I missed all that. I was a child of '74, and the oldest. I still remember everybody bragging about how much they (or rather their parents) paid for everthing. I had no interest in keeping up, but I seemed to have lived through the Velco shoe fad, Member's only jackets, Izod, Jordache, and a few others that my memory has repressed.
I did like the velcro though, so what if everyone stopped wearing it.
School has nothing to do with education. It is all about social conformity, brown nosing authority, and learning your place in the pecking order.
Everything I learned was by working a few chapters ahead of where the course stops and making up my own problems to solve between getting my ass kicked, harrased, and stuffed into lockers. (Didn't help that I was 4'8" and 90 lbs until my Junior Year.)
Let me tell you, there were times that I wanted to go postal. Truth be told the Jocks were very civil to me. My rage was directed at the insecure morons trying to climb to social ladder at my expense.
Remember though: While chicks date the rock star, they marry the plumber. Psychobiologically females are programmed to seek out the mate that is going to provide. Sure they hop from one glamor guy to another. But they don't stick with them. Once they latch a nerd though, they are satisfied and stay put.
Another thing to remember: TV shows go out of their way to find strange people for reality TV. You are not seeing an "Average Joe" or and "Average Chick". You are seeing the people selected from a pool of thousands of folks exhibiting a desired set of traits from the viewpoint of the producer. I should also point out the personality type that would volunteer for this type of show is not your average person either.
You are right though, chicks do tend to pick the biggest assholes. I think it's the projection of power assholes exude. The counter for nerds is to simply be assertive yourself. Women don't understand "maybe", you are interested in her or not. (Spoken as a happily married nerd who had a really fun sex life in college.)
...Start to spend years developing the craft of their choosing, I may be swayed by such arguments. Until such time it's a fad propigated by people with insufficient attention span to write in complete sentences, let alone code in C.
Right now the "True Path" seems to be running a detour through the wide paved road of the Random Masses. If we gain some fellow travelers, great. But the Brights and the Normals will part ways over time again.
Come on, I've been around long enough to remember the Cyberpunk craze. Randoms wandered into our midst, learned a few buzzwords, and then promptly forgot we existed as soon as the next bright shiny thing appeared.
Editor: surgeon must do doc, but editor must clean it up
Two secretaris
Program clerk: maintaining technical records
Toolsmith: serves surgeon's need for tools, utilities
Tester: Devise system component tests, does debugging
The crux of Brook's theory is that you can only grow a development team so large before you loose site of the goal. Adding more people simply increases the amount of communication that must go on.
I am an admin, and I have the same problem with our design department. They chew up gigabytes of disk space, and they also email multi-megabyte files to each other... and KEEP THE EMAILS FOR BACKUP.
My solution was very much like the solution your IT department came up with. (Only we do backup the drive on tape periodically.) We also are working with them to move their "filing energies" to the web instead of email.
Now another ball of wax is our fundraising department. They refused any kind of filing system, and we just ended up getting them an extra server and adding it to the backup. I do understand. They need an exact copy of EVERYTHING they send out, and everything they get back.
To make a long story short, we are up to 3 DLT tapes a night. But you get to a point where you realize that life is what goes on when you are making other plans. There are times to simply hold your nose and deal with the imperfect solution.
Insisting on "the Right Way" every time leads to more stress than the job is worth. (And frankly if they wanted perfection they would spring for more staff, a bigger drive array, and some expert to regularly train users on the appropriate way to use network resources.)
Looking back on those days where I end up camping out in Human Resources, they generally do revolve around me saying "No" instead of "I see the merits in your solution, however..."
That said, most of my bar clearing arguments center around emotionally imbalanced people. Come on, people take no from finance all the time. Why should IT be any different?
In a perfect world I would deliver everyting that a developer, user, or manager could ever want. In the real world people show up a day late, a dollar short, and think that because it's an emergency on their part that somehow the rules do not apply to them.
Am I the only one out there who grimaced at the very thought of cleaning up a developer's box?
Say what you will about cat boxes, they don't smell nearly as bad. And the fecal matter clumps together. A developer's machine is like trying to find diamonds in a cesspool. (No scuba mask for YOU!)
Hell the good ones are the first out the door when the stock market takes a dive. The guys with the most years vested in the pension plan, the highest salaries, and a few dependents dipping into the health plan has targets on their back.
In this day and age of "more with less" the only people left are the glorified trainees.
You know, for all the bitching in the article about how Admins are in the road, the only horror stories I can think of on projects were developers run amok.
Alright, there was one absolute control freak who was a sysadmin. My predicessor actually. But he didn't play nice with the top of the food chain.
You see, the bastard Admin has a correcting factor. Bastards come in 2 forms. The pathological control freak doesn't yield, even to political superiors. They don't last long. Every other control freak has a director and VP above him. If an issue is really that big, your boss talks to his boss, and the bastard's boss talks to him. Things are solved, management feels important, and only the truely useful things get past the hand waving stage.
On the opposite extreme you have 2 types of pliant Admins. The patholical nice guy is nice even when people walk all over him and break stuff. They don't last very long. The other type is simply a bastard in training.
I think it starts at birth. I had an absolutely brilliant kid working for me as an intern. Brilliant. I would ask him to do something off the wall like connect our web database to a palm pilot and a week later BOOM there it was.
What I never could teach him was that "simple is better". Also the value of macros, subroutines on code legibility. Ok, and also to stop re-calculating the same values 20 ways for 12 IF statements.
When his stuff was running it was beautiful. Trying to get in and fix things 6 months later was like a f#@$%@ root canal.
Ok, we are really bastards because we have a target painted on us when things go wrong. It's amazing how many disciplines seem to agree that when the system is in flames it's the admin's fault.
(God, back in the day the guy with ultimate responsibility would get a fat paycheck, chicks, and a body guard. Maybe I need to stop working for non-profits?)
Developers develop bad habits when they have the wheel bit. Stupid things like writing to/var/log instead of useing syslog(). Making them work within the constraints of the final system makes the flesh out all of their various issues, and insures that they don't get to paint a target on YOU when their F@#$%@! software doesn't work at the end of the day.
And I've been on both sides of the issue. The developer gets to walk away at the end of the day. The Admin has to keep it running.
Let them piss and moan about not having root access. They should be patting us on the back. On a well designed production box your network app should not be run as root.
Developers get into bad habits with the wheel bit. Better to let them have to deal with limited privileges from the outset, than have that "oh shit you mean I can't do that" during rollout.
No developer is going to say they are going to do something stupid. No one wakes up and says "Hey I want to run rm -rf/. But it happens. A seasoned administrator knows better than to operate on the command line. Every admin worth his salt writes a sequence of commands in a script. And they check it twice.
Developers just don't think like that. Having been both as the joyless admin (at present), AND that developer who (in my youth) dragged the "H:" drive to the trash and wiped out the CVS repository.
I would like to point out that the soul purpose of those buildings was to be a collecting point of the "combustable material", aka paperwork.
If you didn't have paperwork there would be no purpose to collecting that much information and that many people into a single building. Well, maybe for a sports event or a concert...
And for the record, the jet fuel burned for hours. It's consumption by the fire was limited by the amount of oxygen blowing into the building. The whole system was acting like a giant kerosene lamp. A paper fire alone would not have the heat or intensity required to knock out the beams on a structure that size. Well at least at standard atmospheric pressure.
Heck, if you use a cast iron skillet you are employing carbon buckyballs. (The soot you allow to remain on the surface creates a non-stick surface completely unlike teflon.) If that's using "nanotechnology" then farmers have been practicing chemistry for thousands of years through the production of straw.
Restrooms are on the deckplans in Mr. Scott's guide to the Enterprise, and the tech manual for the Enterprise-D. Though the plumbing is a little sketchy.
The filters between my eyes and brain might be trying to tell me something.
At first glance I read "Economic Analysis of the Nanotech Failure". I'm not sure if it was trying to say Nanotech is going nowhere, or that the grey goop effect will make pollution look like a spot on one's trousers by comparison.
For my part, I'm not really thrilled by Nanotechnology. It's like being thrilled by quantumn mechanics. Sure it's neat, but unless you are a researcher it's not going to be used in anything you buy, build, or are likely to use. Oooo, it will make already small computer chips smaller. Whoopie. The size of a computing device is currently limited by the size of the battery, power supply, or human interface device.
As far as medical uses, the nanotechnology itself is useless without some way of coordinating the activity of millions of simple robots. That technology isn't nanotechnology. I call the ability to harness millions of independent units "Taonology", and it's first application will be social engineering.
(Checking time-traveler's guide to 2003 to make sure it's been invented.) Scratch that. But when it happens, act surprised.
You see it every few years. I remember back in '98 everyone was getting rooted because of bugs in named. Later it was Apache. They come in waves as the crackers figure out new patterns of exploits, and like all of the other "fad" break-ins they are going to come to a crashing end after a quick code review.
I have a better theory. OSS finally has something that is worth cracking for them. I would almost say this is a sign of reverence and respect (as much as black hats understand the concepts.)
I know I'm going to be modded into the basement, but does anyone else note the extreme difference between when the Debian server was rooted and the Gentoo? Gentoo knew in an hour. They had all of the monitoring tools installed. They even had a list of everyone who had pulled from the machine, and a rough idea of what was done and not done on the server.
Good luck catching your buglar. I want to know how to patch my box.
Sounds a lot like Germany. I have to say, letting those who don't express an interest in schooling out to get a job makes a hell of a lot more sense than keeping them couped up in school till 12th grade like they do around here.
The really dumb innovation around the States is that if the students aren't perform the problem is with the school. Thus, to save face most schools simply shlog kids along from grade to grade to the point that in many places a diploma doesn't even guarentee the kid can read.
Slashdot Mirror
I did like the velcro though, so what if everyone stopped wearing it.
Everything I learned was by working a few chapters ahead of where the course stops and making up my own problems to solve between getting my ass kicked, harrased, and stuffed into lockers. (Didn't help that I was 4'8" and 90 lbs until my Junior Year.)
Let me tell you, there were times that I wanted to go postal. Truth be told the Jocks were very civil to me. My rage was directed at the insecure morons trying to climb to social ladder at my expense.
Another thing to remember: TV shows go out of their way to find strange people for reality TV. You are not seeing an "Average Joe" or and "Average Chick". You are seeing the people selected from a pool of thousands of folks exhibiting a desired set of traits from the viewpoint of the producer. I should also point out the personality type that would volunteer for this type of show is not your average person either.
You are right though, chicks do tend to pick the biggest assholes. I think it's the projection of power assholes exude. The counter for nerds is to simply be assertive yourself. Women don't understand "maybe", you are interested in her or not. (Spoken as a happily married nerd who had a really fun sex life in college.)
Right now the "True Path" seems to be running a detour through the wide paved road of the Random Masses. If we gain some fellow travelers, great. But the Brights and the Normals will part ways over time again.
Come on, I've been around long enough to remember the Cyberpunk craze. Randoms wandered into our midst, learned a few buzzwords, and then promptly forgot we existed as soon as the next bright shiny thing appeared.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth While naming is the origin of the myriad things.
--Lao Tsu, The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1
- Surgeon: chief programmer
- Co-pilot: able to do what surgeon does but is less experienced
- Administrator: handles money, people, space, machines, etc...)
- Editor: surgeon must do doc, but editor must clean it up
- Two secretaris
- Program clerk: maintaining technical records
- Toolsmith: serves surgeon's need for tools, utilities
- Tester: Devise system component tests, does debugging
The crux of Brook's theory is that you can only grow a development team so large before you loose site of the goal. Adding more people simply increases the amount of communication that must go on.My solution was very much like the solution your IT department came up with. (Only we do backup the drive on tape periodically.) We also are working with them to move their "filing energies" to the web instead of email.
Now another ball of wax is our fundraising department. They refused any kind of filing system, and we just ended up getting them an extra server and adding it to the backup. I do understand. They need an exact copy of EVERYTHING they send out, and everything they get back.
To make a long story short, we are up to 3 DLT tapes a night. But you get to a point where you realize that life is what goes on when you are making other plans. There are times to simply hold your nose and deal with the imperfect solution.
Insisting on "the Right Way" every time leads to more stress than the job is worth. (And frankly if they wanted perfection they would spring for more staff, a bigger drive array, and some expert to regularly train users on the appropriate way to use network resources.)
That said, most of my bar clearing arguments center around emotionally imbalanced people. Come on, people take no from finance all the time. Why should IT be any different?
In a perfect world I would deliver everyting that a developer, user, or manager could ever want. In the real world people show up a day late, a dollar short, and think that because it's an emergency on their part that somehow the rules do not apply to them.
Say what you will about cat boxes, they don't smell nearly as bad. And the fecal matter clumps together. A developer's machine is like trying to find diamonds in a cesspool. (No scuba mask for YOU!)
In this day and age of "more with less" the only people left are the glorified trainees.
Alright, there was one absolute control freak who was a sysadmin. My predicessor actually. But he didn't play nice with the top of the food chain.
You see, the bastard Admin has a correcting factor. Bastards come in 2 forms. The pathological control freak doesn't yield, even to political superiors. They don't last long. Every other control freak has a director and VP above him. If an issue is really that big, your boss talks to his boss, and the bastard's boss talks to him. Things are solved, management feels important, and only the truely useful things get past the hand waving stage.
On the opposite extreme you have 2 types of pliant Admins. The patholical nice guy is nice even when people walk all over him and break stuff. They don't last very long. The other type is simply a bastard in training.
I fall into the "former nice guy" category.
What I never could teach him was that "simple is better". Also the value of macros, subroutines on code legibility. Ok, and also to stop re-calculating the same values 20 ways for 12 IF statements.
When his stuff was running it was beautiful. Trying to get in and fix things 6 months later was like a f#@$%@ root canal.
Ok, we are really bastards because we have a target painted on us when things go wrong. It's amazing how many disciplines seem to agree that when the system is in flames it's the admin's fault.
(God, back in the day the guy with ultimate responsibility would get a fat paycheck, chicks, and a body guard. Maybe I need to stop working for non-profits?)
But I'm tough because I care. Okay, I care and I've had one to many people paint a target on me when their shit:
I've experienced each one first hand.
That said, it's just karmic balance. Before being and admin I was a developer. I was a pain of one too.
And I've been on both sides of the issue. The developer gets to walk away at the end of the day. The Admin has to keep it running.
Let them piss and moan about not having root access. They should be patting us on the back. On a well designed production box your network app should not be run as root.
Developers get into bad habits with the wheel bit. Better to let them have to deal with limited privileges from the outset, than have that "oh shit you mean I can't do that" during rollout.
Developers just don't think like that. Having been both as the joyless admin (at present), AND that developer who (in my youth) dragged the "H:" drive to the trash and wiped out the CVS repository.
If you didn't have paperwork there would be no purpose to collecting that much information and that many people into a single building. Well, maybe for a sports event or a concert...
And for the record, the jet fuel burned for hours. It's consumption by the fire was limited by the amount of oxygen blowing into the building. The whole system was acting like a giant kerosene lamp. A paper fire alone would not have the heat or intensity required to knock out the beams on a structure that size. Well at least at standard atmospheric pressure.
Heck, if you use a cast iron skillet you are employing carbon buckyballs. (The soot you allow to remain on the surface creates a non-stick surface completely unlike teflon.) If that's using "nanotechnology" then farmers have been practicing chemistry for thousands of years through the production of straw.
Restrooms are on the deckplans in Mr. Scott's guide to the Enterprise, and the tech manual for the Enterprise-D. Though the plumbing is a little sketchy.
At first glance I read "Economic Analysis of the Nanotech Failure". I'm not sure if it was trying to say Nanotech is going nowhere, or that the grey goop effect will make pollution look like a spot on one's trousers by comparison.
For my part, I'm not really thrilled by Nanotechnology. It's like being thrilled by quantumn mechanics. Sure it's neat, but unless you are a researcher it's not going to be used in anything you buy, build, or are likely to use. Oooo, it will make already small computer chips smaller. Whoopie. The size of a computing device is currently limited by the size of the battery, power supply, or human interface device.
As far as medical uses, the nanotechnology itself is useless without some way of coordinating the activity of millions of simple robots. That technology isn't nanotechnology. I call the ability to harness millions of independent units "Taonology", and it's first application will be social engineering.
(Checking time-traveler's guide to 2003 to make sure it's been invented.) Scratch that. But when it happens, act surprised.
Whoever is behind this is showing off for sure.
I have a better theory. OSS finally has something that is worth cracking for them. I would almost say this is a sign of reverence and respect (as much as black hats understand the concepts.)
Good luck catching your buglar. I want to know how to patch my box.
The really dumb innovation around the States is that if the students aren't perform the problem is with the school. Thus, to save face most schools simply shlog kids along from grade to grade to the point that in many places a diploma doesn't even guarentee the kid can read.