These links prove nothing. The Atlantic article's graphics in fact prove my point, but they go on to conjecture by saying that because the GSE's made money, they caused loose lending standards in banks, which is BS by any measure. Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with other banks determining the risks that those institutions were willing to take on. The bump in origination's was due to the refi boom of 2001-2003, which of course was due directly to the Fed's policies. Those policies had their roots in the deep recession that followed the dot-com bust and 9/11.
It is incorrect to attribute the housing bubble to Fannie and Freddie. The loans they were allowed to purchase (remember, they don't originate any) were highly regulated and were substantially less risky. The GSE's saw significant erosion of market share in 2005-2008, due mostly to the securitization of Option ARM's, no-doc loans, etc. provided by companies like Countrywide, WAMU, Citi, and others which were being used to purchase ever more expensive homes.
If you are looking for organizational villians, look no further than the banks that went bankrupt (like Countrywide) and the survivors who had just enough strength and political influence to not fail (i.e., Citi) as well as ratings organizations who stamped anything that was an MBS with an A rating.
While the OFHEO response to changing market conditions for the GSE's was an increased allowance of low-doc loans, even so the market share owned by Fannie and Freddie was trending down until the markets broke and they became monopsony buyers of loans following the credit crunch. Then regulations were changed and we're back to the conditions of 2004 and before, where loans must be conforming, albeit with the revision of conforming loan limits for certain high cost markets. In a very real sense, Fannie and Freddie today are doing exactly what they were chartered to do. If there was no Fannie or Freddie today you couldn't get a refi, much less a new mortgage.
The American team packed this stuff up and shipped it off to India, they (the American) teams were forced to transition the knowledge, and then they were given 90 days to find new jobs.
The Indian outsourcer initially provided packing foam, which didn't meet project specifications. They took a second pass with aluminum cans, which still didn't work. Then as they tried to correct the problem the whole team to which it was outsourced got better paying jobs and the IP was lost. The division VP claimed victory with a cost reduction and since there were no immediate orders for the foam that couldn't be filled nobody could or would bludgeon him with the reality, that they lost a competency that was mission critical.;-)
And second, as for your reaction to the DTaP vaccine, there is a widely known side effect of the vaccine (specifically the "P" part against Pertussis, aka Whopping Cough). We are well aware of the side effect and it is known. That is not the same as speculation about an unproven side effect believed by the public and rejected by most of the scientific community. Hmm, sounds a *lot* like the Global Warming denier community. Oh wait, but those guys are kooks, right? *You're* just being skeptical, right?
That being said, your physician is either an idiot, or to be fair, maybe this wasn't known in 1960s UK - the solution to the DTaP reaction you describe is to administer just the D and T portions and not adding the Pertussis part. Congratulations, you were not immunized against Tetanus or Diptheria.
If the reaction to DTaP was well known and preventable, but there was nothing done about it, is that practitioner acting responsibly by administrating it anyway? How reckless and irresponsible is that - to knowingly induce harm (albeit in a small percentage of cases) when that harm can be avoided by something as simple as a scheduling change and separate shots?
Knowing that practitioners have been arrogant and reckless in the past regarding a certain subject does not inspire confidence in their recommendations on that subject in the future. Hence the discussion around this subject we have today. If medical practitioners as a group have acted in a way that reduced their credibility to near zero it is their own damn fault that they have opened themselves up for anyone to comment credibly.
Relative to "unproven side effects", well, let me offer this. Speaking from personal experience, my brother Patrick (born in 1968) also almost died from the DTaP vaccine. He experienced seizures and a high fever within a day after receiving the DTaP vaccine. In the week following that vaccine these seizure recurred, and he subsequently started to show autistic behavior. In his case, he grew up severely mentally retarded. He has never developed mentally beyond that of a two year old. He can only say a couple of words, literally cannot wipe his own bottom, and has been a tremendous challenge for my parents, my brothers, and quite frankly for me.
Personally, I too have had some, but smaller, reactions to vaccines. I experienced a high fever and weird sleepwalking incidents immediately after receiving a booster shot in high school. I have no recollection of the event - my mother told me about it afterward.
So don't tell me that there's no connection. Bullshit. A connection exists and I've experienced it in a very, very personal way. The science just has not yet caught up with reality.
I will only know my brother as the retarded brother. I will only know the embarrassment and difficulty of having my brother the way he is. The way this condition impacted my life is very negative, and very emotionally draining even to write this - years separated from my direct contact with him. To hear your cavalier response relative to side effects and separation of shots makes me want to reach through the screen and punch you. You'd never cut it as my doctor. If they knew they should separate these shots, why didn't they? If they are not separate now, why not?
The response to those rhetorical questions invariably boils down to doctors did not know everything back then, but they know more now. I will grant you that you know more now, but you still do not know everything around the topic. What you prescribe now may have its own side effects, but your calculus ultimately discounts that. It ultimately boils down to what is most cost effective and least effort for the broadest population. To me, with what I have lived with, and what I hope for my children, that is unacceptable. There certainly is the need to approach this issue at the macro level, but as the parent of a patient (two of them, soon to be three) I only care about my children, and your
For what its worth, a lot of us who currently live here don't like what the US has become either. From this world citizen to another, let me just say that I and many others are embarrassed by the conduct of our government. I hope (and daresay, pray, but not in a religious right kind of way) that the ship continues to turn back toward sanity and constitutional limits on powers that will hopefully result in the US acting more responsibly on the global stage. I think you probably hear from some of us in this forum, but some domestic (US) organizations are starting to make a dent into the fear mentality of the American people that has led us astray.
Personnally, I think it's so nice to talk to foreign visitors, and get their opinions and perspectives. It is consistently enlightening. I only wish more US citizens visited other countries so they could relate to the fact that there is a whole world outside our borders, and we aren't the only people in the world that matter. Joe-sixpack (slang for the common man in the US) is sadly equipped by education to formulate an enlightened worldview, similarly educated parents are rarely equipped to provide it, and our political discourse (reinforced by the media and our politicians) is hideously US-centric. I think the only way for our citizens to evolve is to get outside the borders for a while and build their own opinions.
There has been a lack of statesmanship from the executive and legislative branches of the US government for 7 yrs. now, but happily Nancy Pelosi's visit to the middle east last year signaled a breath of fresh air in that regard. I hope the trend continues.
Full disclosure: I now own a Treo 680 that I love. I've had a Tungsten T3, m505, m500, and V. So I'm not really too objective a voice. That said, I've also owned a iPAQ 6920, RIM 7100t, and RIM 7130e. Based upon that history, I think I know a couple of things about handhelds.
I'm a consultant with no real base of operations outside of my house, so mobility is critical to my job. Little things like a phone that actually works as a phone is pretty big in my book, since people generally like to call you on your phone.;-) Equally important is battery life, since you never know how long you'll be delayed at ORD, LAX, MSP, etc. Finally, a device must be operable with one hand as you are walking through an airport or while taking notes with the other hand.
The Engadget article was insightful, but I think that the basic functions are done better than most in the market today. The 680 is, hands down, the best handheld device I have ever owned. To me, the cardinal virtues are battery life, call clarity, one-handed usability, and application availability. On those scores, the battery life trounces the iPAQ and is dead even with the RIM devices. The interface is comparable to the RIM devices for single handed operation, and the call quality tops all of them. Given such a good resume, why is the Palm struggling? I still cannot figure it out personally. They are late to the game with Exchange syncing, so that was a pretty big hurdle, but now it is a non-factor. The rich offering of applications like GPS navigation, voice recording, and entertainment options are great. Exchange syncing on Palm devices with MS operating systems preceded it, but when you look at battery life and usability of the interface, that humble Palm OS stacks up favorably.
I'm thinking that Palm needs to really apply marketing muscle into enterprise acceptance. I cannot fathom where a new laptop helped with that, so I think ditching the Foleo was good. Palm really needs to continue to focus on the enterprise user and enhanced productivity, with an eye toward those cardinal virtues, and perhaps either partnering with Google or (god forbid) being acquired by Google as a portable physical gateway into the Google ecosystem.
And do no harm. And try to advance humanity. And strive for understanding. And be gentle to humanity, including myself. And forgive the trespasses of others.
Those are the the qualities of greatness. Some guys in history had those qualities and started some pretty big movements. What a shame that those movements themselves became the enemies of their ideals.
Great conviction in the righteousness of tyranny still subverts democracy. Great effort in the service of tyranny still makes you an enemy of freedom.
Good riddance. The world is better off without him. If only he carried some incurable disease that was passed on to executives at Disney, Sony, and the RIAA, perhaps we might see the dying spark fair use fanned into a fire once again.
When I first heard this I felt joy. Then I felt a little guilty at having that joy - after all, this was a human life. Then again, he is in a fairly elite club - there are few people outside of elected office that have done more to trample on the constitution than he. To the great moderator in the sky, I hope you give him all he has coming to him.
What annoys me is how the rocket engines are continuously firing as if they operated like jets. In space, the combination of weightlessness and being in a vacuum means that the engines do not need to be continuously firing to maintain momentum in any particular direction - only if they need to change direction should they be fired. It makes no sense for a spacecraft "fighter" to look like a traditional jet-like design.
Bottle the power of human stupidity? Sorry, you are too late. Look no further than the Vatican, Al Qaeda, or any other religions institution. Superstition, fear of death, and the promise of eternal life are all their tools, and with proper respect of their un-verifiable claims (faith), lack of reason, and willingness to submit you too can be their servant.
I work for a small (200) specialized consulting firm based out of Chicago. It is called Knightsbridge. We specialize in (and actually helped define) the "Big Data" niche. I'm not here to advertise, but here's the official spiel:
Knightsbridge Solutions is a systems integration firm delivering high-performance data solutions that solve "big-data" problems. Our technology planning, information architecture, and implementation services empower organizations with either high data volumes or complex data challenges to leverage organizational data for competitive advantage. We specialize in data warehousing, data integration, householding, low-latency applications, and other solutions that enable high-value business applications such as business intelligence, CRM, and supply chain. The company's existing practice areas focus in telecommunications, financial services, insurance markets, retail and consumer products, and pharmaceutical and healthcare.
If your consultants are not head and shoulders above your staff you should fire them. When I worked in corporate IT I wouldn't have tolerated that. I'm guessing you've had a lot of exposure to some of the bigger shops that hire green-beans and pass them off as experts. We don't operate that way - we require 5yrs experience min + rigorous competency review - just for our mor junior staff.
Become a consultant. As a consultant I have traveled about 75% of the time over the last five years. Now in my case the travel has been strictly domestic, but my company has had international clients. There are many companies that specialize in technology consulting where the job is 50-100% travel. Data warehousing in particular is very mature in the US, but less so overseas. There may be opportunities for placement overseas, particularly if your language skills are good.
Admittedly, the job market is kind of sketchy right now, though many companies (including mine) are still hiring. The company I work for has actually still managed to grow our revenues and become profitable throughout the recession.
As an added bonus, you typically do not have any material living expenses, as your meals, transportation, and hotel are covered by the client. On top of that, consulting salaries are much higher than corporate IT.
If you make the cut, you will also get to work with very high caliber individuals who are experts in their fields. There are exceptions, but typically this type of exposure is difficult to get in a normal IT shop.
There is a downside, however. The work is stressful, you don't have the luxury of making as many mistakes, the hours are long, you are living out of a hotel, and it is nearly impossible to sustain meaningful relationships.
With the exception of your take on the Western Christian societal model, I could not agree with you more. I make that objection because while it is generally a benevolent socializing force it too is/has been subject to corruption and abuse. Please understand that I am a product of the Catholic church, but I find myself in disagreement with its wisdom on many occasion. Nonetheless the need for all persons to value peace, love and understanding are probably best promoted by parents and community, but failing that, they are better promoted through an institution of some size and authority than simply listening to Elvis Costello.;-)
The internet as a social pheonomenon has still not taken hold globally, but it will. Just as mass media affords us a global perspective, albiet through a centrally controlled perspective, the internet will give us global perspective at a peer level. I think that forums such as this are one such way for this to come about.
Oh to hell with you. You are all wrong. I'm going to get in my Lexus now and run down Rambo.;-)
LOL
You are right to say that tolerance is not a good in and of itself. It is context and conflicting values that make it a good. The real problem is that that American public is passive. We absorb sound bites and images without acting on them, often without even analyzing them for ourselves.
Going back to the article, I have to question some of the things this reporter implies. I don't think Americans can cure the world's problems. I don't think that America should. Being a superpower is not the same as being god. What we should do is take the time to analyze the information being provided to us. Think for ourselves. That itself would be a miracle
For example, how many people, even in this forum, have taken the time to understand why terrorists target us? In my opinion it's not just that we are relatively wealthy and self absorbed, as the article implies. If that were the case, it would be perfectly justifiable to throw up our hands and brand "terrorists" as pure evildoers. The thing is, they probably don't think of themselves as evil, they see themselves as just. How could that be?
If you dig under the covers a little bit, you may start to question the US sponsored support of Israel, which has conducted a campaign of assasination an subjugation for decades. Or the fact that Sharon was responsible for brutal acts against non-jews, but still (or perhaps because of this) managed to rise to power, without condemnation from the US. The press glosses over the moral bankruptcy of the Jewish state, in my opinion. Add that to the list of things we should not tolerate.
Of course I could be completely wrong, but at least I took the time to dig up the facts and I wasn't passive. I challenge you to divine your own truth, and tolerate mine even if it is different from yours.
The truth is much scarier than this... at the volumes these guys deal with ( >2Billion impressions/day) the batch processing systems have to be bulletproof and built to scale. The slightest misstep is disastrous. The infrastructure is really critical, and in my experience they did it right. Some of the best engineers I've had the pleasure of working with were there. Can't say whether they kept up on the hardware side, though.
What does it really cost them to keep tracking this stuff, besides a few more boxes in back
It isn't cheap, believe me. Last time I checked, the backend system was four clustered Sun 6500's, with Oracle running on one of them and the transform processes going on a couple of others. When I wrote software for their backend systems, we were wrestling with a state file that was over 1 Terabyte. That was with the volume you found in the year 2000. I am sure that the volume has gone up since then, so you have to figure that the cost of additional DASD alone is painful. Not to mention that they may need to scale up the hardware to an E10K or an additional 6500 by now. Then on top of that add additional per CPU licensing fees for some of the software.
If the targeted ad aspect of the system isn't paying for itself, then you can milk a lot more out of the existing hardware and software. Which in this economy makes it a no brainer.
RE:This is the game you feel like telling the/. community is worth buying a copy of Win98 for
I guess this is where I differ from the rest of the/. community. I take the stance that if a game is worth spending money on, it has to be a Linux version, period. I don't think that there is ever a game that justifies buying WinXX. I use windows 98 for work, because it's the corporate standard, but I don't particularly enjoy it. But it's work, and not everything you do at work will be enjoyable. So its not a big deal.
Once at home, however, I do expect my computing to be enjoyable. So no Microsoft.
RE:how many people still have Windows machines for playing games?
Um, there's a lot to it, that's why. Airlines operations are basically a big exercise in logistics.
My current client has initals that might contain the letters L, A, and U, and they use an RS/6000SP for exactly this type of work. Nice machine. This Sun box is a direct competitor to the SP, but very different architecturally. Large scale SMP vs MPP.
I would have to say that this is a textbook example of why American citizens must be very reluctant to grant additional powers to law enforcement. By redefining everything as a terrorist activity he makes a land-grab for all manner of unconstitutional powers.
I don't have to tell you people what to do - the EFF site has it all - but have you notified your friends, family, coworkers/fellow students?
Let me say upfront that I am uncomfortable with this idea, but purely in terms of implementation, I would have to agree that Oracle is probably not your best database for the job.
Oracle's architecture is very much an SMP centric, which works fine up to the point that the backplane is saturated. A database this big really needs to be more distributed/MPP centric, where you can scale the number of nodes to handle the load. Basically, at lower volumes the SMP-Oracle (like maybe a Sun E10000) solution will be faster than anthing that is loosely coupled over a switch (like a RS/6000 SP or NCR-Teradata Box with Bynet) but it will run into a wall at higher transaction volumes. The NCR, IBM, or even SGI box is much better equipped to scale as needed.
If I were to recommend a database to Big Brother, I would have to recommend Informix, DB2 or Teradata.
Now let's put this out of our mind and get down to business discrediting Larry Ellison and making sure this abomination never comes to fruition.
I totally agree with you here: There are a whole bunch of reasons why a PDA will never replace a laptop. I wouldn't mind replacing my Cellphone with a PDA, actually, assuming that I could just use a headset.
I have an m505, and before that, I had a Palm V. I love both using both of these machines. Because my job requires me to travel a lot, and I am occasionally gone for a couple of weeks at a time, form factor and battery life are the most important thing to me. The IPAQ size is still too big and heavy, and the battery life is still terrible compared to the Palm, so that is what I went with when I upgraded this year.
What I like about the Palm is how simple and intuitive the interface is. I don't need to know the internals, and truth be told, I don't really want to. I have several Linux and OpenBSD boxes for hacking and things of that ilk. I don't need spreadsheets, or presentation software (this is an organizer, after all, not a laptop) but I would like e-mail, and cell phone functionality. In the same form factor, with the same battery life. Somebody else posted bluetooth connectivity to a wireless headset, and I think that's a great idea.
Where the Palm V fell short was memory. The m505 takes care of that. What's missing?
Cell phone/wireless functionality. Ogg Vorbis Player About 1GB of memory for the Ogg Vorbis player;-)
Thinking back, I used to be terribly disorganized. I would have sticky notes and multiple 8x11 notebooks, filled with stuff that I could never find, and couldn't index. My boss and coworkers urged me to take an organizational class, and man, it was good advice. What I did differently, however, was I bought my first PDA (the Palm V) two weeks before the class, learned how to write well with it, and then used it as the basis of my organizational system. I took the class, but used the Palm instead of their materials. It worked out great! Now I have notes from every project I have worked on since 1999, all searchable, and always at my fingertips. Need to know about tuning Solaris kernel internals? No problem, did that in... (you get the idea)
Sorry if this ended up sounding like an advertisment for Palm, but I really love my PDA.:-)
I can not, however, say that foreign workers fill the high IQ/learn-things-quickly
prerequisite any better than native workers. In fact, the language barrier can sometimes get in the way.
While as individuals that is true, but taken as a group they broaden the pool of people from which to choose. So your chances of finding that person you need is better.
That said, I agree with substantially large portions of the article, and I believe that if the economic worth of an activity is high enough, than the prevailing wage for that activity will rise enough to motivate (American) workers to become skilled at that activity.
We (the company I work for) write parallel processing applications. We had a skills shortage, but managed to get around it by training people with good experience in technologies similar in nature.
I wasn't born with parallel processing app dev skills. Neither were any of my foreign co-workers. They were trained on the subject, and the criteria for hire is/was an ability to absorb new concepts with minimum effort. So a hi IQ gets you the job.
I suspect in your case that you didn't pay the prevailing rate for the position (perhaps bad information?) and/or you were not geared to recruit people with the real prerequisite: The ability to comprehend what was necessary to make the software work.
Unfortunately, the people making hiring decisions do not do so optimally. That is just a matter of human nature. I think that that your specific requirements drew you into a sort of no-win situation, in that you could not keep/advance your career without a guaranteed success, and in response to that you targeted your audience too restictively, which effectively precluded success.
The next time you look at finding a person to fill a position, look at what is really required outside of the core technologies. Those who fulfill these requirments are the people you need to interview for. Which is the unspoken point of this article: We have created an atificial limit on applicants and suffered, but now that the price has dipped somewhat, with lowered expectations we have a surplus.
Slashdot Mirror
These links prove nothing. The Atlantic article's graphics in fact prove my point, but they go on to conjecture by saying that because the GSE's made money, they caused loose lending standards in banks, which is BS by any measure. Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with other banks determining the risks that those institutions were willing to take on. The bump in origination's was due to the refi boom of 2001-2003, which of course was due directly to the Fed's policies. Those policies had their roots in the deep recession that followed the dot-com bust and 9/11.
It is incorrect to attribute the housing bubble to Fannie and Freddie. The loans they were allowed to purchase (remember, they don't originate any) were highly regulated and were substantially less risky. The GSE's saw significant erosion of market share in 2005-2008, due mostly to the securitization of Option ARM's, no-doc loans, etc. provided by companies like Countrywide, WAMU, Citi, and others which were being used to purchase ever more expensive homes.
If you are looking for organizational villians, look no further than the banks that went bankrupt (like Countrywide) and the survivors who had just enough strength and political influence to not fail (i.e., Citi) as well as ratings organizations who stamped anything that was an MBS with an A rating.
While the OFHEO response to changing market conditions for the GSE's was an increased allowance of low-doc loans, even so the market share owned by Fannie and Freddie was trending down until the markets broke and they became monopsony buyers of loans following the credit crunch. Then regulations were changed and we're back to the conditions of 2004 and before, where loans must be conforming, albeit with the revision of conforming loan limits for certain high cost markets. In a very real sense, Fannie and Freddie today are doing exactly what they were chartered to do. If there was no Fannie or Freddie today you couldn't get a refi, much less a new mortgage.
The American team packed this stuff up and shipped it off to India, they (the American) teams were forced to transition the knowledge, and then they were given 90 days to find new jobs.
The Indian outsourcer initially provided packing foam, which didn't meet project specifications. They took a second pass with aluminum cans, which still didn't work. Then as they tried to correct the problem the whole team to which it was outsourced got better paying jobs and the IP was lost. The division VP claimed victory with a cost reduction and since there were no immediate orders for the foam that couldn't be filled nobody could or would bludgeon him with the reality, that they lost a competency that was mission critical. ;-)
Yes, I'm joking. Doesn't make it untrue.
And second, as for your reaction to the DTaP vaccine, there is a widely known side effect of the vaccine (specifically the "P" part against Pertussis, aka Whopping Cough). We are well aware of the side effect and it is known. That is not the same as speculation about an unproven side effect believed by the public and rejected by most of the scientific community. Hmm, sounds a *lot* like the Global Warming denier community. Oh wait, but those guys are kooks, right? *You're* just being skeptical, right?
That being said, your physician is either an idiot, or to be fair, maybe this wasn't known in 1960s UK - the solution to the DTaP reaction you describe is to administer just the D and T portions and not adding the Pertussis part. Congratulations, you were not immunized against Tetanus or Diptheria.
If the reaction to DTaP was well known and preventable, but there was nothing done about it, is that practitioner acting responsibly by administrating it anyway? How reckless and irresponsible is that - to knowingly induce harm (albeit in a small percentage of cases) when that harm can be avoided by something as simple as a scheduling change and separate shots?
Knowing that practitioners have been arrogant and reckless in the past regarding a certain subject does not inspire confidence in their recommendations on that subject in the future. Hence the discussion around this subject we have today. If medical practitioners as a group have acted in a way that reduced their credibility to near zero it is their own damn fault that they have opened themselves up for anyone to comment credibly.
Relative to "unproven side effects", well, let me offer this. Speaking from personal experience, my brother Patrick (born in 1968) also almost died from the DTaP vaccine. He experienced seizures and a high fever within a day after receiving the DTaP vaccine. In the week following that vaccine these seizure recurred, and he subsequently started to show autistic behavior. In his case, he grew up severely mentally retarded. He has never developed mentally beyond that of a two year old. He can only say a couple of words, literally cannot wipe his own bottom, and has been a tremendous challenge for my parents, my brothers, and quite frankly for me.
Personally, I too have had some, but smaller, reactions to vaccines. I experienced a high fever and weird sleepwalking incidents immediately after receiving a booster shot in high school. I have no recollection of the event - my mother told me about it afterward.
So don't tell me that there's no connection. Bullshit. A connection exists and I've experienced it in a very, very personal way. The science just has not yet caught up with reality.
I will only know my brother as the retarded brother. I will only know the embarrassment and difficulty of having my brother the way he is. The way this condition impacted my life is very negative, and very emotionally draining even to write this - years separated from my direct contact with him. To hear your cavalier response relative to side effects and separation of shots makes me want to reach through the screen and punch you. You'd never cut it as my doctor. If they knew they should separate these shots, why didn't they? If they are not separate now, why not?
The response to those rhetorical questions invariably boils down to doctors did not know everything back then, but they know more now. I will grant you that you know more now, but you still do not know everything around the topic. What you prescribe now may have its own side effects, but your calculus ultimately discounts that. It ultimately boils down to what is most cost effective and least effort for the broadest population. To me, with what I have lived with, and what I hope for my children, that is unacceptable. There certainly is the need to approach this issue at the macro level, but as the parent of a patient (two of them, soon to be three) I only care about my children, and your
For what its worth, a lot of us who currently live here don't like what the US has become either. From this world citizen to another, let me just say that I and many others are embarrassed by the conduct of our government. I hope (and daresay, pray, but not in a religious right kind of way) that the ship continues to turn back toward sanity and constitutional limits on powers that will hopefully result in the US acting more responsibly on the global stage. I think you probably hear from some of us in this forum, but some domestic (US) organizations are starting to make a dent into the fear mentality of the American people that has led us astray.
Personnally, I think it's so nice to talk to foreign visitors, and get their opinions and perspectives. It is consistently enlightening. I only wish more US citizens visited other countries so they could relate to the fact that there is a whole world outside our borders, and we aren't the only people in the world that matter. Joe-sixpack (slang for the common man in the US) is sadly equipped by education to formulate an enlightened worldview, similarly educated parents are rarely equipped to provide it, and our political discourse (reinforced by the media and our politicians) is hideously US-centric. I think the only way for our citizens to evolve is to get outside the borders for a while and build their own opinions.
There has been a lack of statesmanship from the executive and legislative branches of the US government for 7 yrs. now, but happily Nancy Pelosi's visit to the middle east last year signaled a breath of fresh air in that regard. I hope the trend continues.
Full disclosure: I now own a Treo 680 that I love. I've had a Tungsten T3, m505, m500, and V. So I'm not really too objective a voice.
;-) Equally important is battery life, since you never know how long you'll be delayed at ORD, LAX, MSP, etc. Finally, a device must be operable with one hand as you are walking through an airport or while taking notes with the other hand.
That said, I've also owned a iPAQ 6920, RIM 7100t, and RIM 7130e.
Based upon that history, I think I know a couple of things about handhelds.
I'm a consultant with no real base of operations outside of my house, so mobility is critical to my job. Little things like a phone that actually works as a phone is pretty big in my book, since people generally like to call you on your phone.
The Engadget article was insightful, but I think that the basic functions are done better than most in the market today. The 680 is, hands down, the best handheld device I have ever owned. To me, the cardinal virtues are battery life, call clarity, one-handed usability, and application availability. On those scores, the battery life trounces the iPAQ and is dead even with the RIM devices. The interface is comparable to the RIM devices for single handed operation, and the call quality tops all of them. Given such a good resume, why is the Palm struggling? I still cannot figure it out personally. They are late to the game with Exchange syncing, so that was a pretty big hurdle, but now it is a non-factor. The rich offering of applications like GPS navigation, voice recording, and entertainment options are great. Exchange syncing on Palm devices with MS operating systems preceded it, but when you look at battery life and usability of the interface, that humble Palm OS stacks up favorably.
I'm thinking that Palm needs to really apply marketing muscle into enterprise acceptance. I cannot fathom where a new laptop helped with that, so I think ditching the Foleo was good. Palm really needs to continue to focus on the enterprise user and enhanced productivity, with an eye toward those cardinal virtues, and perhaps either partnering with Google or (god forbid) being acquired by Google as a portable physical gateway into the Google ecosystem.
And do no harm.
And try to advance humanity.
And strive for understanding.
And be gentle to humanity, including myself.
And forgive the trespasses of others.
Those are the the qualities of greatness. Some guys in history had those qualities and started some pretty big movements. What a shame that those movements themselves became the enemies of their ideals.
Great conviction in the righteousness of tyranny still subverts democracy. Great effort in the service of tyranny still makes you an enemy of freedom.
Good riddance. The world is better off without him. If only he carried some incurable disease that was passed on to executives at Disney, Sony, and the RIAA, perhaps we might see the dying spark fair use fanned into a fire once again.
When I first heard this I felt joy. Then I felt a little guilty at having that joy - after all, this was a human life. Then again, he is in a fairly elite club - there are few people outside of elected office that have done more to trample on the constitution than he. To the great moderator in the sky, I hope you give him all he has coming to him.
What annoys me is how the rocket engines are continuously firing as if they operated like jets. In space, the combination of weightlessness and being in a vacuum means that the engines do not need to be continuously firing to maintain momentum in any particular direction - only if they need to change direction should they be fired. It makes no sense for a spacecraft "fighter" to look like a traditional jet-like design.
Bottle the power of human stupidity? Sorry, you are too late. Look no further than the Vatican, Al Qaeda, or any other religions institution. Superstition, fear of death, and the promise of eternal life are all their tools, and with proper respect of their un-verifiable claims (faith), lack of reason, and willingness to submit you too can be their servant.
I work for a small (200) specialized consulting firm based out of Chicago. It is called Knightsbridge. We specialize in (and actually helped define) the "Big Data" niche. I'm not here to advertise, but here's the official spiel:
Knightsbridge Solutions is a systems integration firm delivering high-performance data solutions that solve "big-data" problems. Our technology planning, information architecture, and implementation services empower organizations with either high data volumes or complex data challenges to leverage organizational data for competitive advantage. We specialize in data warehousing, data integration, householding, low-latency applications, and other solutions that enable high-value business applications such as business intelligence, CRM, and supply chain. The company's existing practice areas focus in telecommunications, financial services, insurance markets, retail and consumer products, and pharmaceutical and healthcare.
If your consultants are not head and shoulders above your staff you should fire them. When I worked in corporate IT I wouldn't have tolerated that. I'm guessing you've had a lot of exposure to some of the bigger shops that hire green-beans and pass them off as experts. We don't operate that way - we require 5yrs experience min + rigorous competency review - just for our mor junior staff.
Become a consultant. As a consultant I have traveled about 75% of the time over the last five years. Now in my case the travel has been strictly domestic, but my company has had international clients. There are many companies that specialize in technology consulting where the job is 50-100% travel. Data warehousing in particular is very mature in the US, but less so overseas. There may be opportunities for placement overseas, particularly if your language skills are good.
Admittedly, the job market is kind of sketchy right now, though many companies (including mine) are still hiring. The company I work for has actually still managed to grow our revenues and become profitable throughout the recession.
As an added bonus, you typically do not have any material living expenses, as your meals, transportation, and hotel are covered by the client. On top of that, consulting salaries are much higher than corporate IT.
If you make the cut, you will also get to work with very high caliber individuals who are experts in their fields. There are exceptions, but typically this type of exposure is difficult to get in a normal IT shop.
There is a downside, however. The work is stressful, you don't have the luxury of making as many mistakes, the hours are long, you are living out of a hotel, and it is nearly impossible to sustain meaningful relationships.
Good Luck!!!
With the exception of your take on the Western Christian societal model, I could not agree with you more. I make that objection because while it is generally a benevolent socializing force it too is/has been subject to corruption and abuse. Please understand that I am a product of the Catholic church, but I find myself in disagreement with its wisdom on many occasion. Nonetheless the need for all persons to value peace, love and understanding are probably best promoted by parents and community, but failing that, they are better promoted through an institution of some size and authority than simply listening to Elvis Costello. ;-)
The internet as a social pheonomenon has still not taken hold globally, but it will. Just as mass media affords us a global perspective, albiet through a centrally controlled perspective, the internet will give us global perspective at a peer level. I think that forums such as this are one such way for this to come about.
Peace be with you, my friend.
Oh to hell with you. You are all wrong. I'm going to get in my Lexus now and run down Rambo. ;-)
LOL
You are right to say that tolerance is not a good in and of itself. It is context and conflicting values that make it a good. The real problem is that that American public is passive. We absorb sound bites and images without acting on them, often without even analyzing them for ourselves.
Going back to the article, I have to question some of the things this reporter implies. I don't think Americans can cure the world's problems. I don't think that America should. Being a superpower is not the same as being god. What we should do is take the time to analyze the information being provided to us. Think for ourselves. That itself would be a miracle
For example, how many people, even in this forum, have taken the time to understand why terrorists target us? In my opinion it's not just that we are relatively wealthy and self absorbed, as the article implies. If that were the case, it would be perfectly justifiable to throw up our hands and brand "terrorists" as pure evildoers. The thing is, they probably don't think of themselves as evil, they see themselves as just. How could that be?
If you dig under the covers a little bit, you may start to question the US sponsored support of Israel, which has conducted a campaign of assasination an subjugation for decades. Or the fact that Sharon was responsible for brutal acts against non-jews, but still (or perhaps because of this) managed to rise to power, without condemnation from the US. The press glosses over the moral bankruptcy of the Jewish state, in my opinion. Add that to the list of things we should not tolerate.
Of course I could be completely wrong, but at least I took the time to dig up the facts and I wasn't passive. I challenge you to divine your own truth, and tolerate mine even if it is different from yours.
The truth is much scarier than this... at the volumes these guys deal with ( >2Billion impressions/day) the batch processing systems have to be bulletproof and built to scale. The slightest misstep is disastrous. The infrastructure is really critical, and in my experience they did it right. Some of the best engineers I've had the pleasure of working with were there. Can't say whether they kept up on the hardware side, though.
What does it really cost them to keep tracking this stuff, besides a few more boxes in back
It isn't cheap, believe me. Last time I checked, the backend system was four clustered Sun 6500's, with Oracle running on one of them and the transform processes going on a couple of others. When I wrote software for their backend systems, we were wrestling with a state file that was over 1 Terabyte. That was with the volume you found in the year 2000. I am sure that the volume has gone up since then, so you have to figure that the cost of additional DASD alone is painful. Not to mention that they may need to scale up the hardware to an E10K or an additional 6500 by now. Then on top of that add additional per CPU licensing fees for some of the software.
If the targeted ad aspect of the system isn't paying for itself, then you can milk a lot more out of the existing hardware and software. Which in this economy makes it a no brainer.
Repeat after me. I vote with my dollars.
RE:This is the game you feel like telling the /. community is worth buying a copy of Win98 for
/. community. I take the stance that if a game is worth spending money on, it has to be a Linux version, period. I don't think that there is ever a game that justifies buying WinXX. I use windows 98 for work, because it's the corporate standard, but I don't particularly enjoy it. But it's work, and not everything you do at work will be enjoyable. So its not a big deal.
I guess this is where I differ from the rest of the
Once at home, however, I do expect my computing to be enjoyable. So no Microsoft.
RE:how many people still have Windows machines for playing games?
Not I. There's vote number two.
Um, there's a lot to it, that's why. Airlines operations are basically a big exercise in logistics.
My current client has initals that might contain the letters L, A, and U, and they use an RS/6000SP for exactly this type of work. Nice machine. This Sun box is a direct competitor to the SP, but very different architecturally. Large scale SMP vs MPP.
I would have to say that this is a textbook example of why American citizens must be very reluctant to grant additional powers to law enforcement. By redefining everything as a terrorist activity he makes a land-grab for all manner of unconstitutional powers.
I don't have to tell you people what to do - the EFF site has it all - but have you notified your friends, family, coworkers/fellow students?
Let me say upfront that I am uncomfortable with this idea, but purely in terms of implementation, I would have to agree that Oracle is probably not your best database for the job.
Oracle's architecture is very much an SMP centric, which works fine up to the point that the backplane is saturated. A database this big really needs to be more distributed/MPP centric, where you can scale the number of nodes to handle the load. Basically, at lower volumes the SMP-Oracle (like maybe a Sun E10000) solution will be faster than anthing that is loosely coupled over a switch (like a RS/6000 SP or NCR-Teradata Box with Bynet) but it will run into a wall at higher transaction volumes. The NCR, IBM, or even SGI box is much better equipped to scale as needed.
If I were to recommend a database to Big Brother, I would have to recommend Informix, DB2 or Teradata.
Now let's put this out of our mind and get down to business discrediting Larry Ellison and making sure this abomination never comes to fruition.
I totally agree with you here:
;-)
... (you get the idea)
:-)
There are a whole bunch of reasons why a PDA will never replace a laptop. I wouldn't mind replacing my Cellphone with a PDA, actually, assuming that I could just use a headset.
I have an m505, and before that, I had a Palm V. I love both using both of these machines. Because my job requires me to travel a lot, and I am occasionally gone for a couple of weeks at a time, form factor and battery life are the most important thing to me. The IPAQ size is still too big and heavy, and the battery life is still terrible compared to the Palm, so that is what I went with when I upgraded this year.
What I like about the Palm is how simple and intuitive the interface is. I don't need to know the internals, and truth be told, I don't really want to. I have several Linux and OpenBSD boxes for hacking and things of that ilk. I don't need spreadsheets, or presentation software (this is an organizer, after all, not a laptop) but I would like e-mail, and cell phone functionality. In the same form factor, with the same battery life. Somebody else posted bluetooth connectivity to a wireless headset, and I think that's a great idea.
Where the Palm V fell short was memory. The m505 takes care of that. What's missing?
Cell phone/wireless functionality.
Ogg Vorbis Player
About 1GB of memory for the Ogg Vorbis player
Thinking back, I used to be terribly disorganized. I would have sticky notes and multiple 8x11 notebooks, filled with stuff that I could never find, and couldn't index. My boss and coworkers urged me to take an organizational class, and man, it was good advice. What I did differently, however, was I bought my first PDA (the Palm V) two weeks before the class, learned how to write well with it, and then used it as the basis of my organizational system. I took the class, but used the Palm instead of their materials. It worked out great! Now I have notes from every project I have worked on since 1999, all searchable, and always at my fingertips. Need to know about tuning Solaris kernel internals? No problem, did that in
Sorry if this ended up sounding like an advertisment for Palm, but I really love my PDA.
Ohmygod, somebody please mod this up. This is hysterical. I laughed untill I cried.:-)
Nicely done!
I agree with you on this:
I can not, however, say that foreign workers fill the high IQ/learn-things-quickly
prerequisite any better than native workers. In fact, the language barrier can sometimes get in the way.
While as individuals that is true, but taken as a group they broaden the pool of people from which to choose. So your chances of finding that person you need is better.
That said, I agree with substantially large portions of the article, and I believe that if the economic worth of an activity is high enough, than the prevailing wage for that activity will rise enough to motivate (American) workers to become skilled at that activity.
We (the company I work for) write parallel processing applications. We had a skills shortage, but managed to get around it by training people with good experience in technologies similar in nature.
I wasn't born with parallel processing app dev skills. Neither were any of my foreign co-workers. They were trained on the subject, and the criteria for hire is/was an ability to absorb new concepts with minimum effort. So a hi IQ gets you the job.
I suspect in your case that you didn't pay the prevailing rate for the position (perhaps bad information?) and/or you were not geared to recruit people with the real prerequisite: The ability to comprehend what was necessary to make the software work.
Unfortunately, the people making hiring decisions do not do so optimally. That is just a matter of human nature. I think that that your specific requirements drew you into a sort of no-win situation, in that you could not keep/advance your career without a guaranteed success, and in response to that you targeted your audience too restictively, which effectively precluded success.
The next time you look at finding a person to fill a position, look at what is really required outside of the core technologies. Those who fulfill these requirments are the people you need to interview for. Which is the unspoken point of this article: We have created an atificial limit on applicants and suffered, but now that the price has dipped somewhat, with lowered expectations we have a surplus.