2. Be a lifelong learner. And to the extent you can, prefer to work with other lifelong learners.
There’s a bit of a conundrum here, because lifelong learners arguably are a resource that really is scarce. I’m still not sure how to think about that.
How does success in school relate to lifelong learners? School is in a sense a passive learning activity. Lifelong learning is not passive.
I am sorting through the old computer hardware that was collecting dust in the corner of my study.
Used to be, hardware would die before it became obsolete. This made it easy to rationalize the purchase of new hardware. Several years back I hooked up a UPS between line power and each of my computers. Now I have another problem. Old computers no longer die (a good thing), rather they now become obsolete while still perfectly functional (a bad thing – especially given my tendencies).
Now I have piles of new-looking perfectly functional computer hardware … for which I have no rational use. 100GB+ drives, DVD readers, 2GHz CPUs, 0.5GB memories – all perfectly functional, and all not worth re-using. Clean off the dust, and everything is new and shiny-looking. Why am I about to throw all this stuff out? Oh.
Doubtless I will keep more than what I will find of future use. (Geez … I’m throwing out 0.5GB memory sticks! How many programmers sweated away how many years of work to make their problems fit in smaller memories – and now I’m junking once-huge chunks of memory?) I waited years for a graphics card that could drive a 1600×1200 screen at full color. Now I am throwing out stacks of AGI graphics cards – not because they are too slow! – rather as there are essentially no new motherboards that can use the old video cards. (I am not a gamer, so the newer cards are not especially faster.)
Of the five old computer cases, one is gone (the newer sexy aluminum case with transparent side panel … was too noisy). Four are old PC Power & Cooling steel cases – not sexy or stylish, but perfectly functional – of which I will keep at most two. Threw out piles of perfectly functional motherboards, CPUs, memories, and disk – as not worth re-using.
Wish I could find some rationalization for re-using this old hardware and software …. but I know there is none.
In testing a new software release, reached the point where testing against Windows 2008 Server is now a reasonable requirement. Until now, I’d not had any reason to try out Win2008 Server. Since the (upcoming) 2008 R2 is going to be 64-bit only, created a 64-bit VM (under Sun’s VirtualBox).
Note that the default VM memory size suggested by VirtualBox is 512MB (where 256MB is recommended for 2003 Server) – and for good reason! At least during the (usual) install and patch phase, it looks like 512MB is not enough the keep the VM away from swapping. Have to note – while the eye-candy is better installing 2008 Server, a Ubuntu server is a lot less trouble. As a sysadmin installing your third, tenth, or hundredth server, the eye-candy loses all appeal.
This leads to an interesting question. If Windows 2008 Server is run directly on the hardware, current server hardware is likely a quad processor with at least 4GB. On hardware the 2008 Server needs are a complete non-issue. On the other hand, if 2008 Server is run on a VM (and at this point I would expect most Windows Server instances to be VMs), then a 512MB baseline requirement for the VM may be excessive.
This has got to be a pretty problem for Microsoft.
Naturally Microsoft would like to sell the OS installed on the hardware. Lots of money to be got there. At the same time, smart customers are more likely to want something else (less compulsive expense) as the base OS, and push Windows Server instances into VMs. This creates a conflict. If Windows 2008 Server is too fat to run in a VM, that puts a bit more pressure on Windows business customers to either stay with Windows 2003 Server (or earlier), or to move off Windows servers entirely.
So … Microsoft could squeeze more money out of business customers, at the risk of losing those same customers … and that loss could prove permanent. Tricky. I would hate to be the guy at Microsoft making that call.
No … that is not right. I’d not have any trouble making that call. The customer is always right. I would be looking to keep the customers happy, and making the latest server OS a non-issue. Give customers no incentive to move off Windows Server. (Which is going to conflict with the MS folks still wanting lock-in.)
The install and upgrade UI on 2008 Server are a bit more “webby” … but it seems the Microsoft folk have not yet entirely got the message. While a distinct improvement, the 2008 UI still feels a bit dated.
Right. I’m describing an MS product as “dated”. You have no idea how odd that feels. Windows has gone from the extreme cutting edge (as when I went to a Windows developer conference in 1984), to “dated”?! Very, very strange ….
While I do not pretend to be any sort of “financial wizard” (right – look where those folk got us), there is I think a single common cause driving our economic roller-coaster. The single cause is a flood of capital, accumulating at a compounded rate. Capital flooded the “developed” countries, overflowed, and was enough to set most of the formerly “third world” populations on a rocketing economic climb. Even though places like China and India are no where near completely developed, they are transforming from a sink to a source of capital.
Counting India and China in with the developed countries, we have most of the world’s population.
The only major area outside of the global economic boom seems to be Africa. The oil-rich countries are not hungry enough to want to transform. The mid-African countries seem to be too much of a mess. South Africa is more advanced, but also a mess. Where would the transformation start?
Seems the real answer is also the logical guess.
Manufacturing: The Rise of the Maghreb – BusinessWeek
As costs rise in Eastern Europe, the company says, it's getting harder to make a profit. North Africa, by contrast, offers far lower wages and plenty of eager workers.
Right. The non-oil-rich corner of Africa closest to developed Europe.
With all that capital sloshing around, our current economic stumble is emotional, not rational. Nothing real and major happened. California did not fall into the ocean (I would have noticed). Some investment gamblers made some bad bets – and that is just about all. Once past the current fears, all that capital has to go somewhere.
Recent government actions have three notable effects.
The net effect may be a recovery (aside from housing prices) sudden enough to cause whiplash.
What do you hate?
No. I do not mean dislike. I mean really hate.
To me, hate seems to require a deeper emotion. I do not like rotten bananas. They are a bit disgusting. I throw them away. But dislike is something much less than hate. I do not hate rotten bananas.
My son asked me if I hated George Bush. No, I do not hate George Bush. I hate what he did to the country. But mainly I just wanted him gone. Bush (either one) is a symptom, not the cause. The cause … dunno. Maybe I hate that. Maybe I just want it to go away.
I tried to think of things that I hate. First to mind – I hate when forced to do a mediocre job. I really really hate that. This is why I hate the bogus requirement for @alt and @summary attributes in HTML (to the non-HTML-techies: nevermind). I know in my work, with others, I have sometimes proved difficult, for exactly this reason.
What else do I hate? I have prejudices – usually carefully chosen. Should I these count as hate? I think not.
I have bad knees, that limit what I can do, and I do hate – really hate that limit. Before and during college I did a lot of long distance cycling. In high school I ran cross-country. Neither were popular activities. Both suited my nature. I am … stubborn? determined? As a kid I picked the toughest hill I could find, kept attacking periodically, until my ability was greater than the challenge. As a kid, when I started reading “adult” library books at ten years old, they were tough. I had no help or offered encouragement – I just kept at it until my ability increased. Running cross-country, I always chose the run with the biggest hill. Cycling, midway through a double century ride, I made up near all the ground gained by the run-away lead pace group, on a solo climb from valley to mountain (and loved the climb). A few years back I was near strong enough to attempt a one day round trip up Mt. Whitney (yes – of course I would pick the biggest mountain within reach).
I was nearly to ready to attack Whitney, when my knees failed. In the prior couple years I’d worked my way up to making the 4000-odd-foot hike up the local peak several times. I was running the steepest uphills of my local hike … then my knees failed. For a year I could barely walk. Hiking the local ~7 mile loop is now limited to one or twice a week. Not enough to be a challenge. Cycling is limited in the same way. Too limited to present a challenge, and I lost most of my interest. This I hate.
What else? Dunno. Hard to come up with real-world examples…
What do you hate?
There are rumors that Apple might soon introduce something like a NetBook. The entire substance of the rumor appears to be a manufacturer supplying 10-inch touch-screens for a future Apple product.
A netbook? From Apple? Sounds a bit too “me too”. Seems unlikely.
NetBooks are kind of a dubious product category. Running the usual desktop/laptop applications on a tiny screen is not going to be fun. Using a NetBook for email and limited web browsing is OK – but that does not leave room for Apple to be anything clever.
More likely Apple is looking at the success of the Amazon Kindle. This is a fairly distinct, and useful, product category. Amazon has put in a fairly substantial infrastructure, to make the Kindle a success. That same infrastructure could be re-used by Apple.
My take – a book-reader sized Apple product would consist of:
Apple does not have a viable contender in the e-Book reader product space. In some ways this could be viewed as a natural extension of the the iPod, using iPhone hardware, taking advantage of the Amazon Kindle-supporting services, roughly the same product “shape” as the iPod, and extended for e-books.
My guess, in any case. 
My personal email address is preston@bannister.us and is posted in public in many places. As a result, a lot of spam gets sent my way. (I do not believe in hiding.) Of all that very little gets through to my inbox.
My email setup is a little different. All the email sent to preston@bannister.us goes through a mail server operated by Dreamhost, and the spam filter they use is pretty good. I read my email via GMail, so all the email sent to preston@bannister.us (after filtering out most of the spam) gets bounced to GMail. The Google folks did a pretty good job with their spam filter. As a result, of the spam that gets past the Dreamhost email filter, almost all is caught by the GMail spam filter. I usually see about one spam per day (that gets through both Dreamhost and GMail spam filters). Occasionally the spammers figure out how to get through the spam filters, and there is a short-lived surge. Lately I have seen up to three spams per day. Eventually one of the filters gets a little smarter, and the number of spams that get through drop to the previous levels.
My current setup works rather well, so I set up my sons, my daughter, my father, and my sisters the same.
Today my sister comes over, and tells me she changed her GMail address. She changed her GMail address because she was getting too much spam. This did not make sense. She has the same setup as I (spam filtering at both Dreamhost and GMail). My email address is very public, and hers is not. She should get no more – and likely less – spam than I see.
So I logged into her GMail account, in the expectation that – for some reason – a great deal of spam was getting through to her inbox. That was not it. Apparently she feels a compulsive need to read through her “spam” folder. (To be fair – I suspect my father does the same thing – it is a bit of a family tendency.) Also, she was wanted to check the spam folder on the @bannister.us server (just to be sure … I guess).
Right. You basically have two choices. Either do not use email – at all – or do not look in your “spam” folders.
This I cannot help her with….
Yep – still have those dreams.
