The company I work for has an email server we bought. I know next to nothing about it, I can't comment on it. But when we bought it we also bought from the same company software to manage mailing to large client lists. It's this piece of software, which I'll call Bob's Mailer, that this post is about.
We've had numerous problems with Bob's Mailer over the last two or so years. The guy who is our support contact for the software, who I'll call Bob (hence the software name), is very hard to get in contact with. He doesn't respond to emails very fast, at all.
What we've found out over time, as we complained loudly to the company that sold us this software, is that they don't write or own Bob's Mailer, they just sell it as an add on (or they used to, they don't seem to any more, hint hint hint). Bob is the sole developer.
The problems we find are... fun. Like when the software was running so slow it couldn't, under some circumstances, send any emails. At all. Bob was taking forever to get back to us, and basically didn't seem to get it. His responses were of the variety "It works for other people." I got on the server, watched the MySQL server for a few minutes, and found the problem. It was running the query ".... WHERE email LIKE '%some@email%'" quite a bit. That causes a full table scan. I had to show him proof this was happening before he'd fix it.
That turned into a big incident about upgrading to a new version and this and that.
But the best response from Bob was the last big one we went though. We couldn't upload large lists of new customers (1000s) to the software. It would take HOURS and eventually the connection would drop (this is all a web interface, of course). We asked Bob to fix this or at least give us a work around. The request came from someone in Sales, asking him what they were doing wrong.
He came back with a word document of instructions. We (in IT) were copied in on the email. It's a good thing we read the instructions before someone got a change to use them. They were, essentially:
Upload the list to the server
Log into the server by SSH
Log into MySQL
Run various archaic SQL commands, and not even in a transaction
Then it should be done
He wanted end users to log into the server by command line and run all sorts of SQL commands, because he didn't want to fix the web based GUI. He fixed it pretty fast when we raised a stink about his solution.
But one of the worst things is the email that contained those instructions. Sent to various people, it contained the root passwords for the server and MySQL, in plaintext.
Easily the stupidest work around I've seen. Every time something comes up, we consider dumping Bob's Mailer. I keep hoping we will. Dealing with Bob is a major pain.
Call social services. Find out if they can just take him in for his own good for a psych eval. They might be able to, as it sounds like at this point he may be a harm to himself. Since it's long term harm, it may not work.
If not, you need to hold an intervention. You and everyone you can think of who cares about him. Family too. Have a clinical social worker there, and get their help setting it up.
If he becomes violent, have him arrested and they'll get him help.
If he threatens suicide, you can have him held on a mandatory 72 hour psych-eval.
You're trying to save his life. What he thinks of you doesn't matter. If he never speaks to you again, it's OK as long as you can help him.
I think part of the problem is that the term "computer" refers to the monitor as well as the box.
No it doesn't. That's the same thing. You're calling a car a "wheel" again.
It's a big user visible external component. Calling it the "TV" is much better (although still horribly wrong).
If you want to use a computer, you can learn the names of the 3 parts you actually touch: monitor, mouse, keyboard. I'm not asking for a large amount here. You know the difference between a wheel, a bumper, and a hood, right? You know that all three of those do not mean "car", right?
When you need a word to refer to the entirety of the computer becuase you don't know what's wrong or the name of the component with the problem how about using the word... computer.
Do you refer to your entire car as "the axle"? Same thing.
But people are expected to know that a radiator is not the same as a car. I don't expect people to know the difference between SATA and IDE, but they need to know the difference between the engine and the wheels.
If you want to discuss something, you need to know at least a decent subset of the vocabulary that goes with it. If you don't, then you use phrases like "my car is broken" and "it keeps overheating", not "the axel is broken". Just because you know the word axle is a car thing doesn't mean it's OK to use it to refer to any part of the car.
There is a video called A Sneak Preview of Wolfram|Alpha on YouTube that seems to have been filmed at a talk Wolfram gave. After watching it I think I have a decent idea of what it's like to use, and just how very different it is from every other search out there. I can't wait to try it.
And to see what happens when you search for "Rick Astley".
I'd also like to see if it can convert things like 1 GB into Libraries of Congress. Google's unit conversion doesn't include the LOC, sadly.
While Oracle is big, I kind of doubt that they could ever keep up with Intel. Even in turn-key appliance servers (sort of an iMac of databases, pre-configured computer), Intel/AMD will outstrip them in performance and they won't be able to stay up to date.
The only place I can think that this would be useful is routers. In a turn-key appliance like that that does a very specialized job (especially one that requires custom silicon to do the routing fast enough), SPARC could make sense. It would make it harder to steal their software (because you'd have to run on SPARC). It would give them total control (no need to source processors from external companies). They could even build the SPARC cores into the same chips that hold all the magic high-speed routing magic.
SPARC could be useful, but I doubt they'll try and compete in the general market.
This is just off the top of my head. Is there something special about SPARC that would make it remarkably good at some specific application that Oracle uses?
Until Mozilla has control over Flash, most internet uses will have to put up with buggy plugins. This is about being defensive instead of just getting shot.
You're right on that one. Ireland was a few years ago. I remember reading last year (or the year before?) that Ireland was losing it's "low tax" business to other countries (European and otherwise) that were even lower in taxes.
Congratulations on missing the point congress. (surprise)
Forbes had a great piece on this a few months ago. People aren't going to Ireland / the Caymans because they don't want to pay taxes and just want to cheat... the cost of compliance is too high.
One of the good things Regan was supposed to have done was get lots of tax money back to the US by simplifying our tax code. Even though they may have brought their money back from countries with lower tax burdens, it was easier to have it in the US.
There is an opportunity cost to moving your money to another country or using a tax shelter (legal or not). People judge it worth it because of what they have to go through.
If you simply simplify the tax code so it's not so hard to deal with, people will come back. Things have only gotten worse recently with SarbOx. Closing loopholes is trying to tie the arms of suicidal people to beds. It works much better to try to get them to stop being suicidal.
There will always be people who try to cheat the system because they are immoral jerks. But if it doesn't take wealthy people a team of 30 tax attorneys to keep their wealth in line, they're more likely to keep it in the US and avoid the hassle of all the international laws (and spending 183 days of the year out of the country, and blah blah blah). No tax breaks for pork farmers on 17-35 acres in areas that don't observe daylight savings time unless they grow at least 3% barley ethanol using sustainable methods.
The problem is complexity in the tax code, not tax shelters.
Tramiel didn't get it, he was in the right place at the right time with a specific idea. I recently finished reading On The Edge, a book all about Commodore (warning: ref link, since I copied it off my site).
Basically Tramiel was doing what he did in the calculator business, the one thing he always did: he pushed for lower prices. This was over the objections of the engineers and such.
With the PET and C64 it was a huge hit. The market wanted something like that.
Tramiel also decided to QUADRUPLE the RAM in the C64, which really helped it.
But later he wanted to compete with Sinclair and have a sub $100 computer. He didn't care about higher end computers, he was still selling calculators (price is everything). This was when the market wanted an improved C64. He didn't get it, he just wanted something cheaper still. Marketing didn't even want to touch some of their products (Vic20?) because they were afraid they'd upset their success.
When computers became more common and people started having a good investment in software (instead of just one program or writing their own BASIC stuff), people wanted backwards compatibility instead of having to throw away their $750 software investment. But that didn't fit with the "make a cheaper computer again" philosophy. Calculators didn't have that kind of issue, each one was a stand alone sale. Computers stopped working like that, and Tramiel didn't get it.
It was a REALLY good book if you are interested in this kind of stuff. How Commodore came up, how some people continually made decisions that basically sunk the company (the CFO, who's name escapes me). How they got lucky, how they nearly messed it up, how they lost it, how they almost got it back. A great story.
The subscriber count is one of the big problems of free newspapers, since they can't get accurate numbers. But if you gave away free eReaders, they could report back reader numbers so you could value the ads much better, allowing you to get higher rates since you can prove your readership (instead of surveys saying it's between 1,500 and 30,000), right?
Good point. A real subscription to WSJ or NYT is not cheap. But keeping current subscribers isn't really the problem, is it? It would be much better (financially) to get some old subscribers back, or even new subscribers.
The cost argument is very good, but I don't want 3-4 eReaders, each that only works on one paper. That's just a hassle.
Then there is the up-front cost. Right now I can buy my local paper only on Sundays, or when I see an interesting story. But very few people will front the $360 unless they are very committed. If they are that committed, they probably already subscribe. But you can't get rid of the paper edition, because how would you attract new readers when the price of starting goes from $1.50 to $360? You have to keep print, so you won't be able to cut costs too much.
I'd think 8.5"x11" would be pretty good, as long as the device was about that size (not +2" on each side, keyboard, etc).
Of course, this is the preverbal deck chairs on the Titanic. The problem with newspapers isn't the paper. Sure paper is expensive (compared to digital bits), and big and a bit of a hassle compared to a theoretical eBook (ignore preference). But changing the medium won't work.
The content is already out there. It's on the web. I can get new news faster. Half the stuff in many papers comes straight off the AP wire anyway. Making newspapers more convenient won't work, they've already done that with their websites.
It's the business model that needs rethinking. Digital readers may certainly help, but they alone will do nothing to fix the problems.
Yes. Because nothing will boost readership like each newspaper requiring it's own custom $300 reader that doesn't work for any of the other newspapers or books.
Just make it work on the popular readers out there (at this point that's the Kindle and the Sony devices). Amazon is rumored to release a new Kindle with a bigger screen on Wednesday (they've got a press conference announced).
If you go to the Wiki, and read the link in the top article, there is a link to OS News. If you follow that and read down in the comments, you'll find this post by the architect of the VGA emulation.
Apparently it really is emulation. Their MCU that they use as a PCI interface has a mode that generates the raw pixels when given VGA commands. It handles the VGA interface. The graphics processor just receives (from it's perspective) pixmaps that are constantly generated by the MCU in VGA mode.
The guy says that VGA on their card is actually resolution independent (since the MCU generates what is needed) and could actually be up-sampled to show clearer fonts without the OS having any idea it was going on.
He says it's not the cleanest way of doing things (from a methodology standpoint), but it has the least impact on the design of the hardware (compared to a "real" VGA interface).
A crowd source is where crowds come from, like an apartment building.
A crowd sink is where the crowds go to, like a stadium event.
Standard EE terminology. So the poster must be looking for... a place to steal people from to force them to translate boring lectures? I'm not sure how electrical engineering applies here.
Maybe electroshocks as "encouragement" to do the work?
They never aimed the product at your average 8 year old. It really seemed like a toy of "older" boys (24+) who have money. I don't think it was ever aimed at children. They wanted to do that later, but they knew their initial product couldn't work in that market for a ton of reasons (price being the main one).
Slashdot Mirror
The company I work for has an email server we bought. I know next to nothing about it, I can't comment on it. But when we bought it we also bought from the same company software to manage mailing to large client lists. It's this piece of software, which I'll call Bob's Mailer, that this post is about.
We've had numerous problems with Bob's Mailer over the last two or so years. The guy who is our support contact for the software, who I'll call Bob (hence the software name), is very hard to get in contact with. He doesn't respond to emails very fast, at all.
What we've found out over time, as we complained loudly to the company that sold us this software, is that they don't write or own Bob's Mailer, they just sell it as an add on (or they used to, they don't seem to any more, hint hint hint). Bob is the sole developer.
The problems we find are... fun. Like when the software was running so slow it couldn't, under some circumstances, send any emails. At all. Bob was taking forever to get back to us, and basically didn't seem to get it. His responses were of the variety "It works for other people." I got on the server, watched the MySQL server for a few minutes, and found the problem. It was running the query ".... WHERE email LIKE '%some@email%'" quite a bit. That causes a full table scan. I had to show him proof this was happening before he'd fix it.
That turned into a big incident about upgrading to a new version and this and that.
But the best response from Bob was the last big one we went though. We couldn't upload large lists of new customers (1000s) to the software. It would take HOURS and eventually the connection would drop (this is all a web interface, of course). We asked Bob to fix this or at least give us a work around. The request came from someone in Sales, asking him what they were doing wrong.
He came back with a word document of instructions. We (in IT) were copied in on the email. It's a good thing we read the instructions before someone got a change to use them. They were, essentially:
He wanted end users to log into the server by command line and run all sorts of SQL commands, because he didn't want to fix the web based GUI. He fixed it pretty fast when we raised a stink about his solution.
But one of the worst things is the email that contained those instructions. Sent to various people, it contained the root passwords for the server and MySQL, in plaintext.
Easily the stupidest work around I've seen. Every time something comes up, we consider dumping Bob's Mailer. I keep hoping we will. Dealing with Bob is a major pain.
Call social services. Find out if they can just take him in for his own good for a psych eval. They might be able to, as it sounds like at this point he may be a harm to himself. Since it's long term harm, it may not work.
If not, you need to hold an intervention. You and everyone you can think of who cares about him. Family too. Have a clinical social worker there, and get their help setting it up.
If he becomes violent, have him arrested and they'll get him help.
If he threatens suicide, you can have him held on a mandatory 72 hour psych-eval.
You're trying to save his life. What he thinks of you doesn't matter. If he never speaks to you again, it's OK as long as you can help him.
Yep. I didn't upvote this in the FireHose because it seemed to be just a collection of "Intel makes something".
Ars Technica has a descriptive hands-on preview. Much more useful.
I think part of the problem is that the term "computer" refers to the monitor as well as the box.
No it doesn't. That's the same thing. You're calling a car a "wheel" again.
It's a big user visible external component. Calling it the "TV" is much better (although still horribly wrong).
If you want to use a computer, you can learn the names of the 3 parts you actually touch: monitor, mouse, keyboard. I'm not asking for a large amount here. You know the difference between a wheel, a bumper, and a hood, right? You know that all three of those do not mean "car", right?
Same thing.
When you need a word to refer to the entirety of the computer becuase you don't know what's wrong or the name of the component with the problem how about using the word... computer.
Do you refer to your entire car as "the axle"? Same thing.
But people are expected to know that a radiator is not the same as a car. I don't expect people to know the difference between SATA and IDE, but they need to know the difference between the engine and the wheels.
If you want to discuss something, you need to know at least a decent subset of the vocabulary that goes with it. If you don't, then you use phrases like "my car is broken" and "it keeps overheating", not "the axel is broken". Just because you know the word axle is a car thing doesn't mean it's OK to use it to refer to any part of the car.
There is a video called A Sneak Preview of Wolfram|Alpha on YouTube that seems to have been filmed at a talk Wolfram gave. After watching it I think I have a decent idea of what it's like to use, and just how very different it is from every other search out there. I can't wait to try it.
And to see what happens when you search for "Rick Astley".
I'd also like to see if it can convert things like 1 GB into Libraries of Congress. Google's unit conversion doesn't include the LOC, sadly.
No, they don't!
It's the big secret of the snack-food world. People have been killed for revealing it. They are actually made by *loud crash*
Oh crud, they found me! HELP M#*%(&#*# NO CARRIER
While Oracle is big, I kind of doubt that they could ever keep up with Intel. Even in turn-key appliance servers (sort of an iMac of databases, pre-configured computer), Intel/AMD will outstrip them in performance and they won't be able to stay up to date.
The only place I can think that this would be useful is routers. In a turn-key appliance like that that does a very specialized job (especially one that requires custom silicon to do the routing fast enough), SPARC could make sense. It would make it harder to steal their software (because you'd have to run on SPARC). It would give them total control (no need to source processors from external companies). They could even build the SPARC cores into the same chips that hold all the magic high-speed routing magic.
SPARC could be useful, but I doubt they'll try and compete in the general market.
This is just off the top of my head. Is there something special about SPARC that would make it remarkably good at some specific application that Oracle uses?
How about Miles Prower?
Until Mozilla has control over Flash, most internet uses will have to put up with buggy plugins. This is about being defensive instead of just getting shot.
Congratulations, you've invented a variation on the S-100 bus.
Now with the ability to do external PCI express, this could be reasonably possible again, maybe. I'd think you'd have big signal integrity problems.
I always preferred The Chronicle.
You're right on that one. Ireland was a few years ago. I remember reading last year (or the year before?) that Ireland was losing it's "low tax" business to other countries (European and otherwise) that were even lower in taxes.
Congratulations on missing the point congress. (surprise)
Forbes had a great piece on this a few months ago. People aren't going to Ireland / the Caymans because they don't want to pay taxes and just want to cheat... the cost of compliance is too high.
One of the good things Regan was supposed to have done was get lots of tax money back to the US by simplifying our tax code. Even though they may have brought their money back from countries with lower tax burdens, it was easier to have it in the US.
There is an opportunity cost to moving your money to another country or using a tax shelter (legal or not). People judge it worth it because of what they have to go through.
If you simply simplify the tax code so it's not so hard to deal with, people will come back. Things have only gotten worse recently with SarbOx. Closing loopholes is trying to tie the arms of suicidal people to beds. It works much better to try to get them to stop being suicidal.
There will always be people who try to cheat the system because they are immoral jerks. But if it doesn't take wealthy people a team of 30 tax attorneys to keep their wealth in line, they're more likely to keep it in the US and avoid the hassle of all the international laws (and spending 183 days of the year out of the country, and blah blah blah). No tax breaks for pork farmers on 17-35 acres in areas that don't observe daylight savings time unless they grow at least 3% barley ethanol using sustainable methods.
The problem is complexity in the tax code, not tax shelters.
Example way to fix things.
Tramiel didn't get it, he was in the right place at the right time with a specific idea. I recently finished reading On The Edge, a book all about Commodore (warning: ref link, since I copied it off my site).
Basically Tramiel was doing what he did in the calculator business, the one thing he always did: he pushed for lower prices. This was over the objections of the engineers and such.
With the PET and C64 it was a huge hit. The market wanted something like that.
Tramiel also decided to QUADRUPLE the RAM in the C64, which really helped it.
But later he wanted to compete with Sinclair and have a sub $100 computer. He didn't care about higher end computers, he was still selling calculators (price is everything). This was when the market wanted an improved C64. He didn't get it, he just wanted something cheaper still. Marketing didn't even want to touch some of their products (Vic20?) because they were afraid they'd upset their success.
When computers became more common and people started having a good investment in software (instead of just one program or writing their own BASIC stuff), people wanted backwards compatibility instead of having to throw away their $750 software investment. But that didn't fit with the "make a cheaper computer again" philosophy. Calculators didn't have that kind of issue, each one was a stand alone sale. Computers stopped working like that, and Tramiel didn't get it.
It was a REALLY good book if you are interested in this kind of stuff. How Commodore came up, how some people continually made decisions that basically sunk the company (the CFO, who's name escapes me). How they got lucky, how they nearly messed it up, how they lost it, how they almost got it back. A great story.
Should I be worried that I'd be willing to watch that?
The subscriber count is one of the big problems of free newspapers, since they can't get accurate numbers. But if you gave away free eReaders, they could report back reader numbers so you could value the ads much better, allowing you to get higher rates since you can prove your readership (instead of surveys saying it's between 1,500 and 30,000), right?
Good point. A real subscription to WSJ or NYT is not cheap. But keeping current subscribers isn't really the problem, is it? It would be much better (financially) to get some old subscribers back, or even new subscribers.
The cost argument is very good, but I don't want 3-4 eReaders, each that only works on one paper. That's just a hassle.
Then there is the up-front cost. Right now I can buy my local paper only on Sundays, or when I see an interesting story. But very few people will front the $360 unless they are very committed. If they are that committed, they probably already subscribe. But you can't get rid of the paper edition, because how would you attract new readers when the price of starting goes from $1.50 to $360? You have to keep print, so you won't be able to cut costs too much.
I'd think 8.5"x11" would be pretty good, as long as the device was about that size (not +2" on each side, keyboard, etc).
Of course, this is the preverbal deck chairs on the Titanic. The problem with newspapers isn't the paper. Sure paper is expensive (compared to digital bits), and big and a bit of a hassle compared to a theoretical eBook (ignore preference). But changing the medium won't work.
The content is already out there. It's on the web. I can get new news faster. Half the stuff in many papers comes straight off the AP wire anyway. Making newspapers more convenient won't work, they've already done that with their websites.
It's the business model that needs rethinking. Digital readers may certainly help, but they alone will do nothing to fix the problems.
Yes. Because nothing will boost readership like each newspaper requiring it's own custom $300 reader that doesn't work for any of the other newspapers or books.
Just make it work on the popular readers out there (at this point that's the Kindle and the Sony devices). Amazon is rumored to release a new Kindle with a bigger screen on Wednesday (they've got a press conference announced).
Slashdot, RTFA, blah blah blah.
If you go to the Wiki, and read the link in the top article, there is a link to OS News. If you follow that and read down in the comments, you'll find this post by the architect of the VGA emulation.
Apparently it really is emulation. Their MCU that they use as a PCI interface has a mode that generates the raw pixels when given VGA commands. It handles the VGA interface. The graphics processor just receives (from it's perspective) pixmaps that are constantly generated by the MCU in VGA mode.
The guy says that VGA on their card is actually resolution independent (since the MCU generates what is needed) and could actually be up-sampled to show clearer fonts without the OS having any idea it was going on.
He says it's not the cleanest way of doing things (from a methodology standpoint), but it has the least impact on the design of the hardware (compared to a "real" VGA interface).
"Bacon Lung"
Much better name.
A crowd source is where crowds come from, like an apartment building.
A crowd sink is where the crowds go to, like a stadium event.
Standard EE terminology. So the poster must be looking for... a place to steal people from to force them to translate boring lectures? I'm not sure how electrical engineering applies here.
Maybe electroshocks as "encouragement" to do the work?
They never aimed the product at your average 8 year old. It really seemed like a toy of "older" boys (24+) who have money. I don't think it was ever aimed at children. They wanted to do that later, but they knew their initial product couldn't work in that market for a ton of reasons (price being the main one).