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Comment Was still in college, had just woken up (Score 1) 804

I remember that morning. The first thing I did after waking up was get on my computer. Usually checked the normal stuff like email but also my friends' AIM messages before going out and getting breakfast at the main campus cafeteria. (USC, SC)

Nearly all my friends used AIM, and a good number actually updated their away messages. Personally I put favorite bash.org quotes in mine. One away message was particularly curious though, coming from a girl that doesn't usually put urgent-looking messages, but all it said was Turn on the news, now. And I went to turn on the small TV in my small one-room dormroom.

By that time that morning, the first plane had struck. I know I watched the news for a good while before my roommate came in after his classes. I think I even kept up on Slashdot, too. I had to eat before going to mine, so I left the news to my him.

The awkward feeling that I distinctly remember though, is the scene walking on campus that morning watching people going to class and other things, that may, or may not have heard the news. It looked like any other morning.

Comment Re:Time to shift focus to another kernel? (Score 1) 142

In my first IT job several years ago I made it to create new backup systems there, and by doing so I learned one of the most amazing things about Linux, and that is the cloneability of the entire machine with a single filesystem backup.

I tried to restore one of our webservers in an exercise. From a liveboot environment, I partitioned the disk, formatted it, mounted the filesystems, and rsynced over the root filesystem from backup. After that install the bootloader. I was just amazed that the new system booted up without a hitch (apart from complaining the system wasn't shut down properly); I was floored seeing that and showed all my fellow coworkers =)

Of course I know that in unix everything is a file is a file, and these things are possible, but seeing that in action is an experience. I'm happy that after learning how the innards of a Linux system works, that I was able to apply it.

Comment Re:Smart people (Score 1) 618

I wanted to try one of the Droids but balked at the $100 per month plan. This was at Verizon at the time. No way i'm going to pay that much when my home cable is around half that.

Anyway, I've found out that a good compromise to owning a smartphone is owning an iPod touch. I get to listen to my music, read my newsfeeds or even watch some anime on the bus ride to work, all without paying a premium monthly fee. I keep my dumbphone too. No one ever calls me, anyway =(

Comment Re:The world moves on (Score 1) 431

Oh wow, there's an idea. "Server Farmville"

Spend each day looking over the health of your server room. Oh no! The air conditioning went out! Good thing you have a backup system you just installed yesterday!

Be careful who you let visit your server farmville, or some equipment might disappear....

After a while of hard work you upgrade to a top tier datacenter! Is your PUE Index not as good as you want it? You can buy some extra equipment to help you obtain that goal in the cash shop.

I would totally play this game.

Comment Re:What IS cloud computing? (Score 1) 246

Around when I first heard the term, I thought the internet was the cloud. For the simple fact that I represent the internet as a cloud whenever drawing network diagrams.

I saw a video from datacenterknowledge.com asking this very same question, though. It's fourteen minutes, but it shows that there is not a single definitive answer.

Comment Re:Can't say I'm surprised... (Score 1) 336

Simply put, Google has provided an absolutely awesome, sky is the limit, technology. If multiple killer applications are not in place which leverage Wave within a year or two, I'd declare this a failure of developers and imagination rather than a failure of Google and/or Wave.

Wow, somehow I feel the same way with the Wii and certain 3rd party games.

Comment Doesn't matter who's hosting (Score 3, Informative) 254

If your customers put up vulnerable software on your shared, dedicated, or virtual hosting service and they don't update it or you don't detect it, someone's going to find it and exploit it.

Had something similar happen to my me. If you're monitoring server load, a webserver sending spam will definitely raise an alarm. As for services on odd ports, block everything except the real ports. Blocking outgoing traffic on IRC ports helps too in minimizing damage. The script kids are already making use of the recent Linux local root exploit (wunderbar_emporium) so make sure you do some yum updates!

Highly-Paid Developers As ScrumMasters? 434

An anonymous reader writes 'At my company, our mis-implementation of Agile includes the employment of some of our most highly-paid, principal engineers as ScrumMasters. This has effectively resulted in a loss of those engineering functions as these engineers now dedicate their time to ScrumMastery. Furthermore, the ScrumMasters either cannot or do not separate their roles as Team Leads with those of ScrumMastery and — worse — seem to be completely unaware that this poor implementation of Agile development is harmful to our velocity. To date, I have chalked this up to poor leadership, a general lack of understanding of Agile, and an inability to change from traditional roles left over from the waterfall development mode. In addition, I have contended that, for a given Scrum Team, the role of ScrumMaster should be filled by someone of lower impact, such as an intern brought in specifically for that purpose. But I would like to put the questions to Slashdotters as to whether they have seen these same transitional difficulties, what the results have been at their respective companies, or whether they just plain disagree with my assertion that principal engineers should not be relegated to the roles of ScrumMasters.'

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