"... the most important part of our strategy with Atlas is to the take the rocket science out of Ajax and make it easier for our customers to create more compelling experiences on the Web."
If it isn't Rocket Science, does that mean Microsoft thinks its developers are simpletons?
This recent article makes some good points, including: How come the traditional GIS vendors were not driving this latest wave of disruption? Certainly the ideas and even the technology has been around for many, many years - but true innovation isn't always about inventing something completely new from scratch, rather it is applying existing ideas creatively in new ways. That is known as pushing the boundaries. It appears that it is the map "hobbyists" and not the "professionals" currently leading the way. (Hmm, didn't "hobbyists" invent the personal computer...)
The Safety and Instruction Manual for the N-Charge I doesn't explicitly say anything about not putting it underneath a laptop - but it does say the system will shutdown due to abnormally high temperature around the unit (>95F). If your laptop gets too hot to actually sit in your lap, it is probably not a great idea to put this battery directly underneath it!
However, using a CoolPad for heat disapation would probably work fine.
I have been using an N-Charge I for several years now and agree that it is an excellent external battery. I particularly love the flat shape that fits very nicely in a carrying case next to the laptop itself. The N-Charge also has the nice feature that because it plugs into the laptop's external power outlet, the PC acts like it was plugged into an electrical outlet rather than having the processor running at a stepped down rate common for internal battery use only. One real shortcoming with the N-Charge I is that the removable power connector does not fit very securely on the battery.
The old N-Charge I came in two charge versions, one about 5 hours and the other about 10 hours (same case, just more battery). However, the new (brick cube) N-Charge II model only comes with a 5-hour charge - you are supposed to purchase a second "piggyback" unit to double that. The problem is that two of these batteries are much more awkward to pack or use with a laptop (The N-Charge I fits very nicely under the PC when desk space is at a premium). The first generation battery was clearly intended for use with a laptop, this newer version appears to be an attempt to cater to a wider range of potential users.
ITIL is a good starting point - another good summary of ITIL can be
found at:
What is ITIL?
Another closely related methodology is "Visible Ops" from
the Technology Process Institute.
Also have a look at their TWiki site which is quite
valulable:
ITPI TWiki.
Tripwire has also been supporting this methodology
and has some good information about it on their "IT Best Practices"
web site.
One real problem with ITIL is that it primarily focuses on what how to
structure organizations and procedures but not on
the nuts and bolts on how to actually implement the methodology
in a particular situation. The "Visible Ops" methodology listed above tries to address some of these shortcomings with ITIL.
Ultimately, it is not the strict application of a particular
methodology itself that is going to solve any such problems.
That is really only going to happen when experienced management
working with competent staff appropriately apply these techniques
to their own organization.
Certainly watch out for any pronouncements of
a single
"Silver Bullet" methodology!
Depending upon how and where you use your laptop, an external battery can be a godsend - you'll then rarely ever have to worry about running out of power after a couple of hours of use or about then finding an extenal outlet (or extension cords or tripping over the cords, etc). Changing an internal battery can be a real inconvenience and will only add a couple of more hours of use. I am particularly thinking of all-day conferences or even on-site consulting where you cannot be certain of a power source.
External battery packs aren't cheap but also are not all that more than purchasing a new internal battery. They often come with interchangeable plugs so you can use them with different vendor's laptops. Depending upon how much you are willing to pay, you can get such batteries with 4-5 or 9-10 hours of extended use (over and above the capacity of the internal battery - the external battery pack can also be used to recharge the internal battery). In addition, external battery packs simulate an AC power plug thus your laptop will run at full power and not in reduced battery mode. Often you can also power your cell phone or PDA from an external battery pack. The primary disadvantage is the added 2-3 pounds of weight you'll need to carry - if you are running around a lot with the laptop versus sitting some where a long time this can be annoying.
I've had excellent experience with the N-Charge battery power system from Valence Technologies (
http://www.n-chargepower.com/). It is a flat battery that can sit under your laptop - (although I also use a CoolPad) and easily slides into most carrying bags. There are others available but I have not used them.
Over the years the U.S. has also shown that it is quite able at selectively banning imports of various sorts for all sorts of reasons. U.S. consumers currently pay 2-3 times the world price for sugar because of imports constraints - and this mostly benefits a select handful number of U.S. growers (hate to call them 'farmers' since it is usually big corporate farms that are involved...). Ulimately the big losers are the U.S. consumers who are in effect subsidizing a small number of U.S. producers.
This is true of most trade constraints - ultimately any artifical barrier to trade end up highly warping the local economy with only a select few really benefiting.
The real problem with increasing international trade, including off-shore white collar jobs, is that it introduces change and subsequently a great deal of uncertainly - employees worry about losing their jobs, and more importantly, being able to find an equivalent paying one. While the benefits from trade are widespread (lower prices for all sorts of services and products) but diffuse - the impacts of lost jobs are more focused and therefore readily apparent. Governments have done a poor job of assisting employees adjust to a changing economy.
You might add to your comments that the "distance" measure of importance need not be "geographical" - it could also be "social" or some other measure of affinity. An artist of one region of the world may feel "closer" to artists physically located elsewhere than with their next-door neighbors (and likely doesn't even know them). A "social tag" as related to the messenger might be more relevant than any "geo tag".
Of course, modern communications have pretty much shattered many notions of physical space and continues to bring many groups of people closer together than ever before (and hence makes Tobler's axiom, which he first expoused nearly 40 years ago, less relevant in this context). The "space" that people now inhabit now has less to do with physical geography and more with social connections.
Although, as you point out, traces of tribalism ("us" versus "them") still exist with such prejudices based on the assumption of ethnic or political state regionalism - and the use of "geo tags" would be a manifestation and a magnification of this prejudice.
Furthermore, neither PostgreSQL or mSQL have decent ports (e.g. easy to setup) on Windows (PostgreSQL requires installing Cygwin first)- mySQL does. This allows mySQL to compete with the "bigwigs" in this market (most particularly SQL Server). mySQL also works quite well on Solaris. Although the Linux server market share is increasing, especially for web servers, it still is not yet a major platform for commercial database software.
"Emphasizing the proliferation of Web services, [Jeff] Suttor said more than a million people were mobilized for an anti-war protest several weeks ago via the Web, with Web services being used to coordinate the activity.
But he had dire words for U.S.-based programmers. 'Right now, we're probably the last generation of North American-based coders. Everything that can be done is being done in other places,' he [Jeff Suttor, staff engineer for Web technologies and standards in the Java Web services group at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems] said."
So, is the existance of the Internet, which makes it easy to connect people world-wide, ultimately going to be the curse of most software professionals in the 'developed' world, when much lower salaried (and just as experienced) developers in other countries can easily undercut them for such services? Was the tech boom centered in Silicon Valley just an initial flameout with nothing but a few glowing embers scattered about?
> This guy basically has the "bastard operator from
> hell" mentality, he's just a little more polite
about it.
Too true and still an unfortunate stereotype of all too many self-annointed sysadmins, or at least those who can get away with this attitude. Unfortunately, many inexperienced management types still think that this is acceptable behavior - but that is changing.
He sounds like he works at a relatively small and fairly autonomous site without too much interaction with other groups/departments using the systems on a day-to-day basis. His management also doesn't appear to know what is going on - but it probably doesn't matter and they don't care given the circumstances of this particular site.
Any one involved in system admininstration or interested in this type of job should consider the recent book "The Practice of System and Network Administration" (by Thomas A. Limoncelli and Christine Hogan) a must read. This is a far more realistic description of contemporary practices in system administration than the comments made in this article.
The ApacheWeek report on ApacheCon is a bit skimpy - there were always several concurrent sessions during the day which sometimes made it difficult to choose a session to attend. Some presentations were just so-so (more basic tutorial but with no particularly insight info) while many were quite good (I liked the Tomcat performance/security talks). Same with the keynotes (I got the impression that Sun isn't really sure where it is going...). Of even more interest were some of the BOFs held in the evening or early morning which were a better forum for meeting and discussing different projects (along with the state of the Apache world!). There wasn't much to the vendor/exhibit area although it was a good place to hang out between sessions.
Particular kudos to Apple for the computer and wireless support at ApacheCon! (It did seem as if half of the laptops at the conference were iBooks or PowerBooks:-) All in all a good conference and the Las Vegas location wasn't too bad.
There were actually a number of bloggers at ApacheCon aside from Michael Radwin - each with their own independent views/opinions (!) of what they saw/heard;-) They provide a alternative perspective to Mr. Radwin's own blog. Here are a couple of others: [you may have to skip to the dated entries Nov 19-22 - the conference really started with the first keynote on that Tuesday, there were tutorials only (extra $) on Monday]
How about splitting up big e-mail attachments ...
on
E-Mail Size Limits?
·
· Score: 1
My company has no size limit on outgoing e-mail but size limits are a big issue for many sites that receive e-mail from us. So far we haven't been hosed by gigantic incoming attachments but our e-mail servers intentially have a huge amount of memory and disk space. However, a bigger bottleneck is that the virus checker has to plow through such huge files. Users do like to user e-mail to send documents because it is something they understand how to do even if it is not the most appropriate way of doing so.
For those sites that have incoming e-mail size limits (which usually seem to be 2MB or 10MB) we recommend users compress and/or split up their large attachment files - some mail servers will automatically re-combine the split messages when they are received (otherwise the recipients of the e-mail would need access to the utilities to do this). There are numerous free and shareware utilities to do this for just about any OS. This is a lot less hassle than using FTP or even a web server to distribute/receive such files.
If your wife with her new PhD (you don't mention her field) really has to jump around from one institution to another pursuing postdocs year after year just to maintain her foot in academia then the likelihood of her ever getting a tenure-track position are pretty slim. Especially in the current recession. (Why can't she obtain a postdoc and work from her current school or even from home, perhaps commuting occassionally to another institution?). Too bad you can't convince her to also consider other alternative job opportunities although maybe that approach will only work after after a couple of years of her bouncing around from one low-pay postdoc to another. If her postdocs are in university towns or small communities and not near any cities you may well find yourself under-employed or unemployed.
In your case, you might look around for employment at a large corporation that does allow telecommuting. Some certainly do but you'll have to ask around the grapevine to find out. I know of a couple of former co-workers whose wives went back to grad school in another state and their current employers set up telecommuting for them. You'd also likely have to work at such a company for a year or more before being allowed to do this and it might also depend upon the type of work involved. Of course, if you continually moved from one place to another yearly, the company might not like it.
And exactly how many hundreds of millions of dollars in cash assets is Microsoft sitting on?! Isn't this the biggest and by far the wealthiest software corporation in the world? Is it really not unreasonable that Microsoft ought to have gotten this SSL stuff right the first time? Especially since this security software turns out to be a fundamental component in all of their current OSes?? Didn't Microsoft just spend a month and more having its programming staff supposedly reviewing their software for potential security issues???
Konqueror is just a browser developed and maintained by a handful of individuals, probably mostly part-time and without pay. I'd be more willing to expect/tolerate some bugs (although hopefully any major ones like this would get fixed real quick...).
Geez! No wonder people get on Microsoft's case!
The only trend I see is Microsoft's parade of bugs. Oh look, here comes their bloated OS blimp being pulled the fingerpointing PR clowns...
I've spent 12+ years working as a full-time staff programmer/sys admin in academia (on both coasts and across the country) and nearly as long in the private sector (including some pretty large corporations) and now I am happily working for a not-for-profit organization. In that time I've seen the gamut of working conditions at both types of environments - some pretty sorry (the overblown egos and incompetent diehards exist in both places). I'm sure the original poster knows that the real answer as to which is a better environment to work in now - academia or the private sector - is "it depends". It depends on what you are willing to tolerate along with the local working conditions for a particular position. My general impression of academia is that it tends to be a lot more low-key and you often get a lot of leeway for managing your own time/work - it is also neat that you often can see that your work is appreciated and/or you are contributing to useful research (not always the case, but ideally). The trade-off is that salaries are much lower in academia (often substantially so) and not very reliable if you are being paid out of "soft" (research) money. And don't expect more than 2-4% annual salary increases and certainly forget about "bonuses". Also good luck trying to find any type of desirable academia computer job - there never are all that many openings and most such positions go to former (or current) students - hence the low pay (it helps if you have some contacts in academia both as sources of reliable insider information and as references). It has been my experience that business executive/manager types do tend to look down upon academic work experience as not being as relevant/valuable to the private sector corporate world. To some degree that is probably true as my impression of most corporate IT work is that it focuses upon task-oriented and regimented processes, you are often more of a cog that a true contributer. Some people seemed to like that or are willing to put up with such work for the money...
There are two aspects to good system administration: one is system technical know-how which may or may not be well taught in courses, the other is practical administration skills which you will likely never learn via coursework. This book covers the later topic very well and ought to be a must-read for anyone having system admin responsibilities! Maybe not quite the same as years of accumulated work experience in the field but an invaluable resource nonetheless. And this book isn't as likely to become obsolete as quickly as that "Learn C++ Now" or "COM Interface Programming" textbook!
I'd also recommend having a look at another recent book on the same topic but with much more of a technical emphasis (and not having quite so many humorous antidotes): Principles of Network and System Administration by Mark Burgess (author of cfengine), 2000, Addison-Wesley. The idea behind the two books is the same though - as Burgess points out, "being a system administrator is as much a state of mind as it is being about being knowledgeable."
Perhaps the greatest trick of the punchcard era was the trick of tossing a deck of cards, say a program that had to stay in order, across the room with no rubber band around it. There was a technique for doing this so that the deck would fly across the room in one piece. This required skillfully sliding the top and bottom cards off the deck as it was released into flight. Not for the timid.
Hmm - let's say you did accidentally drop that card deck on the floor or fumbled it while loading the stacks of card into the card reader (only so many cards could fit in the reader at one load - if you had boxes of cards you had to continually feed them in...)? Well, columns 73-80 were reserved for numbering each card - you thus had a fighting chance of getting the cards back in order:-) Just collect them off of the floor, run them through a sorter, and then manually check that you aren't missing any cards. Of course, you did number the cards didn't you:-) The use of a formatted drum card (which appeared on later punch card machines) did make this task a bit easier. In effect, drum cards (made from a regular punch card and wrapped around a drum on the punch card machine) defined pre-formatted layouts for a card so you could do things such as tab ahead to the desired column, automatically insert fixed text, repeat punching the same card, etc. You could also have your cards numbered by running them again through another machine (which could also make a "back-up" deck of cards for you). And remember to initially number them by increments of 10, for example, to permit adding new cards to the deck later (e.g. new progamming code).
Standard IBM keypunches (during most of the 1960's with many still in use in the 1970s') did not type the letters on the cards when you punched the holes.
You could also turn off printing on latter punch card machines - saved ink:-) - but also enabled a degree of security for your code and data as it was a lot harder and more time-consuming trying to determine the character typed from the hole punches!
I've never come across them either at MSP - heck, before Sept 11 it was difficult enough just to find ANY place to sit down with a PC much less a table with a working outlet! (I bet there are outlets in the frequent flyer lounges for Northwest and United). But then again the MSP airport has been under re-construction for quite some time and maybe this is one of the new amenities along with the people movers! Hopefully the wireless reception with work near Caribou Coffee - and isn't Starbucks supposed to be sponsoring wireless service in its outlets:-) (An airport caffeine tax might help pay for the "free" wireless setup...). Or you could just go over to the newly remodeled Humphrey Terminal (home of the now defunct Sun Country airlines) as I'm sure you'd find an unused outlet or two there (but no wireless:-(
Someone made an interesting point about being able to use the electrical outlets on the planes - where would you get the appropriate power cable though?
I'm curious - if Itanium flounders where does that leave HP which supposedly was going to give up on its PA-RISC chip design and replace it with Intel processors? There was a lot of hype from HP about how economical for them this was going to be in the long run by adopting a 64-bit commodity processor. Of course, with all of the delays HP has kept having to extend its PA-RISC line of processors. Might HP insist that Intel keep developing Itanium even if it flops in the consumer market so Intel might have to develop two versions of a 64-bit processor? Maybe SUN didn't screw up after all by not porting Solaris to the Itanium line:-)
What is so bad about AOL?... If there is one thing that could dramatically change the history of computing and put power back into YOUR hands, this is it.
Looking back on AOL's handling of Netscape, I shutter to think that the same fate would befall upon Redhat. Netscape is effectively a shell of its old self (if that) and its browser continues to lose out in popularity to Internet Explorer (and for good reason - how long did it take for a finally usable version 6.2 to appear?!). So where has been AOL's big promotion of the Netscape browser and supposed termination of its reliance on IE over the past couple of years? It is not as if AOL hasn't had plenty of time to make the switch. It seems that AOL is simply using Netscape as a bargaining chip against Microsoft to wrestle a better marketing deal from them regarding IE. AOL has never had a particularly good reputation regarding service to its users much less empowering them with open and innovative technology.
AOL purchasing Redhat to be a dramatic change in the history of computing?! Certainly not from a computing perspective. More like another example of BigCo marketing style again winning out over technological substance.
Microsoft's not stupid -- they know from history that open, standard systems almost always outcompete even the most entrenched closed systems eventually.
What a BIZZARE statement regarding Microsoft. Never mind that Visual Basic - the most widely used programming language - is completely proprietary and Microsoft windows specific. Never mind that Microsoft has perverted every "open" standard they use to add their own extensions (often undocumented) effectively turning them into proprietary protocols. The C# language specification may have been passed off to an obscure standards group (that normally doesn't deal with computer languages) but it hardly opens up all of the APIs which really define.NET and the use of C#. "Embrace and extend" is a standard Microsoft policy - has been for a long time and will continue to be. It is not at all clear that CLR and.NET are open standards as it is given the possibility of hidden patents etc.
Microsoft was caught doing the same thing to Java once they had licensed its use (SUN was pretty naive to have permitted this - maybe they didn't have good enough lawyers...). As soon as the court found Microsoft guilty, Microsoft announced it would dump Java for their own language which turned out to be C# (that looks and works a lot like Java).
Unless Sun has a rapid change of heart,.NET, C# and the CLR is going to vapourise Sun's marketshare in server applications and enterprise programming userbase due to sheer openness.
While SUN has not given up the trademark "Java", this language is hardly as restricted in use as Microsoft would like to imply. Given the incredible number of licensees of various forms of Java would hardly imply that the user base is scared off by SUN's intellectual property. Indeed, Microsoft's past insidious behavior will haunt their promotion of.NET as the new "open" standard. (Who hasn't gotten over the years burned by Microsoft's business practices...)
Glad to read about your applications! Of course, you are hardly alone in such endeavors! Half of the October 2001 issue of the Communications of the ACM was dedicated to High Performance Computing using Java. For a more immediate and applied example of using O-O methods for engineering type problems, have a look at the excellent recent book Object-Oriented Implementation of Numerical Methods: An Introduction using Java and Smalltalk by Dibier H. Bessett (Academic Press, 2001). I am sure it isn't too hard to find lots of other examples.
There is actually a wonderful recently published book entitled "The Tapir's Morning Bath" (by Elizabeth Royte) that is related this topic. The journalist author spent a year at a tropical rain-forest research facility in Panama trying to understand the scientists (most of whom are grad or post-grad students) and the purpose of their research. So what if you've counted how many types of beetles cluster in certain kinds of trees or determined which insects a bat species prefers to eat in a particular season?
The answer the author provides isn't that such information will necessarily save the world (may be it will) but rather that what drives these scientists is the sheer fun/excitment of looking and discovering things. Quoting the authors of another book "Tropical Nature", 'Complexity excites the mind and the discovery of patterns rewards it." Who needs art - or "Star Wars" movies for that matter? Well, the same answer applies to basic science - "it's good for us"...
Slashdot Mirror
If it is so "simple", why did Microsoft call it "Rocket Science" :-)
c le.jhtml?articleId=174400424
http://www.governmententerprise.com/news/showArti
"... the most important part of our strategy with Atlas is to the take the rocket science out of Ajax and make it easier for our customers to create more compelling experiences on the Web."
If it isn't Rocket Science, does that mean Microsoft thinks its developers are simpletons?
"GIS: A Mature Industry Tackles the Disruptive Technology Question"l e_id=904
...)
http://www.directionsmag.com/editorials.php?artic
This recent article makes some good points, including: How come the traditional GIS vendors were not driving this latest wave of disruption? Certainly the ideas and even the technology has been around for many, many years - but true innovation isn't always about inventing something completely new from scratch, rather it is applying existing ideas creatively in new ways. That is known as pushing the boundaries. It appears that it is the map "hobbyists" and not the "professionals" currently leading the way. (Hmm, didn't "hobbyists" invent the personal computer
However, using a CoolPad for heat disapation would probably work fine.
The old N-Charge I came in two charge versions, one about 5 hours and the other about 10 hours (same case, just more battery). However, the new (brick cube) N-Charge II model only comes with a 5-hour charge - you are supposed to purchase a second "piggyback" unit to double that. The problem is that two of these batteries are much more awkward to pack or use with a laptop (The N-Charge I fits very nicely under the PC when desk space is at a premium). The first generation battery was clearly intended for use with a laptop, this newer version appears to be an attempt to cater to a wider range of potential users.
Another closely related methodology is "Visible Ops" from the Technology Process Institute. Also have a look at their TWiki site which is quite valulable: ITPI TWiki. Tripwire has also been supporting this methodology and has some good information about it on their "IT Best Practices" web site.
One real problem with ITIL is that it primarily focuses on what how to structure organizations and procedures but not on the nuts and bolts on how to actually implement the methodology in a particular situation. The "Visible Ops" methodology listed above tries to address some of these shortcomings with ITIL.
Ultimately, it is not the strict application of a particular methodology itself that is going to solve any such problems. That is really only going to happen when experienced management working with competent staff appropriately apply these techniques to their own organization. Certainly watch out for any pronouncements of a single "Silver Bullet" methodology!
External battery packs aren't cheap but also are not all that more than purchasing a new internal battery. They often come with interchangeable plugs so you can use them with different vendor's laptops. Depending upon how much you are willing to pay, you can get such batteries with 4-5 or 9-10 hours of extended use (over and above the capacity of the internal battery - the external battery pack can also be used to recharge the internal battery). In addition, external battery packs simulate an AC power plug thus your laptop will run at full power and not in reduced battery mode. Often you can also power your cell phone or PDA from an external battery pack. The primary disadvantage is the added 2-3 pounds of weight you'll need to carry - if you are running around a lot with the laptop versus sitting some where a long time this can be annoying.
I've had excellent experience with the N-Charge battery power system from Valence Technologies ( http://www.n-chargepower.com/). It is a flat battery that can sit under your laptop - (although I also use a CoolPad) and easily slides into most carrying bags. There are others available but I have not used them.
Over the years the U.S. has also shown that it is quite able at selectively banning imports of various sorts for all sorts of reasons. U.S. consumers currently pay 2-3 times the world price for sugar because of imports constraints - and this mostly benefits a select handful number of U.S. growers (hate to call them 'farmers' since it is usually big corporate farms that are involved ...). Ulimately the big losers are the U.S. consumers who are in effect subsidizing a small number of U.S. producers.
This is true of most trade constraints - ultimately any artifical barrier to trade end up highly warping the local economy with only a select few really benefiting.
The real problem with increasing international trade, including off-shore white collar jobs, is that it introduces change and subsequently a great deal of uncertainly - employees worry about losing their jobs, and more importantly, being able to find an equivalent paying one. While the benefits from trade are widespread (lower prices for all sorts of services and products) but diffuse - the impacts of lost jobs are more focused and therefore readily apparent. Governments have done a poor job of assisting employees adjust to a changing economy.
Of course, modern communications have pretty much shattered many notions of physical space and continues to bring many groups of people closer together than ever before (and hence makes Tobler's axiom, which he first expoused nearly 40 years ago, less relevant in this context). The "space" that people now inhabit now has less to do with physical geography and more with social connections.
Although, as you point out, traces of tribalism ("us" versus "them") still exist with such prejudices based on the assumption of ethnic or political state regionalism - and the use of "geo tags" would be a manifestation and a magnification of this prejudice.
Furthermore, neither PostgreSQL or mSQL have decent ports (e.g. easy to setup) on Windows (PostgreSQL requires installing Cygwin first)- mySQL does. This allows mySQL to compete with the "bigwigs" in this market (most particularly SQL Server). mySQL also works quite well on Solaris. Although the Linux server market share is increasing, especially for web servers, it still is not yet a major platform for commercial database software.
But he had dire words for U.S.-based programmers. 'Right now, we're probably the last generation of North American-based coders. Everything that can be done is being done in other places,' he [Jeff Suttor, staff engineer for Web technologies and standards in the Java Web services group at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems] said."
- Web Standards Burnout Decried
So, is the existance of the Internet, which makes it easy to connect people world-wide, ultimately going to be the curse of most software professionals in the 'developed' world, when much lower salaried (and just as experienced) developers in other countries can easily undercut them for such services? Was the tech boom centered in Silicon Valley just an initial flameout with nothing but a few glowing embers scattered about?
No geek trip across the country should be done without stopping at least once to see a HUGE BEING or a WORLD's LARGEST ROADSIDE ATTRACTION!!
Even Kansas has such remarkable attractions to see :-)
(Heck, if you insist on blogging while traveling, at least include something amusing and worth reading about ...)
> hell" mentality, he's just a little more polite about it.
Too true and still an unfortunate stereotype of all too many self-annointed sysadmins, or at least those who can get away with this attitude. Unfortunately, many inexperienced management types still think that this is acceptable behavior - but that is changing.
He sounds like he works at a relatively small and fairly autonomous site without too much interaction with other groups/departments using the systems on a day-to-day basis. His management also doesn't appear to know what is going on - but it probably doesn't matter and they don't care given the circumstances of this particular site.
Any one involved in system admininstration or interested in this type of job should consider the recent book "The Practice of System and Network Administration" (by Thomas A. Limoncelli and Christine Hogan) a must read. This is a far more realistic description of contemporary practices in system administration than the comments made in this article.
There were actually a number of bloggers at ApacheCon aside from Michael Radwin - each with their own independent views/opinions (!) of what they saw/heard ;-) They provide a alternative perspective to Mr. Radwin's own blog. Here are a couple of others:
[you may have to skip to the dated entries Nov 19-22 - the conference really started with the first keynote on that Tuesday, there were tutorials only (extra $) on Monday]
Andy Oliver
Ugo Cei
Peter Royal
For those sites that have incoming e-mail size limits (which usually seem to be 2MB or 10MB) we recommend users compress and/or split up their large attachment files - some mail servers will automatically re-combine the split messages when they are received (otherwise the recipients of the e-mail would need access to the utilities to do this). There are numerous free and shareware utilities to do this for just about any OS. This is a lot less hassle than using FTP or even a web server to distribute/receive such files.
In your case, you might look around for employment at a large corporation that does allow telecommuting. Some certainly do but you'll have to ask around the grapevine to find out. I know of a couple of former co-workers whose wives went back to grad school in another state and their current employers set up telecommuting for them. You'd also likely have to work at such a company for a year or more before being allowed to do this and it might also depend upon the type of work involved. Of course, if you continually moved from one place to another yearly, the company might not like it.
And exactly how many hundreds of millions of dollars in cash assets is Microsoft sitting on?! Isn't this the biggest and by far the wealthiest software corporation in the world? Is it really not unreasonable that Microsoft ought to have gotten this SSL stuff right the first time? Especially since this security software turns out to be a fundamental component in all of their current OSes?? Didn't Microsoft just spend a month and more having its programming staff supposedly reviewing their software for potential security issues???
Konqueror is just a browser developed and maintained by a handful of individuals, probably mostly part-time and without pay. I'd be more willing to expect/tolerate some bugs (although hopefully any major ones like this would get fixed real quick ...).
Geez! No wonder people get on Microsoft's case!
The only trend I see is Microsoft's parade of bugs. Oh look, here comes their bloated OS blimp being pulled the fingerpointing PR clowns ...
I've spent 12+ years working as a full-time staff programmer/sys admin in academia (on both coasts and across the country) and nearly as long in the private sector (including some pretty large corporations) and now I am happily working for a not-for-profit organization. In that time I've seen the gamut of working conditions at both types of environments - some pretty sorry (the overblown egos and incompetent diehards exist in both places). I'm sure the original poster knows that the real answer as to which is a better environment to work in now - academia or the private sector - is "it depends". It depends on what you are willing to tolerate along with the local working conditions for a particular position. My general impression of academia is that it tends to be a lot more low-key and you often get a lot of leeway for managing your own time/work - it is also neat that you often can see that your work is appreciated and/or you are contributing to useful research (not always the case, but ideally). The trade-off is that salaries are much lower in academia (often substantially so) and not very reliable if you are being paid out of "soft" (research) money. And don't expect more than 2-4% annual salary increases and certainly forget about "bonuses". Also good luck trying to find any type of desirable academia computer job - there never are all that many openings and most such positions go to former (or current) students - hence the low pay (it helps if you have some contacts in academia both as sources of reliable insider information and as references). It has been my experience that business executive/manager types do tend to look down upon academic work experience as not being as relevant/valuable to the private sector corporate world. To some degree that is probably true as my impression of most corporate IT work is that it focuses upon task-oriented and regimented processes, you are often more of a cog that a true contributer. Some people seemed to like that or are willing to put up with such work for the money ...
I'd also recommend having a look at another recent book on the same topic but with much more of a technical emphasis (and not having quite so many humorous antidotes): Principles of Network and System Administration by Mark Burgess (author of cfengine), 2000, Addison-Wesley. The idea behind the two books is the same though - as Burgess points out, "being a system administrator is as much a state of mind as it is being about being knowledgeable."
Hmm - let's say you did accidentally drop that card deck on the floor or fumbled it while loading the stacks of card into the card reader (only so many cards could fit in the reader at one load - if you had boxes of cards you had to continually feed them in ...)? Well, columns 73-80 were reserved for numbering each card - you thus had a fighting chance of getting the cards back in order :-) Just collect them off of the floor, run them through a sorter, and then manually check that you aren't missing any cards. Of course, you did number the cards didn't you :-) The use of a formatted drum card (which appeared on later punch card machines) did make this task a bit easier. In effect, drum cards (made from a regular punch card and wrapped around a drum on the punch card machine) defined pre-formatted layouts for a card so you could do things such as tab ahead to the desired column, automatically insert fixed text, repeat punching the same card, etc. You could also have your cards numbered by running them again through another machine (which could also make a "back-up" deck of cards for you). And remember to initially number them by increments of 10, for example, to permit adding new cards to the deck later (e.g. new progamming code).
Standard IBM keypunches (during most of the 1960's with many still in use in the 1970s') did not type the letters on the cards when you punched the holes.
You could also turn off printing on latter punch card machines - saved ink :-) - but also enabled a degree of security for your code and data as it was a lot harder and more time-consuming trying to determine the character typed from the hole punches!
Someone made an interesting point about being able to use the electrical outlets on the planes - where would you get the appropriate power cable though?
I'm curious - if Itanium flounders where does that leave HP which supposedly was going to give up on its PA-RISC chip design and replace it with Intel processors? There was a lot of hype from HP about how economical for them this was going to be in the long run by adopting a 64-bit commodity processor. Of course, with all of the delays HP has kept having to extend its PA-RISC line of processors. Might HP insist that Intel keep developing Itanium even if it flops in the consumer market so Intel might have to develop two versions of a 64-bit processor? Maybe SUN didn't screw up after all by not porting Solaris to the Itanium line :-)
Looking back on AOL's handling of Netscape, I shutter to think that the same fate would befall upon Redhat. Netscape is effectively a shell of its old self (if that) and its browser continues to lose out in popularity to Internet Explorer (and for good reason - how long did it take for a finally usable version 6.2 to appear?!). So where has been AOL's big promotion of the Netscape browser and supposed termination of its reliance on IE over the past couple of years? It is not as if AOL hasn't had plenty of time to make the switch. It seems that AOL is simply using Netscape as a bargaining chip against Microsoft to wrestle a better marketing deal from them regarding IE. AOL has never had a particularly good reputation regarding service to its users much less empowering them with open and innovative technology.
AOL purchasing Redhat to be a dramatic change in the history of computing?! Certainly not from a computing perspective. More like another example of BigCo marketing style again winning out over technological substance.
What a BIZZARE statement regarding Microsoft. Never mind that Visual Basic - the most widely used programming language - is completely proprietary and Microsoft windows specific. Never mind that Microsoft has perverted every "open" standard they use to add their own extensions (often undocumented) effectively turning them into proprietary protocols. The C# language specification may have been passed off to an obscure standards group (that normally doesn't deal with computer languages) but it hardly opens up all of the APIs which really define .NET and the use of C#. "Embrace and extend" is a standard Microsoft policy - has been for a long time and will continue to be. It is not at all clear that CLR and .NET are open standards as it is given the possibility of hidden patents etc.
Microsoft was caught doing the same thing to Java once they had licensed its use (SUN was pretty naive to have permitted this - maybe they didn't have good enough lawyers ...). As soon as the court found Microsoft guilty, Microsoft announced it would dump Java for their own language which turned out to be C# (that looks and works a lot like Java).
Unless Sun has a rapid change of heart, .NET, C# and the CLR is going to vapourise Sun's marketshare in server applications and enterprise programming userbase due to sheer openness.
While SUN has not given up the trademark "Java", this language is hardly as restricted in use as Microsoft would like to imply. Given the incredible number of licensees of various forms of Java would hardly imply that the user base is scared off by SUN's intellectual property. Indeed, Microsoft's past insidious behavior will haunt their promotion of .NET as the new "open" standard. (Who hasn't gotten over the years burned by Microsoft's business practices ...)
Glad to read about your applications! Of course, you are hardly alone in such endeavors! Half of the October 2001 issue of the Communications of the ACM was dedicated to High Performance Computing using Java. For a more immediate and applied example of using O-O methods for engineering type problems, have a look at the excellent recent book Object-Oriented Implementation of Numerical Methods: An Introduction using Java and Smalltalk by Dibier H. Bessett (Academic Press, 2001). I am sure it isn't too hard to find lots of other examples.
The answer the author provides isn't that such information will necessarily save the world (may be it will) but rather that what drives these scientists is the sheer fun/excitment of looking and discovering things. Quoting the authors of another book "Tropical Nature", 'Complexity excites the mind and the discovery of patterns rewards it." Who needs art - or "Star Wars" movies for that matter? Well, the same answer applies to basic science - "it's good for us" ...