Agreed. Most of the delay in getting support for problem X with vendor Y lies is getting past the guy with "Rule 1: the customer always lies" and "Rule 2: the customer is an idiot" posted in his cubicle. Once you convince the techies that you have a clue, you can usually get pretty good support, provided you call in more often then they hire new techs.
This is precisely why it's better (if you have more money than time) to outsource to an integration specialist. The integrator probably deals with each of the relevant vendors on a frequent basis, and often can bypass the "Rules" guy on the first call.
To rebut the other respondent, the reason this "outside guy" can often do a better job than your own employees is because your problems aren't the only ones he's dealing with. In short, he has more experience and better resources for the limited class of problems you're paying him to solve.
Many Open Source authors are successful because they give away the program (to those who couldn't afford to pay for it anyway) and charge for custom solutions and support (to those who can).
Why buy hardware that is guaranteed for ten years if it will be obsolete in two? Why pay more for big-name software if they orphan their support after three release cycles? Save your money for guy who will keep it all working for you.
You can't GPL a trademark, silly. GPL relates to copyright, not trademark.
And Linux (IIRC) was trademarked by some J. Random Opportunist who then received a torrential outpouring of pressure from the community and wound up turning over the trademark to Linus rather than fighting it in court.
And as always, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.
Yeah, I got tired of cleaning mice too. So I bought a Logitech Trackball Marble FX instead. I currently own three of them and will never (willingly) use a mouse again.
BTW, I usually use the keyboard shortcuts too, but mice are handy for graphics programs...
Ummm, consider how off-target release dates usually are.
If the project is already six months behind schedule, would going on strike for another month really make a difference?
How long can YOU go without pay, before it hurts?
Really, strikes and labor unions are for industries where there is only one principal employer per geographic region. In the computer industry, your largest stick is being able to jump ship to a higher-paying company at a moment's notice.
I tend to agree with the guy who suggested sending out resume's on your first day of the new job.
Though personally, I prefer going a year or so between job-changes, because switching more often gets you labeled as "high risk".
I've got one to add to the list. I first formulated it about fifteen years ago, when I was very into dice-throwing role-playing fantasy games and wanted to find an algorithm to generate well-behaved random numbers.
One way to state the problem is this:
Write a function "f(t,n,d)" that calculates the odds of arriving at a total "t" when rolling "n" number of "d"-sided dice and adding the total. For instance, f(15,3,6) would equal 10/216, or approximately 0.046.
About ten years ago I figured out that the numerator in the fraction would be equal to the integral coefficient of X^t in the expansion of
(x^d + x^(d-1) + x^(d-2) +... + 1)^n.
Of course, the denominator would be equal to d^n and also equal to the sum of the coefficients.
Partial credit for finding a function that generates a reasonable approximation (say to three significant digits) over a reasonable range of "d" and "n" (say 1-100 and 1-1000, respectively).
Oh yeah, and the function has to be computable in polynomial time.
Someday when I learn how to use a symbolic math package, I'm gonna generate a huge dataset and tell it to find the nearest nth-order approximation, for n=3..20, and look for a pattern.
I heard you on a radio interview once and concluded that, unlike many of your fans, you regard Hitchhiker as just another book, "Nothing to get excited about. Move along, now."
Is this true? Are your fans more obsessed with your books than you ever will be? Doesn't it get annoying after a while?
You wasn't kiddin! Skip past the fluff and start reading here.
To eliminate hardware bias, write all the benchmark code to the lowest common denominator, perhaps Knuth's MIX/MMIX architecture. If you want to know how much your particular hardware is being under-optimized, run the benchmarks under HP's Dynamo or the equivalent.
Since when do labor unions have ANYTHING to do with capitalism?
You're right about one thing:
nobody has a decent idea of how to fairly organize really large groups of people
But capitalism isn't a "body" or a "union" or even a "corporation". Capitalism is a natural(1) system that promotes the common good without requiring the compulsion, or compliance, or even the knowledge of any of its participants. Read about Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand", or Leonard Read's "I, Pencil".
(For the benefit of greenrd:)
Natural (system): In this context, any social structure that arises out of the self-interest of each of the participants. This is in contrast with "managed" systems that are planned and organized by a single person, or by a committee that is small in comparison with the total number of participants.
I've heard that the CIA does this. A friend of mine tells the story that he and some buddies broke into a government computer system while they were in high school. Slowly, they burrowed through layer upon layer of security checks. And when they finally got to the bottom, they found a note congratulating them on their efforts and giving them the choice of joining the CIA or going to jail.
Actually, only the ringleader got the "jail" alternative. The others got an offer of employment, plus the warning that they'd be watched from now on.
To this day, the guy is paranoid about computer security. His email bounces through a dozen more-or-less anonymous remailers before he gets it, and he's got at least three pseudonyms on the net, none of them related to his real name.
Only reason I have to run StarOffice is to load the MS-Centric docs that people send me.
It uses 80+ megs of Ram on my box, but I give that much to VMware, too. StarOffice certainly runs quicker than VMware+NT+Office97, but the font handling is poor.
Has anybody got it working with a TrueType font sever for Linux? Would it take advantage of TrueType fonts if they were available?
Spent half an hour at a local bank today, on hold with their legal department (long-distance on THEIR nickel) waiting for a legal explanation of why they required my right thumbprint to cash a payroll check drawn on their bank.
Slashdot Mirror
At least in some (puny) minds.
Just because it mentions breasts.
Yes, but if you took off your shirt (thus exposing the tattoo) you could be arrested for indecent exposure with intent to distribute.
In the Calvin and Hobbes case, SELLING the t-shirts would be illegal, but WEARING them would not.
Agreed. Most of the delay in getting support for problem X with vendor Y lies is getting past the guy with "Rule 1: the customer always lies" and "Rule 2: the customer is an idiot" posted in his cubicle. Once you convince the techies that you have a clue, you can usually get pretty good support, provided you call in more often then they hire new techs.
This is precisely why it's better (if you have more money than time) to outsource to an integration specialist. The integrator probably deals with each of the relevant vendors on a frequent basis, and often can bypass the "Rules" guy on the first call.
To rebut the other respondent, the reason this "outside guy" can often do a better job than your own employees is because your problems aren't the only ones he's dealing with. In short, he has more experience and better resources for the limited class of problems you're paying him to solve.
Many Open Source authors are successful because they give away the program (to those who couldn't afford to pay for it anyway) and charge for custom solutions and support (to those who can).
Why buy hardware that is guaranteed for ten years if it will be obsolete in two? Why pay more for big-name software if they orphan their support after three release cycles? Save your money for guy who will keep it all working for you.
Thanks and kudos. Most succint, clueful explanation of the Debian/KDE licensing issue I've ever seen.
And Linux (IIRC) was trademarked by some J. Random Opportunist who then received a torrential outpouring of pressure from the community and wound up turning over the trademark to Linus rather than fighting it in court.
And as always, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.
Yeah, I got tired of cleaning mice too. So I bought a Logitech Trackball Marble FX instead. I currently own three of them and will never (willingly) use a mouse again.
BTW, I usually use the keyboard shortcuts too, but mice are handy for graphics programs...
They claim it takes a slight performance hit when doing so, but I haven't seen any benchmarks yet.
Even better, the whole thing is now released under GPL, which makes it a viable alternative to Postgres for the FSF fanatics.
Ummm, consider how off-target release dates usually are.
If the project is already six months behind schedule, would going on strike for another month really make a difference?
How long can YOU go without pay, before it hurts?
Really, strikes and labor unions are for industries where there is only one principal employer per geographic region. In the computer industry, your largest stick is being able to jump ship to a higher-paying company at a moment's notice.
I tend to agree with the guy who suggested sending out resume's on your first day of the new job.
Though personally, I prefer going a year or so between job-changes, because switching more often gets you labeled as "high risk".
Perhaps you mean
- Generating Functionology
Yup, that's gotta be it. Thanks -- I'll buy and read the book.by Herbert S. Wilf
- Given a set of numbers, and a target sum, determine if any combination of the numbers add up to the target sum (Subset-sum problem)
This sounds like it may be equivalent to the problem I've carried around for fifteen years, namely:Given "n" number of "d"-sided dice, compute the odds of rolling them and coming up with a total of "t" number of pips on top.
Partial credit for finding a reasonable approximation (say, three significant digits) for f(n,d,t) where n=1..1000 and d=1..100
Oh yeah, and the function should be computable in polynomial time.
- ...the "t"th integral coefficient of the expansion of...
not- ...the integral coefficient of X^t in the expansion of...
Sorry.One way to state the problem is this:
Write a function "f(t,n,d)" that calculates the odds of arriving at a total "t" when rolling "n" number of "d"-sided dice and adding the total. For instance, f(15,3,6) would equal 10/216, or approximately 0.046.
About ten years ago I figured out that the numerator in the fraction would be equal to the integral coefficient of X^t in the expansion of
(x^d + x^(d-1) + x^(d-2) + ... + 1)^n.
Of course, the denominator would be equal to d^n and also equal to the sum of the coefficients.
Partial credit for finding a function that generates a reasonable approximation (say to three significant digits) over a reasonable range of "d" and "n" (say 1-100 and 1-1000, respectively).
Oh yeah, and the function has to be computable in polynomial time.
Someday when I learn how to use a symbolic math package, I'm gonna generate a huge dataset and tell it to find the nearest nth-order approximation, for n=3..20, and look for a pattern.
Is this true? Are your fans more obsessed with your books than you ever will be? Doesn't it get annoying after a while?
To eliminate hardware bias, write all the benchmark code to the lowest common denominator, perhaps Knuth's MIX/MMIX architecture. If you want to know how much your particular hardware is being under-optimized, run the benchmarks under HP's Dynamo or the equivalent.
You're right about one thing:
But capitalism isn't a "body" or a "union" or even a "corporation". Capitalism is a natural(1) system that promotes the common good without requiring the compulsion, or compliance, or even the knowledge of any of its participants. Read about Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand", or Leonard Read's "I, Pencil".
(For the benefit of greenrd:)
Hegel would have loved this guy.
Pure capitalism is the most efficient way to distribute wealth.
If there were no limits on international trade and travel, there would (very soon) be no "third-world" countries.
Actually, only the ringleader got the "jail" alternative. The others got an offer of employment, plus the warning that they'd be watched from now on.
To this day, the guy is paranoid about computer security. His email bounces through a dozen more-or-less anonymous remailers before he gets it, and he's got at least three pseudonyms on the net, none of them related to his real name.
It uses 80+ megs of Ram on my box, but I give that much to VMware, too. StarOffice certainly runs quicker than VMware+NT+Office97, but the font handling is poor.
Has anybody got it working with a TrueType font sever for Linux? Would it take advantage of TrueType fonts if they were available?
Spent half an hour at a local bank today, on hold with their legal department (long-distance on THEIR nickel) waiting for a legal explanation of why they required my right thumbprint to cash a payroll check drawn on their bank.
Change it from -j DENY to -j REJECT, and you won't get the delays.
REJECT sends an "unreachable" response immediately, whereas DENY just drops the packet, leaving your browser to time-out the connection.