COredneck - Slashdot User

Comment: Been through a lot inthe past 10 years (Score 1) 473

by COredneck on Saturday December 03, @01:11PM (#38250644) Attached to: Half Life of a Tech Worker: 15 Years

I m now almost 46 years old. I worked as a Unix Sys Admin for many years. Since January 2008, got laid off with my previous employer (major DoD company based out of Maryland), did some part time teaching with a local university and still doing it today and now work for a DB company now. What caught my eye in this article is someone older is not willing to relocate. I have lived in Colorado since 1995 and there are very few places I would consider living elsewhere. Top of my list is New Zealand and then West Coast.

My previous employer came to me one day and told me I had to relocate to the Washington DC area for the same pay, barely enough money to rent a moving truck and I had to take vacation time to move. When I asked for more, I was told either move to Virginia or it was the door. I took the door. A month after I got laid off, I got a part time teaching position and still doing it to this day and really like it and would eventually like to get out of the corporate world for good and do teaching full time.

Relocation to the East Coast especially the Washington DC area doesn't "float my boat". Totally different lifestyle there where putting in 40 hours is considered slacking off, you are expected to attend company sponsored community events outside of your work hours and you are expected to like dressing up as well.

Enhanced Seti@Home on the horizon

Submitted by on Saturday December 02 2006, @11:10AM

An anonymous reader writes "It appears as though setting is doing another callout for more computing power... I just received an email with the following: "SETI@home needs your help. The SETI@home team has accomplished much in the past 6 months. We have successfully deployed the "enhanced" version of SETI@home. The new seven beam data recorder has been installed at Arecibo and is recording the data that will be analyzed in the next phase of SETI@home. Server components required for the analysis of this data are being beta tested. Changes to the SETI@home application to improve the analysis of this data will be released soon. With this new data recorder, we have the ability to look at seven places in the sky simultaneously while recording fourteen times as much data as before. This means we will need more volunteers like you to help us process this data. So please, tell a friend about SETI@home (See: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ffmail_form.php). But there is still far more to be done. Although we are pleased with the success of our spring funding drive, and grateful for the generosity of our donors, we could not afford to do everything we had hoped. In spite of the progress we have made, we would like to be able to sift through the results returned by your computers in order to identify candidates more rapidly so we can re-observe them. This rapid response validation system would also give you the ability to see the results your computers have/has returned in more detail. (For more information see: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_plans.php.) To keep SETI@home operating for the next year, and to provide these new capabilities, will require approximately $540,000. Currently SETI@home is entirely funded by donations from people like you. We hope that you will consider making a donation to SETI@home at this time. You can make a secure donation by credit card on our website (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donate.php). Instructions for donation by check or money order are there as well. Unless you specify otherwise, your donation will be noted by a star icon next to your username on the SETI@home pages and your username will appear on our list of donors. If you do not wish to have this recognition you may indicate that as well. Please be assured that regardless of whether or not you choose to have your donation be anonymous, SETI@home will not share your address with other organizations. You can check on our fundraising progress by visiting our main site at http://setiathome.berkeley.edu./ Thank You, Sir Arthur C. Clarke (Author and Futurist) Dan Werthimer (Chief Scientist, SETI@home) For more information about how to donate: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donate.php ""

Gracenote Founder Rewriting History at Wikipedia

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2006, @10:57AM

An anonymous reader writes "Gracenote founder Steve Scherf is busy again in his attempts to rewrite history after his recent interview at Wired. This time he around he is aggressively deleting or seeking removal of any content on Wikipedia which discuss the controversy behind the commercialization of the formerly GPL'd cddb. Slashdotters may remember when joined the Bad Patent Club back in 2000. It followed up by starting lawsuits against its customers for trying to switch to freedb and for alleged patent violations. Are there any Slashdotters out there who know the facts about Gracenote — its history, its business practices, its lawsuits? Wikipedia needs your help."

Bill & Monica prosecutor now targets free spee

Submitted by

Virchull

on Saturday December 02 2006, @10:28AM

Virchull writes "The Supreme Court has accepted a free-speech dispute involving a high school student suspended over a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner. The justices accepted an appeal from a school board in Juneau, Alaska, after a federal appeals court allowed a lawsuit by the family of Joseph Frederick to proceed. Frederick was suspended in 2002 after he unfurled the 14-foot-long banner — a reference to marijuana use — just outside school grounds. Attorney Kenneth Starr, the former Whitewater prosecutor who investigated President Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, is representing the school board. More at http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/12/01/scotus.bonghits/ index.html"

How to handle code developed in spare time

Submitted by

GyrosGeier

on Saturday December 02 2006, @10:16AM

GyrosGeier writes "Over the years, I've been working on some toy projects that are theoretically GPLed, but in practice noone cares about them, so I still own all the rights to the code. There are some interesting bits in there though, when I split out some functionality into a helper class or function, and I reuse these bits frequently because they make my life a lot easier. However, as I wrote them on my spare time, I don't feel that I would be justly compensated if I just dropped them into a project at my workplace; at the same time I don't see any point in rewriting the code just for the sake of it.

Charging half of the time spent actually writing the code is not a real solution, as it leaves the code with a pretty questionable legal status. Now, what would be a good solution for everybody?"

Ten Best, Worst, and Craziest Uses of RFID 126

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday December 02 2006, @10:14AM
from the track-this dept.

An anonymous reader writes "This top 10 rounds up what it calls 'the best, worst and craziest' uses of RFID out there — including chipped kids at Legoland, smart pub tables that let you order drinks, smartcards for sports fans, and chipped airline passengers. The craziest use of the tech surely has to be RFID chips for Marks & Spencer suits — you couldn't pay most people to wear one of them."

Deploying Windows Remotely with Unattended

Submitted by leftcase on Saturday December 02 2006, @10:05AM

leftcase writes "In a flash of inspiration my colleague 'I heart ET' suggested that we investigate remote deployment of Windows instead of re-ghosting them via multicast and Norton ghost. Always happy to make my life easier, I readily agree, and the boss doesn't mind as long as it costs nowt!"

Elgato EyeTV Diversity Review

Submitted by

Anthony Agius

on Saturday December 02 2006, @10:05AM

Anthony Agius writes "MacTalk reviews Elgato's latest product — the EyeTV Diversity, which brings a unique dual tuner solution that can either stabilise a weak signal using a special DSP system, or give you dual tuner benefits such as picture in picture and the ability to watch TV whilst recording or recording two channels at once. Take a read of the review at: http://forums.mactalk.com.au/showthread.php?t=2549 6"

FBI Taps Cell Phone Microphones in Mafia Case 274

Posted by Zonk on Saturday December 02 2006, @07:18AM
from the lots-of-conversations-about-merchandise dept.

cnet-declan writes "We already knew the FBI can secretly listen in to car conversations by activating microphones of systems like OnStar. A new Mafia court case suggests that the FBI can do the same thing to cell phones. The judge's opinion and some background information [pdf] are available for reading online. The most disturbing thing? According to the judge, the bug worked even if the phone appeared to be 'powered off.' Anyone up for an open-source handset already?" From the article: "This week, Judge Kaplan in the southern district of New York concluded that the 'roving bugs' were legally permitted to capture hundreds of hours of conversations because the FBI had obtained a court order and alternatives probably wouldn't work. The FBI's 'applications made a sufficient case for electronic surveillance,' Kaplan wrote. 'They indicated that alternative methods of investigation either had failed or were unlikely to produce results, in part because the subjects deliberately avoided government surveillance.'"

A terror code?

Submitted by

Anonymous MadCoe

on Saturday December 02 2006, @06:49AM

Anonymous MadCoe writes "From the article:
WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union today condemned an unprecedented new program for generating terrorist ratings on tens of millions of travelers, including American citizens, maintaining those ratings for 40 years, and making them available throughout the government.

So in other words some code will be used to decide if youre likely to be a terrorist. This will be used and kept.

I feel this is too far, the US people really should worry about these kind of things.

The artice http://www.aclu.org/privacy/gen/27579prs20061201.h tml"