My ringtone is that of an old modem dialing and negotiating a connection. I get some odd looks from the younger people but not long ago a guy about my age walked over and asked where I got the tone. Once upon a time, I imagine that might have made for more interesting looks and responses. At one point, I could mimic the noises pretty well (and did - usually when nobody was there to hear me) and I'd have loved to do that in public when answering a phone back then.
Of course, I'm old and retired so I can get away with that sort of stuff now. Maybe I should do it down at the lodge when they're playing Pinochle. It might distract some of 'em - those old ladies can be pretty shrewd. Also, we're usually playing for money.
Oh, I know - I figure they're just trying to trick me! (I did click the link. Looks interesting.) I just couldn't help but notice it was GNA and just missing a letter.
This is Slashdot. The URL to your site is GNA.org. We're not gonna click that! (Unless we're gay or black.)
In all seriousness, after I retired and moved to Maine I was invited to teach at UMF. I taught a basic maths and two advanced mathematics courses. I did this for two semesters. Oh the things I have to say... But, now is not that time.
Suffice to say, even with such a limited course load - I still lacked time to give the attention that I felt the kids deserved (even if they didn't know it, but I digress) and to be able to judge my own abilities to give instruction. I'd have enjoyed something that had given me metrics like those and might have stuck with it. I am told that I am an excellent teacher but very strict.
I do not ask for much. In fact, I guess I don't ask for anything. I make demands. I do not make many of them. They are not really requests. Failing to do so will not go well for the student. One of the demands I made was that if you can not meet my demands you must tell me. In hindsight, that seems a bit of a paradox.
But, I expect a certain level of effort. That effort is something I also expect from me. Just those courses were enough to keep me quite occupied and I didn't think I was able to give the kids as much individual attention as they were paying for. I tried to set aside a few hours, every day, for the students to reach out - and that time was actually often spent meeting with said students. It's not easy to get someone to go from rote memory to actually being able to visualize what the math means and why the results are what they are.
UMF is, for the most part, a teacher's college. I probably pushed further than I needed to - though the kids seemed to like it and, for the most part, did well. I probably would have been able to give them more attention if I'd had tools to do better analytics. I like the concept of teaching but I don't like the practice. I also didn't have things like assistants or grad students to help out.
To paraphrase, "You will learn quickly, you will learn much, and you will work out of class as well as during class or you will drop the course so that I have time for those who do wish to do those things." I'd probably do better with fewer students per class. Everybody's "get it moment" is different and everybody needs a different path to reach that point. My job was to get them to that point and tools of the nature that you describe would have better enabled me to do that job.
I took four years of Latin back in school. It has come in handy. I also took a couple of years of Greek. Those have come in handy. There are loads of languages that I do not speak but I can figure a lot of things out in text. It's not uncommon for me to be at a non-English site and still be able to grasp the gist of it. Obviously, no Cyrillic, Asian, or Arabic type things work for me - I don't know what the characters mean.
I do wonder why it's okay to change the English to Latin but not okay to change the Chinese to Latin. I don't really care, however. In three hours I will have forgotten this almost entirely and in a week I won't even remember the name. I figure that, by the time I hit 70, I should be able to hide my own Easter Eggs.
The world doesn't work like that so I don't have much of an answer. You can blame anyone you want but that doesn't mean the rest of the world agrees.
I'd only suggest that there are others who share culpability in many things and that this is one of those things. The person who did the deed is culpable - just like a murder for hire means the killer and the person who hired them share culpability. I suppose this is a bit less drastic than murder, however. The underlying principle is the same. We decided long ago, perhaps in grade school, that it is no excuse to say, "They told me to do it!"
Heh... It works fine as a desktop for me. The bonus is that I can also use it like a server in many regards.
From my house in Florida I connect to my house in Maine which has a desktop which is connected to my server rack in the basement which has some VM images which are the OS image that is running on that desktop in Maine which is connected to a VPN by which I connect to Slashdot...
Obviously, I'm retarded. However, I can be as retarded as I want.
Err... It's not always connected like this - I was just doing stuff and brought up a VM that's used to do some specific stuff. Seeing as I was there... Yeah, you get insane gibberish but the point is the same - it's a fine desktop and there's a lot you can do with it, easily, if you're willing to put some effort into learning. It gets worse - sometimes I'm not even using an installed OS but just running off a Live USB. I mostly set it up because I was in hotels and wanted to make sure that I had control of my encryption levels directly so I tunneled through my house. Surprisingly, it works. Seems to be stable as all hell and I can check my security system which I only allow certain machines and IP addresses to access. I'll skip the details for a whole variety of reasons. But, suffice to say, you can do the damnedest of things with relative ease and stability.
You use standard images, you can roll your own if you want. AD can just be permissions and you can still do roaming profiles - hell, you can just use the computer as a dumb terminal and simply push everything out and just manage a few standard images (per job needed to fulfill) with things being saved to a separate/home folder with various permissions used to do what you want with it. If you want to be really fancy, you can even have new default profiles come with special permissions already enabled by doing what's pretty much just editing a template as those permissions will just be inherited and assigned automatically on new-user creation.
Basically, as near as I can tell, you can do whatever you want in those regards and do them in loads of different ways. You can even run your own local repository so that you can test updates before pushing them out. Much of it can be automated away.
To say something said above: I was an MS MVP for quite a while. I hold no ill will and LIKE Windows. I didn't switch to using Linux exclusively because I hated Windows. I switched because my brain was turning to mush because I wasn't doing anything new. No idealism or zealotry needed. Linux is just fine for me. Hell, OS X is a fine OS, I'm pretty sure, but I've never bothered to dig deep into it - I've used it a little. BSD is fine. Etc... I'm not a crazy zealot and just happened to want to do something to make me think more as I'm starting to get old. I used to use Unix and then I used some Linux when it came out. It's always been installed as a second/rescue OS. I just never really used it.
I forget the name but there are Exchange things you can poke at - they should probably cover much of what you need. The permissions system is nice and not so buried. If you want to be really intricate, you can do stuff like seriously set up SAMBA in some new and unusual ways. It just means looking at things a little differently. If you understand the basic concepts (why this happens when I push this) then you'll figure it out pretty quickly.
'Snot too hard, really. There's a learning curve but it's kind of go at your own pace unless you're taking it as a scholastic pursuit. As I'd been familiar with Linux and Unix (typically Solaris) I had a bit of a head start. When I first used Windows it was actually rather hard. I'd learned with command line. Reverting wasn't tough for me but I think the hardest things for some people to get are things like file management/directory structures and thinking that it is, or should be, like Windows. It's not, if you want Windows then use it. Linus is not Windows. Trying to use it like Windows will really not help and will make you right pissed off.
Oh, and don't worry about learning the commend line. De-dupe your bash_history and keep backups of it.;-) There's often a GUI front end that someone's cobbled together. It might not be pretty but it works. If not, well, It's Qt time. Or you can introduce the sexy secretary Perl to your Python and C what happens. Hmm... I should probably avoid trying to be amusing. Seriously, though, it's not 1997 any more. It's not hard to switch and, for the most part, things just work.
Take the Hairyfeet challenge. Get a 5 year old version of Linux and do 2 upgrades or more? They will ALWAYS break after the 3 rd release. Windows doesn't have this problem.
While the only product that I have Windows on, right now, is a phone - I'm actually a bit of a fan of the Windows OS, even if it's not installed. It was only recently that I let my MSDN subscription lapse and I participated in the MS MVP (winning multiple awards) for quite some time.
That said, what do I win? How do I need to document it? Do I get to pick the distro? Do I get to pick the hardware? Can I do it in a VM?
Also, releases are more frequent - meaning that 3 releases ago was only 14.04 (which was a LTS) so the most realistic release would be 13.10 which is three standard releases away from the current 15.10 version. It'd be a bit silly to show what it could do 5 years ago when I can just as easily show you want it can do now.
You gotta make it worth my time though. I don't need money, I've got plenty of that. I don't need wine, women, or song. Hmm... Only three upgrades? Yeah, I can do that. But, specifically, I only need to do one install and then two upgrades - and then one final upgrade? Yeah, make it worth my time and I'll do it. Is someone going to go from Vista, to 7, to 8, and then to 10? 'Cause I think I might even beat them in speed. Do I need more than the default installed applications? That shouldn't matter but it will tell me what to do to ensure I only need to do it once.
Thing is, I'm not even a Linux guru and I can do that. Hell, I can switch from 12.04 (Ubuntu) to upgrade multiple times and end up with all my data, all my settings, and have the end result be a perfectly fine CentOS latest beta build. (That might take some actual work.) I can probably stop in at Fedora in the middle and *still* come out with my data, settings, and even still have the same wallpaper and theme. Make it worth my time.
Hmmm.... If I can't do it (in a timely fashion - figure out a time limit and I'll agree or disagree) then I'll re-up my MSDN subscription and I'll install their OS on two devices - as the default boot choice. If I can do it then you and Mr. Feet have to do something... Say, wearing nothing but a pair of knee high stockings and two-piece string bikinis, dancing to an oompa loompa band, and singing a duet that I write about RMS and how he's your greatest man-crush.
Hint: Don't take this bet. However, it will be an awesome video.
LOL You've been bitching about that netbook thing for a couple of years now. (I'm assuming that's what your link goes to - I didn't click.) I think I might actually have a couple at home that are in that size range and a couple that are slightly smaller. When I get back to Maine, probably in the early spring, I'll look and you can have 'em if you want. Why? You're gonna be insufferable when the damned thing dies on you so you might as well get a spare. Otherwise, even in 2016, you'll be ranting about "that damned fine ultra-portable you had back in the day, that they discontinued, and it broke.";-)
Seriously, I'll look when I get back home. It's not like it gets used at my house. I'm pretty sure I have the same model that I've heard you mention once or twenty times and a couple of others that are similarly sized. I know I have some 9" netbooks - one from Acer and the other from Asus (I think?) and I think I have a much more recent model from Lenovo that is either 11" or close to it. At least I'm pretty sure that I've neither given them away nor had one of my kids abscond with them. They prefer the more expensive stuff. That didn't go away when they turned into adults or had their own money.
I seem to recall getting Ubuntu to work on the Asus. I just couldn't fall in lust with it. I prefer a much larger device, a keyboard with a number pad, and room for two drives. At any rate, I'll be sure to look. If I haven't then just remember to bitch about it some more come spring. That'll remind me - though I kind of doubt you'll need a reminder. If it dies before then you'll be straight up impossible.
Hmm... That really kind of depends on your definition of good. The Zero was agile, yes. It was relatively inexpensive, yes. It wasn't too difficult to fly but was difficult to fly well - which is why they ran out of good pilots pretty quickly. They had pretty much no armor. They didn't have self-sealing fuel tanks. Hmm... I'm a bit skeptical with "pretty decent" as the terms. Take a look at their firearms during WWII as another example of things I'd not call "pretty decent."
I guess it's subjective and what you'd call decent but, well, I'm not really inclined to agree that it is all that good.
On the other hand, gimme a Honda Accord from 1988. I love that car.
It is certainly not a toy but, more often than not, the firearm I choose for my daily carry is chambered in.22 LR. No, I have no intention of stopping an active shooter and a bunch of his friends - I am not Rambo. I like the deterrent nature and, if needed, I can always use more rounds and keep them on-target.
The kinds of things he makes he never even bothers to patent. I've had this discussion with him before. Basically, a patent is useless to him and a waste of money. Making something to do what we're talking about will (not might be) copied by China who can do it cheaper and not give two shits about a patent. His best bet is to get in, do it quick, make his money, and then just get out. Or, less frequently, he just finds and builds a small network of companies and sells to them direct. Basically, you give him dimensions and he's got a product a day later and boxes full in a week. The place doesn't even run 24/7 or anything.
In your case, he's who you'd probably go to and get a quick order filled if you're low on inventory or just starting out and want to rush to market. If you've got a lot of something or a large market then his company isn't the best choice for you in the long term - it's fine for short term, low volumes, and things like that. By low-volumes we're talking 100,000 units or so. Anything larger? Go to China. He probably won't even take that order or, if he does, he's just going to sub it out to China and communication is cheap today so you might as well do it yourself.
Basically, you might have used him for the first samples and then the first couple of orders while you waited for them to ramp up in China and get the stuff here on a slow boat. He stores the designs to disk so you can return and have more done. He can do some custom shapes and closure types, those get welded by ultrasound usually. I've offered to help him expand, he's not interested. "I can't compete with China and there's a limit where I'll no longer be as profitable for the amount of work done." Something along those lines. He's probably right.
Hmm... Network with people. That's my suggestion but, no worries - nobody ever listens to me.;-) Seriously though, you'd be surprised who you know who knows someone. Hell, I'd have just forwarded an email to him on your behalf in the case of your device. He might have taken the job on 90 day or something. It's not much cost to him and all the equipment is paid for and the factory is already owned entirely. It's mostly a large warehouse and then two smaller sections of equipment and an office with a showroom. That's it. He's got like two fork-lifts and a box truck. I think he's got two employees and they're both family.
Seeing as I'm already this far off-topic (and rightfully moderated as so up above), I'm actually rather fond of investing in small businesses. I've now got partial ownership of a few of them and all but one has been quite lucrative. Even the one that wasn't really lucrative, I still made out in the end with the assets being sold or kept. Since I sold my company, quite a few of my friends and family have their own small businesses - one as small as making handmade quilts.. I really think that's the way forward.
Sometime this spring, I am not sure when, I'll be going to Peru to help my son close on a bar/hotel. He's not going to finish school at the moment (he went to Peru, met a native lady, and he's enjoying himself) so he might as well do something besides not being productive. I don't want non-productive kids. I've seen their type. He doesn't drink, it should be a good place for him. Well, he doesn't drink often.
I seem to recall a similar attitude. In fact, it's similar enough to be uncanny. "Leave interpreting God's will/word/Bible/signs to the priests. You lay people wouldn't understand."
Thanks again - I've actually got an acquaintance that makes custom plastic bags, now that you mention it. I'm reasonably certain that he has the capacity to make me something by the box. I suppose that's something to look into and might turn out to not just be viable but might turn into a business idea for him. I believe he has a special molder for making the zipper closure things. As he knows my daughter, I should have her contact him. She can con him out of a few dollars too.
Even further off-topic, I've been to his factory. It's actually not a big thing and is kind of neat to see how they're made. They use either heat or ultrasound to seal them and the machines are really versatile. You basically just program them, it's a bit like CAM. I seem to recall that they're smart enough that you can basically feed it a design and it can figure out how to actually make the pieces on its own. 'Tis kind of neat and I'd not thought of that - I'll certainly look into it.
Alas, it only applies to certain content and content configured in such a way as to allow them to compress it - at least that's my understanding. I pay for 25 GB a month and I don't even usually use 1/10 of it. I think I only pay for it because I don't see the bill (accountant does all that stuff) and because I'm insane and think I might need it some day. I looked, based on a conversation at this site, and it turns out that I'm paying quite a bit for it. It's over $200 every month - I think? I don't actually know what I'm paying now because I've recently added a second line so that my girlfriend has a cell. I'm not sure what it costs but she goes ahead and uses one of my debit cards to get a different plan (some Straight Talk thing?) for her younger brother who is back in Buffalo.
I say this mostly because I like to nitpick from time to time. But, well... I've heard it stated, and I'm inclined to agree, that the internet is itself a part of the critical infrastructure. I've even heard it stated that one should have a right to basic access - I've even heard people postulate that a minimal access level should be paid for by tax payers indirectly or by an increased tax on those who pay for full services.
To the point!
So, if we count the internet as a part of a country's critical infrastructure then...
No, no I don't actually have a real point other than that. I'm also in full agreement with the rest of what you said but I suppose we should make an exception to that rule to cover then internet itself. Though, I suppose, one could argue that certain equipment that runs/facilitates the 'net shouldn't be connected to the internet itself.
Yeah, I'm going to be looking into cases for them - preferably ones that can be replaced between patients at minimal expense but the resealable bag is a good idea. I'll have to mention that to her. At this point, I probably should own stock in the damned company. Technically, I once did. I probably should have held onto those shares but I didn't. Ah well... I did not have a lot.
So weren't the people who gassed the Jews. We've already, as a society, decided that culpability lies with the person(s) who give the order and the person(s) who follow them. "I was just following orders." Is no excuse at all.
I worked in a military detention facility as a chaser/escort (transportation officer, really) and I've mentioned this before but I'll mention it again. When we went through the Sally Port into the secure area, just before that, was an old sign on the wall that said, "There, but by the grace of God, go I." That has always stuck with me. It's actually been something, that one little saying - as pithy as it might sound, that helped make me who I am today.
The people who are incarcerated are not all stupid and evil. They're pretty much just like you and I. The difference is that someone didn't like them, they did something stupid and got caught, or they allowed themselves to get caught up in the stupidity of other people.
As a general rule, staff don't actually know why they are detained (at least in a military facility). In fact, some of the records that I carried were classified and that's another story for another day. In my position, I often knew a bit about the reasons but that's because I escorted detainees to court proceedings, sometimes council sessions, and things of that nature. On occasion, I'd also be privy to more personal information because transport sometimes included medical appointments that weren't addressed in the brig facilities.
Mostly, I drove things like a bus to pick up or drop detainees off at the flight line or at a civilian airport, brought them to-from court, and things of that nature. It's frowned on, to some extent, but I had some good conversations with some of them. It should be noted that a military detention facility is not much like a civilian facility - we have a whole different level where we actually respect the detainees. Our average detainee is quite fit, trained, and dangerous so it is essential to ensure that you treat them with respect. They're incarcerated as punishment - not to be punished. We've taken their freedom, there's nothing worse than that.
At any rate, this is a bit rambling on but I had great conversations and I'll not delve into particulars but, for the most part, these were just normal Marines who had bad things happen. Very, very few were actually what I'd call a problem. Most exhibited remorse and you can usually tell who is legit and who is actually remorseful because they were caught.
I had the opportunity to make extra income by working in a civilian facility while I attended school. I did tour the facility and did interact with their training department as well as get a job offer. I can not, in good consciousness, work in a such a facility. The level of respect is not there and I do not think I'd have been able to deal with being around some of the employees for long periods of time. The level of respect from the detainees is also not there but that's a whole other issue and one I'm not qualified to opine on. I would speculate that, in part, it is a chicken and egg problem. I imagine that some of the blame is at both ends as well as social/cultural norms.
At any rate, the detention facility was replaced some time back and I've no authorization to reenter the facility. This was at Camp Lejeune and I'm given to understand that the sign was originally at a detention facility in Plymouth, NH. I have no idea if it made the move to the new facility or not. I'd like to think it did and I'd like to think that it is still significant. For such a trite, or pithy, saying - it has a lasting impact on me and is one of those things that has always stuck with me and enabled me to appreciate my circumstances even more than I think I might.
This is a day old so I'll throw an off-topic reply in here. I don't know if you kept up with the gibberish I posted during the holidays but my daughter finished med school and is now doing whatever it is that doctors do when they finish school and go do some poorly paid duty for four years. She's working in an children's emergency slash trauma unit in a city along the Eastern Seaboard.
I have been conned! Conned I tell you! "Oh, but Daddy, it's not like you were doing anything better." *sighs* You can guess where this is going.
According to her (I figure you can add this to your repertoire) iPads are easy to keep fairly sanitized and to clean if they get dirty. They're not applicable to all patients, some are kept in very sterile environments, but the hospital is a non-profit/charitable facility. So, yeah... She says that they need at least twenty as they have 18 beds. She does not yet have approval from the IT staff to put them online but I'm sure she'll get that approval. And yes, yes I'll take care of it.
She should have been a con artist. I figured you'd be interested and would like to know that, in her professional opinion, they're suitable for use in such environments assuming they're not being kept in complete, sterile, isolation. I expect to know if they can be brought in and put on the network by the end of next week.
Yup. I am referencing a comment earlier - and had read the ensuing discussion.:D
I'll even give you an example. You think it's okay to give young girls special opportunities that exclude young boys. I disagree. I think we should give those special opportunities to all disadvantaged people, regardless of gender, race, creed, or other innate traits. You think we need more females in tech (from your prior posts) and I disagree. I think we need more competent people in tech, without regard to their innate traits other than their aptitude. I think we should find more people with a high aptitude and encourage them - with egalitarianism being the method. If that means we end up with more females in tech then that matters not one iota to me except it will make me mildly emotionally happier to see a more equal distribution.
I want progress - just not progress in the same specific way you want it. Based on your comment, and not reading things into the post that you were replying to, I'd say that it's a false dichotomy. There's another choice. (The above example is used simply to provide an example and shouldn't be assumed to be anything more than one such example.)
Which, if you will, leads me to this... I find myself disliking the progressive moniker because the vast majority of those who self-identify as such *AND* that I have encountered, are convinced that there is only one type of progress to be made and in only a certain direction. I'm one of those people who would like society to be very different than it is but my failing to envision the same outcome gets me erroneously labeled a conservative by many of those people. You, of course, are quite likely to know that I'm hardly a conservative.
As for the above, you do not quite fall into that observation. That's why I was kind of surprised with the false dichotomy. You are usually more, for lack of a better word, observant and not quite so binary as some.
If I understand it correctly, many of those other devices that make use of the spectrum (spectra?) are much lower powered and this may drown them out. I am not a guru but I think the way in which the wifi protocols work means that there still some frequency hopping (not necessarily huge leaps) which means that they'll *potentially* be tough to work around - is my layman's understanding.
The current devices, in their current use, will be fairly narrowly defined bands and fairly low power (things like a wireless phone would be one that's a bit higher powered). They stay in fairly defined areas and don't use frequency hoping or the likes - they're not designed for that. Now, this could (if used frequently) cause interference and I suspect there's no law preventing them from doing so. On top of that, these may not be (probably won't be - given the nature of wifi) so narrowly defined (Narrowband is the word - I think? They won't be that.) and they'll be higher powered.
Imagine a room full of people. You and I are having a conversation and we've been having it for a while. Then, a bunch of other people come in and they have conversations. That's fine but now they're loud so it's hard to hear each other. On top of that, these new people aren't just talking to each other, sometimes they want to talk to someone on your left or on your right and they bounce back and forth between them - instead of moving to them, they yell over and across our conversation.
That's my layman's understanding. It's also a horrible analogy but I think it should be close enough.
Two. Two arguments! Muahahah! (I am the count because I like to count things!!!)
Err...
1. There are exemptions. If there are exemptions it is not mandatory. 2. They don't appear* to test for drugs and alcohol as a general rule.
And, to be fancy-shmancy, even though they currently test for some things does that mean they should be even more invasive? Does that mean they should make a test for this mandatory for acquisition of a driver's license? I'm guessing you think so.
* Some of those words were big and I did not look up all States.
Slashdot Mirror
My ringtone is that of an old modem dialing and negotiating a connection. I get some odd looks from the younger people but not long ago a guy about my age walked over and asked where I got the tone. Once upon a time, I imagine that might have made for more interesting looks and responses. At one point, I could mimic the noises pretty well (and did - usually when nobody was there to hear me) and I'd have loved to do that in public when answering a phone back then.
Of course, I'm old and retired so I can get away with that sort of stuff now. Maybe I should do it down at the lodge when they're playing Pinochle. It might distract some of 'em - those old ladies can be pretty shrewd. Also, we're usually playing for money.
Oh, I know - I figure they're just trying to trick me! (I did click the link. Looks interesting.) I just couldn't help but notice it was GNA and just missing a letter.
This is Slashdot. The URL to your site is GNA.org. We're not gonna click that! (Unless we're gay or black.)
In all seriousness, after I retired and moved to Maine I was invited to teach at UMF. I taught a basic maths and two advanced mathematics courses. I did this for two semesters. Oh the things I have to say... But, now is not that time.
Suffice to say, even with such a limited course load - I still lacked time to give the attention that I felt the kids deserved (even if they didn't know it, but I digress) and to be able to judge my own abilities to give instruction. I'd have enjoyed something that had given me metrics like those and might have stuck with it. I am told that I am an excellent teacher but very strict.
I do not ask for much. In fact, I guess I don't ask for anything. I make demands. I do not make many of them. They are not really requests. Failing to do so will not go well for the student. One of the demands I made was that if you can not meet my demands you must tell me. In hindsight, that seems a bit of a paradox.
But, I expect a certain level of effort. That effort is something I also expect from me. Just those courses were enough to keep me quite occupied and I didn't think I was able to give the kids as much individual attention as they were paying for. I tried to set aside a few hours, every day, for the students to reach out - and that time was actually often spent meeting with said students. It's not easy to get someone to go from rote memory to actually being able to visualize what the math means and why the results are what they are.
UMF is, for the most part, a teacher's college. I probably pushed further than I needed to - though the kids seemed to like it and, for the most part, did well. I probably would have been able to give them more attention if I'd had tools to do better analytics. I like the concept of teaching but I don't like the practice. I also didn't have things like assistants or grad students to help out.
To paraphrase, "You will learn quickly, you will learn much, and you will work out of class as well as during class or you will drop the course so that I have time for those who do wish to do those things." I'd probably do better with fewer students per class. Everybody's "get it moment" is different and everybody needs a different path to reach that point. My job was to get them to that point and tools of the nature that you describe would have better enabled me to do that job.
I took four years of Latin back in school. It has come in handy. I also took a couple of years of Greek. Those have come in handy. There are loads of languages that I do not speak but I can figure a lot of things out in text. It's not uncommon for me to be at a non-English site and still be able to grasp the gist of it. Obviously, no Cyrillic, Asian, or Arabic type things work for me - I don't know what the characters mean.
I do wonder why it's okay to change the English to Latin but not okay to change the Chinese to Latin. I don't really care, however. In three hours I will have forgotten this almost entirely and in a week I won't even remember the name. I figure that, by the time I hit 70, I should be able to hide my own Easter Eggs.
The world doesn't work like that so I don't have much of an answer. You can blame anyone you want but that doesn't mean the rest of the world agrees.
I'd only suggest that there are others who share culpability in many things and that this is one of those things. The person who did the deed is culpable - just like a murder for hire means the killer and the person who hired them share culpability. I suppose this is a bit less drastic than murder, however. The underlying principle is the same. We decided long ago, perhaps in grade school, that it is no excuse to say, "They told me to do it!"
Heh... It works fine as a desktop for me. The bonus is that I can also use it like a server in many regards.
From my house in Florida I connect to
my house in Maine which has
a desktop which is connected to
my server rack in the basement which has
some VM images which are
the OS image that is running on that
desktop in Maine which is connected to
a VPN by which I connect to
Slashdot...
Obviously, I'm retarded. However, I can be as retarded as I want.
Err... It's not always connected like this - I was just doing stuff and brought up a VM that's used to do some specific stuff. Seeing as I was there... Yeah, you get insane gibberish but the point is the same - it's a fine desktop and there's a lot you can do with it, easily, if you're willing to put some effort into learning. It gets worse - sometimes I'm not even using an installed OS but just running off a Live USB. I mostly set it up because I was in hotels and wanted to make sure that I had control of my encryption levels directly so I tunneled through my house. Surprisingly, it works. Seems to be stable as all hell and I can check my security system which I only allow certain machines and IP addresses to access. I'll skip the details for a whole variety of reasons. But, suffice to say, you can do the damnedest of things with relative ease and stability.
You use standard images, you can roll your own if you want. AD can just be permissions and you can still do roaming profiles - hell, you can just use the computer as a dumb terminal and simply push everything out and just manage a few standard images (per job needed to fulfill) with things being saved to a separate /home folder with various permissions used to do what you want with it. If you want to be really fancy, you can even have new default profiles come with special permissions already enabled by doing what's pretty much just editing a template as those permissions will just be inherited and assigned automatically on new-user creation.
Basically, as near as I can tell, you can do whatever you want in those regards and do them in loads of different ways. You can even run your own local repository so that you can test updates before pushing them out. Much of it can be automated away.
To say something said above: I was an MS MVP for quite a while. I hold no ill will and LIKE Windows. I didn't switch to using Linux exclusively because I hated Windows. I switched because my brain was turning to mush because I wasn't doing anything new. No idealism or zealotry needed. Linux is just fine for me. Hell, OS X is a fine OS, I'm pretty sure, but I've never bothered to dig deep into it - I've used it a little. BSD is fine. Etc... I'm not a crazy zealot and just happened to want to do something to make me think more as I'm starting to get old. I used to use Unix and then I used some Linux when it came out. It's always been installed as a second/rescue OS. I just never really used it.
I forget the name but there are Exchange things you can poke at - they should probably cover much of what you need. The permissions system is nice and not so buried. If you want to be really intricate, you can do stuff like seriously set up SAMBA in some new and unusual ways. It just means looking at things a little differently. If you understand the basic concepts (why this happens when I push this) then you'll figure it out pretty quickly.
'Snot too hard, really. There's a learning curve but it's kind of go at your own pace unless you're taking it as a scholastic pursuit. As I'd been familiar with Linux and Unix (typically Solaris) I had a bit of a head start. When I first used Windows it was actually rather hard. I'd learned with command line. Reverting wasn't tough for me but I think the hardest things for some people to get are things like file management/directory structures and thinking that it is, or should be, like Windows. It's not, if you want Windows then use it. Linus is not Windows. Trying to use it like Windows will really not help and will make you right pissed off.
Oh, and don't worry about learning the commend line. De-dupe your bash_history and keep backups of it. ;-) There's often a GUI front end that someone's cobbled together. It might not be pretty but it works. If not, well, It's Qt time. Or you can introduce the sexy secretary Perl to your Python and C what happens. Hmm... I should probably avoid trying to be amusing. Seriously, though, it's not 1997 any more. It's not hard to switch and, for the most part, things just work.
Take the Hairyfeet challenge. Get a 5 year old version of Linux and do 2 upgrades or more? They will ALWAYS break after the 3 rd release. Windows doesn't have this problem.
While the only product that I have Windows on, right now, is a phone - I'm actually a bit of a fan of the Windows OS, even if it's not installed. It was only recently that I let my MSDN subscription lapse and I participated in the MS MVP (winning multiple awards) for quite some time.
That said, what do I win? How do I need to document it? Do I get to pick the distro? Do I get to pick the hardware? Can I do it in a VM?
Also, releases are more frequent - meaning that 3 releases ago was only 14.04 (which was a LTS) so the most realistic release would be 13.10 which is three standard releases away from the current 15.10 version. It'd be a bit silly to show what it could do 5 years ago when I can just as easily show you want it can do now.
You gotta make it worth my time though. I don't need money, I've got plenty of that. I don't need wine, women, or song. Hmm... Only three upgrades? Yeah, I can do that. But, specifically, I only need to do one install and then two upgrades - and then one final upgrade? Yeah, make it worth my time and I'll do it. Is someone going to go from Vista, to 7, to 8, and then to 10? 'Cause I think I might even beat them in speed. Do I need more than the default installed applications? That shouldn't matter but it will tell me what to do to ensure I only need to do it once.
Thing is, I'm not even a Linux guru and I can do that. Hell, I can switch from 12.04 (Ubuntu) to upgrade multiple times and end up with all my data, all my settings, and have the end result be a perfectly fine CentOS latest beta build. (That might take some actual work.) I can probably stop in at Fedora in the middle and *still* come out with my data, settings, and even still have the same wallpaper and theme. Make it worth my time.
Hmmm.... If I can't do it (in a timely fashion - figure out a time limit and I'll agree or disagree) then I'll re-up my MSDN subscription and I'll install their OS on two devices - as the default boot choice. If I can do it then you and Mr. Feet have to do something... Say, wearing nothing but a pair of knee high stockings and two-piece string bikinis, dancing to an oompa loompa band, and singing a duet that I write about RMS and how he's your greatest man-crush.
Hint: Don't take this bet. However, it will be an awesome video.
LOL You've been bitching about that netbook thing for a couple of years now. (I'm assuming that's what your link goes to - I didn't click.) I think I might actually have a couple at home that are in that size range and a couple that are slightly smaller. When I get back to Maine, probably in the early spring, I'll look and you can have 'em if you want. Why? You're gonna be insufferable when the damned thing dies on you so you might as well get a spare. Otherwise, even in 2016, you'll be ranting about "that damned fine ultra-portable you had back in the day, that they discontinued, and it broke." ;-)
Seriously, I'll look when I get back home. It's not like it gets used at my house. I'm pretty sure I have the same model that I've heard you mention once or twenty times and a couple of others that are similarly sized. I know I have some 9" netbooks - one from Acer and the other from Asus (I think?) and I think I have a much more recent model from Lenovo that is either 11" or close to it. At least I'm pretty sure that I've neither given them away nor had one of my kids abscond with them. They prefer the more expensive stuff. That didn't go away when they turned into adults or had their own money.
I seem to recall getting Ubuntu to work on the Asus. I just couldn't fall in lust with it. I prefer a much larger device, a keyboard with a number pad, and room for two drives. At any rate, I'll be sure to look. If I haven't then just remember to bitch about it some more come spring. That'll remind me - though I kind of doubt you'll need a reminder. If it dies before then you'll be straight up impossible.
Hmm... That really kind of depends on your definition of good. The Zero was agile, yes. It was relatively inexpensive, yes. It wasn't too difficult to fly but was difficult to fly well - which is why they ran out of good pilots pretty quickly. They had pretty much no armor. They didn't have self-sealing fuel tanks. Hmm... I'm a bit skeptical with "pretty decent" as the terms. Take a look at their firearms during WWII as another example of things I'd not call "pretty decent."
I guess it's subjective and what you'd call decent but, well, I'm not really inclined to agree that it is all that good.
On the other hand, gimme a Honda Accord from 1988. I love that car.
It is certainly not a toy but, more often than not, the firearm I choose for my daily carry is chambered in .22 LR. No, I have no intention of stopping an active shooter and a bunch of his friends - I am not Rambo. I like the deterrent nature and, if needed, I can always use more rounds and keep them on-target.
Probably something like:
sudo apt-get purge adobeflash* && sudo apt-get purge pepperflash*
That should work. Close your browser while it runs, also check Google before running those but they should work on Mint.
The kinds of things he makes he never even bothers to patent. I've had this discussion with him before. Basically, a patent is useless to him and a waste of money. Making something to do what we're talking about will (not might be) copied by China who can do it cheaper and not give two shits about a patent. His best bet is to get in, do it quick, make his money, and then just get out. Or, less frequently, he just finds and builds a small network of companies and sells to them direct. Basically, you give him dimensions and he's got a product a day later and boxes full in a week. The place doesn't even run 24/7 or anything.
In your case, he's who you'd probably go to and get a quick order filled if you're low on inventory or just starting out and want to rush to market. If you've got a lot of something or a large market then his company isn't the best choice for you in the long term - it's fine for short term, low volumes, and things like that. By low-volumes we're talking 100,000 units or so. Anything larger? Go to China. He probably won't even take that order or, if he does, he's just going to sub it out to China and communication is cheap today so you might as well do it yourself.
Basically, you might have used him for the first samples and then the first couple of orders while you waited for them to ramp up in China and get the stuff here on a slow boat. He stores the designs to disk so you can return and have more done. He can do some custom shapes and closure types, those get welded by ultrasound usually. I've offered to help him expand, he's not interested. "I can't compete with China and there's a limit where I'll no longer be as profitable for the amount of work done." Something along those lines. He's probably right.
Hmm... Network with people. That's my suggestion but, no worries - nobody ever listens to me. ;-) Seriously though, you'd be surprised who you know who knows someone. Hell, I'd have just forwarded an email to him on your behalf in the case of your device. He might have taken the job on 90 day or something. It's not much cost to him and all the equipment is paid for and the factory is already owned entirely. It's mostly a large warehouse and then two smaller sections of equipment and an office with a showroom. That's it. He's got like two fork-lifts and a box truck. I think he's got two employees and they're both family.
Seeing as I'm already this far off-topic (and rightfully moderated as so up above), I'm actually rather fond of investing in small businesses. I've now got partial ownership of a few of them and all but one has been quite lucrative. Even the one that wasn't really lucrative, I still made out in the end with the assets being sold or kept. Since I sold my company, quite a few of my friends and family have their own small businesses - one as small as making handmade quilts.. I really think that's the way forward.
Sometime this spring, I am not sure when, I'll be going to Peru to help my son close on a bar/hotel. He's not going to finish school at the moment (he went to Peru, met a native lady, and he's enjoying himself) so he might as well do something besides not being productive. I don't want non-productive kids. I've seen their type. He doesn't drink, it should be a good place for him. Well, he doesn't drink often.
Hmm... Not sure if serious?
I seem to recall a similar attitude. In fact, it's similar enough to be uncanny. "Leave interpreting God's will/word/Bible/signs to the priests. You lay people wouldn't understand."
Thanks again - I've actually got an acquaintance that makes custom plastic bags, now that you mention it. I'm reasonably certain that he has the capacity to make me something by the box. I suppose that's something to look into and might turn out to not just be viable but might turn into a business idea for him. I believe he has a special molder for making the zipper closure things. As he knows my daughter, I should have her contact him. She can con him out of a few dollars too.
Even further off-topic, I've been to his factory. It's actually not a big thing and is kind of neat to see how they're made. They use either heat or ultrasound to seal them and the machines are really versatile. You basically just program them, it's a bit like CAM. I seem to recall that they're smart enough that you can basically feed it a design and it can figure out how to actually make the pieces on its own. 'Tis kind of neat and I'd not thought of that - I'll certainly look into it.
Alas, it only applies to certain content and content configured in such a way as to allow them to compress it - at least that's my understanding. I pay for 25 GB a month and I don't even usually use 1/10 of it. I think I only pay for it because I don't see the bill (accountant does all that stuff) and because I'm insane and think I might need it some day. I looked, based on a conversation at this site, and it turns out that I'm paying quite a bit for it. It's over $200 every month - I think? I don't actually know what I'm paying now because I've recently added a second line so that my girlfriend has a cell. I'm not sure what it costs but she goes ahead and uses one of my debit cards to get a different plan (some Straight Talk thing?) for her younger brother who is back in Buffalo.
It's a long story. ;-)
I say this mostly because I like to nitpick from time to time. But, well... I've heard it stated, and I'm inclined to agree, that the internet is itself a part of the critical infrastructure. I've even heard it stated that one should have a right to basic access - I've even heard people postulate that a minimal access level should be paid for by tax payers indirectly or by an increased tax on those who pay for full services.
To the point!
So, if we count the internet as a part of a country's critical infrastructure then...
No, no I don't actually have a real point other than that. I'm also in full agreement with the rest of what you said but I suppose we should make an exception to that rule to cover then internet itself. Though, I suppose, one could argue that certain equipment that runs/facilitates the 'net shouldn't be connected to the internet itself.
Yeah, I'm going to be looking into cases for them - preferably ones that can be replaced between patients at minimal expense but the resealable bag is a good idea. I'll have to mention that to her. At this point, I probably should own stock in the damned company. Technically, I once did. I probably should have held onto those shares but I didn't. Ah well... I did not have a lot.
She was following orders...
So weren't the people who gassed the Jews. We've already, as a society, decided that culpability lies with the person(s) who give the order and the person(s) who follow them. "I was just following orders." Is no excuse at all.
I worked in a military detention facility as a chaser/escort (transportation officer, really) and I've mentioned this before but I'll mention it again. When we went through the Sally Port into the secure area, just before that, was an old sign on the wall that said, "There, but by the grace of God, go I." That has always stuck with me. It's actually been something, that one little saying - as pithy as it might sound, that helped make me who I am today.
The people who are incarcerated are not all stupid and evil. They're pretty much just like you and I. The difference is that someone didn't like them, they did something stupid and got caught, or they allowed themselves to get caught up in the stupidity of other people.
As a general rule, staff don't actually know why they are detained (at least in a military facility). In fact, some of the records that I carried were classified and that's another story for another day. In my position, I often knew a bit about the reasons but that's because I escorted detainees to court proceedings, sometimes council sessions, and things of that nature. On occasion, I'd also be privy to more personal information because transport sometimes included medical appointments that weren't addressed in the brig facilities.
Mostly, I drove things like a bus to pick up or drop detainees off at the flight line or at a civilian airport, brought them to-from court, and things of that nature. It's frowned on, to some extent, but I had some good conversations with some of them. It should be noted that a military detention facility is not much like a civilian facility - we have a whole different level where we actually respect the detainees. Our average detainee is quite fit, trained, and dangerous so it is essential to ensure that you treat them with respect. They're incarcerated as punishment - not to be punished. We've taken their freedom, there's nothing worse than that.
At any rate, this is a bit rambling on but I had great conversations and I'll not delve into particulars but, for the most part, these were just normal Marines who had bad things happen. Very, very few were actually what I'd call a problem. Most exhibited remorse and you can usually tell who is legit and who is actually remorseful because they were caught.
I had the opportunity to make extra income by working in a civilian facility while I attended school. I did tour the facility and did interact with their training department as well as get a job offer. I can not, in good consciousness, work in a such a facility. The level of respect is not there and I do not think I'd have been able to deal with being around some of the employees for long periods of time. The level of respect from the detainees is also not there but that's a whole other issue and one I'm not qualified to opine on. I would speculate that, in part, it is a chicken and egg problem. I imagine that some of the blame is at both ends as well as social/cultural norms.
At any rate, the detention facility was replaced some time back and I've no authorization to reenter the facility. This was at Camp Lejeune and I'm given to understand that the sign was originally at a detention facility in Plymouth, NH. I have no idea if it made the move to the new facility or not. I'd like to think it did and I'd like to think that it is still significant. For such a trite, or pithy, saying - it has a lasting impact on me and is one of those things that has always stuck with me and enabled me to appreciate my circumstances even more than I think I might.
This is a day old so I'll throw an off-topic reply in here. I don't know if you kept up with the gibberish I posted during the holidays but my daughter finished med school and is now doing whatever it is that doctors do when they finish school and go do some poorly paid duty for four years. She's working in an children's emergency slash trauma unit in a city along the Eastern Seaboard.
I have been conned! Conned I tell you! "Oh, but Daddy, it's not like you were doing anything better." *sighs* You can guess where this is going.
According to her (I figure you can add this to your repertoire) iPads are easy to keep fairly sanitized and to clean if they get dirty. They're not applicable to all patients, some are kept in very sterile environments, but the hospital is a non-profit/charitable facility. So, yeah... She says that they need at least twenty as they have 18 beds. She does not yet have approval from the IT staff to put them online but I'm sure she'll get that approval. And yes, yes I'll take care of it.
She should have been a con artist. I figured you'd be interested and would like to know that, in her professional opinion, they're suitable for use in such environments assuming they're not being kept in complete, sterile, isolation. I expect to know if they can be brought in and put on the network by the end of next week.
Yup. I am referencing a comment earlier - and had read the ensuing discussion. :D
I'll even give you an example. You think it's okay to give young girls special opportunities that exclude young boys. I disagree. I think we should give those special opportunities to all disadvantaged people, regardless of gender, race, creed, or other innate traits. You think we need more females in tech (from your prior posts) and I disagree. I think we need more competent people in tech, without regard to their innate traits other than their aptitude. I think we should find more people with a high aptitude and encourage them - with egalitarianism being the method. If that means we end up with more females in tech then that matters not one iota to me except it will make me mildly emotionally happier to see a more equal distribution.
I want progress - just not progress in the same specific way you want it. Based on your comment, and not reading things into the post that you were replying to, I'd say that it's a false dichotomy. There's another choice. (The above example is used simply to provide an example and shouldn't be assumed to be anything more than one such example.)
Which, if you will, leads me to this... I find myself disliking the progressive moniker because the vast majority of those who self-identify as such *AND* that I have encountered, are convinced that there is only one type of progress to be made and in only a certain direction. I'm one of those people who would like society to be very different than it is but my failing to envision the same outcome gets me erroneously labeled a conservative by many of those people. You, of course, are quite likely to know that I'm hardly a conservative.
As for the above, you do not quite fall into that observation. That's why I was kind of surprised with the false dichotomy. You are usually more, for lack of a better word, observant and not quite so binary as some.
If I understand it correctly, many of those other devices that make use of the spectrum (spectra?) are much lower powered and this may drown them out. I am not a guru but I think the way in which the wifi protocols work means that there still some frequency hopping (not necessarily huge leaps) which means that they'll *potentially* be tough to work around - is my layman's understanding.
The current devices, in their current use, will be fairly narrowly defined bands and fairly low power (things like a wireless phone would be one that's a bit higher powered). They stay in fairly defined areas and don't use frequency hoping or the likes - they're not designed for that. Now, this could (if used frequently) cause interference and I suspect there's no law preventing them from doing so. On top of that, these may not be (probably won't be - given the nature of wifi) so narrowly defined (Narrowband is the word - I think? They won't be that.) and they'll be higher powered.
Imagine a room full of people. You and I are having a conversation and we've been having it for a while. Then, a bunch of other people come in and they have conversations. That's fine but now they're loud so it's hard to hear each other. On top of that, these new people aren't just talking to each other, sometimes they want to talk to someone on your left or on your right and they bounce back and forth between them - instead of moving to them, they yell over and across our conversation.
That's my layman's understanding. It's also a horrible analogy but I think it should be close enough.
Two. Two arguments! Muahahah! (I am the count because I like to count things!!!)
Err...
1. There are exemptions. If there are exemptions it is not mandatory.
2. They don't appear* to test for drugs and alcohol as a general rule.
And, to be fancy-shmancy, even though they currently test for some things does that mean they should be even more invasive? Does that mean they should make a test for this mandatory for acquisition of a driver's license? I'm guessing you think so.
* Some of those words were big and I did not look up all States.
You need two tools, a hammer and duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, you use a hammer. If it moves and it shouldn't, you use duct tape.