What we are you talking about? You realize that a lot of this activity is international, right? Some script kidding in China isn't going to be too worried about what the US is going to do if he violates a US law. There are no consequences most of the time, and that is what people have legitimate reason not to fear.
Also, many of the people doing these things are stupid kids. Come on, $25 for a 10,000 node botnet? That's someone who wants money to play whatever online game is hot these days, not someone with a mortgage. 50 years for a 13 year old acting like a stupid kid is a bit excessive. Summary execution for spammers I can get behind wholeheartedly, but your plan is just too extreme for minor nuisances.
I'm a sysadmin and I'm not fed up with all of the security bulletins and patches. Guess what, keeping up to date in my field of expertise is part of my job. Continuing education is a part of every non-trivial job. The trivial jobs are being outsourced or disappearing. The people you despise are justifying your jobs, just as criminals justify employing so many police officers.
If it makes you feel any better, most of the high paying technical jobs with big companies require that you have no felony convictions. Even if these people get a slap on the wrist, it may seriously limit their future options in life.
Microsoft can't kill Linux. They might be able to prevent companies like RedHat from selling Linux. However, those companies have it in their best interests to fight that with everything they have. Even if Linux could not be sold anymore, it's not going to get it removed from every server or desktop running it.
The Linux community doesn't exist to ensure the financial success of each member. Companies exist to make money. Most Linux fan(atic)s spend money on their Linux habit. Free OS's exist because enough people don't like commercial OS's. People who are willing to put their own time into something to get nothing in return, except the ability to benefit from a community of like minded individuals, are not likely to accept a decree that says their community must disband because some corporation is offended.
Killing Linux doesn't make everyone a Microsoft slave either. There are a lot of other OS's out there. Even in the ridiculous fantasy world where Linux was wiped off the entire planet, the BSD's are still there for free. Anyone who needs big company support can always move to Solaris x86.
Patents are rules around ideas. People have the ability to violate those rules when they don't like them. There may be consequences, but it's pretty hard to go after a large group of unrelated individuals and organizations. A class action lawsuit can be brought against a company who has many victims. A company can't sue "the world" into submission as easily. It would take millions of individual cases to do that, many of which would be in places that don't care about the US patent system.
They already did that movie. It's called "The Princess Bride". Sure, they had pirates instead of hackers, but according to the RIAA they're the same thing.
Re:sounds more like
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Hacker Boot Camp
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I thought that was the point. Just like all of the people who have seminars on how to get rich. The moral of the story is that if you want to be rich and famous, you need to exploit the hopes of people who are too stupid to realize that it's a scam.
I think you're basically saying the same thing. In order to get to a known state, you need to reload. Whether that's completely reinstalling the OS or restoring a previously created known-good image, you're removing the potential for something being left behind that would leave the system still compromised. Ultimately, you're bringing the compromised system down and bringing the system back up in a known state.
For most environments, I prefer reloading the OS and reinstalling the applications. This ensures that there is a direct relationship between what is in the installation media or server and what's running on the machines. For multiuser systems where lots of users can install their own little applications in their home directories, it's going to be difficult to ensure that there isn't something weird hiding out somewhere on the system. That problem never goes away, but at least the potential for privilege escalation from a system account in minimized.
Not true. I don't have any P2P applications on my machines at home. I can't have them at work. It's not something everyone needs and it's certainly not something everyone has. On the other hand, I have email everywhere. Email is the most common application around, so people use it when there are much better solutions. Sure, I can ftp a file to a web server and provide a link if I'm at home. I can't do that from work, so email is good for small things.
That's the point. The real world plethora of formats is the worst case. If ODF can handle the worst case, it would be a testament to the robustness of the format. The worst case test for interchangeable file formats would demonstrate that ODF is viable.
One other trick about throwing hardware instead of people at a problem is that it often is treated differently from an accounting standpoint. If someone gets to count it as an asset instead of an expense, and someone else is responsible for maintenance, the department who buys hardware has better numbers. The cost to the company is higher overall, but no one looks at the details of how the little decisions affect the bottom line.
The investors are happy when the company adds to the bottom line by reducing expenses and/or increasing profits. From the investors perspective, it doesn't matter if you do this ethically. That also means that if you can do it ethically, that's just as good. By working with the business people and understanding what their goals are(and aren't - an important point to consider), I can provide solutions that do the most important parts of the project at the lowest cost. The most valuable thing I have learned doing unix sysadmin/programming for the last 18 years is how to relate to someone else's perspective. Whether it's trying to figure out what a user is trying to do or trying to divine requirements from some business person, being able to put myself in their shoes makes it much easier to solve their problem.
I have a slightly different perspective from the GP. I do my job well and am willing to learn new things. However, it's also perfectly clear to my employer that I'm doing it for the money. I think the business people respect that on some level. I'm not interested in trading my paid-by-the-hour contracting position for a full-time position that may have more prestige or long term promotion potential, but comes with more hours and a substantial pay cut. I want the money now because I know all of those things are empty promises. They want people to hope for long term stability with the company and work harder to impress someone with no additional cost to the company. We're all expendable and we're all temporary. I'm ok with that cold, hard fact of life. It makes it easy to negotiate when I know I'm expendable, but I also know how many people it would take to replace me. Ultimately, I'm good for the bottom line because I can provide benefits in different areas that normally require different people. I'm not concerned about being outsourced because I know the people I work with recognize that the expense of having me around is more than offset by the benefit I provide.
If you don't want to be outsourced, find out what the business needs and learn to do those things that aren't being done now and interest you. You can't do everything you want and get paid for it, but if you get your fingers in enough pies, you can be pretty satisfied with your job and still be a net asset to the people who sign the checks.
According to the believers, he used to be vindictive and pull that kind of crap, but later realized that he needed to stop acting like a spoiled omnipotent child. Now, that same god is supposed to be more hands off and mellow. It's awfully convenient that he was an angry youth, giving people something to fear, but now he doesn't get involved, so there's no similar occurrences that people can experience first hand.
If I do the math, a 48U rack can hold 12 of these 4U devices. Filled with 500GB drives, that's about 20TB of disk space per device. A rack full of them would be 240TB. That would be $4.17 per TB per month to house the disk space. I think that's pretty reasonable for over a half million dollars in hardware.
That's just more non-proof. I don't believe in any of them. They seem like caricatures made for selling something. I would consider Eric Cartman a more credible source, since at least he doesn't pretend to be real.
Of course, the flip side of that argument is what kind of god would be so insecure as to feel a need to prove himself? Any god that weak would be out of a job pretty quick. Then he'd just be some homeless guy on the street talking about what god wants.
There is a price point at which no one will bother making PIII-500 systems. PC's are cheap enough and provide enough capabilities, that no one really bothers considering keeping old technology as the standard.
Totally made up hypothetical example: If it cost $6 to build the system and someone could sell it for $10 (way more than the 7% markup that was common when I used to buy PC's), you still wouldn't sell many more computers than you do now. (really, is hardware cost the only reason you don't have 30 pc's in every room of your house?) If a small company can sell 10k/yr at $1k each, even selling 50k/yr of the hypothetical $10 pc's would be a difference of $500k/year in profit in favor of the higher cost, lower margin, more expensive systems.
Gamers are one group that drives the demand for top of the line system. Most business users don't need them for desktops, but I see a lot more applications migrating from big expensive Unix systems to inexpensive and plentiful Linux systems. These factors drive the development of better processors, memory, etc. Since the top of the line exists, it only makes sense to have a version that's aimed at more average consumers.
I run FreeBSD on most of my home PC's, ranging from a Celeron 300A to an Athlon 64 3000+. While the Celeron still does everything I need of it just fine, I never find myself thinking "this is not taking long enough to compile" or "this program runs too darned fast". While I don't need the top of the line stuff, the last generation is cheap enough to afford and I'm not going to complain about the improved performance.
I've been doing unix system administration professionally for 15 years. Just now do I have a need to get Sun certifications for another job I'm starting. This has given me a better appreciation for the benefits and problems with certification programs. Now I have a piece of paper that says Sun Certified System Administrator. My opinions on how to interview (from either side) or what to look for in technical candidates have not changed. The advantage I have now is that I can show that I do have certification and can elaborate as to the pros and cons of that as an evaluation metric.
It's easy for people to claim that certifications are silly. Back in my day, nobody had any certifications and people were judged on what they could DO when put in front of a broken system, not what questions and answers they could memorize and get right on a multiple choice test.
Most interviewers aren't going to know how to do your job. That's why they want to hire someone like you. Certifications are a way to show that there is at least a lowest common denominator in knowledge on a topic. You can differentiate yourself by contrasting real world experience with a test you've passed. This shows that you aren't bitter about certification since you've completed it, but have legitimate concerns about the value of the process.
For example, a couple of the topics, such as setting up RAID or running backups don't test real world environments. In the real world, I have an EMC array and use TSM for backups on the Sun servers I administer. Since these are not Sun products, that knowledge doesn't count towards my certification. While the concepts are similar in both topics, the specific test questions address how to perform the functions only using built in Solaris commands using Sun hardware. If I were being interviewed, this would be a good opportunity to ask about the actual environment they have.
This is on a Sun at a large corporation. I'm the sysadmin for that box, so I can fix the problem. However, it's someone else's responsibility and would be considered overtly hostile to do their job. On the other hand, by not using Oracle, I avoid these issues and still get my work done.
Hovering over things like that is how some people create job security. The irony is that this creates an overall decreased need for me to have someone supporting Oracle. I'm the sysadmin, so I installed PostgreSQL and can administer that myself.
I tried to install Oracle 8 on some random Linux distribution a long time ago. I learned my lesson about trying to use Oracle outside work. I've been using PostgreSQL since 6.5 and keep finding more reasons to stick with it. We use Sun at work, so I've been lucky enough to avoid the problems you mentioned.
The Oracle servers at work were installed by DBA's who really knew their stuff. Our current application runs great under Oracle since a lot of Oracle tuning was done. I wouldn't want to have to try to port that to PostgreSQL and keep the performance the same. Though, I also wouldn't want to have to rebuild the current environment without help from really good DBA's. Oracle definitely has its benefits, but it's expensive in money and people.
I have some data analysis I'm doing right now under PostgreSQL that I previously did under Oracle. Being able to have several parallel processes working on the same query in Oracle makes things go much faster. Oracle is really efficient at creating subsets of data. Most of what I need to do was previously done with lots of "create table as..." statements. Oracle's performance is much better than PostgreSQL for the volume of data I'm working with.
However, I'm using PostgreSQL now because I keep running into problems with the Oracle server. The listener isn't listening to the network, so I only have local access and I need to share the data with others. I keep running out of space and need more tablespaces added to Oracle. The DBA who supports that database is only available for supporting this environment on a part time basis. The inevitable result of wave after wave of cost cutting is that we have a fraction of the manpower we need to do our work, so some things just don't happen. We used to have two DBA's locally and everything was efficient. Now we have part of one whose work hours rarely overlap with mine, so getting things done is painful.
A database is just a tool. In this case, I am proficient enough with PostgreSQL that I can use that and be more productive than trying to limp along with no DBA on Oracle.
In large companies, I've noticed a clear tendency to overcommit and underdeliver. I will concede that what you say is certainly true of small companies. I should have qualified my earlier statement to that effect. Large companies do not have to relate income with expenses, as is critical to a small business, so this type of trend can go unnoticed for quite some time.
In most companies I've worked for, I've been tasked with making good on the overcommitments of the sales people. I've been fortunate enough to have overcome all of the irrational promises put in front of me. However, many times these were not met within the unreasonable timeframes promised by the sales people, so the profits were small or negative in these deals. I worked for one company that eventually went under by making too many sales based on poor assumptions. My current employer went 200-300% over budget for my last major project, but as a company in the top Fortune 100, they look at success independently of cost. If it were a small company instead of a small department in a large company, it would have gone under for a severe underestimation of the resources required. As a large company, they were able to go significantly over budget and get the project done successfully. I suspect that one individual's demotion was in no small part related to high overrun of this project, but he was not let go because even though his judgement on the budget side was lacking, the project was a resounding success.
I like that analogy, it's funny. The truth in that statement probably hit a nerve in someone and that's why you got modded Troll.
I work with a bunch of business people and have learned a lot about business from them. I'm a Unix sysadmin and programmer, but have learned enough from them to do ok with the business side as well. I think the fundamental problem technical people have with business is that technology is demonstratable. You can always say "show me" if someone tells you something you don't believe. Business is inconsistent and based on many common, irrational underlying assumptions. (At least, that's how it looks to me.) The most useful business skill a technical person can develop is the ability to look someone in the eye and lie to them with a straight face. As far as I can tell, that's what separates the good business people from the ones who will work 25 years in the same job and never make more than $40k.
On topic: it's hard to see things from someone else's perspective. Most business people don't understand technical people and vice versa. The benefit of discussing business strategies on slashdot is that there are some of us who are technical, but also run businesses. It's rare, but it is possible for those who are willing to learn nontechnical skills.
A little bitter? I'm not surprised that happened in California. I left 5 years ago because I got tired of the inmates running the asylum. The whole world isn't the earthenware vessel of excrement you'd think it was from dealing with those kinds of people.
I opened my own home based company here in Arizona and it was amazingly simple. Probably took a total of 4 hours of my time. Most of that was time to go back and forth to the Corporation Commission office downtown to file and pick up my papers. I had to publish notice in a newspaper, but that took about 15 minutes with a phone, credit card and fax. I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with the IRS to get my EIN.
Then again, I did have a business license(home based business) around 10 years ago in Sunnyvale and it was nowhere nearly as onerous as your story either. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you lived in SF with all the problems you noted. If you don't like the way things are run where you live, you could consider moving.
Someone once said nobody can walk all over you without your consent. Someone who can get their spirit crushed by a little bureaocracy isn't going to be able to run their own business. There's a lot of BS you have to do, but how's that different from any other part of life? It may have been easier for me because I didn't ask for permission from anyone. I figured out what I needed to do and did it. Some minimum wage functionary could complain that I didn't fill out their form, but I don't think we have as many of those local government jobs for people with no skills or education here. I'm also not deeply concerned with whether or not the Chamber of Commerce puts a gold star next to my name. The IRS and state aren't going to come after me for some major problem, so I think I'm fine.
It's not just Arabic sounding names. There is no way to dispute being on the list, so there is no way to find out if the lists are abused. I know someone named David Nelson who managed our data center and is subjected to additional review, because someone else with a common name made it on the list. Here's a reference for this problem:
Reality may be an illusion. However, if we don't define reality as that which can be observed independently, we can't prove that anything exists. Defying the existence of reality may be an interesting intellectual exercise, but nothing productive can come of it. If reality is an illusion, the tree does not make a sound when there is no observer. Of course, it also doesn't make a sound when there is an observer because the tree, sound and observer do not exist from that perspective. Is the point of the koan that I must simultaneously believe both conflicting explanations?
The thing I disliked most about the Matrix trilogy is that it didn't end with Zion being a second computer system that was miserable and more likely to be accepted as real. Agent Smith talks about humans defining themselves through misery, so it would make perfect sense. That would have been a great existential ending. It would be like the Buddhist concept of enlightenment - you go through all of this work to end up being exactly the same person you were before you started, just with a more all encompassing perspective. Also, it would have been cool if we sat through all three movies and were left not knowing whether or not any of the people actually exist. It could have been nothing more than a complex simulation.
The next big thing already predicted by Dilbert
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No More Next Big Thing?
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· Score: 2, Funny
In the Dilbert Future, he already predicted the next big thing - the head cubicle. It's basically a helmet with an integrated phone, monitor, etc. This will be a tremendous cost savings for large companies. Instead of having to use valuable floorspace for cubes, they can stack people with their head cubicles.
Right now, I'm taking up 72 square feet/576 cubic feet (6' deep x 12' long x 8' high) with my cube. That's valuable real estate for someone who, sitting in a chair, wearing a head cubicle, could be accommodated easily by a 3'x3'x4' area. That's only 36 cubic feet. 16 people could be housed in an area the size of my cube.
Sure, stacking people in boxes seems inhumane and degrading, but since when has that stopped companies from realizing a minor decrease in costs? Given the cost of real estate, companies who don't flock to the head cubicle would be at a very serious economic disadvantage.
Slashdot Mirror
You come across too much like the real whiners. Maybe a Monty Python or Simpsons reference as proof would help clarify the intent. =)
What we are you talking about? You realize that a lot of this activity is international, right? Some script kidding in China isn't going to be too worried about what the US is going to do if he violates a US law. There are no consequences most of the time, and that is what people have legitimate reason not to fear.
Also, many of the people doing these things are stupid kids. Come on, $25 for a 10,000 node botnet? That's someone who wants money to play whatever online game is hot these days, not someone with a mortgage. 50 years for a 13 year old acting like a stupid kid is a bit excessive. Summary execution for spammers I can get behind wholeheartedly, but your plan is just too extreme for minor nuisances.
I'm a sysadmin and I'm not fed up with all of the security bulletins and patches. Guess what, keeping up to date in my field of expertise is part of my job. Continuing education is a part of every non-trivial job. The trivial jobs are being outsourced or disappearing. The people you despise are justifying your jobs, just as criminals justify employing so many police officers.
If it makes you feel any better, most of the high paying technical jobs with big companies require that you have no felony convictions. Even if these people get a slap on the wrist, it may seriously limit their future options in life.
Microsoft can't kill Linux. They might be able to prevent companies like RedHat from selling Linux. However, those companies have it in their best interests to fight that with everything they have. Even if Linux could not be sold anymore, it's not going to get it removed from every server or desktop running it.
The Linux community doesn't exist to ensure the financial success of each member. Companies exist to make money. Most Linux fan(atic)s spend money on their Linux habit. Free OS's exist because enough people don't like commercial OS's. People who are willing to put their own time into something to get nothing in return, except the ability to benefit from a community of like minded individuals, are not likely to accept a decree that says their community must disband because some corporation is offended.
Killing Linux doesn't make everyone a Microsoft slave either. There are a lot of other OS's out there. Even in the ridiculous fantasy world where Linux was wiped off the entire planet, the BSD's are still there for free. Anyone who needs big company support can always move to Solaris x86.
Patents are rules around ideas. People have the ability to violate those rules when they don't like them. There may be consequences, but it's pretty hard to go after a large group of unrelated individuals and organizations. A class action lawsuit can be brought against a company who has many victims. A company can't sue "the world" into submission as easily. It would take millions of individual cases to do that, many of which would be in places that don't care about the US patent system.
They already did that movie. It's called "The Princess Bride". Sure, they had pirates instead of hackers, but according to the RIAA they're the same thing.
I thought that was the point. Just like all of the people who have seminars on how to get rich. The moral of the story is that if you want to be rich and famous, you need to exploit the hopes of people who are too stupid to realize that it's a scam.
I think you're basically saying the same thing. In order to get to a known state, you need to reload. Whether that's completely reinstalling the OS or restoring a previously created known-good image, you're removing the potential for something being left behind that would leave the system still compromised. Ultimately, you're bringing the compromised system down and bringing the system back up in a known state.
For most environments, I prefer reloading the OS and reinstalling the applications. This ensures that there is a direct relationship between what is in the installation media or server and what's running on the machines. For multiuser systems where lots of users can install their own little applications in their home directories, it's going to be difficult to ensure that there isn't something weird hiding out somewhere on the system. That problem never goes away, but at least the potential for privilege escalation from a system account in minimized.
Not true. I don't have any P2P applications on my machines at home. I can't have them at work. It's not something everyone needs and it's certainly not something everyone has. On the other hand, I have email everywhere. Email is the most common application around, so people use it when there are much better solutions. Sure, I can ftp a file to a web server and provide a link if I'm at home. I can't do that from work, so email is good for small things.
That's the point. The real world plethora of formats is the worst case. If ODF can handle the worst case, it would be a testament to the robustness of the format. The worst case test for interchangeable file formats would demonstrate that ODF is viable.
One other trick about throwing hardware instead of people at a problem is that it often is treated differently from an accounting standpoint. If someone gets to count it as an asset instead of an expense, and someone else is responsible for maintenance, the department who buys hardware has better numbers. The cost to the company is higher overall, but no one looks at the details of how the little decisions affect the bottom line.
The investors are happy when the company adds to the bottom line by reducing expenses and/or increasing profits. From the investors perspective, it doesn't matter if you do this ethically. That also means that if you can do it ethically, that's just as good. By working with the business people and understanding what their goals are(and aren't - an important point to consider), I can provide solutions that do the most important parts of the project at the lowest cost. The most valuable thing I have learned doing unix sysadmin/programming for the last 18 years is how to relate to someone else's perspective. Whether it's trying to figure out what a user is trying to do or trying to divine requirements from some business person, being able to put myself in their shoes makes it much easier to solve their problem.
I have a slightly different perspective from the GP. I do my job well and am willing to learn new things. However, it's also perfectly clear to my employer that I'm doing it for the money. I think the business people respect that on some level. I'm not interested in trading my paid-by-the-hour contracting position for a full-time position that may have more prestige or long term promotion potential, but comes with more hours and a substantial pay cut. I want the money now because I know all of those things are empty promises. They want people to hope for long term stability with the company and work harder to impress someone with no additional cost to the company. We're all expendable and we're all temporary. I'm ok with that cold, hard fact of life. It makes it easy to negotiate when I know I'm expendable, but I also know how many people it would take to replace me. Ultimately, I'm good for the bottom line because I can provide benefits in different areas that normally require different people. I'm not concerned about being outsourced because I know the people I work with recognize that the expense of having me around is more than offset by the benefit I provide.
If you don't want to be outsourced, find out what the business needs and learn to do those things that aren't being done now and interest you. You can't do everything you want and get paid for it, but if you get your fingers in enough pies, you can be pretty satisfied with your job and still be a net asset to the people who sign the checks.
According to the believers, he used to be vindictive and pull that kind of crap, but later realized that he needed to stop acting like a spoiled omnipotent child. Now, that same god is supposed to be more hands off and mellow. It's awfully convenient that he was an angry youth, giving people something to fear, but now he doesn't get involved, so there's no similar occurrences that people can experience first hand.
We just got one of these: http://www.nexsan.com/products/products/satabeast/ satabeast.html
If I do the math, a 48U rack can hold 12 of these 4U devices. Filled with 500GB drives, that's about 20TB of disk space per device. A rack full of them would be 240TB. That would be $4.17 per TB per month to house the disk space. I think that's pretty reasonable for over a half million dollars in hardware.
That's just more non-proof. I don't believe in any of them. They seem like caricatures made for selling something. I would consider Eric Cartman a more credible source, since at least he doesn't pretend to be real.
Of course, the flip side of that argument is what kind of god would be so insecure as to feel a need to prove himself? Any god that weak would be out of a job pretty quick. Then he'd just be some homeless guy on the street talking about what god wants.
There is a price point at which no one will bother making PIII-500 systems. PC's are cheap enough and provide enough capabilities, that no one really bothers considering keeping old technology as the standard.
Totally made up hypothetical example:
If it cost $6 to build the system and someone could sell it for $10 (way more than the 7% markup that was common when I used to buy PC's), you still wouldn't sell many more computers than you do now. (really, is hardware cost the only reason you don't have 30 pc's in every room of your house?) If a small company can sell 10k/yr at $1k each, even selling 50k/yr of the hypothetical $10 pc's would be a difference of $500k/year in profit in favor of the higher cost, lower margin, more expensive systems.
Gamers are one group that drives the demand for top of the line system. Most business users don't need them for desktops, but I see a lot more applications migrating from big expensive Unix systems to inexpensive and plentiful Linux systems. These factors drive the development of better processors, memory, etc. Since the top of the line exists, it only makes sense to have a version that's aimed at more average consumers.
I run FreeBSD on most of my home PC's, ranging from a Celeron 300A to an Athlon 64 3000+. While the Celeron still does everything I need of it just fine, I never find myself thinking "this is not taking long enough to compile" or "this program runs too darned fast". While I don't need the top of the line stuff, the last generation is cheap enough to afford and I'm not going to complain about the improved performance.
I've been doing unix system administration professionally for 15 years. Just now do I have a need to get Sun certifications for another job I'm starting. This has given me a better appreciation for the benefits and problems with certification programs. Now I have a piece of paper that says Sun Certified System Administrator. My opinions on how to interview (from either side) or what to look for in technical candidates have not changed. The advantage I have now is that I can show that I do have certification and can elaborate as to the pros and cons of that as an evaluation metric.
It's easy for people to claim that certifications are silly. Back in my day, nobody had any certifications and people were judged on what they could DO when put in front of a broken system, not what questions and answers they could memorize and get right on a multiple choice test.
Most interviewers aren't going to know how to do your job. That's why they want to hire someone like you. Certifications are a way to show that there is at least a lowest common denominator in knowledge on a topic. You can differentiate yourself by contrasting real world experience with a test you've passed. This shows that you aren't bitter about certification since you've completed it, but have legitimate concerns about the value of the process.
For example, a couple of the topics, such as setting up RAID or running backups don't test real world environments. In the real world, I have an EMC array and use TSM for backups on the Sun servers I administer. Since these are not Sun products, that knowledge doesn't count towards my certification. While the concepts are similar in both topics, the specific test questions address how to perform the functions only using built in Solaris commands using Sun hardware. If I were being interviewed, this would be a good opportunity to ask about the actual environment they have.
This is on a Sun at a large corporation. I'm the sysadmin for that box, so I can fix the problem. However, it's someone else's responsibility and would be considered overtly hostile to do their job. On the other hand, by not using Oracle, I avoid these issues and still get my work done.
Hovering over things like that is how some people create job security. The irony is that this creates an overall decreased need for me to have someone supporting Oracle. I'm the sysadmin, so I installed PostgreSQL and can administer that myself.
I tried to install Oracle 8 on some random Linux distribution a long time ago. I learned my lesson about trying to use Oracle outside work. I've been using PostgreSQL since 6.5 and keep finding more reasons to stick with it. We use Sun at work, so I've been lucky enough to avoid the problems you mentioned.
The Oracle servers at work were installed by DBA's who really knew their stuff. Our current application runs great under Oracle since a lot of Oracle tuning was done. I wouldn't want to have to try to port that to PostgreSQL and keep the performance the same. Though, I also wouldn't want to have to rebuild the current environment without help from really good DBA's. Oracle definitely has its benefits, but it's expensive in money and people.
I have some data analysis I'm doing right now under PostgreSQL that I previously did under Oracle. Being able to have several parallel processes working on the same query in Oracle makes things go much faster. Oracle is really efficient at creating subsets of data. Most of what I need to do was previously done with lots of "create table as..." statements. Oracle's performance is much better than PostgreSQL for the volume of data I'm working with.
However, I'm using PostgreSQL now because I keep running into problems with the Oracle server. The listener isn't listening to the network, so I only have local access and I need to share the data with others. I keep running out of space and need more tablespaces added to Oracle. The DBA who supports that database is only available for supporting this environment on a part time basis. The inevitable result of wave after wave of cost cutting is that we have a fraction of the manpower we need to do our work, so some things just don't happen. We used to have two DBA's locally and everything was efficient. Now we have part of one whose work hours rarely overlap with mine, so getting things done is painful.
A database is just a tool. In this case, I am proficient enough with PostgreSQL that I can use that and be more productive than trying to limp along with no DBA on Oracle.
In large companies, I've noticed a clear tendency to overcommit and underdeliver. I will concede that what you say is certainly true of small companies. I should have qualified my earlier statement to that effect. Large companies do not have to relate income with expenses, as is critical to a small business, so this type of trend can go unnoticed for quite some time.
In most companies I've worked for, I've been tasked with making good on the overcommitments of the sales people. I've been fortunate enough to have overcome all of the irrational promises put in front of me. However, many times these were not met within the unreasonable timeframes promised by the sales people, so the profits were small or negative in these deals. I worked for one company that eventually went under by making too many sales based on poor assumptions. My current employer went 200-300% over budget for my last major project, but as a company in the top Fortune 100, they look at success independently of cost. If it were a small company instead of a small department in a large company, it would have gone under for a severe underestimation of the resources required. As a large company, they were able to go significantly over budget and get the project done successfully. I suspect that one individual's demotion was in no small part related to high overrun of this project, but he was not let go because even though his judgement on the budget side was lacking, the project was a resounding success.
I like that analogy, it's funny. The truth in that statement probably hit a nerve in someone and that's why you got modded Troll.
I work with a bunch of business people and have learned a lot about business from them. I'm a Unix sysadmin and programmer, but have learned enough from them to do ok with the business side as well. I think the fundamental problem technical people have with business is that technology is demonstratable. You can always say "show me" if someone tells you something you don't believe. Business is inconsistent and based on many common, irrational underlying assumptions. (At least, that's how it looks to me.) The most useful business skill a technical person can develop is the ability to look someone in the eye and lie to them with a straight face. As far as I can tell, that's what separates the good business people from the ones who will work 25 years in the same job and never make more than $40k.
On topic: it's hard to see things from someone else's perspective. Most business people don't understand technical people and vice versa. The benefit of discussing business strategies on slashdot is that there are some of us who are technical, but also run businesses. It's rare, but it is possible for those who are willing to learn nontechnical skills.
A little bitter? I'm not surprised that happened in California. I left 5 years ago because I got tired of the inmates running the asylum. The whole world isn't the earthenware vessel of excrement you'd think it was from dealing with those kinds of people.
I opened my own home based company here in Arizona and it was amazingly simple. Probably took a total of 4 hours of my time. Most of that was time to go back and forth to the Corporation Commission office downtown to file and pick up my papers. I had to publish notice in a newspaper, but that took about 15 minutes with a phone, credit card and fax. I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with the IRS to get my EIN.
Then again, I did have a business license(home based business) around 10 years ago in Sunnyvale and it was nowhere nearly as onerous as your story either. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you lived in SF with all the problems you noted. If you don't like the way things are run where you live, you could consider moving.
Someone once said nobody can walk all over you without your consent. Someone who can get their spirit crushed by a little bureaocracy isn't going to be able to run their own business. There's a lot of BS you have to do, but how's that different from any other part of life? It may have been easier for me because I didn't ask for permission from anyone. I figured out what I needed to do and did it. Some minimum wage functionary could complain that I didn't fill out their form, but I don't think we have as many of those local government jobs for people with no skills or education here. I'm also not deeply concerned with whether or not the Chamber of Commerce puts a gold star next to my name. The IRS and state aren't going to come after me for some major problem, so I think I'm fine.
It's not just Arabic sounding names. There is no way to dispute being on the list, so there is no way to find out if the lists are abused. I know someone named David Nelson who managed our data center and is subjected to additional review, because someone else with a common name made it on the list. Here's a reference for this problem:
g 26610.html
http://archives.californiaaviation.org/airport/ms
Reality may be an illusion. However, if we don't define reality as that which can be observed independently, we can't prove that anything exists. Defying the existence of reality may be an interesting intellectual exercise, but nothing productive can come of it. If reality is an illusion, the tree does not make a sound when there is no observer. Of course, it also doesn't make a sound when there is an observer because the tree, sound and observer do not exist from that perspective. Is the point of the koan that I must simultaneously believe both conflicting explanations?
The thing I disliked most about the Matrix trilogy is that it didn't end with Zion being a second computer system that was miserable and more likely to be accepted as real. Agent Smith talks about humans defining themselves through misery, so it would make perfect sense. That would have been a great existential ending. It would be like the Buddhist concept of enlightenment - you go through all of this work to end up being exactly the same person you were before you started, just with a more all encompassing perspective. Also, it would have been cool if we sat through all three movies and were left not knowing whether or not any of the people actually exist. It could have been nothing more than a complex simulation.
In the Dilbert Future, he already predicted the next big thing - the head cubicle. It's basically a helmet with an integrated phone, monitor, etc. This will be a tremendous cost savings for large companies. Instead of having to use valuable floorspace for cubes, they can stack people with their head cubicles.
Right now, I'm taking up 72 square feet/576 cubic feet (6' deep x 12' long x 8' high) with my cube. That's valuable real estate for someone who, sitting in a chair, wearing a head cubicle, could be accommodated easily by a 3'x3'x4' area. That's only 36 cubic feet. 16 people could be housed in an area the size of my cube.
Sure, stacking people in boxes seems inhumane and degrading, but since when has that stopped companies from realizing a minor decrease in costs? Given the cost of real estate, companies who don't flock to the head cubicle would be at a very serious economic disadvantage.