Linux Pocket Guide

The Linux Pocket Guide book, which I have chosen is a brief introduction to usage of GNU/Linux operating systems command line. The book is directed at a quite narrow target group of IT specialists who need to understand more Bash (Bourne Again Shell) and generally text mode of the mentioned system. But on the other hand it is written in not complicated style, hence, it is very useful for the beginners. A great advantage of the book seems to be saving time, that a user or administrator would need to study resources, which the book encapsulates.

              The book covers a variety of commands with options that can be applied when the commands are launched. For each command we get sufficient explanation of function, mentioned options and even location on disk, which can be very useful information for advanced administrators. The book is very useful for people who need to quickly get to know systems commands, not only because of range, which is only about 200 pages. If we consider similar books concerning this topic they are usually with several times more pages.

               In the book we see commands for a variety of purposes. I would mention Installing Software, Text Manipulation, Viewing Processes, Network Connections, Users and Groups manipulations etc. Book is straight guide with not only commands. It also introduces the basic principles of the system and also describes the main differences between Unix-like systems and Windows. Also scripting is involved with several examples, which can be really helpful for a system administrator. Then we are also introduced to the structure of file systems used. Book’s structure is obviously not like a novel and can be used in everyday work with the system.

              I especially appreciate the focus on scripting in one of the parts. Script is a list of commands that can be launched. This is especially useful if we need to do same thing several times or at some concrete time. We may need for instance to do back up at the server. So we may create script with necessary commands and then with program cron we may set that it will run every day at some concrete time.

             Another very useful part about Network Connections introduces tools for setting of network connection with description where and how we can change the settings. And also tools for analysis of problems with connection, tracing and others.

             If we look at the part devoted to files and file systems, we will see the description of different order in file system that users are familiar with from Windows. There are different file systems that are used at hard drives and we can find out how much disk space we should dedicate to partitions as Swap, system’s partition, partition dedicated for user’s files and optionally others. The aim of Swap partition is to help system with lack of RAM memory etc.

Story of Electronics

The presented video is impressive and I agree that we should realize some points from that, but on the other hand stay calm.  Last few years appeared many pseudo documents with conspiracy theories and issues that should take our attention. I saw for instance “Who Killed the Electric Car?” which is quite an interesting presentation created by activists. Unfortunately there are many things that can make us feel bad after realizing that. For example, the quality of food in central and eastern Europe is much lower than in western Europe. I can buy roughly same food in The Czech republic as here, but content differs and in my home country we eat less quality products. Coca Cola’s content differs too.
            Fortunately not everything is so bad, let’s see the example from the beginning of the story with different chargers for any device. For European market the new standards are promoted by the European Commission which should unify chargers for main phone producers.
            Moore’s law is definitely true and we may ask ourselves whether we would like to still use notebook which we bought let’s say ten years ago. Sure it is crazy to put to trash bin our devices and buy new ones every two years, but we fortunately don’t have to. From my personal experience same notebook can be used for more than three years, and my previous phone lasted about five years and reason why it didn’t last longer was that it got wet when I was canoeing.
            Working environment is terrible in developing countries in general, it is not only connected with electronics. We can see the example of company that produce the jeans in Bangladesh, this case appeared a few days ago in news, they use techniques which cause much higher probability of cancer for workers. And also we can hear of nets in a factory where Apple products are made. They have nets to avoid workers’ suicides when they try to jump from bridge, for instance. It is really crazy I think and at some point it is good to show such cases in news, it makes pressure to companies to change that.
            Of course there are many unfair things around the world, like poverty in Africa.
And it appears to be great idea to contribute with money to some charity helping in this area, but this idea isn’t carried out in the best way. For example my friend’s relative is working in such company and he asked me: “When you give let’s say 100 SEK, how much you think is really going the people who desperately need the money?” and the answer was 8 SEK. There is such a huge administrative chain that is unfortunately consuming that much.                
            I don’t want to be that negative, but there are many problems in the world. And our work is not to solve them all. But we should try to do our best like recycling, buying things made without children’s work. Also it is great from time to time to go to some volunteer project. I already participated at 3 of them and I try not to think of global issues too much. It would only make us crazy to be worried about everything bad around.

Snooping bosses

In everything in our lives is need for balance. For sure we can understand companies, that their aim is to be competitive, that is why they employ techniques to monitor work of their employees, but on the other hand they should not go too far as in many cases presented in article Snooping bosses in Time magazine.
            At the beginning I would like to mention case where I think reasonable monitoring would be useful. In plenty of European countries sector of Public administration is ineffective. From personal experience I can refer to Czech public administration, because friend of mine was working there more than one year. There is significant difference between efficiency in private and public sector of employment. According to the several analysis overemployment occurs there by at least 15 percent. Personally I visited my friend in working hours several times, we were talking even for two hours at once and no one was interested why he doesn’t work. That was surprise for me, for sure not every day there is like this and for sure there are people who work more and who work less, but it is anyway suspicious. Some time ago appeared case of one officer in eastern part of Czech republic, who complained that he is overloaded with work and he need some colleague to help him in order to handle that. Monitoring showed, that he was spending on average seventy percent of working time at porn web pages, so then he was fired. There is even satirical British sitcom called Yes minister presenting public sector.
            On the other hand I would like to mention that exaggerated monitoring doesn’t bring positive results. There was published study as far as I remember, focusing on work performance with several possible ways of relaxation and no relaxation at all. Mentioned study observed groups of students with particular tasks and with several ways of possible relaxation. As the result showed that group that had a chance for breaks with surfing the internet had significantly better result in comparison with groups that could make for example personal calls or send emails. Such relaxation leads to possible refreshment of people and helps to avoid boredom and exhaustion.                                                                                   
            Now from different perspective I would like to mention today’s phenomenon, social networks.  This area is one of the fastest changing things that lately influence younger generation. This aspect isn’t necessary connected to work performance, but is quite important. We can read about real situations when people lost their job, because of what they posted on Facebook.  There was a case of employee in US who called to his job and announced that he is sick and he is not coming to job. Then he posted to Facebook what he had done without realizing that his boss can read that too.  In general young generation underestimate possible danger of social networks in connection with many other things in life. People can be proud of showing off that they are going to some nice holidays, but don’t realize, that they also inform when their house or flat will be empty and also easily reachable for burglars.                                   
            In conclusion I would like to say that, for sure every extreme is dangerous and being in job with less respect to our private life and dignity is definitely bad. But we should honestly accept than in many companies the efficiency isn’t as high as it should be and the work environment is best where the balance is kept.