You've obviously never worked for a micro manager.
At any one time I'm working on 4 or 5 projects each one with a different project managers (some micro and some macro managers) and also providing support for systems with as many as 5 million users. When my IM shows as being "Away" or "Do Not Disturb" it is often perceived as I'm not working. Add to that, my boss telling me I have to be available and it doesn't leave me with a lot of options.
I know that IM has good points but it also has a number bad points and one of those is that it is very easy to abuse.
Doesn't your IM system support Do Not Disturb as a status?
Of course, but in my office the use of the "Do Not Disturb" feature is tracked and frequently has to be justified.
Bosses who log IM probably also log email, so that's a wash.
They can also log phone calls and vmail. My point was that the GGP suggested that logging was a positive feature. My point was that there is also a negative.
Interesting. I've never had a choice of whether to respond quickly to questions, regardless of how they arrived.
Your sarcasm aside, anyone in a support position of course has to respond quickly but with IM it now has to be instant. With email you can prioritize before responding. Not all problems require instantaneous action.
If you go back and read the GGP you would see that it was making IM sound like a panacea of communication. I was merely pointing out that there are negative aspects as well. IM, like any other form of communication, has it's uses but unlike other forms it is easier to abuse by those who don't use common sense or proper etiquette.
I am forced to use IM at work and all the benefits you list also have negatives associated with them.
Being "instant" allows people to annoy you for any little thing. The dozen or so phone interruptions I used to get a day are now 20-30 IM interruptions.
"Logging of communications" also means you have no privacy. And if you think your boss isn't tracking you by your IM status you're kidding yourself.
Screen popups mean that you don't have to wait for the recipient to check their email/vmail but it also means that you just interrupted what they were doing. I don't know how many times I was trying to solve a problem and I got IMed by multiple people asking if I had solved the problem.
The difference between IM and previous forms of communication is that I used to have a choice.
Don't do it. They'll be forced to wear polyester suits with bell bottoms. Then there'll be a horrible accident and the moon will get blown out of Earth's orbit and send the moon and it's inhabitants on an interstellar journey encountering alien races and strange powerful forces. Wait...it's 2005 and that hasn't happened. Damn you Gerry and Sylvia Anderson! Damn you all to hell!!!
Of course I think they should have been involved but they should have been involved in 1939. If they had then Hitler would have been stopped before overrunning Europe and Japan wouldn't have attacked Pearl Harbour.
It bugs me when people praise the Americans for "winning" WWII when many countries were there from the beginning and didn't have to wait to get attacked before they stood up to Germany and their allies.
It's a coward that runs away when your friends are being attacked.
I suspect that if Japan hadn't attacked the U.S. the government would have let the rest of the world fall to Hitler. If that's what it took to get the U.S. to care about what was happening all around them then I'm glad Japan attacked the U.S.
These comments are about the U.S. government at the time and are not meant to diminish the sacrifices made by millions of Americans after 1941. Since then the U.S. has done a lot of good and should be respected for it but that doesn't mean that in 1939 they didn't make a number of bad choices.
IE 5.5/6 has broken support for PNG - it doesn't support alpha transparency except using a vendor specific extension. I haven't seen it personally but apparently IE 7 has full PNG support.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
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· Score: 1
I stand corrected. I hadn't heard that Python and Perl had made it to OS/390.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
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· Score: 4, Informative
I've never seen any serious developper that could tell me he was able to make Java code flawlessly run on every plateform.
I work on a Java app that processes over 25 million transactions a week for a large financial institution.
This app used to run on OS/390 but we moved it to Solaris and the only compatibility problem we found had nothing to do with Java but SQL language differences going from DB/2 to Oracle. Now we do all of our development on Windows and our production runs on Solaris using the code we compiled and packaged on Windows.
Now that might not be "every platform" but I think you'll agree that the three platforms I mentioned are about as different as you can get. Especially OS/390 on which none of the other languages mentioned in this discussion will even run.
There is no technical reason that spyware is a Windows specific problem but right now spyware does not target Linux or MacOS. Spyware targets Windows because it is the most common OS, is relatively homogeneous and has a number of known security holes.
Until MS plugs the holes or other OS's become more widespread this will continue to be a Windows specific issue.
Firstly, Java is a bit more sophisticated than BASIC.
Sun's implementation may not be open enough for some but the Sun community license is not as closed as something like.NET.
And while Sun's Java implementation is not entirely open the Java spec is open which has allowed many vendors to create compatible runtimes. GNU has GCJ which is still a work in progress but is getting better all the time. The project may just be starting but Apache's Harmony is also promising.
A 100% open source Java runtime implementation is inevitable.
I first used DB2 (on MVS) about 17 years ago and I believe it had stored procedures back then. I started using DB2 UDB on OS/2 and Windows almost a decade ago and I believe they both had stored procedures.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, looks like Hubble is out of focus again.
Again, if that happens I don't think saving your pictures of the family trip to Disneyworld will be all that important.
Unfortunately, obviousness is in the eye of the beholder. What may seem obvious to one of us may not be so obvious to a patent clerk.
If that happens I don't think saving your pictures of the family trip to Disneyworld will be all that important.
Perhaps it's time to dust off your resume? ;-)
If I thought it would be any different somewhere else I would.
You've obviously never worked for a micro manager.
At any one time I'm working on 4 or 5 projects each one with a different project managers (some micro and some macro managers) and also providing support for systems with as many as 5 million users. When my IM shows as being "Away" or "Do Not Disturb" it is often perceived as I'm not working. Add to that, my boss telling me I have to be available and it doesn't leave me with a lot of options.
I know that IM has good points but it also has a number bad points and one of those is that it is very easy to abuse.
Doesn't your IM system support Do Not Disturb as a status?
Of course, but in my office the use of the "Do Not Disturb" feature is tracked and frequently has to be justified.
Bosses who log IM probably also log email, so that's a wash.
They can also log phone calls and vmail. My point was that the GGP suggested that logging was a positive feature. My point was that there is also a negative.
Interesting. I've never had a choice of whether to respond quickly to questions, regardless of how they arrived.
Your sarcasm aside, anyone in a support position of course has to respond quickly but with IM it now has to be instant. With email you can prioritize before responding. Not all problems require instantaneous action.
If you go back and read the GGP you would see that it was making IM sound like a panacea of communication. I was merely pointing out that there are negative aspects as well. IM, like any other form of communication, has it's uses but unlike other forms it is easier to abuse by those who don't use common sense or proper etiquette.
I am forced to use IM at work and all the benefits you list also have negatives associated with them.
Being "instant" allows people to annoy you for any little thing. The dozen or so phone interruptions I used to get a day are now 20-30 IM interruptions.
"Logging of communications" also means you have no privacy. And if you think your boss isn't tracking you by your IM status you're kidding yourself.
Screen popups mean that you don't have to wait for the recipient to check their email/vmail but it also means that you just interrupted what they were doing. I don't know how many times I was trying to solve a problem and I got IMed by multiple people asking if I had solved the problem.
The difference between IM and previous forms of communication is that I used to have a choice.
Don't do it. They'll be forced to wear polyester suits with bell bottoms. Then there'll be a horrible accident and the moon will get blown out of Earth's orbit and send the moon and it's inhabitants on an interstellar journey encountering alien races and strange powerful forces. Wait...it's 2005 and that hasn't happened. Damn you Gerry and Sylvia Anderson! Damn you all to hell!!!
Another definition of "pundit" is one who gives opinions in an authoritative manner (syn CRITIC).
A critic can definitely be clueless, especially in Dvorak's case.
Besides, just because someone is "learned, wise or knowledgeable" does not mean they're learned, wise or knowledgeable about every subject.
Luckily his next assignment is on George Orwell's 1984.
It would be rather difficult for the FBI to invoke the Patriot Act since Rogers is a Canadian company.
Of course I think they should have been involved but they should have been involved in 1939. If they had then Hitler would have been stopped before overrunning Europe and Japan wouldn't have attacked Pearl Harbour.
It bugs me when people praise the Americans for "winning" WWII when many countries were there from the beginning and didn't have to wait to get attacked before they stood up to Germany and their allies.
It's a coward that runs away when your friends are being attacked.
I suspect that if Japan hadn't attacked the U.S. the government would have let the rest of the world fall to Hitler. If that's what it took to get the U.S. to care about what was happening all around them then I'm glad Japan attacked the U.S.
These comments are about the U.S. government at the time and are not meant to diminish the sacrifices made by millions of Americans after 1941. Since then the U.S. has done a lot of good and should be respected for it but that doesn't mean that in 1939 they didn't make a number of bad choices.
The world was already hurting by the time Japan "invited" the U.S. into WWII.
IE 5.5/6 has broken support for PNG - it doesn't support alpha transparency except using a vendor specific extension. I haven't seen it personally but apparently IE 7 has full PNG support.
I stand corrected. I hadn't heard that Python and Perl had made it to OS/390.
I work on a Java app that processes over 25 million transactions a week for a large financial institution.
This app used to run on OS/390 but we moved it to Solaris and the only compatibility problem we found had nothing to do with Java but SQL language differences going from DB/2 to Oracle. Now we do all of our development on Windows and our production runs on Solaris using the code we compiled and packaged on Windows.
Now that might not be "every platform" but I think you'll agree that the three platforms I mentioned are about as different as you can get. Especially OS/390 on which none of the other languages mentioned in this discussion will even run.
There is no technical reason that spyware is a Windows specific problem but right now spyware does not target Linux or MacOS. Spyware targets Windows because it is the most common OS, is relatively homogeneous and has a number of known security holes.
Until MS plugs the holes or other OS's become more widespread this will continue to be a Windows specific issue.
Maybe that's why Threshold has been cancelled, so as not to alarm the public. Maybe its already happened...
I was referring to the proprietary extensions mentioned by the grandparent post.
Firstly, Java is a bit more sophisticated than BASIC.
.NET.
Sun's implementation may not be open enough for some but the Sun community license is not as closed as something like
And while Sun's Java implementation is not entirely open the Java spec is open which has allowed many vendors to create compatible runtimes. GNU has GCJ which is still a work in progress but is getting better all the time. The project may just be starting but Apache's Harmony is also promising.
A 100% open source Java runtime implementation is inevitable.
I first used DB2 (on MVS) about 17 years ago and I believe it had stored procedures back then. I started using DB2 UDB on OS/2 and Windows almost a decade ago and I believe they both had stored procedures.
Hurray for proprietary extensions that promote vendor lock-in.
Are there any myths you really, really, really wanted to test but the producers wouldn't let you? If so, why.
And since everyone else is asking, can I have Kari's phone number.
It wouldn't be Slashdot if someone didn't jump to a conclusion with little or no evidence.