Actually, the young lady has never been to Europe and we were talking about going. I've got to get down to Florida and out to Nevada and then back to Maine first. I'm still in Buffalo. I have no excuses. *sighs*
However, if I get over to that area - I'll smuggle back a few bottles. You probably think I'm kidding but, no... I just might. Two for my cabinet and one to send by mail.;-) I'd like to revisit the former Yugoslavia area. Good people but I don't speak *any* of the language. I can usually get drunk in any language, not so Eastern Europe. I don't drink (much) any more - never more than two. I do like a good sipping drink though and Slivovitz fits the bill IIRC. (I was probably drunk and most anything does the trick after a certain point.)
Anyhow, no... These companies aren't going to do a damned thing useful except, maybe, make some tech cheaper. That's a big maybe. That's one of the reasons I don't think I quite qualify as a space nutter. Close, I mean I dream of it, but no... I figure we're going to screw it up just like we've screwed everything else up. To err is human. My Latin is fuzzy... Est Erratas Humanas? Something like that. I'm too lazy to look and I've nobody to impress. Not even the lady is impressed with butchered Latin, I don't believe. I doubt she knows the difference but I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter.
She's not much interested in space, either. We do, kinda, need to get off this planet if we want to actually keep the species going. I'm not sure why we're concentrating on going places. Anywhere that's interesting enough to warrant visiting is so far away that we'll need to figure out long term space travel. If we can go that distance then we really don't have to land anywhere. We can just keep tooling along in our rusty Chevrolet or something. Maybe stop at various planets and collect knickknacks and bumper stickers. Maybe collector spoon sets... I don't think we're that enlightened. We'd probably try to sex the aliens, rape their minerals, and pillage their underwear drawers.
Why yes, yes I have spent a night in a drunk tank and once a whole weekend. Well, it was a long weekend. You should see me throw gang sign! Hola my G block bitches!
Hmm... That's better than some. Personally, I code like ass and am too lazy to report bugs. I donate money to a bunch of projects - usually if I find something particularly useful or useful to someone else and still just a small project. I have pushed code/sent pull requests. I have found and fixed a few bugs here and there. I do support, I'm KGIII on AskUbuntu for instance - just recently decided to help there as a bit of a pastime.
I was mostly just curious. I'm not sure why it was flamebait but someone's panties were in knots. I've got karma to burn so no big deal to me. I doubt you'd have kept the project afloat. How about contacting the devs to see if they're still getting requests and forking it?
You, my friend, have never been to Alabama. Or Florida. Or Georgia.;-)
That whole little part of the country is its own sort of special. I have a house in Florida. I visit often. I am greatly amused. I am also easily amused. I'd not actually be surprised to see a moon rover going down the road in Alabama. What would surprise me is if it were the real one and not a mock-up. Hell, seeing a parade of the things wouldn't even make me bat an eye. I've seen swamp buggies (the platform type that are like ten feet tall) tooling down Rt. 98 in Panama City Beach. It's nowhere near the swamp, really. No, I'd not bat an eye.
I bought a Super Street Fighter II Turbo stand-up (and an older PacMan) and both sit in my basement collecting dust. I've been meaning to turn them both into MAME boxes for years now. *sighs* So many forgotten and half-done projects.
Err... Didn't you say that software ABSOLUTELY must be open to be secure up above? Some "must be done" part... Now you're saying not to speak in absolutes. Methinks you lost this one.
A study, not that long ago, said something like 98% of all open source projects get abandoned in ____ amount of time. I forget how long. I'm not sure that you can say that a "big percentage" has someone else hacking it. It's quite a stretch to do so. This may be true for popular software but that's actually not the majority of open source software.
And no, I'm a Linux user. A registered Linux user actually. I'm just not a zealot and am inclined to try to be honest. It's the internet, you can do that here.
I am a big fan of hedging my bets but, at the same time, I'm not sure I want humans spreading out to the galaxy like cockroaches. The reality is that we will eventually be hit by some extinction event that eliminates all human life on this planet. This is not optional, it will happen. There is no (realistic) way around this.
Now, I'm almost okay with that but let's pretend that I'm not a raging asshole (if only for the sake of argument). I don't think I'm a space nutter to implicitly state that we need to get off this rock in a meaningful way. This does not mean going to Mars. It means finding a way to ensure that long-term travel, in space, is viable. At which point, it no longer matters where we go nor which worlds we inhabit.
If we want the species to survive longer than Sol then we need to get off this rock - there is no other choice. I am also of the mind that, by the time we realize that we need to do this (as a society) we'll have also reached the point where we've depleted the resources too greatly to accomplish this. And, as stated, I'm kind of okay with the idea of humanity going extinct due to its own ignorance, hubris, and petty politics. I'm not sure that I'd wish our species on the rest of the galaxy.
Humans suck. I'm glad that I'm not one of them. Also, stop picking on the kids! "Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone."
I've taken on (adopted, really), quite some time ago, funding the local elementary school's entire in-class IT education. They only have 56 students. For instance, I've bought the whole school laptops and, this year, I bought them all iPads plus a half-dozen extras for eventual mishaps. The solitary IT staff and teachers really appreciate it but not nearly as much as the kids do. The bake me cookies, have visited my house for nature walks, invite me to plays, make me crafts, send me Christmas cards, and I usually even get a box of "I love you" Valentine's Day cards. It is awesome but their acting and 'music' leave a lot to be desired.
I say that because I want to ask this: You seem knowledgeable. These are K-6 students. The project type that I'm thinking of could be a long-term thing where the students would just keep the device. Financing is trivial, not even remotely an issue. What sort of projects could the kids, reasonably, do with these devices that they could us, say, throughout the year and then keep the device at the end of the year or, perhaps, half year? What kind of support would be offered (if needed, if any)? And would it make the solitary, just one, IT staff pull his hair out or otherwise hate me? Would they be used? Would it be beneficial at their level?
I specifically target the younger kid's education because they're local, they are fewer, and my actions can be more meaningful. The older kids get bused off to a larger school and I'm not fond of the administration there.
Thoughts? No? Just a passing idea but I suspect this would be something I'd need to prep ahead of time to make sure they're ready for incoming students next year as well as making sure that the teachers were familiar with them enough to actually give instruction. They could even make multiple devices or even make stuff that stayed in the school. Perhaps some sort of timer to control the sprinkler's for their little veggie garden? But I'm thinking things to take home. This number might mean that the students could use, damage, and simply keep the devices. It needn't be a single year that does the projects, either. This sort of stash will last them quite a while, I'd suspect.
It's kind of off-topic but I don't know if it's worthy of an Ask Slashdot and I don't generally submit anything for I am a lazy git and almost a passive consumer these days.
Gaming, on a computer, goes back ages - like when I was a kid. No, I didn't play them but they had them. Long before the Magnavox, the Intelivision, etc... They weren't *good* games, from what I've read, but they were gaming on computers before they were gaming on consoles. You did say, "PCs." So, that does mean personal computers. At that point, I'm not really sure - I guess we'd have to figure out when the first device was and what you consider to be a personal computer?
I don't suppose anyone knows, off hand, when the first 'personal computer' arrived (do we go with the early micos)? I seem to remember the consoles popping up in the late 70s - I think the first one I saw was a Magnavox. Standups were right around that time - not long after??? This discounts pinball machines and slot machines. Then there were a whole slew of hand-held games, like football and stuff by makers like Coleco. Some where even head-to-head on one little machine. Kind of neat but, alas, I was more a table top RPG kinda person.
I don't play games, haven't since Fallout 2 - I blame it on my buying Fallout Tactics as I've never really played a game since, and I've watched a few gaming sessions on Twitch. I didn't really enjoy it. On the other hand, back home, I've a an XBox One that I've never actually played a single game on - I've only held the controllers to do setup. I have friends that game and I enjoy watching them. I like watching someone play role playing games but they're right in the room.
I doubt that makes much sense to anyone but me. I used to enjoy a good RPG but I've just not felt like dedicating the time and effort. I never really got into the newer controllers when the PS2 came out so I don't really even know how to use the round controller thingies on them. I simply never learned. I'm not exactly sure what the point of them is, I guess it's granular control or something? I dunno... Don't really care, I guess.
I do, however, like the RPGs and sitting there with a friend who's playing. It's nice when they don't have any clue what they're doing either - first run through the game. Some of the Final Fantasy games were okay. I learned to like watching RPGs with some Mana game, I don't recall which. Basically, I could pick up the second controller and play as a second person in the party. That wasn't bad. I don't really enjoy watching FPS games as much. I did like a few driving games but those kind of 'jumped the shark' with the PS2, I found. I didn't actually buy a PS2, that was a friend's so I never really played much. I've never actually seen a PS3 or 4 in the flesh that I know of. My son had a few of them but I was over gaming by then but I'd watch once in a while.
I dunno? I can't really see eSports being something I'd get into unless they played for many hours over multiple days to play an RPG they'd never played before? I'd probably watch something like that. Hell, if a Slashdotter is going to get a new RPG and wants to stream it and hasn't played it before then I'd probably watch if I had time. I don't even know how I'd go about finding someone who'd not played a game and was streaming it. I just happened to stumble across Twitch from Justin and ended up watching a bit of gaming.
Dunno but, I guess, I can understand spectators enjoying it. I would, for a limited subset, enjoy it. I just don't think they actually cater to my desires so I probably wouldn't enjoy it but it's okay if they do.
Holy shit... Seriously. I could not work like that. I just, a few seconds prior to you replying (it seems), replied to another user and went into some details and, honestly, I feel very fortunate. It seems, as I stated, toxic. I could not, I would not, work like that. I'm retired but I owned my own company and never, not really, had a single issue of this nature. Anything even close to that was nipped in the bud but we were small (around two hundred employees in three offices and two skeleton-crew offices). I don't recall it ever being an issue - we did have a couple of times where stuff was forgotten but I think it was legitimately forgotten in the rush and we all pulled together and made it work on time. It was never the same person and was only a few times. We didn't need to take notes, we talked. We followed up.
Heh... For a while, way too long, we did have logging on an IRC system in the office. That got abused more than it was used - if it was used then it was just as a reminder.
This backstabbing, blackmailing, etc. nonsense just seems foreign to me. I went military, academia, private. So, I don't have much experience working for other people or in a large business. In the military most orders are written down, in some form or another, so there's that but I wasn't the one doing the note taking and if they were going to bitch at me then they were going to bitch at me no matter how many notes I produced to the contrary. In academia, I actually had a fairly simple time, so to speak. I did have a few issues when preparing to my defense but those were quickly figured out and everything got done on time and went according to plan, mostly...
I really, I just couldn't. I'd quit. I don't have the patience for that sort of crap. If you tell me that you're going to do something then do it. Otherwise be honest and tell me to piss off. I'll extend the same courtesy. If you say you're going to have it done on Friday then have it done on Friday. If, come Wednesday, you figure out you need more time then don't wait until Friday to tell me. Tell me on Wednesday and I'll get you the help you need or help you myself (that's motivation to not do help, right there!)
Sorry for your work life. That has to suck. I seriously wouldn't want to work with people that I could not trust. I sure as hell wouldn't want them working "for" me, either.
I can't say that I'm following what it is you're trying to get across. If you're saying that Cheney's friends in the Industrial Military Complex made out like bandits that's probably true. I am not actually sure what that has to do with the claim that the AC made, the one which I was responding to. You then go on to say that my "argument" (which was actually just a question because they might be correct and I can't find any information that confirms that as being true) falls flat - even if true. So if I'm arguing, and that argument is correct, it's immaterial because of some point that I neither made nor argued?
Am I following or am I misreading something? I've never known you to be an idiot before (though I'm sure you have, I know I have - plenty of times) so, perhaps, I am misreading something.
I went from the military to academia to owning my own company. We did have staff to take notes in meetings with clients and recorded those meetings. Orders were often written in the military. But, from the way I read their post, this was just dealing with coworkers during normal interactions, at least part of the time. Yeah, we've got a lot on our plate but we remember these things, don't lie about these things, and keep updated with these things. Meetings with clients, yeah, we recorded stuff but it was all written into contracts and any changes required returning to the contract to make changes.
It just seems toxic to me. Like backstabbing, lying, cheating, and other ineptitudes; Not on the part of the OP but on the part of the people they are working with. I can't imagine feeling like I have to defend myself or dealing with coworkers who would behave in a manner where I needed written notes to "prove" something. That this is normal enough behavior to warrant an actual need to document conversations is, wow... Just, wow.... It's foreign to me?
The more I think about it, the more I read, the more grateful I am that I've just been damned lucky - it seems. In the end, I had about two hundred people who worked with me (not "for" me - there's a difference) and everyone was vetted carefully so this was never an issue. I'm sure that some candidates were turned away who may have had that sort of behavior, the type needing to defend against, but nobody hired ever really was a problem. We didn't even have an HR department - not one single person. Candidates had a tertiary interview that involved anyone in the company who felt they'd be interested - a whole panel. Only a half dozen ever normally showed up. Maybe that's why we never had issues like this? *shrugs* I don't know?
It just seems toxic. The idea that I can't trust you to do what you said - and will need notes to prove it? Sure, people make mistakes and forget. That's why you follow up and check on their progress. "Hey, Neil. How's the Macy account going? Did you get the database to sort properly? It's going to have to such to do some of that data insertion manually, huh? Need a hand with it? I know Jeff's said he's got some free time at the end of this week. Do we need more staff?"
I don't know how you deal with that sort of stuff for eight hours a day. It's different with a client but that's recorded and on paper in a contract. Say what you do, do what you say. ISO 9002.:/ Then again, we were a small company. We only had a little over two hundred employees. We had three offices that were fully staffed and two that maintained a skeleton crew but scaled as needed when we had work in the region. We were mostly programmers, IT staff, mathematicians, modelers, traffic engineers, and secretarial staff. We didn't even have a real sales department, just customer service and representatives who fielded questions. Maybe that has something to do with it, too.
Hell, in the Eastern Europe region they not only rape you but they'll often hold you down and tattoo the equivalent of "bitch" across your forehead with tattoo ink made from melted boot heels and urine. Rape's common in prisons across the globe. America just is stupid and has more people in prison. Some, a smaller number than you might think, are much more humane and actually have adequate staffing, a smaller prison population, and proper housing routines.
You know... You probably, unknowingly, broke a law when you entered in and created the PIN information. I have no idea which law you probably broke but, given the way laws are, that was probably a felony. I'm not even kidding. It could be anything from unauthorized use of a computer system to all sorts of various banking related crimes depending on your jurisdiction. You knew it wasn't your card and even though you were doing the right thing, you still entered in and changed that data without the consent of the actual card holder.
I don't think that opening mislabeled mail is illegal - I think that one might have been settled in the supreme court (assuming US laws). The content inside, on the other hand... Yeah, you probably committed a felony. I'd not raise a stink over it or the issuing bank could opt to contact an already affiliated district attorney (or the likes) and see if they can come up with a way to shut you up. I'm not usually the tin-foil hat type but, yeah... I'm not even sure that this is tin-foil-hat-territory. Businesses are, sometimes, damned evil and willing to go a long ways to protect their image or get revenge.
Very seldom does the "government" stop crime. They investigate it and punish it, after the fact. They don't usually prevent anything.
This may not be a popular thing to say but, as I think about this - I'm okay with that. The methods they'd need to use to stop crime would be too harsh, I think. I'd assume they'd be only able to accomplish this be removing freedoms and restricting rights. I am kind of happy that the government isn't really meant to (even if they think they are) stop crime. Crime sucks but they should only be in the business, generally speaking, of prosecuting those who have committed crimes - that should be more than enough, usually, to keep them busy.
I've never given it much though but, on first blush, I'm okay with the government not being in the business of stopping crime. You don't expect the government to provide you with locks on your door, would you? (Maybe you would - your post indicates you just might be. I am not, I don't think?) You don't want them stopping you to see where you're going and what business you have at your destination, do you? (Again, you might.) You don't want them collecting and inspecting your data to see if, just maybe, you're committing a crime, do you? (Yet again, you might.)
No... I don't think I want the government to stop criminals (for the most part). Sure, where there is an obvious, known, and present threat then reasons takes over and it'd be nice if they stepped in to protect the citizens. However, I'm armed because I don't expect the cops to save me if I'm being shot at (if I'm just being mugged then I'm just going to give them my wallet).
Yeah, the more I think about it - they're kind of right -- in my opinion. I don't want the government trying to stop the criminals, generally speaking. I want them to prosecute those who break the law. The only way they can prevent crime is to reduce freedoms and rights. I'm open to suggestions but I'm not sure how it's the government's responsibility to prevent crime nor do I really think it should be their responsibility (regardless of what they think). That's how you end up with the NSA, Homeland Security, or the likes.
Hmm... This needs reasoning and logic applied.:/ Note to self: Ponder this.
Per your enforcing the law... Hmm... I guess that depends on how you look at it? I'm probably reaching a bit here so I'll try to be brief - I don't have much of a point, anyhow.
My business had been broken into, the alarm company called, the kid was in custody. After letting it get partway through the court system we opted to drop charges and were able to set up a deal with the judge. He had to work to pay off the money to cover the repairs. We'd convinced our cleaning company to take him on to work at our office (he eventually earned enough trust to work elsewhere). He had to stay out of trouble for a year and stay in school, with passing grades and acceptable behavior reports - while working 20 hours per week. I'd have just let him work at our place doing the cleaning and outside stuff had the cleaning company not taken him on to do other work. In return, at the end of the year, his case was round-filed which included expunging the arrest record.
Which was what I'd decided I wanted. (By the way, only 1/4 of his weekly pay was deducted to pay for the damages, damned kid.)
So, in a way, yes... That was us enforcing the law - but, as I said, I'm kind of reaching here. We worked within the legal framework (including time off to see the DA and attend two of the initial court appearances and the last one where the case was dismissed).
For the curious, it turned out okay. I'm not completely certain but I'm told that he's now got his own cleaning company, he goes in at night and does office cleaning as well as industrial floors - that type of stuff. I guess he's got a bunch of people working for him and many are young, underprivileged, and ex-cons. He also (I'm pretty sure) was planning on (or doing something) about giving kids a way to stay out of trouble - like a Boys Club type of thing. I don't really know. I've not been in the area for eight years and this was more like fifteen years ago.
Now, there was still a judge and a representative of the State involved but we decided the punishment, we enforced the (as in I, personally, got the letters from his teacher and his report cards) stipulations - including the time worked, and we decided to not move the prosecution forward at the end of the year (which he passed with flying colors). We were not the law but we had the force of law behind us and quite a bit of control (or influence) on how that process worked.
This was Winston/Salem NC and I'm not sure how the court system would react today but it wasn't that long ago, really. The kid did seem interested in getting into coding and was working with one of the devs to see if he could make a traffic simulation game (we had the best MFing traffic sim "game" in the world, thank you very much - I might be biased) but nothing ever came of it. He liked the outcome, he liked the work, but he didn't seem quite able to grasp the process so much and we had plenty of staff so there was always help for him - he actually would come in 'off hours' after school quite a bit.
Anyhow, nice family but poor and a lot of kids. The parents were always out of the house, working their asses off, and we all met and whatnot. My thinking was that the courts wouldn't have actually done anything to him except punish him and punishment wasn't really what I felt was required. Well, not solely required. He was punished, he worked to fix the damage. Beyond that, I figured, he needed something to keep his ass busy and some rewards for his effort to learn to respect himself.
Which ties back in... It was my ideology (technically, not just mine as I'd discussed it with a number of those who worked with me) that influenced the court's decision as well as the State's decision to not prosecute but to allow a certain set of criteria to be met. I'm not sure if that counts as enforcement but it is pretty close. True, it's not total but it's not unprecedented - I guess that's my line of thinking and my point. For certain periods of time, we had data on-site that was the property of others and part of our contract was to
No, they possess a copy. *nods* We, Slashdot, are all about information being free until it's our information. We didn't take anything when we made a copy. They still have use of that data, after all.
Yes, tongue-in-cheek. I do, actually, support copyright and patents but I feel the system needs to be reformed to reflect a more modern society and the speed that technology now changes.
We get the Great White up my way (off the New England coast) and they don't really even bite anyone. I'm not sure why the person above thinks sharks get killed if they bite humans. It's not like the movie Jaws where they hunt around for a specific shark or anything. There's no great throng of people with pitchforks and torches who go hunting mean sharks that bite people. They just stay the hell out of there for a few days. I also kind of doubt that sharks are telling each other, "Go for the fat ones, those are the best humans."
WTF kind of toxic places do you people work at? The more I read this type of shit, the more it boggles my mind. How are these companies even in business?
Slashdot Mirror
I just want to say... I understand.
Actually, the young lady has never been to Europe and we were talking about going. I've got to get down to Florida and out to Nevada and then back to Maine first. I'm still in Buffalo. I have no excuses. *sighs*
However, if I get over to that area - I'll smuggle back a few bottles. You probably think I'm kidding but, no... I just might. Two for my cabinet and one to send by mail. ;-) I'd like to revisit the former Yugoslavia area. Good people but I don't speak *any* of the language. I can usually get drunk in any language, not so Eastern Europe. I don't drink (much) any more - never more than two. I do like a good sipping drink though and Slivovitz fits the bill IIRC. (I was probably drunk and most anything does the trick after a certain point.)
Anyhow, no... These companies aren't going to do a damned thing useful except, maybe, make some tech cheaper. That's a big maybe. That's one of the reasons I don't think I quite qualify as a space nutter. Close, I mean I dream of it, but no... I figure we're going to screw it up just like we've screwed everything else up. To err is human. My Latin is fuzzy... Est Erratas Humanas? Something like that. I'm too lazy to look and I've nobody to impress. Not even the lady is impressed with butchered Latin, I don't believe. I doubt she knows the difference but I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter.
She's not much interested in space, either. We do, kinda, need to get off this planet if we want to actually keep the species going. I'm not sure why we're concentrating on going places. Anywhere that's interesting enough to warrant visiting is so far away that we'll need to figure out long term space travel. If we can go that distance then we really don't have to land anywhere. We can just keep tooling along in our rusty Chevrolet or something. Maybe stop at various planets and collect knickknacks and bumper stickers. Maybe collector spoon sets... I don't think we're that enlightened. We'd probably try to sex the aliens, rape their minerals, and pillage their underwear drawers.
D block - represent! whoo whoo!
Why yes, yes I have spent a night in a drunk tank and once a whole weekend. Well, it was a long weekend. You should see me throw gang sign! Hola my G block bitches!
Hmm... That's better than some. Personally, I code like ass and am too lazy to report bugs. I donate money to a bunch of projects - usually if I find something particularly useful or useful to someone else and still just a small project. I have pushed code/sent pull requests. I have found and fixed a few bugs here and there. I do support, I'm KGIII on AskUbuntu for instance - just recently decided to help there as a bit of a pastime.
I was mostly just curious. I'm not sure why it was flamebait but someone's panties were in knots. I've got karma to burn so no big deal to me. I doubt you'd have kept the project afloat. How about contacting the devs to see if they're still getting requests and forking it?
You, my friend, have never been to Alabama. Or Florida. Or Georgia. ;-)
That whole little part of the country is its own sort of special. I have a house in Florida. I visit often. I am greatly amused. I am also easily amused. I'd not actually be surprised to see a moon rover going down the road in Alabama. What would surprise me is if it were the real one and not a mock-up. Hell, seeing a parade of the things wouldn't even make me bat an eye. I've seen swamp buggies (the platform type that are like ten feet tall) tooling down Rt. 98 in Panama City Beach. It's nowhere near the swamp, really. No, I'd not bat an eye.
I bought a Super Street Fighter II Turbo stand-up (and an older PacMan) and both sit in my basement collecting dust. I've been meaning to turn them both into MAME boxes for years now. *sighs* So many forgotten and half-done projects.
Err... Didn't you say that software ABSOLUTELY must be open to be secure up above? Some "must be done" part... Now you're saying not to speak in absolutes. Methinks you lost this one.
A generic .config is usually in the source but that often gets edited and is not included in the source. Why would it be included in this source?
A study, not that long ago, said something like 98% of all open source projects get abandoned in ____ amount of time. I forget how long. I'm not sure that you can say that a "big percentage" has someone else hacking it. It's quite a stretch to do so. This may be true for popular software but that's actually not the majority of open source software.
And no, I'm a Linux user. A registered Linux user actually. I'm just not a zealot and am inclined to try to be honest. It's the internet, you can do that here.
You know what's in your post?
More than meets the eye.
I am a big fan of hedging my bets but, at the same time, I'm not sure I want humans spreading out to the galaxy like cockroaches. The reality is that we will eventually be hit by some extinction event that eliminates all human life on this planet. This is not optional, it will happen. There is no (realistic) way around this.
Now, I'm almost okay with that but let's pretend that I'm not a raging asshole (if only for the sake of argument). I don't think I'm a space nutter to implicitly state that we need to get off this rock in a meaningful way. This does not mean going to Mars. It means finding a way to ensure that long-term travel, in space, is viable. At which point, it no longer matters where we go nor which worlds we inhabit.
If we want the species to survive longer than Sol then we need to get off this rock - there is no other choice. I am also of the mind that, by the time we realize that we need to do this (as a society) we'll have also reached the point where we've depleted the resources too greatly to accomplish this. And, as stated, I'm kind of okay with the idea of humanity going extinct due to its own ignorance, hubris, and petty politics. I'm not sure that I'd wish our species on the rest of the galaxy.
Humans suck. I'm glad that I'm not one of them. Also, stop picking on the kids! "Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone."
I've taken on (adopted, really), quite some time ago, funding the local elementary school's entire in-class IT education. They only have 56 students. For instance, I've bought the whole school laptops and, this year, I bought them all iPads plus a half-dozen extras for eventual mishaps. The solitary IT staff and teachers really appreciate it but not nearly as much as the kids do. The bake me cookies, have visited my house for nature walks, invite me to plays, make me crafts, send me Christmas cards, and I usually even get a box of "I love you" Valentine's Day cards. It is awesome but their acting and 'music' leave a lot to be desired.
I say that because I want to ask this: You seem knowledgeable. These are K-6 students. The project type that I'm thinking of could be a long-term thing where the students would just keep the device. Financing is trivial, not even remotely an issue. What sort of projects could the kids, reasonably, do with these devices that they could us, say, throughout the year and then keep the device at the end of the year or, perhaps, half year? What kind of support would be offered (if needed, if any)? And would it make the solitary, just one, IT staff pull his hair out or otherwise hate me? Would they be used? Would it be beneficial at their level?
I specifically target the younger kid's education because they're local, they are fewer, and my actions can be more meaningful. The older kids get bused off to a larger school and I'm not fond of the administration there.
Thoughts? No? Just a passing idea but I suspect this would be something I'd need to prep ahead of time to make sure they're ready for incoming students next year as well as making sure that the teachers were familiar with them enough to actually give instruction. They could even make multiple devices or even make stuff that stayed in the school. Perhaps some sort of timer to control the sprinkler's for their little veggie garden? But I'm thinking things to take home. This number might mean that the students could use, damage, and simply keep the devices. It needn't be a single year that does the projects, either. This sort of stash will last them quite a while, I'd suspect.
It's kind of off-topic but I don't know if it's worthy of an Ask Slashdot and I don't generally submit anything for I am a lazy git and almost a passive consumer these days.
Gaming, on a computer, goes back ages - like when I was a kid. No, I didn't play them but they had them. Long before the Magnavox, the Intelivision, etc... They weren't *good* games, from what I've read, but they were gaming on computers before they were gaming on consoles. You did say, "PCs." So, that does mean personal computers. At that point, I'm not really sure - I guess we'd have to figure out when the first device was and what you consider to be a personal computer?
I don't suppose anyone knows, off hand, when the first 'personal computer' arrived (do we go with the early micos)? I seem to remember the consoles popping up in the late 70s - I think the first one I saw was a Magnavox. Standups were right around that time - not long after??? This discounts pinball machines and slot machines. Then there were a whole slew of hand-held games, like football and stuff by makers like Coleco. Some where even head-to-head on one little machine. Kind of neat but, alas, I was more a table top RPG kinda person.
I don't play games, haven't since Fallout 2 - I blame it on my buying Fallout Tactics as I've never really played a game since, and I've watched a few gaming sessions on Twitch. I didn't really enjoy it. On the other hand, back home, I've a an XBox One that I've never actually played a single game on - I've only held the controllers to do setup. I have friends that game and I enjoy watching them. I like watching someone play role playing games but they're right in the room.
I doubt that makes much sense to anyone but me. I used to enjoy a good RPG but I've just not felt like dedicating the time and effort. I never really got into the newer controllers when the PS2 came out so I don't really even know how to use the round controller thingies on them. I simply never learned. I'm not exactly sure what the point of them is, I guess it's granular control or something? I dunno... Don't really care, I guess.
I do, however, like the RPGs and sitting there with a friend who's playing. It's nice when they don't have any clue what they're doing either - first run through the game. Some of the Final Fantasy games were okay. I learned to like watching RPGs with some Mana game, I don't recall which. Basically, I could pick up the second controller and play as a second person in the party. That wasn't bad. I don't really enjoy watching FPS games as much. I did like a few driving games but those kind of 'jumped the shark' with the PS2, I found. I didn't actually buy a PS2, that was a friend's so I never really played much. I've never actually seen a PS3 or 4 in the flesh that I know of. My son had a few of them but I was over gaming by then but I'd watch once in a while.
I dunno? I can't really see eSports being something I'd get into unless they played for many hours over multiple days to play an RPG they'd never played before? I'd probably watch something like that. Hell, if a Slashdotter is going to get a new RPG and wants to stream it and hasn't played it before then I'd probably watch if I had time. I don't even know how I'd go about finding someone who'd not played a game and was streaming it. I just happened to stumble across Twitch from Justin and ended up watching a bit of gaming.
Dunno but, I guess, I can understand spectators enjoying it. I would, for a limited subset, enjoy it. I just don't think they actually cater to my desires so I probably wouldn't enjoy it but it's okay if they do.
Holy shit... Seriously. I could not work like that. I just, a few seconds prior to you replying (it seems), replied to another user and went into some details and, honestly, I feel very fortunate. It seems, as I stated, toxic. I could not, I would not, work like that. I'm retired but I owned my own company and never, not really, had a single issue of this nature. Anything even close to that was nipped in the bud but we were small (around two hundred employees in three offices and two skeleton-crew offices). I don't recall it ever being an issue - we did have a couple of times where stuff was forgotten but I think it was legitimately forgotten in the rush and we all pulled together and made it work on time. It was never the same person and was only a few times. We didn't need to take notes, we talked. We followed up.
Heh... For a while, way too long, we did have logging on an IRC system in the office. That got abused more than it was used - if it was used then it was just as a reminder.
This backstabbing, blackmailing, etc. nonsense just seems foreign to me. I went military, academia, private. So, I don't have much experience working for other people or in a large business. In the military most orders are written down, in some form or another, so there's that but I wasn't the one doing the note taking and if they were going to bitch at me then they were going to bitch at me no matter how many notes I produced to the contrary. In academia, I actually had a fairly simple time, so to speak. I did have a few issues when preparing to my defense but those were quickly figured out and everything got done on time and went according to plan, mostly...
I really, I just couldn't. I'd quit. I don't have the patience for that sort of crap. If you tell me that you're going to do something then do it. Otherwise be honest and tell me to piss off. I'll extend the same courtesy. If you say you're going to have it done on Friday then have it done on Friday. If, come Wednesday, you figure out you need more time then don't wait until Friday to tell me. Tell me on Wednesday and I'll get you the help you need or help you myself (that's motivation to not do help, right there!)
Sorry for your work life. That has to suck. I seriously wouldn't want to work with people that I could not trust. I sure as hell wouldn't want them working "for" me, either.
I can't say that I'm following what it is you're trying to get across. If you're saying that Cheney's friends in the Industrial Military Complex made out like bandits that's probably true. I am not actually sure what that has to do with the claim that the AC made, the one which I was responding to. You then go on to say that my "argument" (which was actually just a question because they might be correct and I can't find any information that confirms that as being true) falls flat - even if true. So if I'm arguing, and that argument is correct, it's immaterial because of some point that I neither made nor argued?
Am I following or am I misreading something? I've never known you to be an idiot before (though I'm sure you have, I know I have - plenty of times) so, perhaps, I am misreading something.
I went from the military to academia to owning my own company. We did have staff to take notes in meetings with clients and recorded those meetings. Orders were often written in the military. But, from the way I read their post, this was just dealing with coworkers during normal interactions, at least part of the time. Yeah, we've got a lot on our plate but we remember these things, don't lie about these things, and keep updated with these things. Meetings with clients, yeah, we recorded stuff but it was all written into contracts and any changes required returning to the contract to make changes.
It just seems toxic to me. Like backstabbing, lying, cheating, and other ineptitudes; Not on the part of the OP but on the part of the people they are working with. I can't imagine feeling like I have to defend myself or dealing with coworkers who would behave in a manner where I needed written notes to "prove" something. That this is normal enough behavior to warrant an actual need to document conversations is, wow... Just, wow.... It's foreign to me?
The more I think about it, the more I read, the more grateful I am that I've just been damned lucky - it seems. In the end, I had about two hundred people who worked with me (not "for" me - there's a difference) and everyone was vetted carefully so this was never an issue. I'm sure that some candidates were turned away who may have had that sort of behavior, the type needing to defend against, but nobody hired ever really was a problem. We didn't even have an HR department - not one single person. Candidates had a tertiary interview that involved anyone in the company who felt they'd be interested - a whole panel. Only a half dozen ever normally showed up. Maybe that's why we never had issues like this? *shrugs* I don't know?
It just seems toxic. The idea that I can't trust you to do what you said - and will need notes to prove it? Sure, people make mistakes and forget. That's why you follow up and check on their progress. "Hey, Neil. How's the Macy account going? Did you get the database to sort properly? It's going to have to such to do some of that data insertion manually, huh? Need a hand with it? I know Jeff's said he's got some free time at the end of this week. Do we need more staff?"
I don't know how you deal with that sort of stuff for eight hours a day. It's different with a client but that's recorded and on paper in a contract. Say what you do, do what you say. ISO 9002. :/ Then again, we were a small company. We only had a little over two hundred employees. We had three offices that were fully staffed and two that maintained a skeleton crew but scaled as needed when we had work in the region. We were mostly programmers, IT staff, mathematicians, modelers, traffic engineers, and secretarial staff. We didn't even have a real sales department, just customer service and representatives who fielded questions. Maybe that has something to do with it, too.
Not sure if serious...
Hell, in the Eastern Europe region they not only rape you but they'll often hold you down and tattoo the equivalent of "bitch" across your forehead with tattoo ink made from melted boot heels and urine. Rape's common in prisons across the globe. America just is stupid and has more people in prison. Some, a smaller number than you might think, are much more humane and actually have adequate staffing, a smaller prison population, and proper housing routines.
You know... You probably, unknowingly, broke a law when you entered in and created the PIN information. I have no idea which law you probably broke but, given the way laws are, that was probably a felony. I'm not even kidding. It could be anything from unauthorized use of a computer system to all sorts of various banking related crimes depending on your jurisdiction. You knew it wasn't your card and even though you were doing the right thing, you still entered in and changed that data without the consent of the actual card holder.
I don't think that opening mislabeled mail is illegal - I think that one might have been settled in the supreme court (assuming US laws). The content inside, on the other hand... Yeah, you probably committed a felony. I'd not raise a stink over it or the issuing bank could opt to contact an already affiliated district attorney (or the likes) and see if they can come up with a way to shut you up. I'm not usually the tin-foil hat type but, yeah... I'm not even sure that this is tin-foil-hat-territory. Businesses are, sometimes, damned evil and willing to go a long ways to protect their image or get revenge.
$ sudo alias app-get="apt-get" && alias moo="update" && alias cows="upgrade"
$ sudo app-get moo && cow
Hmm... Not sure if serious?
Very seldom does the "government" stop crime. They investigate it and punish it, after the fact. They don't usually prevent anything.
This may not be a popular thing to say but, as I think about this - I'm okay with that. The methods they'd need to use to stop crime would be too harsh, I think. I'd assume they'd be only able to accomplish this be removing freedoms and restricting rights. I am kind of happy that the government isn't really meant to (even if they think they are) stop crime. Crime sucks but they should only be in the business, generally speaking, of prosecuting those who have committed crimes - that should be more than enough, usually, to keep them busy.
I've never given it much though but, on first blush, I'm okay with the government not being in the business of stopping crime. You don't expect the government to provide you with locks on your door, would you? (Maybe you would - your post indicates you just might be. I am not, I don't think?) You don't want them stopping you to see where you're going and what business you have at your destination, do you? (Again, you might.) You don't want them collecting and inspecting your data to see if, just maybe, you're committing a crime, do you? (Yet again, you might.)
No... I don't think I want the government to stop criminals (for the most part). Sure, where there is an obvious, known, and present threat then reasons takes over and it'd be nice if they stepped in to protect the citizens. However, I'm armed because I don't expect the cops to save me if I'm being shot at (if I'm just being mugged then I'm just going to give them my wallet).
Yeah, the more I think about it - they're kind of right -- in my opinion. I don't want the government trying to stop the criminals, generally speaking. I want them to prosecute those who break the law. The only way they can prevent crime is to reduce freedoms and rights. I'm open to suggestions but I'm not sure how it's the government's responsibility to prevent crime nor do I really think it should be their responsibility (regardless of what they think). That's how you end up with the NSA, Homeland Security, or the likes.
Hmm... This needs reasoning and logic applied. :/ Note to self: Ponder this.
Per your enforcing the law... Hmm... I guess that depends on how you look at it? I'm probably reaching a bit here so I'll try to be brief - I don't have much of a point, anyhow.
My business had been broken into, the alarm company called, the kid was in custody. After letting it get partway through the court system we opted to drop charges and were able to set up a deal with the judge. He had to work to pay off the money to cover the repairs. We'd convinced our cleaning company to take him on to work at our office (he eventually earned enough trust to work elsewhere). He had to stay out of trouble for a year and stay in school, with passing grades and acceptable behavior reports - while working 20 hours per week. I'd have just let him work at our place doing the cleaning and outside stuff had the cleaning company not taken him on to do other work. In return, at the end of the year, his case was round-filed which included expunging the arrest record.
Which was what I'd decided I wanted. (By the way, only 1/4 of his weekly pay was deducted to pay for the damages, damned kid.)
So, in a way, yes... That was us enforcing the law - but, as I said, I'm kind of reaching here. We worked within the legal framework (including time off to see the DA and attend two of the initial court appearances and the last one where the case was dismissed).
For the curious, it turned out okay. I'm not completely certain but I'm told that he's now got his own cleaning company, he goes in at night and does office cleaning as well as industrial floors - that type of stuff. I guess he's got a bunch of people working for him and many are young, underprivileged, and ex-cons. He also (I'm pretty sure) was planning on (or doing something) about giving kids a way to stay out of trouble - like a Boys Club type of thing. I don't really know. I've not been in the area for eight years and this was more like fifteen years ago.
Now, there was still a judge and a representative of the State involved but we decided the punishment, we enforced the (as in I, personally, got the letters from his teacher and his report cards) stipulations - including the time worked, and we decided to not move the prosecution forward at the end of the year (which he passed with flying colors). We were not the law but we had the force of law behind us and quite a bit of control (or influence) on how that process worked.
This was Winston/Salem NC and I'm not sure how the court system would react today but it wasn't that long ago, really. The kid did seem interested in getting into coding and was working with one of the devs to see if he could make a traffic simulation game (we had the best MFing traffic sim "game" in the world, thank you very much - I might be biased) but nothing ever came of it. He liked the outcome, he liked the work, but he didn't seem quite able to grasp the process so much and we had plenty of staff so there was always help for him - he actually would come in 'off hours' after school quite a bit.
Anyhow, nice family but poor and a lot of kids. The parents were always out of the house, working their asses off, and we all met and whatnot. My thinking was that the courts wouldn't have actually done anything to him except punish him and punishment wasn't really what I felt was required. Well, not solely required. He was punished, he worked to fix the damage. Beyond that, I figured, he needed something to keep his ass busy and some rewards for his effort to learn to respect himself.
Which ties back in... It was my ideology (technically, not just mine as I'd discussed it with a number of those who worked with me) that influenced the court's decision as well as the State's decision to not prosecute but to allow a certain set of criteria to be met. I'm not sure if that counts as enforcement but it is pretty close. True, it's not total but it's not unprecedented - I guess that's my line of thinking and my point. For certain periods of time, we had data on-site that was the property of others and part of our contract was to
No, they possess a copy. *nods* We, Slashdot, are all about information being free until it's our information. We didn't take anything when we made a copy. They still have use of that data, after all.
Yes, tongue-in-cheek. I do, actually, support copyright and patents but I feel the system needs to be reformed to reflect a more modern society and the speed that technology now changes.
We get the Great White up my way (off the New England coast) and they don't really even bite anyone. I'm not sure why the person above thinks sharks get killed if they bite humans. It's not like the movie Jaws where they hunt around for a specific shark or anything. There's no great throng of people with pitchforks and torches who go hunting mean sharks that bite people. They just stay the hell out of there for a few days. I also kind of doubt that sharks are telling each other, "Go for the fat ones, those are the best humans."
Link or any additional information about the software? Beta? Alpha?
WTF kind of toxic places do you people work at? The more I read this type of shit, the more it boggles my mind. How are these companies even in business?