Pet Peeve: Coders that bring up the earliest record in history. If a customer with 7 years of history calls up with a problem, likely it's with the latest order, not one they made 7 years ago.
That said, a database should treat all information in it as frangible. Nothing is ever written in stone, and all input can never be 100% validated by rules. The best you can do is say "Did they really go from Male to Female?" or "Customer unique identifier change is not supported on this version. See your supervisor for how to proceed."
What about Open Stack? For production, don't oversubscribe RAM. For a play ground, isolate them to one physical machine and let that machine over subscribe. I'm guessing but you can host about 20-25 virtual servers per compute node, you'll need a physical management machine, and if you do a lot of different images/want backups, you'll need a machine with a bunch of disk space or a iSCSI appliance. The open stack doc will tell you which iSCSI system will work.
From the really crap work I've seen by "ThoughtWorks" developers, this can only be a Bad Thing. I mean, when a developer can't even properly craft a curl statement to correctly test his own work... well, ---FACEPALM---
Better solution: Stop trying to force email to be a reliable and concurrent source of information. It has never been reliable nor has it ever been concurrent protocol. Check the default settings for sending email - try every hour for up to 5 days before giving up. Wait one day before sending a trouble report.
That email now generally DOES deliver results in almost real time is no excuse to think it will ALWAYS deliver in real time. If your communication either critical and/or time sensitive, then email is the wrong tool to use.
I was about to purchase 30 GoPro cameras for the charities I support. I'm glad this came thought now rather than two days from now. I've canceled my orders for their cameras. Going forward, I will refuse to purchase their equipment or anything with their IP in it.
Here's my take: If I find value in a tool, I'm quite willing to pay for it to use it. If I find no value in a tool, then I quit using it and delete it. People that use your tool but refuse to pay for it are willing to invest a lot of effort in to circumventing any kind of DRM you might wish to use. Consider their time and effort as a non-fungible expression of the worth of your tool. Simply take the high road and ignore them.
For an example, see the "Audio-Grabber" project.
At worst, limit updates to only paying users. As "haters gotta hate", deadbeat users are just another fact of life. It isn't worth worrying about them. Put your effort into pleasing those that pay you.
I own a farm. I do not buy seed from Monsanto. Never have. I refuse to on moral grounds. Yet I am sued by Monsanto every 2 to 4 years. Their "inspectors" trespass on my property, collect samples from 50 to 200 plants, and if only ONE has their GMO dna, I get sued. The farmer next to me buys exclusively Monsanto seed.
You figure it out. I have.
In the near future, anyone found on my property that doesn't have permission to be there... well, it won't be pretty.
I've had charges on my home wired account for the past 2 years I never authorized, don't want, and have no need for. I can't get them to stop it either. I'm getting ready to move, and part of my move considerations will be a CLEC is available.
I'd cancel the line, but it's needed for EMS and alarm system. I could switch those over to a cell phone, but the charge is more than what AT&T dings me for.
All email accounts use an unique numerical identifier as the "real" name. Inbound mail is directed to the account via an alias. Outbound email is rewirtten using the Generics table. Name space collisions on the alias/re-writes are resolved by hand.
Going forward, code logic prevents the self help portion of the email system from allowing name collisions.
I pay $80 a month for DSL and local phone service. My internet DNS is so bad, I switched to Open DNS, a free service, because DNS provided by my DSL provider times out 90% of the time. My packet loss is always > 45%, and my internet speeds for "3.0M down, 750K up" are 128K down, and less than 56K up. Wrap "open market works" around you in the night, fondle it, and stroke it. But it's a pipe dream. It doesn't work, not here, not for me, and not for people around me.
Here is a simple and effective way for deciding if a data cap and extra charges are for profit, or for network congestion:
Enforce a cutoff upon reaching a limit. Let the customer decide if they want to continue to get internet at a higher price, or if, upon reaching their cap, if they choose to be prevented from further Internet action, and wait for it to reset at the end of the billing period.
Had a sibling get a bill for internet access via their iPad for $4,000 in one month. I'm sorry, there simply isn't a legitimate way for a iPad to consume $4,000 of internet bandwidth over wireless in 90 days, much less than 30 days in any universe where Internet access is provided at a free market rate.
I quit purchasing IP from clueless labels (read members of RIIA) long ago. I take nothing from them, I give nothing to them. If I didn't already own a CD from that artist so I could legally rip the music, I went without. I'd switch them off if I was listening to the radio. At worst, I'd buy a used copy for gifts, but even that made my teeth hurt.
First, look who uses copyrights most. Next, visit www.opensecrets.org - look them up and which party they tend to donate to. Next, look where educators tend to donate to. Look where the GOP legislative record tilts - NB: State of Texas/K-12 school funding.
While I agree with many of the points in the GOP paper, sometimes things aren't done for just one reason. Or done for the reasons stated.
Just sayin'.
------ Continuing my K-12 rant:
And while "Throwing money at education doesn't work!", I'll ask a rather pointed question: Would you rather have a doctor that graduated from Harvard medical school (85K USD per semester) or from a unknown state university (where it's more like 30K USD per semester) to operate on your brain?
Factiod: Texas spends about $6.82 per hour to educate children in K-12 Factiod: Average price of a baby sitter in Texas: $9.00 per hour over all, $12.50 per hour in urban areas. Factiod: Average pay of a letter carrier: 58,700 USD (no degree required) Factiod: Average pay of a Texas K-12 Teacher with a bachelor's degree: 42,890 Opinion: The person that teaches your child to read should make at least as much as the person that brings them the mail.
And yes - I am now a FORMER K-12 employee. I couldn't keep depriving my family of a living wage to teach your kids, get insulted for being "A pig in the trough sucking on the public t|t", being called a "Fat cat over paid administrator", and having just about everyone assume I'm incompetent and can't get "A real job". I once had someone actually spit on me when I told them where I worked.
I hired on to a place glassdoor rates as one of the 5 hardest places to get hired. I applied on a Tuesday, had a phone interview on Wednesday morning, an in person interview on Thursday evening, (I was offered a slot on Wednesday afternoon, but I had to be there for your kids), got an offer on Friday morning (at 4AM!), and I now make 211% more than I did teaching your kids, not counting the hiring bonus (1.5 month's pay at my new rate) or quarterly bonuses (about two weeks pay usually.)
In a free market, people tend to go where compensation is best. The truly remarkable teachers hang on like grim death to teach. So I guess I'm not a truly remarkable teacher - but now I make more money, and have to work only 6 more days a year than I used to. I would have stayed to teach your kids, if I could afford to get my daughter braces, my son corrective surgery for his injury, my wife the things she has earned to keep this household running as well as it does, and cars somewhat less than 14 and 17 years old. I don't ask for any toys for myself - my family is the joy of my life. I just want them to do, and be, well.
As a side note: Retirement. Because I was in Teacher's retirement, I can never draw out from Social Security what any other person would get, even if I give up all the money I paid into teacher retirement. As a result, I won't be able to retire until I'm 72 years old, which I don't expect to see. I have a rather large life insurance policy for my wife, which should see she is comfortable and able to do all the things she's like to do with me, if we could. We'll cross off a few bucket list items, but as for passing comfortable years in our golden age, I don't see that happening.
(Will call my first day on shift Day 1, and so on. The actual day isn't a Monday.)
Day 1: Report for shift: Start in the early afternoon. Work til just after midnight. Work ass off. Stress. Deal with unhappy technically challenged people. 90% have screwed themselves, 10% are screwed due to faulty software, either from their vendors, other vendors, or employer's software. Day 2: Rinse, lather repeat day 1. Day 3: Rinse, lather repeat day 2 Day 4: Rinse, lather repeat day 3. Day 5: Sleep until 9pm or so. Day 6: Sleep until 9am, get woken up by friends wanting to play. Explain it's 5am for you right now. Go back to sleep until 4pm. Day 7: Sleep until about 11am, wake up, shave, wash clothes, clean up a bit, get ready for work.
That said, I work with really smart, caring, wonderful people (well, there are one or two exceptions, but MUCH better than my last job). Management is engaged and really does seem to care that I'm happy and listens to me on the very rare occasions I have an issue. Work from home policy is liberal (though I personally do not like working from home). I used to be the smartest person in the room on technical stuff. That is no longer true.
I've been working this schedule for about 5 months now. I'm still not used to it.
Seriously. Some work environments enable the web cam remotely during calls. One poor lady came on without a blouse on, just her bra. I cover mine now with a red paper so I know when I don't see it, I'm "on camera".
Stop making it work. It's the only answer. Your cleaver ability to make it work (somehow) only reinforces their "vision" that you don't know what you're talking about and ask for too much. Do be careful, and don't do this when a really obvious workaround is available. I'm taking about spending a week or two head scratching to come up with an answer is what you should stop or at least slow down. Don't make the slowdown suddenly, make it over a year.
Also see this post: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2686997&cid=39131125 - and take it to heart. Just happened to me. I quit rather than take the "death march". Got nearly a 100,000 dollar raise out of it too. Did I mention it's always good to carefully document your projects?
When the higher-ups start complaining about things not working, say things like: "Yes, I knew that would happen if we substituted the windows licenses I requested for the less costly versions we were supplied. There is a reason for the price point difference. I would have pointed it out if I'd been informed of the change." "That hardware was known to be under-preforming, however, we were not advised our requested hardware was to be substituted for that or I would have pointed out the deficiencies." "I wouldn't dream of selecting what educational materials were purchased because I'm not an educator. I'm not sure why people that are not IT professionals would substitute their judgement in IT areas with out a even a consult with IT. We know about budget constraints and we specify the least expensive choice that still gets the job done with the resources available." (Careful with that one.) You should come up with at least a dozen variations on this theme and drop them causally to everyone, not just the PHBs. I was able to force out a PHB that constantly was changing my orders for software, services and equipment with careful documentation and a grass roots effort from classroom teachers.
"Son, in life or business, always remember, you dance with the person you brought". This is a basic point of honor - you keep to the commitments you made.
More expensive than you thought it would be? Tough, honor it. Harder than you thought? Tough, honor it. See something else that's better? Tough, honor it.
Yes, I know, business isn't about honor, it's about profit. I simply feel there is no profit in being dishonorable, no matter how much money you can make. No Sir, "Greed is good" in not in my orison. You know the good companies in your life. Go look at their mission statement. Top one is "To serve our customers/community". You also know who the bad companies are. Look at their mission statements. The honest ones list "Increase shareholder value" as first. The dishonest ones say "To serve our customers/community". In the end, it isn't about what someone says, it's what they do. Actions don't lie. Words can.
That is why I will listen closely to what someone says, but I pay more attention to what they do.
In a perfect world, someone would whisper this in Sony's, RIAA's, MPAA's, ASCAP, AT&T's, and many others ears: "Honor is a lasting value. Try it. For a change."
Slashdot Mirror
Pet Peeve: Coders that bring up the earliest record in history. If a customer with 7 years of history calls up with a problem, likely it's with the latest order, not one they made 7 years ago.
That said, a database should treat all information in it as frangible. Nothing is ever written in stone, and all input can never be 100% validated by rules. The best you can do is say "Did they really go from Male to Female?" or "Customer unique identifier change is not supported on this version. See your supervisor for how to proceed."
What about Open Stack? For production, don't oversubscribe RAM. For a play ground, isolate them to one physical machine and let that machine over subscribe. I'm guessing but you can host about 20-25 virtual servers per compute node, you'll need a physical management machine, and if you do a lot of different images/want backups, you'll need a machine with a bunch of disk space or a iSCSI appliance. The open stack doc will tell you which iSCSI system will work.
It took me all of three minutes to isolate his Flash Cookie.
My my my. Just LOOK at what he's been doing!
From the really crap work I've seen by "ThoughtWorks" developers, this can only be a Bad Thing.
I mean, when a developer can't even properly craft a curl statement to correctly test his own work... well, ---FACEPALM---
Better solution: Stop trying to force email to be a reliable and concurrent source of information. It has never been reliable nor has it ever been concurrent protocol. Check the default settings for sending email - try every hour for up to 5 days before giving up. Wait one day before sending a trouble report.
That email now generally DOES deliver results in almost real time is no excuse to think it will ALWAYS deliver in real time. If your communication either critical and/or time sensitive, then email is the wrong tool to use.
Any open source library management software that does ebooks should help you out. Here's a list:
http://sourceforge.net/directory/home-education/library/opac/os:windows/freshness:recently-updated/
I was about to purchase 30 GoPro cameras for the charities I support. I'm glad this came thought now rather than two days from now. I've canceled my orders for their cameras. Going forward, I will refuse to purchase their equipment or anything with their IP in it.
Here's my take: If I find value in a tool, I'm quite willing to pay for it to use it.
If I find no value in a tool, then I quit using it and delete it.
People that use your tool but refuse to pay for it are willing to invest a lot of effort in to circumventing any kind of DRM you might wish to use.
Consider their time and effort as a non-fungible expression of the worth of your tool. Simply take the high road and ignore them.
For an example, see the "Audio-Grabber" project.
At worst, limit updates to only paying users. As "haters gotta hate", deadbeat users are just another fact of life. It isn't worth worrying about them. Put your effort into pleasing those that pay you.
I'm seeing the old X-FORWARD-FOR 127.0.0.1 attacks come back too.
Thanks! Your post made me laugh after a very stressful and worrisome day.
I own a farm. I do not buy seed from Monsanto. Never have. I refuse to on moral grounds. Yet I am sued by Monsanto every 2 to 4 years. Their "inspectors" trespass on my property, collect samples from 50 to 200 plants, and if only ONE has their GMO dna, I get sued. The farmer next to me buys exclusively Monsanto seed.
You figure it out. I have.
In the near future, anyone found on my property that doesn't have permission to be there... well, it won't be pretty.
There are multiple 10 billion dollar plus companies putting money into open source hardware.
Restricted boot mobo's will go the way of the dodo.
I've had charges on my home wired account for the past 2 years I never authorized, don't want, and have no need for. I can't get them to stop it either. I'm getting ready to move, and part of my move considerations will be a CLEC is available.
I'd cancel the line, but it's needed for EMS and alarm system. I could switch those over to a cell phone, but the charge is more than what AT&T dings me for.
All email accounts use an unique numerical identifier as the "real" name. Inbound mail is directed to the account via an alias. Outbound email is rewirtten using the Generics table. Name space collisions on the alias/re-writes are resolved by hand.
Going forward, code logic prevents the self help portion of the email system from allowing name collisions.
sudo su -
useradd dad
passwd dad
useradd son
passwd -d son
cd ~/movies
chown -R dad:dad *
chmod -R 500 *
^D
And posting this comment took 3 tries due to network timeouts.
I pay $80 a month for DSL and local phone service.
My internet DNS is so bad, I switched to Open DNS, a free service, because DNS provided by my DSL provider times out 90% of the time.
My packet loss is always > 45%, and my internet speeds for "3.0M down, 750K up" are 128K down, and less than 56K up.
Wrap "open market works" around you in the night, fondle it, and stroke it.
But it's a pipe dream. It doesn't work, not here, not for me, and not for people around me.
Here is a simple and effective way for deciding if a data cap and extra charges are for profit, or for network congestion:
Enforce a cutoff upon reaching a limit. Let the customer decide if they want to continue to get internet at a higher price, or if, upon reaching their cap, if they choose to be prevented from further Internet action, and wait for it to reset at the end of the billing period.
Had a sibling get a bill for internet access via their iPad for $4,000 in one month. I'm sorry, there simply isn't a legitimate way for a iPad to consume $4,000 of internet bandwidth over wireless in 90 days, much less than 30 days in any universe where Internet access is provided at a free market rate.
I quit purchasing IP from clueless labels (read members of RIIA) long ago. I take nothing from them, I give nothing to them. If I didn't already own a CD from that artist so I could legally rip the music, I went without. I'd switch them off if I was listening to the radio. At worst, I'd buy a used copy for gifts, but even that made my teeth hurt.
First, look who uses copyrights most.
Next, visit www.opensecrets.org - look them up and which party they tend to donate to.
Next, look where educators tend to donate to. Look where the GOP legislative record tilts - NB: State of Texas/K-12 school funding.
While I agree with many of the points in the GOP paper, sometimes things aren't done for just one reason. Or done for the reasons stated.
Just sayin'.
------
Continuing my K-12 rant:
And while "Throwing money at education doesn't work!", I'll ask a rather pointed question:
Would you rather have a doctor that graduated from Harvard medical school (85K USD per semester) or from a unknown state university (where it's more like 30K USD per semester) to operate on your brain?
Factiod: Texas spends about $6.82 per hour to educate children in K-12
Factiod: Average price of a baby sitter in Texas: $9.00 per hour over all, $12.50 per hour in urban areas.
Factiod: Average pay of a letter carrier: 58,700 USD (no degree required)
Factiod: Average pay of a Texas K-12 Teacher with a bachelor's degree: 42,890
Opinion: The person that teaches your child to read should make at least as much as the person that brings them the mail.
And yes - I am now a FORMER K-12 employee. I couldn't keep depriving my family of a living wage to teach your kids, get insulted for being "A pig in the trough sucking on the public t|t", being called a "Fat cat over paid administrator", and having just about everyone assume I'm incompetent and can't get "A real job". I once had someone actually spit on me when I told them where I worked.
I hired on to a place glassdoor rates as one of the 5 hardest places to get hired. I applied on a Tuesday, had a phone interview on Wednesday morning, an in person interview on Thursday evening, (I was offered a slot on Wednesday afternoon, but I had to be there for your kids), got an offer on Friday morning (at 4AM!), and I now make 211% more than I did teaching your kids, not counting the hiring bonus (1.5 month's pay at my new rate) or quarterly bonuses (about two weeks pay usually.)
In a free market, people tend to go where compensation is best. The truly remarkable teachers hang on like grim death to teach. So I guess I'm not a truly remarkable teacher - but now I make more money, and have to work only 6 more days a year than I used to. I would have stayed to teach your kids, if I could afford to get my daughter braces, my son corrective surgery for his injury, my wife the things she has earned to keep this household running as well as it does, and cars somewhat less than 14 and 17 years old. I don't ask for any toys for myself - my family is the joy of my life. I just want them to do, and be, well.
As a side note: Retirement. Because I was in Teacher's retirement, I can never draw out from Social Security what any other person would get, even if I give up all the money I paid into teacher retirement. As a result, I won't be able to retire until I'm 72 years old, which I don't expect to see. I have a rather large life insurance policy for my wife, which should see she is comfortable and able to do all the things she's like to do with me, if we could. We'll cross off a few bucket list items, but as for passing comfortable years in our golden age, I don't see that happening.
and here's how it shakes out:
(Will call my first day on shift Day 1, and so on. The actual day isn't a Monday.)
Day 1: Report for shift: Start in the early afternoon. Work til just after midnight. Work ass off. Stress. Deal with unhappy technically challenged people. 90% have screwed themselves, 10% are screwed due to faulty software, either from their vendors, other vendors, or employer's software.
Day 2: Rinse, lather repeat day 1.
Day 3: Rinse, lather repeat day 2
Day 4: Rinse, lather repeat day 3.
Day 5: Sleep until 9pm or so.
Day 6: Sleep until 9am, get woken up by friends wanting to play. Explain it's 5am for you right now. Go back to sleep until 4pm.
Day 7: Sleep until about 11am, wake up, shave, wash clothes, clean up a bit, get ready for work.
That said, I work with really smart, caring, wonderful people (well, there are one or two exceptions, but MUCH better than my last job). Management is engaged and really does seem to care that I'm happy and listens to me on the very rare occasions I have an issue. Work from home policy is liberal (though I personally do not like working from home). I used to be the smartest person in the room on technical stuff. That is no longer true.
I've been working this schedule for about 5 months now. I'm still not used to it.
Seriously. Some work environments enable the web cam remotely during calls. One poor lady came on without a blouse on, just her bra.
I cover mine now with a red paper so I know when I don't see it, I'm "on camera".
I would definitely suggest Venus Equilateral. See this link to be sure to get the right one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Equilateral
There are several books, some without all the stories.
I would add http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_Station_(novel) Way Station by Clifford D. Simak.
Not as old, but still a good read (and FREE!)
The Warrior's Apprentice http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1290-warriors-apprentice.aspx
Changer of Worlds http://www.baenebooks.com/p-62-changer-of-worlds.aspx
samzenpus,
Stop making it work. It's the only answer. Your cleaver ability to make it work (somehow) only reinforces their "vision" that you don't know what you're talking about and ask for too much. Do be careful, and don't do this when a really obvious workaround is available. I'm taking about spending a week or two head scratching to come up with an answer is what you should stop or at least slow down. Don't make the slowdown suddenly, make it over a year.
Also see this post: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2686997&cid=39131125 - and take it to heart. Just happened to me. I quit rather than take the "death march". Got nearly a 100,000 dollar raise out of it too. Did I mention it's always good to carefully document your projects?
When the higher-ups start complaining about things not working, say things like:
"Yes, I knew that would happen if we substituted the windows licenses I requested for the less costly versions we were supplied. There is a reason for the price point difference. I would have pointed it out if I'd been informed of the change."
"That hardware was known to be under-preforming, however, we were not advised our requested hardware was to be substituted for that or I would have pointed out the deficiencies."
"I wouldn't dream of selecting what educational materials were purchased because I'm not an educator. I'm not sure why people that are not IT professionals would substitute their judgement in IT areas with out a even a consult with IT. We know about budget constraints and we specify the least expensive choice that still gets the job done with the resources available." (Careful with that one.)
You should come up with at least a dozen variations on this theme and drop them causally to everyone, not just the PHBs. I was able to force out a PHB that constantly was changing my orders for software, services and equipment with careful documentation and a grass roots effort from classroom teachers.
"Son, in life or business, always remember, you dance with the person you brought".
This is a basic point of honor - you keep to the commitments you made.
More expensive than you thought it would be? Tough, honor it.
Harder than you thought? Tough, honor it.
See something else that's better? Tough, honor it.
Yes, I know, business isn't about honor, it's about profit. I simply feel there is no profit in being dishonorable, no matter how much money you can make. No Sir, "Greed is good" in not in my orison. You know the good companies in your life. Go look at their mission statement. Top one is "To serve our customers/community". You also know who the bad companies are. Look at their mission statements. The honest ones list "Increase shareholder value" as first. The dishonest ones say "To serve our customers/community". In the end, it isn't about what someone says, it's what they do. Actions don't lie. Words can.
That is why I will listen closely to what someone says, but I pay more attention to what they do.
In a perfect world, someone would whisper this in Sony's, RIAA's, MPAA's, ASCAP, AT&T's, and many others ears:
"Honor is a lasting value.
Try it.
For a change."