with access lists, running anti-virus software on the box(es), running Cisco Security Agent (looks for anamolous behavior of running programs), and running the boxes in a redundant fashion. Not that porting to Linux would solve all problems, but a box that runs a web server, SQL2000, and Windows 2000 has a fair number of issues that could r0x the b0x. Not the least is that if you download a patch from Microsoft that Cisco hasn't approved, and it breaks the box, Cisco TAC will wash its hands of you.
However, Cisco and Microsoft are not only in bed with each other, they are spooning. Part of Cisco's new security initiative involves running Cisco software on desktops to check if the anti-virus and CSA software are up to date, and not allow them to join the network until they are. This is part of those Cisco commercials where the "Self-defending Network" comes in and stops attacks. Getting Cisco software to use the Microsoft API in a world where MS could simply roll their own software just like it for free is a tricky business. Cisco needs to know what Microsoft is doing, and Microsoft could just as easily start doing more business with Juniper should they want to.
What I'm saying is that Cisco uses Linux today for a good number of its products (Content Networking, CallManager, etc) because of its stability. However, the aims of this guy to publically change internal desktops to Linux would be nullified by just one phone call from Gates to Chambers (Cisco CEO).
I used to work for Pathmark, a grocery shore chain in the Northeast US (specifically NY). About ten years ago the put on all their carts a screen that would notify them of specials in different lanes. You could accept coupons as they were sent to the screen.
I thought it was going to be the next wave of the future.
Within nine months, every cart had the system stripped out.
I don't know the exact reason the system was pulled (I had stopped working there by then). It was flaky, didn't always change display based on aisle, and some panels were broken, either by extreme weather (-20F that winter) or on purpose. Those are not trivial losses for a business with a tiny profit margin.
I use the self-serve checkout stands when I can. Some work fine, others keep telling me to start over from the beginning. Either way is slower than having someone else do it.
All I'm saying, is that it had better be a damn good piece of technology that saves some money on the backend before we see this stuff available at the local supermarket.
1-800 numbers (and 888,887...) are looked up in databases that are maintained by all the phone companies. When you call an 800 number, the database translates it to a local number, which is then routed appropriately.
Because the number is translated and then routed to the local switch, it doesn't mean that number portability is just that simple. Each Class 5 switch has it's own office code(s) (the XXX in NPA-XXX-YYYY), which makes call routing simpler. To make the routing rules more complex (esp since there are no dynamic routing protocols for phone numbers), each switch would have to have incredibly complex routing rules depending on the path to switch to. Or, each phone call would be routing in a non-optimal fashion, where a call from Boston to New York may route through Minneapolis because that's where the path says to go because no one switch knows where all destinations are.
"Try this out- to go Google and enter in your home phone number ( (xxx)-xxx-xxxx format ) and watch Google return your home address, and then be able to map near by businesses."
Well, I've just found another reason to keep going with just my cell phone and keep the landline away. My cell phone number returns no entries and no address.
W. McDonald Buck sounded like a made up name to me. How about G. Penny Cash, or Exxon Starbucks? W. McDonald Buck as a CTO of World Bank? If you google for that name, you don't find a mention of that name anywhere except at a university. If you search on worldbank.org, that name doesn't come up there either.
I think you all have been hacked, because the article tells you what you wanted to talk about.
Looking at worldbank.org and searching for CTO, I haven't found a reference to a CTO for themselves, only references to CTO's elsewhere. I don't beleive they even have a CTO, honestly.
If you're using Windows 2000, do yourself a favor and get the msconfig.exe executable from a Windows 98 box. Copy it onto the 2000 box, and run it. It will complain about missing system.ini, etc, but don't let that ruin your day. You are only using this tool to disable programs from auto-starting when you reboot. Uncheck the programs you don't want to run (you can tell Real programs because they are in the Real directory, and msconfig tells you where they are), and you're done!
There are several non-exclusive answers to the Beth Israel problem:
1) introduction of routed domains to seperate groups of switches
2) insure that more than one redundant switching loop does not terminate in a switch. I've had a single switch be the lynch-pin between two loops, had the switch go down and back up, and spanning-tree would not converge. If you want redundancy in your switches, spread out the loops.
3) Put QoS on the network. Identify mission-critical traffic and give it priority and guarenteed bandwidth (Cisco uses LLQ and CBWFQ using DiffServ, CoS, and IP precendence). That way even if someone puts loads of traffic on mission critical paths, the effect should be limited to the local switch port or router, depending how it is implemented.
4) lastly try a redundant network. You would still want QoS to stop a jabbering NIC from hosing your local bandwidth, and you might want to run diagnostics with your pocket PC or laptop, so you would still need to plug into that isolated net anyway. I would recommend that last due to cost, space, and connectivity issues.
How many overeducated people have come from overseas, from places like Russia, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, South America, who had doctorates in particle physics or some other high level education? Some of these people come to America for the opportunities they believe they can get here, and they wind up having to drive cabs, or deliver papers, or serve burgers. When you have limited opportunities, you do what you have to. These people don't like doing those jobs, but they have to do them.
Some people are conditioned that they will never work a "menial" job again. My wife is one of those people, and you could argue effectively that I am one too. But guess what? When the economy goes south and there's not much work around, you gotta do what you gotta do. A friend of mine has worked odd jobs all his life, and now he has more flexibility with his work than I do. If I get laid off, I'm screwed, but he gets laid off, and it's just off down the street for another job.
If you ue AdAware to remove KaZaa's spyware, KaZaa will no longer function.
When you start it up, it says something to the point of "Hey, you agreed to run this spyware. I'm taking my ball and going home". The sofware just exits at that point.
I don't know of a way to get around it other than installing KaZaa on a crappy laptop I don't use (200Mhz) and only turning it on when I download stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
To be sure, if you only read what bsDaemon reads, you would also think that FoxNews watchers, talk radio listeners, and WSJ readers would probably be white nationalists. The intersections of those groups is a lot lower than you think it is.
Fox News watcher, talk radio listener, WSJ reader.
I work for a bank, and we get audited by both the Feds and the state every two years. Usually they alternate years, so we are either getting ready for an audit, getting audited, or responding to an audit.
There's nothing like having someone over your shoulder saying things like:
"How would this look if I had to explain this to an auditor?"
"If the auditor were to ask about this, what would I say?"
Banks will pay the extra money to secure an ATM because if we don't, we get screwed. Our board of directors finds out that the IT department didn't secure the ATMs, bringing down our overall audit score. Our bosses boss gets questioned. We spend money. We fix the problem. We look at everything else that could go wrong, and try to fix it ahead of time. We test, and prove that we fixed it with documentation.
Meanwhile, independant private auditors that we hire scan our network and tell us things we need to fix. Sometimes what they suggest that we do defies reason. We either have to do it, or explain why we can't. We then have to explain to several layers of management why those suggestions are bunk. Sometimes its easier to go with the suggestions after all.
Now, elections are local matters. City by city, county by county, state by state. Who audits them? Which voting jurisdiction wants to spend the money to have someone point out that the new machines they just bought are vulnerable to such-and-such condition using tin foil and fingerprint molds made of jello? The local officals then look bad, spend more money, and then lose the next election for overspending. The idea of something being "good enough" happens here.
And let's face it, let's say the feds set up a auditing board for state and local elections. Several things will happen:
+ Local government officials may go nuts at having federal officials show up at their local town hall trying to run things.
+ If a bank fails an audit, the Feds will take it over. If it's really bad, they'll shut the doors that day and the bank may never re-open. If the county voting machines don't pass federal muster, what will the Feds do? Invalidate the votes? Shut down the voting? You can always go to another bank, or not bank at all. Where else can you go vote? Voting is a right, banking is not.
Simply put, banks have to compete with each other, and are highly regulated. If the Feds don't like how we do things, we change them. If we can't give the customer what they want, they go elsewhere. You have to vote under your local government, and there is nowhere else to go unless you move. Voting is not regulated by the Feds because of separation of powers between the states and the Feds. So, yeah, ATMs will be more secure than voting machines, and will be for the foreseeable future.
The only fix is to have an enforceable Federal audit, with penalties for mismangement. I beleive that people who tend to think that will happen tend to beleive that we are a government with fifty administrative districts, rather than fifty states that have a common government.
I beleive that if you want to give the Feds the power to regulate elections, you then give the Feds to power to rig the elections. The hue and cry over Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 will be minor compared to the fits people will have when their favorite candidate loses nationally when the "exit polls" said otherwise, and it just so happens that the previous President was of the same party as the "winner". But the Feds said everything was kosher, because they controlled every part of the process, and invalidated votes from places that just happen to be predominantly voting the other party.
Welcome to Slashdot, as close to a completely virgin population as it gets.
I do love the automatic assumption of racism.
A precinct in New Hampshire that is considered "blacker" than others would have sixty black people. No joke.
The percentage of black people in NH in 2006 was 1.1%, which out of 1,314,895 people would be about 15,000. Take 301 voting precincts, and there is an average of fifty per precinct.
Instead of automatically assuming that racism is involved, consider that there may be other factors involved.
What one hand gives, the other takes away. :
Article 1. The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The socialist system is the basic system of the People's Republic of China. Sabotage of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited.
Article 28. The state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter- revolutionary activities; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.
Article 53. Citizens of the People's Republic of China must abide by the constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property and observe labour discipline and public order and respect social ethics.
I'll leave it to you to decide what constitutes "sabotage of the socialist system", "other counter-revolutionary activities", and observing "labour discipline and public order" means.
Article 1. The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The socialist system is the basic system of the People's Republic of China. Sabotage of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited.
Article 28. The state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter- revolutionary activities; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.
Article 53. Citizens of the People's Republic of China must abide by the constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property and observe labour discipline and public order and respect social ethics.
I'll leave it to you to decide what constitutes "sabotage of the socialist system", "other counter-revolutionary activities", and observing "labour discipline and public order" means.
I have looked into the link you provided. It mentions the articles that the source came from, and talks about the differing stories. Yes, some of the stories are inconsistent. Yes, some people have taken this story, "improved" upon it, and used it for partisan purposes. In the end, we can argue over the number of Oreos, if they were thrown or simple passed out, or if any hit the stage, or hit him directly. It probably wasn't "thick in the air" like Schurick said, or "raining down". I can agree that there is murkiness here. The cleanup staff member says that there weren't any on the ground, which doesn't rule out the symbolism of them being there at all.
Some people have been known to make "hate crimes" allegations only to be found out that the stories weren't true, and the damage was inflicted by themselves. But from what I know of Steele, if he says that a cookie rolled to his feet during the debate, I think I'm inclined to beleive him, despite other versions of the story being so wrong.
In the end, we can disagree on what exactly happened that night. I welcome your debate.
You know, it could be that that part about Ken Mehlman being gay might have been cut out for several reasons.
;) Sometimes the first thing to happen after an election is that scapegoats are found and the window dressing changed.
1) It wasn't true, and the producers of Larry King (or CNN) didn't want to promote such a rumor (more likely).
2) CNN didn't want to contribute to a forced outing of a gay person (less likely).
Mehlman's party just lost the House and the Senate. Remember all those stories about the Diebold machines being able to be hacked and fixing the election for Republicans? Maybe Melhman forgot the master password
Seriously, the two events (the "outing" and Melhman leaving) I believe are coincidental. The Republicans losing the Senate became "official" just yesterday. They lost the House two days before. Don't you think that would be a more likely reason to lose the head of your political party than, say, a cable talk show host (Maher) questioning your sexuality the night before? What a wonderful weapon Maher has discovered! Next, he'll claim Cheney is gay, and Cheney will be removed overnight too. All hail the power of gay-outing!
If Maher has the sympathy towards gay people that he claims to, he shouldn't be forcibly outing people just to make a political point. But sometimes when it comes to politics, patience and tolerance are discarded, and revenge and power are the highest values. Some people are just not the caring people that they beleive themselves to be.
What strikes me the hardest about this whole thing is the idea that to Maher, being gay means by definition you can't be a good Republican. Take it from me (an atheist), there is room in the Republican party for more than just white Christian fundamentalists. Just ask Michael Steele, the Republican that ran for a senate seat in Maryland, and just barely lost. He's black and Republican, so he has had his party identification mislabelled on CNN (D vs. R), and he's had Oreos thrown at him (Oreos are black on the outside, white on the inside). The Republican party was so impressed with his campaign that he has been brought up as a possible replacement to Mehlman as the leady of the party. If "George Bush doesn't care about black people", you'd think he'd prevent his party from being run by one. But it turns out that he's already has a black woman as Secretary of State that he himself appointed. And remember, while Bush pushed for the gay marriage amendment to the Constitution, he would have allowed states to retain "civil unions". The gay marriage idea is so popular that thirty-nine states now have such amendments to their Constitutions banning the practice. Bush isn't nearly as opposed to gay people as you might think, and neither are a good deal of Republicans.
Yes, there are some in the Republican party that do not like gay people. In our two-party system, there are only two main options for people with points of view to go. Some white Christian fundamentalists go with the Republican party, and some vote Democrat. I beleive that the Republican party welcomes their support, while some Democrats only go to church during campaign season. I don't agree with the fundamentalists, however, and some of them do not like gay people. Disagreeing with the fundamentalists doesn't make me a bad Republican. And being a Republican doesn't make me a bad person, despite what some "open minded" people would have you beleive.
themselves.
Very efficient, showing your point in your axiom. It's like I'm there with you.
I have a bachelors degree in Philosophy. I was going for my Masters when one of our PHD candidates (total 9 years in college combined) had to get a job at the Piggy Wiggly because she had no skills. Then I switched to computer science. I later dropped out of CS and went into professional IT, and haven't looked back.
The thing that interested me most about both studies is that they seemed to be both sides of the same coin. Not because of liberal arts vs. hard science, but in the way they had to deal with reality.
In a nutshell:
Philosophy tries to develop, enumerate, and proof basic concepts of existence. Platonic Forms, the monads, and Descartes dialouges are examples of literally trying to get the basic concepts of reality and use them to build bigger structures. Eventually, you could prove more and more complex ideas based on those basic priniciples, which hopefully corresponded with reality.
So, Philosophy tries to take reality and break it down into its individual elements.
Computer science taught about programming languages, algorithms, and circuit design. From those basic parts, we were to make mini CPUs, applications, and so forth. Then we would learn about Artifical Intelligence, and the issues with that.
Computer Science starts with the basic blocks, and tries to create 'reality' from it.
So, there is some curiosity (to me) in that one of the hardest issues in Computer Science is how to create 'intelligence' from basic building blocks. Then, one of the hardest issues in Philosophy is to derive the basic building blocks out of 'intelligence'.
The sequence between step 3 and 4 don't have corrolation between each other. Just because the dollar is weak does not that interest rates will be raised to encourage foreign investment. If the ecomony continues as it has, foreigners would still see the US stock market and private industry as some of the better bets available. A 5-10% increase is the same no matter what currency you are talking about. Besides, if you make money in a particular currency, there is no need to translate it into your native currency, if you can buy more stuff in that country. See the eighties for what the Japanese were supposedly going to do to the US (make US dollars, buy US companies, buy US real estate, make more US dollars, all without any yen).
Plus, why would the Fed raise interest rates to appease foreign investment if it would lead like night into day to a real estate collapse? Don't think they don't know about things like this, which is while the Fed only raises a 1/4 point when it does it at all.
Some people in the eighties were predicting economic disaster by the late 1990, by assuming that all negative economic factors would run like a snowball going downhill and cause trillion-dollar deficits and economic collapse. And then it didn't happen. When the dot-com boom happened, the reverse occured ("Dow Jones 50,000"). Some people make a living making extreme predictions.
Chances are a low dollar means more foreigners will visit the US and buy US goods. That isn't bad. Besides, people have been complaining about the "trade deficit". Now others will have a stronger reason to buy American, since our good will be cheaper than before.
PABX is what private phone systems are called in Europe. PBX is what they are called in North America. Otherwise, they are exactly the same (except for the telco interfaces that they accept, example: E1 in Europe vs. T1 in NA).
Hope this helps.
I have recently quit my job.
It was a lucrative job that involved a high level of certification with a vendor. I got to go to different job sites every other week or so, learn the latest technologies, and get free training. In the beginning it seemed like the culmination of several years or training.
The entire time I had the job, I didn't feel like I belonged there. I found journals of mine from two years ago, and I'd said then that I didn't know if I would be there in six months. I could do the technical part ok. I just didn't have the personality to do the job. I didn't like BS'ing the customer into purchasing a solution when I couldn't prove that the solution would work because I had never done that before. When a recent project involved over $175,000 in labor and materials, and the number of things of unknowns that would have ruined the project ran over a page long, I knew I didn't have it in me to keep doing this.
I used to read 300-page books about my vendor's products while I was *on vacation*. The stuff just fascinated me. Now I don't read it at all anymore. Maybe one day I'll be back, but that day isn't today.
Plus, the job helped stress out my marriage, and when a computer guy tries to force "ones and zeroes" thinking on a liberal arts creative singer, well things go wrong.
The main logistical issue is to make sure that you will have enough money to ride out an extended time while unemployed. You may have to consider cancelling recurring services, such as digital cable, or certain long-distance plans. You might have to consider that you may have to move back in with family, or somehow signing up for state assistance.
The rule for success (I forget who say it first): Figure out what price you would pay for what you want, and then pay that price. If you've got the money, then leaving a job because the color of the carpet disagrees with your flesh tones is a possibility. If the money isn't there, then learning what goes into a Taco Bell Chalupa may be in your future.
Ultimately, the only time that you will not have any problems is when you're dead. Part of realizing that I was a "grown up" was seeing that there are always more problems, and that waiting for those to go away before you become happy will never work.
Happiness is not the absence of problems. Happiness is what you have to bring to your problems in order to improve your life.
P.S. I have a job possibility on the horizon with a 40% pay cut. But it is a great work environment, and I have money stashed away. I can reduce my lifestyle, now that I know that I am not what I own.
4.5%!?! Sign me up!
Hee hee.
Uber Banker: "...breaking even at a little over $80 per problem." ...
:)
Uber Banker: "Apologies, $80k per problem."
__
Mr. Banker, I'd like to talk to you about refinacing my home loan. I'm sure you can give me a great deal.
I work for a Cisco reseller, and I see Cisco sales guys all the time.
There are rumors that the CallManager software (Cisco's IP PBX) will be ported from Windows 2000 to Linux. As it is, to run this box safely today requires having the box on its own subnet with access lists, running anti-virus software on the box(es), running Cisco Security Agent (looks for anamolous behavior of running programs), and running the boxes in a redundant fashion. Not that porting to Linux would solve all problems, but a box that runs a web server, SQL2000, and Windows 2000 has a fair number of issues that could r0x the b0x. Not the least is that if you download a patch from Microsoft that Cisco hasn't approved, and it breaks the box, Cisco TAC will wash its hands of you.
However, Cisco and Microsoft are not only in bed with each other, they are spooning. Part of Cisco's new security initiative involves running Cisco software on desktops to check if the anti-virus and CSA software are up to date, and not allow them to join the network until they are. This is part of those Cisco commercials where the "Self-defending Network" comes in and stops attacks. Getting Cisco software to use the Microsoft API in a world where MS could simply roll their own software just like it for free is a tricky business. Cisco needs to know what Microsoft is doing, and Microsoft could just as easily start doing more business with Juniper should they want to.
What I'm saying is that Cisco uses Linux today for a good number of its products (Content Networking, CallManager, etc) because of its stability. However, the aims of this guy to publically change internal desktops to Linux would be nullified by just one phone call from Gates to Chambers (Cisco CEO).
I used to work for Pathmark, a grocery shore chain in the Northeast US (specifically NY). About ten years ago the put on all their carts a screen that would notify them of specials in different lanes. You could accept coupons as they were sent to the screen.
I thought it was going to be the next wave of the future.
Within nine months, every cart had the system stripped out.
I don't know the exact reason the system was pulled (I had stopped working there by then). It was flaky, didn't always change display based on aisle, and some panels were broken, either by extreme weather (-20F that winter) or on purpose. Those are not trivial losses for a business with a tiny profit margin.
I use the self-serve checkout stands when I can. Some work fine, others keep telling me to start over from the beginning. Either way is slower than having someone else do it.
All I'm saying, is that it had better be a damn good piece of technology that saves some money on the backend before we see this stuff available at the local supermarket.
1-800 numbers (and 888,887...) are looked up in databases that are maintained by all the phone companies. When you call an 800 number, the database translates it to a local number, which is then routed appropriately.
Because the number is translated and then routed to the local switch, it doesn't mean that number portability is just that simple. Each Class 5 switch has it's own office code(s) (the XXX in NPA-XXX-YYYY), which makes call routing simpler. To make the routing rules more complex (esp since there are no dynamic routing protocols for phone numbers), each switch would have to have incredibly complex routing rules depending on the path to switch to. Or, each phone call would be routing in a non-optimal fashion, where a call from Boston to New York may route through Minneapolis because that's where the path says to go because no one switch knows where all destinations are.
"Try this out- to go Google and enter in your home phone number ( (xxx)-xxx-xxxx format ) and watch Google return your home address, and then be able to map near by businesses."
Well, I've just found another reason to keep going with just my cell phone and keep the landline away. My cell phone number returns no entries and no address.
W. McDonald Buck sounded like a made up name to me. How about G. Penny Cash, or Exxon Starbucks? W. McDonald Buck as a CTO of World Bank? If you google for that name, you don't find a mention of that name anywhere except at a university. If you search on worldbank.org, that name doesn't come up there either.
I think you all have been hacked, because the article tells you what you wanted to talk about.
Looking at worldbank.org and searching for CTO, I haven't found a reference to a CTO for themselves, only references to CTO's elsewhere. I don't beleive they even have a CTO, honestly.
Just sayin'.
If you're using Windows 2000, do yourself a favor and get the msconfig.exe executable from a Windows 98 box. Copy it onto the 2000 box, and run it. It will complain about missing system.ini, etc, but don't let that ruin your day. You are only using this tool to disable programs from auto-starting when you reboot. Uncheck the programs you don't want to run (you can tell Real programs because they are in the Real directory, and msconfig tells you where they are), and you're done!
It will take approximately 5 libraries of Congress.
Oh, wait...
1) introduction of routed domains to seperate groups of switches
2) insure that more than one redundant switching loop does not terminate in a switch. I've had a single switch be the lynch-pin between two loops, had the switch go down and back up, and spanning-tree would not converge. If you want redundancy in your switches, spread out the loops.
3) Put QoS on the network. Identify mission-critical traffic and give it priority and guarenteed bandwidth (Cisco uses LLQ and CBWFQ using DiffServ, CoS, and IP precendence). That way even if someone puts loads of traffic on mission critical paths, the effect should be limited to the local switch port or router, depending how it is implemented.
4) lastly try a redundant network. You would still want QoS to stop a jabbering NIC from hosing your local bandwidth, and you might want to run diagnostics with your pocket PC or laptop, so you would still need to plug into that isolated net anyway. I would recommend that last due to cost, space, and connectivity issues.
Thank you.
Amen, brother.
How many overeducated people have come from overseas, from places like Russia, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, South America, who had doctorates in particle physics or some other high level education? Some of these people come to America for the opportunities they believe they can get here, and they wind up having to drive cabs, or deliver papers, or serve burgers. When you have limited opportunities, you do what you have to. These people don't like doing those jobs, but they have to do them.
Some people are conditioned that they will never work a "menial" job again. My wife is one of those people, and you could argue effectively that I am one too. But guess what? When the economy goes south and there's not much work around, you gotta do what you gotta do. A friend of mine has worked odd jobs all his life, and now he has more flexibility with his work than I do. If I get laid off, I'm screwed, but he gets laid off, and it's just off down the street for another job.
When you start it up, it says something to the point of "Hey, you agreed to run this spyware. I'm taking my ball and going home". The sofware just exits at that point.
I don't know of a way to get around it other than installing KaZaa on a crappy laptop I don't use (200Mhz) and only turning it on when I download stuff.