I don't recommend using hard drives for archival purposes, they're not rated for that. Have you considered LTO-4 tapes: the price per unit GB comparable and they are intended for archival storage. You could ship them to an offsite location or make two copies and send to two locations if you're paranoid. Setup is relatively cheap if you just buy a tape drive, somewhat more if you buy fancy software and a tape robot.
Software quality isn't a single thing, it emerges from a reasonable process. As a simple start, I'd recommend getting a few copies of "The Software Project Survival Guide" It's a little old, but still relevant. (http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/1332.aspx) And going through the checklist in there. Do you have a source control system? do you have a bug tracking system? do you have a change management board? It provides a means of incrementally improving your software process in a way that can be understood by management and will show good results. It won't fix everything immediately, that'll be a long struggle to change the culture, but it gives you a roadmap to make things incrementally better every day.
Insurance generally requires a check every 48 hourse, you can pay someone to do this. Nice simple setup I heard about was a temperature sensor which takes the phone off hook if the temp drops too low. The house-check guy calls daily and if the phone is busy, drops by to see what's up.
I've worked for a few companies that have shipped software to paying customers. The secret to shipping with no serious bugs is reclassifying them as less serious before the ship date. Having been both a programmer and a test drone, I can't believe that anyone would think any code ships without known bugs. I guess not doing testing would be a good way to achieve that honestly.
It's a strange world. What a human would call "memory" they call "storage". What a human would call "disk" they call "DASD". They think it reasonable to pay about 10X as much for the same hardware. And they're all about 5'6", kinda chubby and nice guys. Usually with beards. I think they're clones. Alas, they are an endangered species, living mainly at banks and other financial institutions.
-A lot of software development for the US is done in Canada. Is that considered to be "offshoring"? Should work that is "offshored" to Canada, Mexico or other future NAFTA partners be subject to the same trade restrictions that are being proposed for India and China? -What about small scale offshoring? I'm a Canadian living in Canada and I do software piecework for a friends company in the US. Over the last 7 years, this has added up to tens of thousands of dollars that have been earned by me rather than by an American. What is the scale of small scale piecework, how has it grown, and what are the longer term economic effects of this sort of movement? Are there even any statistics on this?
You really don't need yet more formal certification. A medical diploma and a bit of initiativate should be enough to get you in the door of a biological/medical research establishment to do all sorts of IT work: programming, cluster setup, data analysis. The combination of bio/medical skills and computer skills/interests are surprisingly hard to come by. Just knock on a few doors: "Hello, I have a medical diploma and useful skills and interests in IT. I'd like to work for you to learn and would be willing to take lower pay for a while to do it." they'll be falling all over each other to hire you.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't recommend using hard drives for archival purposes, they're not rated for that. Have you considered LTO-4 tapes: the price per unit GB comparable and they are intended for archival storage. You could ship them to an offsite location or make two copies and send to two locations if you're paranoid. Setup is relatively cheap if you just buy a tape drive, somewhat more if you buy fancy software and a tape robot.
Software quality isn't a single thing, it emerges from a reasonable process. As a simple start, I'd recommend getting a few copies of "The Software Project Survival Guide" It's a little old, but still relevant. (http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/1332.aspx)
And going through the checklist in there.
Do you have a source control system? do you have a bug tracking system? do you have a change management board?
It provides a means of incrementally improving your software process in a way that can be understood by management and will show good results. It won't fix everything immediately, that'll be a long struggle to change the culture, but it gives you a roadmap to make things incrementally better every day.
Insurance generally requires a check every 48 hourse, you can pay someone to do this.
Nice simple setup I heard about was a temperature sensor which takes the phone off hook if the temp drops too low. The house-check guy calls daily and if the phone is busy, drops by to see what's up.
I've worked for a few companies that have shipped software to paying customers. The secret to shipping with no serious bugs is reclassifying them as less serious before the ship date.
Having been both a programmer and a test drone, I can't believe that anyone would think any code ships without known bugs. I guess not doing testing would be a good way to achieve that honestly.
I suppose it would be called a turdminal...
It's a strange world.
What a human would call "memory" they call "storage".
What a human would call "disk" they call "DASD".
They think it reasonable to pay about 10X as much for the same hardware.
And they're all about 5'6", kinda chubby and nice guys. Usually with beards. I think they're clones.
Alas, they are an endangered species, living mainly at banks and other financial institutions.
There's one neanderthal DNA sequence already in ncbi:
= nucleotide&val=7769684
"Homo sapiens neanderthalensis mitochondrial D-loop, hypervariable region I."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/viewer.fcgi?db
I doubt that there will be enough good dna for anything like a full sequence as it is unstable over periods of thousands of years.
-A lot of software development for the US is done in Canada. Is that considered to be "offshoring"? Should work that is "offshored" to Canada, Mexico or other future NAFTA partners be subject to the same trade restrictions that are being proposed for India and China?
-What about small scale offshoring? I'm a Canadian living in Canada and I do software piecework for a friends company in the US. Over the last 7 years, this has added up to tens of thousands of dollars that have been earned by me rather than by an American. What is the scale of small scale piecework, how has it grown, and what are the longer term economic effects of this sort of movement? Are there even any statistics on this?
You really don't need yet more formal certification. A medical diploma and a bit of initiativate should be enough to get you in the door of a biological/medical research establishment to do all sorts of IT work: programming, cluster setup, data analysis.
The combination of bio/medical skills and computer skills/interests are surprisingly hard to come by.
Just knock on a few doors: "Hello, I have a medical diploma and useful skills and interests in IT. I'd like to work for you to learn and would be willing to take lower pay for a while to do it." they'll be falling all over each other to hire you.