Re: FreeBSD vice OS X memory management
On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 12:04 AM, jb jb.1234a...@gmail.com wrote: If so, should FreeBSD adopt NetBSD's MM subsys, or just improve itself surgically ? You ought first establish there is a problem. What you have cited is recently reinvigorated trend that has taken on the air of the BDS is dying troll. What you have is a set of computer users with no understanding of kernel internals attempting to diagnose some sort of possibly legitimate problem by reaching conclusion via rumor and guesswork. These people can be taken about as seriously as those who insist the moon landing was fake and other bizarre ignorant pseudo-science. http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/19036310553/two-things-that-really-helped-speed-up-my-mac-and http://dywypi.org/2012/02/back-on-linux.html When you have a test case illustrating your feared FreeBSD VM shortcomings, you may at that point begin to attract developer interest. -- Adam Vande More ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: FreeBSD vice OS X memory management
Adam Vande More amvandemore at gmail.com writes: ... http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/19036310553/two-things-that-really-helped- speed-up-my-mac-and http://dywypi.org/2012/02/back-on-linux.html 2) Inactive memory (which is memory that has been recently used but is no longer) is supposed to be seamlessly reclaimed automatically by the OS when needed for new programs. In practice, I’ve found that this isn’t the case, and my system slows to a crawl and starts paging out to disk when free memory drops to zero, even as half of the available RAM (which is a lot) is marked as inactive. ... Well, this is not a case of a BSD is dying troll (you can safely ignore those). The above and the past FreeBSD thread here, both I referred to, have something in common - the system seems to progressively come under stress due to what one user experienced as missing memory, and other two users experienced (as shown here above) as inefficient (or lack of) early reclamation of inactive pages. We just want the devs and users make aware of things. jb ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: FreeBSD vice OS X memory management
Adam Vande More wrote: On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 12:04 AM, jb jb.1234a...@gmail.com wrote: If so, should FreeBSD adopt NetBSD's MM subsys, or just improve itself surgically ? You ought first establish there is a problem. What you have cited is recently reinvigorated trend that has taken on the air of the BDS is dying troll. What you have is a set of computer users with no understanding of kernel internals attempting to diagnose some sort of possibly legitimate problem by reaching conclusion via rumor and guesswork. These people can be taken about as seriously as those who insist the moon landing was fake and other bizarre ignorant pseudo-science. http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/19036310553/two-things-that-really-helped- speed-up-my-mac-and http://dywypi.org/2012/02/back-on-linux.html When you have a test case illustrating your feared FreeBSD VM shortcomings, you may at that point begin to attract developer interest. To the OP: A potential first test case where the symptom is my system slows to a crawl and starts paging out to disk might be to build a kernel with the SCHED_4BSD scheduler. There have been a couple of edge/corner cases that sound like this. That is, if you really have a problem and want to try eliminating one possibility. Another thing that shows up in things like top is it breaks and does not report accurate values for anything when userland and kernel are out of sync, that is if it runs at all without segfaulting. World and kernel being out of sync would be operator error. In this case the values you are using to somehow relate the symptom to memory management would be false. As far as all the rest, such as something being deeply broken in OS X memory management, mentions of NetBSD memory management, etc, are all irrelevant. It is this wild mix of stuff seemingly non-related to any problem in FreeBSD per se, that makes this look like a troll. If you really are having a problem with FreeBSD you are going to have to do a lot better than this in terms of providing some data points which define the problem. I am in agreement with Adam here: either you can work the problem or you can troll. I don't see any indication yet of any real problem analysis, only a wild mix of stuff non-related to FreeBSD sprinkled with some magic 'memory management' dust. Sorry if this comes across the wrong way, but this really looks like troll material to me too - it has a great resemblance to a pattern trolls have used for many years. -Mike ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Python module wnck?
I'm trying to get screenlets up and running on 9.0, but I'm getting the following Python error: ImportError: No module named wnck I believe that this should be supplied by a a package or port named something like py27-wnck, but am unable to trace any such. Can anyone point me in the right direction please? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Python module wnck?
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:37:44 + (UTC), Walter Hurry wrote: I'm trying to get screenlets up and running on 9.0, but I'm getting the following Python error: ImportError: No module named wnck I believe that this should be supplied by a a package or port named something like py27-wnck, but am unable to trace any such. Can anyone point me in the right direction please? Use the ports, Luke. :-) % cd /usr/ports % make search name=wnck And a result: Port: libwnck-2.30.6 Path: /usr/ports/x11-toolkits/libwnck Info: Library used for writing pagers and taskslists More checks: % cat less x11-toolkits/libwnck/pkg-descr libwnck is a Window Navigator Construction Kit, i.e. a library used for writing pagers and taskslists. It is needed for the GNOME 2.0 desktop. Does this look like what you're searchin for? I know it's not specified to be a Python module, but maybe it interfaces with Python somehow? You can also use make search key=wnck to bring up a list of keyword search results. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Python module wnck?
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:37:44 + (UTC) Walter Hurry walterhu...@gmail.com wrote: I'm trying to get screenlets up and running on 9.0, but I'm getting the following Python error: ImportError: No module named wnck I believe that this should be supplied by a a package or port named something like py27-wnck, but am unable to trace any such. Can anyone point me in the right direction please? It's been a year or two since I tried to get screenlets running, but as I recall you need to get python wnck module yourself. libwnck is in the ports which is needed for the python module. -- Rod Person http://www.rodperson.com rodper...@rodperson.com 'Silence is a fence around wisdom' ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Python module wnck?
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:43:23 -0400, Rod Person wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:37:44 + (UTC) Walter Hurry walterhu...@gmail.com wrote: I'm trying to get screenlets up and running on 9.0, but I'm getting the following Python error: ImportError: No module named wnck I believe that this should be supplied by a a package or port named something like py27-wnck, but am unable to trace any such. Can anyone point me in the right direction please? It's been a year or two since I tried to get screenlets running, but as I recall you need to get python wnck module yourself. libwnck is in the ports which is needed for the python module. Thanks. libwnck is already installed, so I downloaded gnome-python- desktop-2.32.0.tar.bz2 from ftp.gnome.org, which apparently contains the Python wnck module. I was intending to make the whole thing, but then install only the bit I need. Unfortunately when it came to compile wnck, the following error was displayed: libtool: link: `/usr/local/lib/libxcb-aux.la' is not a valid libtool archive Indeed it isn't. There is no such file, even though libxcb is installed. Any thoughts? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Python module wnck?
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012, Walter Hurry wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:43:23 -0400, Rod Person wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:37:44 + (UTC) Walter Hurry walterhu...@gmail.com wrote: I'm trying to get screenlets up and running on 9.0, but I'm getting the following Python error: ImportError: No module named wnck I believe that this should be supplied by a a package or port named something like py27-wnck, but am unable to trace any such. Can anyone point me in the right direction please? It's been a year or two since I tried to get screenlets running, but as I recall you need to get python wnck module yourself. libwnck is in the ports which is needed for the python module. Thanks. libwnck is already installed, so I downloaded gnome-python- desktop-2.32.0.tar.bz2 from ftp.gnome.org, which apparently contains the Python wnck module. I was intending to make the whole thing, but then install only the bit I need. Unfortunately when it came to compile wnck, the following error was displayed: libtool: link: `/usr/local/lib/libxcb-aux.la' is not a valid libtool archive Indeed it isn't. There is no such file, even though libxcb is installed. http://forums.freebsd.org/showpost.php?p=163415postcount=17 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: FreeBSD vice OS X memory management
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:32:39 + (UTC) jb wrote: Adam Vande More amvandemore at gmail.com writes: ... http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/19036310553/two-things-that-really-helped- speed-up-my-mac-and http://dywypi.org/2012/02/back-on-linux.html 2) Inactive memory (which is memory that has been recently used but is no longer) is supposed to be seamlessly reclaimed automatically by the OS when needed for new programs. In practice, I’ve found that this isn’t the case, and my system slows to a crawl and starts paging out to disk when free memory drops to zero, even as half of the available RAM (which is a lot) is marked as inactive. ... That's not a good description of inactive memory, most of which contains useful data. The situation described is undesirable, but not abnormal. It can happen when your physical memory is spread thinly, but most of it isn't being frequently accessed. In that case the inactive queue can be dominated by dirty swap-backed pages. The above and the past FreeBSD thread here, both I referred to, have something in common - the system seems to progressively come under stress due to what one user experienced as missing memory, The FreeBSD link involved ZFS which manages its own disk caching and is relatively new. My guess is that if there is a problem it's ZFS specific. If it were a more general problem I think we'd see a lot more complaints, whereas ZFS already has a reputation for needing lots of memory. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: FreeBSD vice OS X memory management
RW rwmaillists at googlemail.com writes: ... ... 2) Inactive memory (which is memory that has been recently used but is no longer) is supposed to be seamlessly reclaimed automatically by the OS when needed for new programs. In practice, I’ve found that this isn’t the case, and my system slows to a crawl and starts paging out to disk when free memory drops to zero, even as half of the available RAM (which is a lot) is marked as inactive. ... That's not a good description of inactive memory, most of which contains useful data. The situation described is undesirable, but not abnormal. It can happen when your physical memory is spread thinly, but most of it isn't being frequently accessed. In that case the inactive queue can be dominated by dirty swap-backed pages. ... Would implementing the VM pageout algorithm in such a way that it would mix in equal proportion the current least-actively used algo and the old least-recently used algo help the situation ? jb ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U
On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 11:55 PM, Polytropon free...@edvax.de wrote: Thanks for that article, it's really sad. One of the main problems is (in my opinion) that GENERIC SKILLS aren't recognozed with the big importane they have. This applies to hiring as well as education. When they read a job application, HR people seem to basically do keyword matching. They don't know or care about generic skills. If the posting says 'Microsoft Word experience' the words 'Microsoft Word' better appear somewhere in the resume. Likewise, if they want experience with a particular programming language, you'd better have experience with THAT SPECIFIC LANGUAGE...never mind if you already know five and can pick up another in a week's time. Generic skills aren't recognized because they're hard to judge and test for. People want quantifiable, objective things to weed out applicants. This is also why credit scoring has become so popular -- sure, someone's credit score may not tell whether they'd be a good employee or not, but it's a convenient, objective way to throw out a bunch of resumes. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U
On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 02:45:53PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote: Generic skills aren't recognized because they're hard to judge and test for. People want quantifiable, objective things to weed out applicants. This is also why credit scoring has become so popular -- sure, someone's credit score may not tell whether they'd be a good employee or not, but it's a convenient, objective way to throw out a bunch of resumes. Indeed -- and the employer who bucks this trend does him/her self a huge service, because large numbers of very skilled and/or talented people are being rejected on entirely arbitrary criteria that have little or no correlation to their ability to do the job. People who use such critera are forcing themselves to compete with everyone else in the industry using the same criteria, leaving a glut of job candidates who would be great at the job waiting for someone else to give them a chance. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Python module wnck?
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:29:44 -0600, Warren Block wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012, Walter Hurry wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:43:23 -0400, Rod Person wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:37:44 + (UTC) Walter Hurry walterhu...@gmail.com wrote: I'm trying to get screenlets up and running on 9.0, but I'm getting the following Python error: ImportError: No module named wnck I believe that this should be supplied by a a package or port named something like py27-wnck, but am unable to trace any such. Can anyone point me in the right direction please? It's been a year or two since I tried to get screenlets running, but as I recall you need to get python wnck module yourself. libwnck is in the ports which is needed for the python module. Thanks. libwnck is already installed, so I downloaded gnome-python- desktop-2.32.0.tar.bz2 from ftp.gnome.org, which apparently contains the Python wnck module. I was intending to make the whole thing, but then install only the bit I need. Unfortunately when it came to compile wnck, the following error was displayed: libtool: link: `/usr/local/lib/libxcb-aux.la' is not a valid libtool archive Indeed it isn't. There is no such file, even though libxcb is installed. http://forums.freebsd.org/showpost.php?p=163415postcount=17 Thanks for that link! And thanks to Rod and Poly too. I now have screenlets up and running perfectly. I have kept notes in case any other soul needs assistance. What a suerb list!. As I gain experience with FreeBSD I hope I shall be able to contribute something in return. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Python module wnck?
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:14:53 + (UTC) Walter Hurry walterhu...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for that link! And thanks to Rod and Poly too. I now have screenlets up and running perfectly. I have kept notes in case any other soul needs assistance. What a suerb list!. As I gain experience with FreeBSD I hope I shall be able to contribute something in return. How many of the screenlets actually work? When I was working on this I found that a number of them where too linux specific to work. I have a screenshot of the sticky note and weather working but that's about all I can recall working. -- Rod Person http://www.rodperson.com rodper...@rodperson.com Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity, go on sending all the slaves that can be sold. - Letter from Christopher Columbus. J.A. Rawley, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A History. Pg.3 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:52:56 -0600 Chad Perrin articulated: On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 02:45:53PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote: Generic skills aren't recognized because they're hard to judge and test for. People want quantifiable, objective things to weed out applicants. This is also why credit scoring has become so popular -- sure, someone's credit score may not tell whether they'd be a good employee or not, but it's a convenient, objective way to throw out a bunch of resumes. Indeed -- and the employer who bucks this trend does him/her self a huge service, because large numbers of very skilled and/or talented people are being rejected on entirely arbitrary criteria that have little or no correlation to their ability to do the job. People who use such critera are forcing themselves to compete with everyone else in the industry using the same criteria, leaving a glut of job candidates who would be great at the job waiting for someone else to give them a chance. Wouldn't it be far easier for this glut of job applicants to either become proficient in the skills stated in the job description for which they are applying or do what everyone else does; i.e. lie on their résumé. If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain. -- Jerry ♔ Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored. Please do not ignore the Reply-To header. __ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Installing VMware Tools on FreeBSD 9, amd64
I've installed the compat6x libraries and made a symlink to /lib for libc.so.6 as per some docs I found; however, the vmware tools installation is still failing with: Unable to copy the source file /usr/local/lib/vmware-tools/modules/binary/FreeBSD8.0-amd64/vmxnet.ko to the destination file /boot/modules/vmxnet.ko. The reason being is that /usr/local/lib/vmware-tools/modules/binary/ only contains: FreeBSD6.0-amd64FreeBSD6.0-i386FreeBSD7.0-amd64 FreeBSD7.0-i386 Is this a bug in the vmware install script or have I missed something--or can I use a different option? Thing is, I'm on 9.0 RELEASE. Thanks. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
HOWTO: FreeBSD ZFS Madness (Boot Environments)
Hi, I have just created new HOWTO [1] on how to use Boot Environments on FreeBSD with new created utility *beadm* that I put on SourceForge [2]. Feel free to send Your ideas/critique about it. [1] http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=31662 [2] https://sourceforge.net/projects/beadm/ Regards, vermaden ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Python module wnck?
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:41:35 -0400, Rod Person wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:14:53 + (UTC) Walter Hurry walterhu...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for that link! And thanks to Rod and Poly too. I now have screenlets up and running perfectly. I have kept notes in case any other soul needs assistance. What a suerb list!. As I gain experience with FreeBSD I hope I shall be able to contribute something in return. How many of the screenlets actually work? When I was working on this I found that a number of them where too linux specific to work. I have a screenshot of the sticky note and weather working but that's about all I can recall working. I only wanted three: Clock, ClearCalendar and ClearWeather. They work perfectly. I haven't tried any of the others. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Python module wnck?
On Fri, 27 Apr 2012, Walter Hurry wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:41:35 -0400, Rod Person wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:14:53 + (UTC) Walter Hurry walterhu...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for that link! And thanks to Rod and Poly too. I now have screenlets up and running perfectly. I have kept notes in case any other soul needs assistance. What a suerb list!. As I gain experience with FreeBSD I hope I shall be able to contribute something in return. How many of the screenlets actually work? When I was working on this I found that a number of them where too linux specific to work. I have a screenshot of the sticky note and weather working but that's about all I can recall working. I only wanted three: Clock, ClearCalendar and ClearWeather. They work perfectly. I haven't tried any of the others. Consider making a port. Clearly there is some demand. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Python module wnck?
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:51:49 -0600, Warren Block wrote: On Fri, 27 Apr 2012, Walter Hurry wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:41:35 -0400, Rod Person wrote: On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:14:53 + (UTC) Walter Hurry walterhu...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for that link! And thanks to Rod and Poly too. I now have screenlets up and running perfectly. I have kept notes in case any other soul needs assistance. What a suerb list!. As I gain experience with FreeBSD I hope I shall be able to contribute something in return. How many of the screenlets actually work? When I was working on this I found that a number of them where too linux specific to work. I have a screenshot of the sticky note and weather working but that's about all I can recall working. I only wanted three: Clock, ClearCalendar and ClearWeather. They work perfectly. I haven't tried any of the others. Consider making a port. Clearly there is some demand. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/ For the Python wnck module, or for screenlets? I'm afraid that technically I am well short of the ability to do either. I am more than willing to help anyone who elects to so, though. Incidentally (and this is addressed to Rod mainly), the ClearWeather module was broken. I had to hack it a bit to get it to work properly. It got confused over proxies, but since I am not unfamiliar with Python, that presented no difficulty. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: editor that understands CTRL/B, CTRL/I, CTRL/U
On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:45:53 -0700, David Brodbeck wrote: On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 11:55 PM, Polytropon free...@edvax.de wrote: Thanks for that article, it's really sad. One of the main problems is (in my opinion) that GENERIC SKILLS aren't recognozed with the big importane they have. This applies to hiring as well as education. When they read a job application, HR people seem to basically do keyword matching. They don't know or care about generic skills. That's a shortsightet view, especially when you consider the typical lifecyle of software. Being educated on one specific version that doesn't share many similarities with competitor's products or own follow-up versions, you're lost. Generic skills (such as generic Linux and UNIX skills) enable you to become familiar with _any_ Unix-like operating system very quickly, and in a world software changing dayly this is an important skill. Additionally, generic skills enable you to learn _anything_ quickly, such as a new scripting language, or a DTP application. They all share generic concepts (like some kind of syntax for a programming language, or some kind of UI design for a GUI based program). And you're right: HR people don't do more than keyword matching. That's the only thing they have time for. If the posting says 'Microsoft Word experience' the words 'Microsoft Word' better appear somewhere in the resume. It's even worse. There are some standardized skill profiles (which aren't standardized) that one is expected to include. I currently have an example here. It contains 100 times the word Microsoft, but lacks essential stuff that one would assume when applying for a job as a virtualisation / system administrator. Some non-MICROS~1 stuff is mentioned in footnotes, most of it even improperly spelled or not attributed to the proper company. For example, if you're familiar with StarOffice, OpenOffice and LibreOffice (which you can acquire knowledge in _for free_), you should be able to conclude how the MICROS~1 products work, any version of them (even though they are very different and incon- sistent, and you _cannot_ learn them for free). So this would match the skill office applications, but maybe because the word Microsoft doesn't appear several times, this skill is rejected. This also works with commercial UNIXes that are hard to try for free. But with your generic skills, you can find out how things work, because the basics are the same everywhere. You can even install Hercules on your FreeBSD machine and find out how an IBM /360 mainframe is operated - teaching you basic skills how to deal with z/OS, CMS, TSO, REXX, ISPF and other (primarily commercial) applications you might encounter). Likewise, if they want experience with a particular programming language, you'd better have experience with THAT SPECIFIC LANGUAGE...never mind if you already know five and can pick up another in a week's time. That is correct. But being able to do so depends on the employer to _publish_ his expectations in an understandable format. In a setting where job applications are typically filtered by an external HR company which _also_ makes the job announcement, you'll hardly find them. Instead, there's lots of blahblah like we're an established company, a prominent market leader or young and dynamic expanding service provider - and then programmer or system administrator. You often don't find any hint who the _real_ employer would be. And in the end, it turns out that they are searching for a phone monkey in 1st level customer support. :-) Generic skills aren't recognized because they're hard to judge and test for. Hard to judge - no, but only by try and watch which often is not possible or not intended. Hard to test for - true, as proper test would have to be developed first, and I assume that's rather expensive. There are generic tests like FizzBuzz, but it doesn't say _that_ much, and it's not enough to use _only_ this test. However, it's a nice fall-through test if you want to hire a programmer and he doesn't get it done by any programming language _he_ may choose. :-) Generic skills are _the_ skills you need to learn something new. Stupidly repeating things doesn't work. Being tied to the one way of doing things doesn't fit a quickly changing world. You can't rely on vendor lock-in everywhere. People want quantifiable, objective things to weed out applicants. They often _assume_ that this is provided by colorful paper, typically hanging on a wall in your back, the wall of fame. There are many certificates that state you actually know something, but there are more than enough that just cost money, and you get them, no matter what you know (certificate spam, if I may say that) - those are _worthless_. I think objective is very hard to find here. Many considerations depend on assumptions and expectations. For example, you want a programmer. You don't state for what precisely (kind of project and programming language).
