Is XML-RPC still in use? The Wikipedia entry says it has now evolved into SOAP, which if I remember correctly from the last time I used it is not true as they are different, albeit closely related, protocols and SOAP is not a superset of XML-RPC.
I coded a distributed application (a word game) with XML-RPC for a client some years back having been given the choice of language and communications option. I looked at SOAP at the time, but used XML-RPC as it was very simple to implement with a straightforward API I was up to speed with in a day or two, and it did what was required of it perfectly.
You're probably just trolling, but seriously, if you really do think this then you are in the wrong profession as you obviously don't have the mental capacity of rigour needed to code beyond a very basic level.
SELECT * FROM tblA INNER JOIN tblB ON tblA.key = tblB.key
as I like to make my joins clear. However the point I'm making is that this syntax make you think along the lines of the results dataset being assembled by joining groups of records, whereas there's quite a deep logical insight to be had by thinking of all the table joins as cartesians which generate a dataset which is then 'filtered' by the join conditions.
Your milage may vary of course, but when I first started using SQL I found this quite a useful concept for getting my head around SQL's set behaviour. Indeed I'd go so far as to say to understand SQL you really have to grock why select * from tblA, tblB gives you a recordset of tblA * tblB.
Re:Useless to all but theoraticians
on
The Art of SQL
·
· Score: 1
In my experience there's a point in all rdbms systems for table size which once crossed causes significant differences in table handling and requires serious DBA skills to optimize the system correctly. Generally this seems to be in the region of 200,000 to 1,000,000 records. Below that as long as you are paying reasonable attention to indexes you are fine, above that it's important that the dba understands quite deeply the table structure, data, indexes and access methods, and otimizes correctly.
There's a multiplicity of reasons why this might be so, but it's quite noticable sometimes how a relatively small increase in table size can move a table over the edge from being trivial to handle to requiring some insight.
You havn't the faintest idea what you are on about have you? While SQL does have it's faults (but less so with more modern standards) it is a truly elegent method of retrieving and manipulating data. SQL can be difficult to grock for many coders because it's declarative and not procedural.
One trick I have with newbie sql coders is to make them think about the statement
select * from tblA, tblB
and compare to
select * from tblA, tblB where tblA.key = tblB.key
Easier to see what's going on with the original SQL specification I think - anyway the insight that the first statment is a cartesian join and gives you the set of A multiplied by B, whereas the second is logically the same but after the cartesian join the records not meeting the where clause are excluded (filtered) seems to start people off on the route of understaning what SQL is. (and yes I know the optimzer would never assemble the cartesian then filter, but the point is a feel for how the set operations work logically, not the algorithmic details)
Don't think I completely agree. True writing SQL to second-guess the optimizer in detail is deadly and pointless with modern rdbms' anyway (but Oracle 5, where you really had to isn't that many years ago). Nevertheless having a feel for how optimizers work is good. For instance setting up your joins on indexed fields or being aware of where the optimizer will use a full table scan and when that is a problem. On of my favourite tricks for example is to use an index to avoid a table access - which can pay mega dividends on large datasets. For example suppose we have a table which contains employee data and is index on an ID. I know that I regularly require a further field from this table - say insurance number. By setting an index on ID and Insurance Number the optimizer saves a record access for each instance when Insurance Number must be retrieved. That's a simple example, but the theme can be extended quite significantly
Re:sql vs. procedural
on
The Art of SQL
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Firstly most production databases contain some denormalization. Indeed the art of designing a real database is knowing where and when to denormalize data. How much denormalization is required is dependent upon the database, access paths and application usage and is rarely more than a few fields or a table or two. Nevertheless real production databases that have been correctly denormalized often run orders of magnitude faster than those that rigidly stick to 3rd normalization throughout.
Secondly what you are asking for is generally straightforward in any real dialect of SQL. Select distinct works fine, as do various scenarios with subselects and group by / having clauses (having is the most overlooked of the standard SQL clauses and it's use generally signifies you are using code written by someone who knows what they are doing).
However if you have a good dbms to hand that implements user defined functions then usually the best way if to create a function that returns the uid of the record from the multiple recordset you require (i.e. last payroll record for employee x) and use that in the where clause.
OTOH if you are stuck with MySQL then the first step you have to take is upgrade to Postgres:-)
So true. I've worked in several big manufacturing/financial companies which recruited sinificant numbers of graduates each year into there IT department as trainee programmers. Indeed I was one myself and progressed up via programmer/analyst through systems analyst to project manager in that environment before heading off to run my own consultancy.
A common theme in all of these companies was that they were biased against Computer Science students. Instead they'd recruit from any discipline (the apptitude tests took a full day at least in all cases). Whilst they were after good coders, what they wanted more was rounded individuals who could talk to the business people and develop systems to help them. Indeed given the choice between a brilliant coder with no people skills and a good coder who could interact well with people the second would win every time.
The bias against CS graduates was that they tended to be totally focused on code and not considered the wider perspective. The better recruits in fact tended to be language and bioscience graduates - probably because both these disciplines require a logical mind but with more flexibility than say Physics or other hard sciences (or the the opposite extreme of the humanities and arts).
Your milage may vary tremendously of course. Obviously the above considerations would not apply in a software company, or a hardware manufacturer or an ISP etc. etc. But by no means every IT career exists in such a hard environment, and indeed if you have good people skills you'd probably find it more rewarding not to be in one.
Template systems have of course been around a while, but I must put in a plug for TinyButStrong - http://www.tinybutstrong.com/ - here. I've been writing PHP apps for some time but after casting around for a template system a couple of projects back dropped on this one. Absolutly brilliant piece of work and I've recently been combining it quite successfully with xajax - http://www.xajaxproject.org/
I've no connection with either of these two projects, just a very impressed user (and the TinyButStrong promotional video is a wee gem:-)
Windows, IIS, SQL Server and PHP. Only downside is SQL Server is expensive to deploy but it sure beats the pathetic excuse for a database that is MySQL.
Plus being introduced to Shakespeare by reading is completely the wrong approach. Oh sure the language can be analysed to the n'th degree - and there's lots to learn in there - but to 'get' Shakespeare you need to be introduced to it live from a good company to pick up the visceral punch. Too many people are introduced to him by wading through the prose for weeks before seeing a first play from an indifferent company.
We took our 12 year old daughter to see Macbeth for her first, by a good professional company. We gave her a quick 2-minute outline of the plot before she saw it and then dropped her in iat the deep end. Verdict: that was scary! (but good).
Hmm, how old are you? And you're probably male too. The only English Don I've ever known once told me that to really enjoy Jane Austin you have to be over 30 and female, or if male over 40.
OTOH try George Eliot, particularly Middlemarch. I read that in my early 20's and found it an utter page-turner. It may be a 'classic' but it's a hell of a good read. Around the same time I also devoured Thomas Hardy - I'd recommend starting with The Mayor of Casterbridge as that's another riveting narrative.
Dickens I agree often tends to the turgid and I've put more than one down as just unreadable. Nevertheless some repay the effort of wading through the 'paid by the word' prose - Bleak House for instance.
But do read Middlemarch. Stick with it for the first thirty pages and you'll be hooked.
I always find that if I go to see a Shakespearian play it always takes me about 10 minutes to get in tune to the language. Sure I can understand what's going on from the word go but it's an effort, I have to concentrate hard and I'm sure I miss much beyond the basic plot. However generally a few scenes into Act 1 something flips and from then on it's easy - and the language is far more enjoyable to listen to than most modern plays.
And it's commonly forgotten that the EU is now considerably larger than the US both in economic and population. What stops the EU punching it's weight globally is (a) the greater social and political cohesion of the USA and (b) US military spending is a far larger proportion of it's GDP.
Personally I couldn't agree more - we need to move power from the comission to the EU parliment and have a directly elected president.
There's suprisingly few comments about CmdrTaco's remarkably good taste in alcohol. Always nice to see our export market being supported - one product that can't be outsourced.
Is he an Islay or Speyside man? I think we should be told:-)
Can't send a bottle, but a few personal recommendations of some slightly more obscure distilleries he might not have tried:-
The Balvenie. Superlative Speyside. An American friend of mine seems to import this into NYC in near industrial quantities after being introduced to it when over here.
Scapa. Second most northerly distillery and for years overshadowed by Highland Park (itself a superb dram). I once had a bottle of 25 year old (1963) which was pure distilled heaven. The 14 year old is less good, but I've seen various older bottlings on sale.
Springbank. Cambelltown malts tend to get overlooked. Worth seeking out though.
The Talisker. OK hardly obscure, but if you're a west coast man then you have to have tried this. Possibly my personal favourite.
Of course all are recommended as best appreciated sitting outside a bar on the west coast of scotland at sunset. Applecross topping my personal list:-)
Firstly it's known Tamiflu has to be administered in the initial stages of the infection or else it's effectiveness is severely reduced. So, the Vietnam cases don't really contribute anything in this context.
Secondly whilst there has been evidence of resistance, well documented in some cases, that is not at all the same thing as resistance being a problem in practice. Resistance in viruses is NOT the same as in bacteria and this is causing a great deal of confusion. In Japan, where Tamiflu has been routinely prescibed for several years for 'normal' flu resistance has been seen to arise in some cases, but the 'wild' strains of the virus remain vulnerable to Tamiflu. This suggests that Tamiflu-resistance comes with sufficient costs to the virus that it is selected against.
Also, don't forget that a) H5N1 has to mutate considerably before it can cause a human pandemic so it's pathogenity now is not necessarily any guide to the human pandemic form, and b) the next pandemic might well come from a different strain entirely. This 40 year cycle is not written in tablets of stone anywhere and H5N1 could be a complete red-herring.
Er no, there is some evidence of resistance in some strains, but the majority seem to be susceptible to the drug. Resistance could be a problem, but that's by no means certain and the indication is rather against that if anything. Tamiflu has been used routinely now in Japan for several years against normal flu and while there has been occassional resistance arising, it's not been sustained in the wild suggesting that it's selected against in practice.
The mechanism for drug resistance in viruses is rather different from that in bacteria, which is causing a lot of confusion in the general press.
If you can point me to a document or documents standardizing terms like "Web 2.0", "enterprise", "solution", "mission-critical", "partner", etc., then I will admit my criticism of corporate speak is wrong.
Just because a word or phrase doesn't have a standardized definition doesn't mean to say it's not useful. Quite the contary in fact. For example you cannot point me at a document that gives a standard definition of the phrase "In Love". I'm also sure it has subtly different meanings for different people, nevertheless this is an extremely useful concept that is a major driving force in human society.
In fact fuzzy concepts are generally much more important than precisely defined ones. "Freedom" perhaps. "Duty" might be another one. "Honour" has fallen out of favour of late in the west but wars were fought because of it. Dozens of others too - "Justice", "Liberty", "Fairness" etc. etc.
Which isn't to say that much corporate speak isn't bullshit - of course it is. However a concept that is fuzzy at the edges can be useful precisely because it isn't well defined.
But this is precisely what you shouldn't do. Bob is going to hate your guts for making him look like an idiot, the Friends of Bob around the table are also going to hate your guts for making their fried look like an idiot, and the ones left are going to think your a smartass and hate your guts in case you do it to them next. And they'll all be looking for a way to take you down a peg or two next time they get the chance - which as you're going to have to use techie jargon at some point is likely sooner than later.
If you don't understand basic human nature at a level that can anticipate this then there's no way you should be let out of the techie corner except under close supervision. Charismatic? Ha.
As you've obviously already taken a position that moves away from pure techie to more general management already then you should take onboard that to succeed in that role you have to interface effectively between IT and Management.
Maybe you've not picked up on it yet, but managers are usually scared of dealing with the IT department. In most companies nowdays the managers are will aware that the company would collapse without the IT function, but at the same time they don't fully understand it and it's a cost centre which eats up their profits so is easily resented.
Which is where you come in. General managers speak corporate. Get over it, they're comfortable with it so you have to be too. They are also quite aware that the IT department speaks techie - which they are painfully aware they don't understand. Niverna to a general managers is an IT type, such as yourself, who can communicate with with them on their level, but they know can then communicate with the IT department on a techie level. They want someone they can trust, feels understands them, but they know can then go away and get corporate IT right for what they want to do without them having to understand the details themselves. In otherwords metaphorically hold their hand and make the worry about IT go away:-)
People who can do this - live comfortably in both worlds and move between them - are worth their weight in gold to corporates. Good ones who can maintain respect on both sides are also rare as it demands being able to handle two opposing methods of mindsets. It's a potentially very rewarding position - in more ways than one.
Firstly getting rid of legal handguns was to stop 'sports' shooters like Hamilton and Ryan killing people with legally held weapons. That has been spectacularly successful.
On the 500,000 illegal guns there is absolutly no evidence for this whatsoever. Indeed during the campaign to get rid of handguns in 1996 the UK shooting bodies and there affiliates used to pick a figure out of the air at random on a weekly basis - one prominent number was at one point seriously citing 5 million illegal handguns in circulation and challenging the Polic to prove him wrong. Most people draw their own conclusions from this about the mental stability of 'sports' shooters.
In fact the best guess that the police could come up with on the basis of actual crime was there was under 10,000 illegal guns available to criminals. The rest, if they existed, were old war trophies in attics.
And for those not familiar with it, In Our Time is simply the best serious radio program ever. The format is always the same, Melvyn Bragg acts as ringmaster while three academics work there way through whatever topic is being discussed that week. The topics vary widely from hard science and maths through religion to arts and history. The level is pitched at well-educated layman - so a working knowledge of Western thought is required - but somehow it always manages to pitch at the challengeing without being incomprehensible or condescending.
It sounds like it should fall flat on it's face, but Bragg is superb at teasing and cajoling the best out of his contributors without getting in the way of the discussion, somewhat in contrast to most other broadcasting he does where he can come across as a bit of a pompous git (and it's difficult to rate his writing too highly either - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvyn_Bragg)
But you are also missing the point. If you take an 'Anglican' compromise such that Creatanism is compatible with evolution then evolution could also be said to be compatible with Confuscism, Hinduism and Buddism too, or more particularly is is compatible with none. Evolution doesn't need a Christian context to provide the universe with meaning, in point of fact what it shows is that it, together with modern cosmology, can offer a pretty good framework to explain how we got here with absolutly no need for any gods whatsoever.
Which is why the fundies have the problems they do and why they end up ID or 6-day Creationism. If you go for the compromise approach then the requirement for god shrinks as knowledge advances, to the point of no requirement whatsoever. At which point were back to the 'I believe because I'd like to believe' state and the question of why the Judaochristian tradition over Hinduism applies.
Slashdot Mirror
Is XML-RPC still in use? The Wikipedia entry says it has now evolved into SOAP, which if I remember correctly from the last time I used it is not true as they are different, albeit closely related, protocols and SOAP is not a superset of XML-RPC.
I coded a distributed application (a word game) with XML-RPC for a client some years back having been given the choice of language and communications option. I looked at SOAP at the time, but used XML-RPC as it was very simple to implement with a straightforward API I was up to speed with in a day or two, and it did what was required of it perfectly.
You're probably just trolling, but seriously, if you really do think this then you are in the wrong profession as you obviously don't have the mental capacity of rigour needed to code beyond a very basic level.
I generally use an explicit
SELECT * FROM tblA INNER JOIN tblB ON tblA.key = tblB.key
as I like to make my joins clear. However the point I'm making is that this syntax make you think along the lines of the results dataset being assembled by joining groups of records, whereas there's quite a deep logical insight to be had by thinking of all the table joins as cartesians which generate a dataset which is then 'filtered' by the join conditions.
Your milage may vary of course, but when I first started using SQL I found this quite a useful concept for getting my head around SQL's set behaviour. Indeed I'd go so far as to say to understand SQL you really have to grock why select * from tblA, tblB gives you a recordset of tblA * tblB.
In my experience there's a point in all rdbms systems for table size which once crossed causes significant differences in table handling and requires serious DBA skills to optimize the system correctly. Generally this seems to be in the region of 200,000 to 1,000,000 records. Below that as long as you are paying reasonable attention to indexes you are fine, above that it's important that the dba understands quite deeply the table structure, data, indexes and access methods, and otimizes correctly.
There's a multiplicity of reasons why this might be so, but it's quite noticable sometimes how a relatively small increase in table size can move a table over the edge from being trivial to handle to requiring some insight.
You havn't the faintest idea what you are on about have you? While SQL does have it's faults (but less so with more modern standards) it is a truly elegent method of retrieving and manipulating data. SQL can be difficult to grock for many coders because it's declarative and not procedural.
One trick I have with newbie sql coders is to make them think about the statement
select * from tblA, tblB
and compare to
select * from tblA, tblB where tblA.key = tblB.key
Easier to see what's going on with the original SQL specification I think - anyway the insight that the first statment is a cartesian join and gives you the set of A multiplied by B, whereas the second is logically the same but after the cartesian join the records not meeting the where clause are excluded (filtered) seems to start people off on the route of understaning what SQL is. (and yes I know the optimzer would never assemble the cartesian then filter, but the point is a feel for how the set operations work logically, not the algorithmic details)
Don't think I completely agree. True writing SQL to second-guess the optimizer in detail is deadly and pointless with modern rdbms' anyway (but Oracle 5, where you really had to isn't that many years ago). Nevertheless having a feel for how optimizers work is good. For instance setting up your joins on indexed fields or being aware of where the optimizer will use a full table scan and when that is a problem. On of my favourite tricks for example is to use an index to avoid a table access - which can pay mega dividends on large datasets. For example suppose we have a table which contains employee data and is index on an ID. I know that I regularly require a further field from this table - say insurance number. By setting an index on ID and Insurance Number the optimizer saves a record access for each instance when Insurance Number must be retrieved. That's a simple example, but the theme can be extended quite significantly
Firstly most production databases contain some denormalization. Indeed the art of designing a real database is knowing where and when to denormalize data. How much denormalization is required is dependent upon the database, access paths and application usage and is rarely more than a few fields or a table or two. Nevertheless real production databases that have been correctly denormalized often run orders of magnitude faster than those that rigidly stick to 3rd normalization throughout.
:-)
Secondly what you are asking for is generally straightforward in any real dialect of SQL. Select distinct works fine, as do various scenarios with subselects and group by / having clauses (having is the most overlooked of the standard SQL clauses and it's use generally signifies you are using code written by someone who knows what they are doing).
However if you have a good dbms to hand that implements user defined functions then usually the best way if to create a function that returns the uid of the record from the multiple recordset you require (i.e. last payroll record for employee x) and use that in the where clause.
OTOH if you are stuck with MySQL then the first step you have to take is upgrade to Postgres
2 days ago...
2 7/1639243
Science Ability Down in U.S. High Schools
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/
How true.
So true. I've worked in several big manufacturing/financial companies which recruited sinificant numbers of graduates each year into there IT department as trainee programmers. Indeed I was one myself and progressed up via programmer/analyst through systems analyst to project manager in that environment before heading off to run my own consultancy.
A common theme in all of these companies was that they were biased against Computer Science students. Instead they'd recruit from any discipline (the apptitude tests took a full day at least in all cases). Whilst they were after good coders, what they wanted more was rounded individuals who could talk to the business people and develop systems to help them. Indeed given the choice between a brilliant coder with no people skills and a good coder who could interact well with people the second would win every time.
The bias against CS graduates was that they tended to be totally focused on code and not considered the wider perspective. The better recruits in fact tended to be language and bioscience graduates - probably because both these disciplines require a logical mind but with more flexibility than say Physics or other hard sciences (or the the opposite extreme of the humanities and arts).
Your milage may vary tremendously of course. Obviously the above considerations would not apply in a software company, or a hardware manufacturer or an ISP etc. etc. But by no means every IT career exists in such a hard environment, and indeed if you have good people skills you'd probably find it more rewarding not to be in one.
Template systems have of course been around a while, but I must put in a plug for TinyButStrong - http://www.tinybutstrong.com/ - here. I've been writing PHP apps for some time but after casting around for a template system a couple of projects back dropped on this one. Absolutly brilliant piece of work and I've recently been combining it quite successfully with xajax - http://www.xajaxproject.org/
:-)
I've no connection with either of these two projects, just a very impressed user (and the TinyButStrong promotional video is a wee gem
Windows, IIS, SQL Server and PHP. Only downside is SQL Server is expensive to deploy but it sure beats the pathetic excuse for a database that is MySQL.
Plus being introduced to Shakespeare by reading is completely the wrong approach. Oh sure the language can be analysed to the n'th degree - and there's lots to learn in there - but to 'get' Shakespeare you need to be introduced to it live from a good company to pick up the visceral punch. Too many people are introduced to him by wading through the prose for weeks before seeing a first play from an indifferent company.
We took our 12 year old daughter to see Macbeth for her first, by a good professional company. We gave her a quick 2-minute outline of the plot before she saw it and then dropped her in iat the deep end. Verdict: that was scary! (but good).
Hmm, how old are you? And you're probably male too. The only English Don I've ever known once told me that to really enjoy Jane Austin you have to be over 30 and female, or if male over 40.
OTOH try George Eliot, particularly Middlemarch. I read that in my early 20's and found it an utter page-turner. It may be a 'classic' but it's a hell of a good read. Around the same time I also devoured Thomas Hardy - I'd recommend starting with The Mayor of Casterbridge as that's another riveting narrative.
Dickens I agree often tends to the turgid and I've put more than one down as just unreadable. Nevertheless some repay the effort of wading through the 'paid by the word' prose - Bleak House for instance.
But do read Middlemarch. Stick with it for the first thirty pages and you'll be hooked.
I always find that if I go to see a Shakespearian play it always takes me about 10 minutes to get in tune to the language. Sure I can understand what's going on from the word go but it's an effort, I have to concentrate hard and I'm sure I miss much beyond the basic plot. However generally a few scenes into Act 1 something flips and from then on it's easy - and the language is far more enjoyable to listen to than most modern plays.
And it's commonly forgotten that the EU is now considerably larger than the US both in economic and population. What stops the EU punching it's weight globally is (a) the greater social and political cohesion of the USA and (b) US military spending is a far larger proportion of it's GDP.
Personally I couldn't agree more - we need to move power from the comission to the EU parliment and have a directly elected president.
Is he an Islay or Speyside man? I think we should be told :-)
Can't send a bottle, but a few personal recommendations of some slightly more obscure distilleries he might not have tried:-
The Balvenie. Superlative Speyside. An American friend of mine seems to import this into NYC in near industrial quantities after being introduced to it when over here.
Scapa. Second most northerly distillery and for years overshadowed by Highland Park (itself a superb dram). I once had a bottle of 25 year old (1963) which was pure distilled heaven. The 14 year old is less good, but I've seen various older bottlings on sale.
Springbank. Cambelltown malts tend to get overlooked. Worth seeking out though.
The Talisker. OK hardly obscure, but if you're a west coast man then you have to have tried this. Possibly my personal favourite.
Of course all are recommended as best appreciated sitting outside a bar on the west coast of scotland at sunset. Applecross topping my personal list :-)
Firstly it's known Tamiflu has to be administered in the initial stages of the infection or else it's effectiveness is severely reduced. So, the Vietnam cases don't really contribute anything in this context.
Secondly whilst there has been evidence of resistance, well documented in some cases, that is not at all the same thing as resistance being a problem in practice. Resistance in viruses is NOT the same as in bacteria and this is causing a great deal of confusion. In Japan, where Tamiflu has been routinely prescibed for several years for 'normal' flu resistance has been seen to arise in some cases, but the 'wild' strains of the virus remain vulnerable to Tamiflu. This suggests that Tamiflu-resistance comes with sufficient costs to the virus that it is selected against.
Also, don't forget that a) H5N1 has to mutate considerably before it can cause a human pandemic so it's pathogenity now is not necessarily any guide to the human pandemic form, and b) the next pandemic might well come from a different strain entirely. This 40 year cycle is not written in tablets of stone anywhere and H5N1 could be a complete red-herring.
Er no, there is some evidence of resistance in some strains, but the majority seem to be susceptible to the drug. Resistance could be a problem, but that's by no means certain and the indication is rather against that if anything. Tamiflu has been used routinely now in Japan for several years against normal flu and while there has been occassional resistance arising, it's not been sustained in the wild suggesting that it's selected against in practice.
The mechanism for drug resistance in viruses is rather different from that in bacteria, which is causing a lot of confusion in the general press.
By which logic you shouldn't put salt on your food, it being a combination of a posionous gas and a metal that reacts explosively with water
Just because a word or phrase doesn't have a standardized definition doesn't mean to say it's not useful. Quite the contary in fact. For example you cannot point me at a document that gives a standard definition of the phrase "In Love". I'm also sure it has subtly different meanings for different people, nevertheless this is an extremely useful concept that is a major driving force in human society.
In fact fuzzy concepts are generally much more important than precisely defined ones. "Freedom" perhaps. "Duty" might be another one. "Honour" has fallen out of favour of late in the west but wars were fought because of it. Dozens of others too - "Justice", "Liberty", "Fairness" etc. etc.
Which isn't to say that much corporate speak isn't bullshit - of course it is. However a concept that is fuzzy at the edges can be useful precisely because it isn't well defined.
Bob is of course an idiot.
But this is precisely what you shouldn't do. Bob is going to hate your guts for making him look like an idiot, the Friends of Bob around the table are also going to hate your guts for making their fried look like an idiot, and the ones left are going to think your a smartass and hate your guts in case you do it to them next. And they'll all be looking for a way to take you down a peg or two next time they get the chance - which as you're going to have to use techie jargon at some point is likely sooner than later.
If you don't understand basic human nature at a level that can anticipate this then there's no way you should be let out of the techie corner except under close supervision. Charismatic? Ha.
As you've obviously already taken a position that moves away from pure techie to more general management already then you should take onboard that to succeed in that role you have to interface effectively between IT and Management.
:-)
Maybe you've not picked up on it yet, but managers are usually scared of dealing with the IT department. In most companies nowdays the managers are will aware that the company would collapse without the IT function, but at the same time they don't fully understand it and it's a cost centre which eats up their profits so is easily resented.
Which is where you come in. General managers speak corporate. Get over it, they're comfortable with it so you have to be too. They are also quite aware that the IT department speaks techie - which they are painfully aware they don't understand. Niverna to a general managers is an IT type, such as yourself, who can communicate with with them on their level, but they know can then communicate with the IT department on a techie level. They want someone they can trust, feels understands them, but they know can then go away and get corporate IT right for what they want to do without them having to understand the details themselves. In otherwords metaphorically hold their hand and make the worry about IT go away
People who can do this - live comfortably in both worlds and move between them - are worth their weight in gold to corporates. Good ones who can maintain respect on both sides are also rare as it demands being able to handle two opposing methods of mindsets. It's a potentially very rewarding position - in more ways than one.
Firstly getting rid of legal handguns was to stop 'sports' shooters like Hamilton and Ryan killing people with legally held weapons. That has been spectacularly successful.
On the 500,000 illegal guns there is absolutly no evidence for this whatsoever. Indeed during the campaign to get rid of handguns in 1996 the UK shooting bodies and there affiliates used to pick a figure out of the air at random on a weekly basis - one prominent number was at one point seriously citing 5 million illegal handguns in circulation and challenging the Polic to prove him wrong. Most people draw their own conclusions from this about the mental stability of 'sports' shooters.
In fact the best guess that the police could come up with on the basis of actual crime was there was under 10,000 illegal guns available to criminals. The rest, if they existed, were old war trophies in attics.
And for those not familiar with it, In Our Time is simply the best serious radio program ever. The format is always the same, Melvyn Bragg acts as ringmaster while three academics work there way through whatever topic is being discussed that week. The topics vary widely from hard science and maths through religion to arts and history. The level is pitched at well-educated layman - so a working knowledge of Western thought is required - but somehow it always manages to pitch at the challengeing without being incomprehensible or condescending.
It sounds like it should fall flat on it's face, but Bragg is superb at teasing and cajoling the best out of his contributors without getting in the way of the discussion, somewhat in contrast to most other broadcasting he does where he can come across as a bit of a pompous git (and it's difficult to rate his writing too highly either - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvyn_Bragg)
And the best is that the BBC Radio 4 archive holds years of back editions of the program at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/
But you are also missing the point. If you take an 'Anglican' compromise such that Creatanism is compatible with evolution then evolution could also be said to be compatible with Confuscism, Hinduism and Buddism too, or more particularly is is compatible with none. Evolution doesn't need a Christian context to provide the universe with meaning, in point of fact what it shows is that it, together with modern cosmology, can offer a pretty good framework to explain how we got here with absolutly no need for any gods whatsoever.
Which is why the fundies have the problems they do and why they end up ID or 6-day Creationism. If you go for the compromise approach then the requirement for god shrinks as knowledge advances, to the point of no requirement whatsoever. At which point were back to the 'I believe because I'd like to believe' state and the question of why the Judaochristian tradition over Hinduism applies.