I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to this post, but now that I've discovered it, I can't help but respond. It is, by far, one of the silliest things I've ever read.
The truth is that some managers are simply incapable of grasping the technical intricacies of IT work. This was clearly the case here: my boss at the time heard me say "root access" once in relation to one of our servers, and said that he wanted the ability to perform root tasks. He didn't need that ability, wouldn't have known how to apply it if he'd had it, and I would no more have let him log in as root to that server (or, worse: given his own account root privileges, as was his initial order) any more than a surgeon would assist you to operate on your own spleen.
To allow him to do so would have been a failure in professionalism on my part. And were the network to have fallen apart due to my improperly giving him that level of access: there are times when it's better to let someone wind up with egg on their faces. This wasn't one of them. If I get disciplined, I get disciplined: if he hoses the network, we lose clients, and I'd have lost my job. Besides which, once he'd calmed down, he eventually realized that the access I had already given him gave him everything he needed or wanted.
Lastly, to leave you with an idea of the level of sophistication this user had: This same person wanted to show viewers the difference between various video-conferencing options, operating at a variety of bandwidths and compression levels. Specifically, he wanted to demonstrate "what uncompressed video looks like." Full screen, at NTSC resolution. At T1 bandwidth. In the year 1999.
When I explained to him that the resultant video stream would be impossibly large for the majority of home users, his response was to suggest compressing the video. What followed was a half-hour conversation - escalating into an argument - during which I futilely tried to explain to him that you can't show someone a compressed video stream and then say, "this is what uncompressed video looks like". When we eventually concluded, he immediately went to the head tech and made the same request of him. The head tech's verbatim response: "Are you fucking crazy?"
(Although when I read the title, I kept thinking of detecting things that are extruded. WARNING! SILLY PUTTY FUN FACTORY DETECTED.)
Re:How about this simple change-
on
The Patent Epidemic
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Unfortunately, that rule may defeat the entire purpose of having a patent.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're a real life engineer with a real life idea for a genuinely useful (and non-obvious) device. The problem is, these devices are extremely difficult to construct, requiring equipment or materials outside the reach of the individual.
As it stands right now, you could apply for a patent for your device. Assuming you're approved, you can then take your design to a company with the resources to implement your design, and license them the right to use it.
Sans patent, there's really nothing presenting the company from saying, "Hey, great idea. Think I'll take it." Then, since they have the resources that you lack, they're free to go ahead and build your idea, without having paid you a dime.
As it turns out, the "someone else produces a working example first" thing is already in patent law. It's called "prior art."
Um.... I know that that's just an instance of trying to blow a guy's mind, but that explanation is still deeply flawed.
If you look up the details of our atmosphere, you'll find that it's made up almost entirely of various molecules. But it's a gas, which means that those molecules aren't touching each other. They are separated by small gaps, and those gaps are full of - vacuum! It's only the lowest parts of the Earth's surface that are covered with liquid water, where the molecules are able to exclude the vacuum and touch each other.
A vacuum is defined as an area with little or no gaseous/atmosphereic pressure. The "gaps" in between the air molecules we breathe can't be called vacuum by any reasonable definition, since you'd have to define the sample area for measuring the vacuum so small that you couldn't really fit much air in it anyway.
Incidentally: while molecules in a liquid like water do come into contact, they're not constantly in contact by any stretch of the imagination. They bump into each other, form hydrogen bonds, then drift away and break their bonds with great regularity, until you start to get to within a couple degrees of freezing. If adjacent molecules in water were constantly jammed up against each other, always in contact, they would form a plenum, which is a theoretical consruct. (That is to say, it doesn't exist.)
I just followed your link. This quote alone made it worth the read:
Outer space is a vacuum. Earth is not. The vacuum begins just beyond our atmosphere. What is our atmosphere made of that prevents the vacuum from penetrating it..?
(picture me, vigorously shaking my head back and forth, making the cartoon "yi-yi-yi" sound.)
Can you institute change? Maybe. But you're going to have to start with you.
(I'm assuming that the acronym IS stands for Information Services. I would've said IT, but that's a quibble. If you meant something different, please disregard everything I'm about to say.)
1) The main job of IS is connectivity. Connectivity is the core of why we have IS. Anything else is extraneous, and I shouldn't be dealing with it.
The main job of IS is keeping the system running. Any technical issue that prevents someone from doing their job is yours. This alone should be enough to convince your management that a lone guy in an office isn't going to be sufficient support for your organization.
You're correct in that it's a mistake to view computing as just another facilities issue. However, that doesn't mean that it doesn't reach the same level of importance, and simply put, there's nobody else whose job it is to fix it. That means it's yours. (Or at least, that's what I'd be saying if I were your boss.)
2) IS involvement in other divisions isn't necessary. IS is involved with other divisions when physical products get connected to the network, but not before. Software should be evaluated by IS only when it becomes necessary for purchase and implementation, not before. Any developed piece of software (we have an in-house programmer in accounting who uses Access -- I know, I know...) should be evaluated by IS when the software is ready to install.
See, you think this is what you want. Trust me, it's not. Otherwise, you can find yourself in the situation I was in, with a rack full of Linux servers and a department chair demanding to know why the $10K+ Windows-only web app he just bought isn't gonna run.
3)I'm too overloaded. With 93 permanent users and 110 workstations (some are floaters), I can't do both systems work and admin work (my title is Systems Administrator, but I carry no management authority) on my own.
You're absolutely right about being overloaded, but you appear to be laboring under the misconception that a "Systems Administrator" is usually a management position. In my experience, it almost never is, unless by chance you tack the word "Senior" to the front, and even then the only people you'll manage are other Systems Administrators.
My proposal stated the need for the creation of staff (a tech and a clerk). Management thinks because things are running, I have no issues, but I'm falling apart from all I have to do to keep things running. I need to offset the load so I can do more of the 'bigger picture' things to help guide this company out of the IS dark ages. (We have no CTO or CIO; Management is made up of engineers from different disciplines)
Your management will likely be unsympathetic, but you're not without hope. What I'd do is to brief them on the three biggest issues you're facing. Each brief should be about a minute in length, and all three should be delivered back-to-back. Each one should follow the structure: "this is the problem; here are the consequences of not addressing it; here is what i will need to address it." The trick: the third should be, "My time is fully committed just keeping what we have now together; if left unaddressed, neither the previous two issues, nor the multiple issues haven't mentioned, can be accomplished, resulting in the failure of X, Y, and Z; hire me another tech and an administrative assistant and give me some time to get them up to speed."
Two of the larger examples I would point out are Howard Dean and Micheal Moore.
A pity you have to cite Howard Dean in your example, considering he was just the target of a mini smear campaign claiming that he was "gleefully" predicting American defeat in Iraq, when any reasonable reading of the interview showed quite the opposite sentiment (about the "gleeful" part, that is. Looking for a more specific reference, but wasn't able to find one in time to get this posted). And such a pity that, viewed objectively, the main thrust of his argument - that quotes from administration officials today look just like Nixon administration quotes during Vietnam - is pretty much objectively true.
As for Michael Moore: not such a big fan. But I'd gladly take Moore's dubious documentary style over, say, Coulter's outright bile any day of the week. Twice on Sunday.
Two days ago my roomate asked me what I thought about Bush's quote, "It's just a G*dd@mn piece of paper". When I said I suspected that was a hoax, since I doubt any politician in this country would be foolish enough to say something, she wouldn't believe me, because to her and her friends it was just a confirmation of what they believe to be true (that Bush would say something like that). Five minutes later with Google showed that every article about that was linked back to one blogger, who never linked his article.
It took me a comperably short time to trace that particular story back to Capitol Hill Blue, the blog I assume you're referring to. According to his bio, the author, Doug Thompson, is also a published journalist and photographer whose work has been carried by Esquire, National Geographic, the AP, and Reuters. He sourced "three people present at the meeting," without further elaboration, which I assume means he was only permitted to cite them on background.
Of course, you're free to doubt his story or sources, but this is a far cry from some random crank with a blog. And really, why would it be that surprising? Because he cursed? This is the same guy who was doing impersonations of Texas' first death-row inmate since 1860 begging for her life, as a joke. To a journalist. (Although, evidently, he realized immediately after that that kind of joke really isn't so cool). And as for actual respect for the constitution, the Bush administration has been trying to expand the power of the executive in pretty much every sphere of American life, not to mention the lives of non Americans.
Anyway: thank you for taking the time to debate this with me seriously, and I'd just ask you to consider the notion that occasionally, the reason that something has become conventional wisdom is that it's objectively true.
I suspect that ideologically, we're farther apart on the spectrum than our self-descriptions would suggest. You say that "you tend to fall towards the conservative views on issues... because most liberals seem to be unable to do much besides froth at the mouth against Bush and America." I believe that I fall slightly to the left on most issues, but I can't stand the way that statist pundits like Malkin (or occasionally Reynolds, or anyone writing at National Review) can say one thing one day, do a complete 180 the next, and then label anyone who fails to agree with them at either stage anti-American.
Certainly the Democratic party has been in bad need of help for some time. But with apologies to a certain cartoonist, trying to establish a dialogue with the "other side" is a lot easier when you're not telling them they're treasonous, slanderous, "frothing at the mouth" lunatics.
Regardless of the scope of the surveillance conducted by the NSA, the subjects they're allowed to snoop on are severely restricted. Here's the relevant bit:
(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that... there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party;
(this is way, way, out of my field of expertise, but my brief reading of the code didn't yield anything that would have placed this in the Preznit's purview.)
So anyway. The code basically says, "You can conduct surveillance without a court order, so long as there is "no substantial likelihood" that you're spying on Americans. The President's order said, essentially, "Do it anyway."
The Department of Justice, as you noted, reviewed the program: however, this is a DoJ which has been notoriously dismissive of civil rights. Take John Yoo, for example, who recently claimed that crushing the testicles of the child of a suspected terrorist should be acceptable behavior. Or Alberto Gonzales, who has in past legal memos revealed himself to be unabashedly pro-torture. These are not people I would view as well qualified to provide balance to issues of civil rights.
I have to say, though, Michelle Malkin is even worse, given her support for the internment camps for Japansese during WWII, and for Muslims now (and utter fabrications/slanders she's made to justify these positions.)
A Feminazi is basically a feminist who believes that the advancement of women's rights in the us can be *directly* correlated to the number of abortions performed in a year.
I challenge your assertion of the term as having that specific a meaning in its original construction, unless you have a paper or something by Tom Hazlett claiming otherwise. More generally it has come to mean any feminist who exhibits misandry. In my experience, it's usually applied to any woman who considers herself a feminist, period.
Let's just say that if the term ever had a meaning that wasn't derogatory, it has since been corrupted.
Perhaps you have a more intellectual term for feminists who think all sex is rape?
I do, actually. It's "a tiny minority of people who should not be taken seriously, and who are vastly outnumbered by Rush Limbaugh listeners and Fox News watchers who believe that they have taken over the world."
"Feminazi" is shorter, though. I'll give you that.
Jesus. How many male geeks are there that look like shit. Why you would even bother posting something as insidiously stupid as "God damn she's ugly" is beyond me. You give fire to people who say our industry is sexist. Give the feminazis amunition and they will use it. Moron.
I'm not sure which is sadder: the troll saying that she's ugly, or the rebuke of the troll in which the word "feminazi" is used unironically.
Not sure that's fair to drgonzo. He said, "But if all the browsers had a faster, better looking Swing already builtin, so the user wouldn't have to go looking for plugins and JREs, then "yeah" - I would suggest that everyone use Swing..."
That's like saying, "Yeah, I'd say that you should use it if it didn't completely suck." Not particularly controversial. (Well, except for the breaking search engines and alternative input/reading devices and... and...)
(putting on my overalls, lighting pipe, sitting in rocking chair in preparation to tell an "old-timers story".)
Heh! You think that's bad! I remember way back in... must've been '97 or so, there was this company, thought they had a killer solution for fixing incompatibilities in the way browsers rendered sites. They looked at how some things didn't render right in Netscape, and others were cock-eyed in IE, and some things didn't render right in either one, and they had this "brilliant" idea...
"Screw HTML," they said. "Make your whole site into one big Java app!"
And that's what they sold to their clients, too: a program that did nothing but generate user interfaces into which you could plug your text and pictures, then stick it on the web. 'Cause after all, everyone had Java, right? So every site should look the same! And if the applet rendered your whole site invisible to search engines, and took ten minutes to load in a client's browser, well, that was a small price to pay to make sure you could get pixel-perfect alignment, wasn't it?
(I really wish I were joking about this. There really was a product that promised to do exactly what I'm describing here, although I can't remember the name.)
That's actually kind of inaccurate, if I understand the situation correctly.
mod_ruby is apparently a very limited way of embedding ruby code inside a web page, a la mod_php and the PHP language. Ruby on Rails works through the use of a CGI (or, preferably, a fast_cgi) script called the Dispatcher, which is (unsurprisingly) written in Ruby. The dispatcher handles the translation of requests and URIs to the code you've written using Ruby and the Rails framework.
It would be more accurate to say that Ruby is to Rails as PHP/Coldfusion is to Fusebox.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 1
Now, I hope those PUSH clients don't come back. I can't remember the name of the company, but they were really big in 1996ish. Weather, news, etc. Lame.
I'm willing to bet you're thinking of Pointcast.
It's funny, but I remember talking to an unbelievably smart ex-Wired/Hotwired/Suck guy (you'd recognize the name if you follow the people involved) about how wrong those guys were on "push," and the miserable failure I thought it represented. In response, he noted how RSS, parts of Ajax, and podcasting are all the logical descendants of what used to be called push. For as much as I found all the push hype irritating, I'm not sure I can disagre with him.
Not long after starting my first real tech job, I got called into my boss' office to help him when he complained that he didn't have network connectivity to his computer. (Note: the boss was the director of an organization which later supplied internet access to about 100k people).
I walked into his office, and looked at the laptop. Back then (1997 or so), the ethernet came via a PCMCIA card. They were Xircom combo-cards, which I remember mostly for being bright red. I think that's why I can remember with crystal clarity the way the card looked that day, with the accompanying ethernet cable sitting next to it, disconnected, about six inches away. I plugged it in and walked out.
"Fixed now," I mentioned on the way out. "Connectivity issue." That seemed to satisfy him.
Slashdot Mirror
Did I just read correctly that one of your options for people who can't find unskilled labor work is prison?
Flickr has exactly what you describe, but it's for photos only.
I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to this post, but now that I've discovered it, I can't help but respond. It is, by far, one of the silliest things I've ever read.
The truth is that some managers are simply incapable of grasping the technical intricacies of IT work. This was clearly the case here: my boss at the time heard me say "root access" once in relation to one of our servers, and said that he wanted the ability to perform root tasks. He didn't need that ability, wouldn't have known how to apply it if he'd had it, and I would no more have let him log in as root to that server (or, worse: given his own account root privileges, as was his initial order) any more than a surgeon would assist you to operate on your own spleen.
To allow him to do so would have been a failure in professionalism on my part. And were the network to have fallen apart due to my improperly giving him that level of access: there are times when it's better to let someone wind up with egg on their faces. This wasn't one of them. If I get disciplined, I get disciplined: if he hoses the network, we lose clients, and I'd have lost my job. Besides which, once he'd calmed down, he eventually realized that the access I had already given him gave him everything he needed or wanted.
Lastly, to leave you with an idea of the level of sophistication this user had: This same person wanted to show viewers the difference between various video-conferencing options, operating at a variety of bandwidths and compression levels. Specifically, he wanted to demonstrate "what uncompressed video looks like." Full screen, at NTSC resolution. At T1 bandwidth. In the year 1999.
When I explained to him that the resultant video stream would be impossibly large for the majority of home users, his response was to suggest compressing the video. What followed was a half-hour conversation - escalating into an argument - during which I futilely tried to explain to him that you can't show someone a compressed video stream and then say, "this is what uncompressed video looks like". When we eventually concluded, he immediately went to the head tech and made the same request of him. The head tech's verbatim response: "Are you fucking crazy?"
So, so true. I nearly got disciplined once for explaining to my boss that I wasn't going to give him root access on our Debian boxes.
Another recent book on the same topic: Extrusion Detection: Security Monitoring for Internal Intrusions . Haven't read it yet, but looks interesting.
(Although when I read the title, I kept thinking of detecting things that are extruded. WARNING! SILLY PUTTY FUN FACTORY DETECTED.)
Unfortunately, that rule may defeat the entire purpose of having a patent.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're a real life engineer with a real life idea for a genuinely useful (and non-obvious) device. The problem is, these devices are extremely difficult to construct, requiring equipment or materials outside the reach of the individual.
As it stands right now, you could apply for a patent for your device. Assuming you're approved, you can then take your design to a company with the resources to implement your design, and license them the right to use it.
Sans patent, there's really nothing presenting the company from saying, "Hey, great idea. Think I'll take it." Then, since they have the resources that you lack, they're free to go ahead and build your idea, without having paid you a dime.
As it turns out, the "someone else produces a working example first" thing is already in patent law. It's called "prior art."
Please. Maybe you don't take Michael Moore seriously, but the guy pulled down $118 million for Farenheit 9/11, and that's just its theatrical run.
Heh. Meanwhile, a webmaster at Mt. Holyke is wondering why some philosophy professor's page is getting slashdotted...
A vacuum is defined as an area with little or no gaseous/atmosphereic pressure. The "gaps" in between the air molecules we breathe can't be called vacuum by any reasonable definition, since you'd have to define the sample area for measuring the vacuum so small that you couldn't really fit much air in it anyway.
Incidentally: while molecules in a liquid like water do come into contact, they're not constantly in contact by any stretch of the imagination. They bump into each other, form hydrogen bonds, then drift away and break their bonds with great regularity, until you start to get to within a couple degrees of freezing. If adjacent molecules in water were constantly jammed up against each other, always in contact, they would form a plenum, which is a theoretical consruct. (That is to say, it doesn't exist.)
(picture me, vigorously shaking my head back and forth, making the cartoon "yi-yi-yi" sound.)
I've been replaying GTA: San Andreas the last few days, and have had that song in my head. Synchronicity.
(No, not the song, Synchronicity. That's by The Police.)
(I'm assuming that the acronym IS stands for Information Services. I would've said IT, but that's a quibble. If you meant something different, please disregard everything I'm about to say.)
The main job of IS is keeping the system running. Any technical issue that prevents someone from doing their job is yours. This alone should be enough to convince your management that a lone guy in an office isn't going to be sufficient support for your organization.
You're correct in that it's a mistake to view computing as just another facilities issue. However, that doesn't mean that it doesn't reach the same level of importance, and simply put, there's nobody else whose job it is to fix it. That means it's yours. (Or at least, that's what I'd be saying if I were your boss.)
See, you think this is what you want. Trust me, it's not. Otherwise, you can find yourself in the situation I was in, with a rack full of Linux servers and a department chair demanding to know why the $10K+ Windows-only web app he just bought isn't gonna run.
You're absolutely right about being overloaded, but you appear to be laboring under the misconception that a "Systems Administrator" is usually a management position. In my experience, it almost never is, unless by chance you tack the word "Senior" to the front, and even then the only people you'll manage are other Systems Administrators.
Your management will likely be unsympathetic, but you're not without hope. What I'd do is to brief them on the three biggest issues you're facing. Each brief should be about a minute in length, and all three should be delivered back-to-back. Each one should follow the structure: "this is the problem; here are the consequences of not addressing it; here is what i will need to address it." The trick: the third should be, "My time is fully committed just keeping what we have now together; if left unaddressed, neither the previous two issues, nor the multiple issues haven't mentioned, can be accomplished, resulting in the failure of X, Y, and Z; hire me another tech and an administrative assistant and give me some time to get them up to speed."
Best of luck.
A pity you have to cite Howard Dean in your example, considering he was just the target of a mini smear campaign claiming that he was "gleefully" predicting American defeat in Iraq, when any reasonable reading of the interview showed quite the opposite sentiment (about the "gleeful" part, that is. Looking for a more specific reference, but wasn't able to find one in time to get this posted). And such a pity that, viewed objectively, the main thrust of his argument - that quotes from administration officials today look just like Nixon administration quotes during Vietnam - is pretty much objectively true.
As for Michael Moore: not such a big fan. But I'd gladly take Moore's dubious documentary style over, say, Coulter's outright bile any day of the week. Twice on Sunday.
It took me a comperably short time to trace that particular story back to Capitol Hill Blue, the blog I assume you're referring to. According to his bio, the author, Doug Thompson, is also a published journalist and photographer whose work has been carried by Esquire, National Geographic, the AP, and Reuters. He sourced "three people present at the meeting," without further elaboration, which I assume means he was only permitted to cite them on background.
Of course, you're free to doubt his story or sources, but this is a far cry from some random crank with a blog. And really, why would it be that surprising? Because he cursed? This is the same guy who was doing impersonations of Texas' first death-row inmate since 1860 begging for her life, as a joke. To a journalist. (Although, evidently, he realized immediately after that that kind of joke really isn't so cool). And as for actual respect for the constitution, the Bush administration has been trying to expand the power of the executive in pretty much every sphere of American life, not to mention the lives of non Americans.
Anyway: thank you for taking the time to debate this with me seriously, and I'd just ask you to consider the notion that occasionally, the reason that something has become conventional wisdom is that it's objectively true.
I suspect that ideologically, we're farther apart on the spectrum than our self-descriptions would suggest. You say that "you tend to fall towards the conservative views on issues... because most liberals seem to be unable to do much besides froth at the mouth against Bush and America." I believe that I fall slightly to the left on most issues, but I can't stand the way that statist pundits like Malkin (or occasionally Reynolds, or anyone writing at National Review) can say one thing one day, do a complete 180 the next, and then label anyone who fails to agree with them at either stage anti-American.
Certainly the Democratic party has been in bad need of help for some time. But with apologies to a certain cartoonist, trying to establish a dialogue with the "other side" is a lot easier when you're not telling them they're treasonous, slanderous, "frothing at the mouth" lunatics.
Heh.
It means, "in a manner which is not ironical."
Regardless of the scope of the surveillance conducted by the NSA, the subjects they're allowed to snoop on are severely restricted. Here's the relevant bit:
(this is way, way, out of my field of expertise, but my brief reading of the code didn't yield anything that would have placed this in the Preznit's purview.)
So anyway. The code basically says, "You can conduct surveillance without a court order, so long as there is "no substantial likelihood" that you're spying on Americans. The President's order said, essentially, "Do it anyway."
The Department of Justice, as you noted, reviewed the program: however, this is a DoJ which has been notoriously dismissive of civil rights. Take John Yoo, for example, who recently claimed that crushing the testicles of the child of a suspected terrorist should be acceptable behavior. Or Alberto Gonzales, who has in past legal memos revealed himself to be unabashedly pro-torture. These are not people I would view as well qualified to provide balance to issues of civil rights.
I have to say, though, Michelle Malkin is even worse, given her support for the internment camps for Japansese during WWII, and for Muslims now (and utter fabrications/slanders she's made to justify these positions.)
The word "feminazi" has its own theory of the nature of knowledge? (I think you mean "etymology.")
I challenge your assertion of the term as having that specific a meaning in its original construction, unless you have a paper or something by Tom Hazlett claiming otherwise. More generally it has come to mean any feminist who exhibits misandry. In my experience, it's usually applied to any woman who considers herself a feminist, period.
Let's just say that if the term ever had a meaning that wasn't derogatory, it has since been corrupted.
I do, actually. It's "a tiny minority of people who should not be taken seriously, and who are vastly outnumbered by Rush Limbaugh listeners and Fox News watchers who believe that they have taken over the world."
"Feminazi" is shorter, though. I'll give you that.
I'm not sure which is sadder: the troll saying that she's ugly, or the rebuke of the troll in which the word "feminazi" is used unironically.
Not sure that's fair to drgonzo. He said, "But if all the browsers had a faster, better looking Swing already builtin, so the user wouldn't have to go looking for plugins and JREs, then "yeah" - I would suggest that everyone use Swing..."
That's like saying, "Yeah, I'd say that you should use it if it didn't completely suck." Not particularly controversial. (Well, except for the breaking search engines and alternative input/reading devices and... and...)
I think you misunderstood me.
mod_ruby and mod_php are similar. Neither one looks very much like Rails, which works via a [fast?]CGI script.
(putting on my overalls, lighting pipe, sitting in rocking chair in preparation to tell an "old-timers story".)
Heh! You think that's bad! I remember way back in... must've been '97 or so, there was this company, thought they had a killer solution for fixing incompatibilities in the way browsers rendered sites. They looked at how some things didn't render right in Netscape, and others were cock-eyed in IE, and some things didn't render right in either one, and they had this "brilliant" idea...
"Screw HTML," they said. "Make your whole site into one big Java app!"
And that's what they sold to their clients, too: a program that did nothing but generate user interfaces into which you could plug your text and pictures, then stick it on the web. 'Cause after all, everyone had Java, right? So every site should look the same! And if the applet rendered your whole site invisible to search engines, and took ten minutes to load in a client's browser, well, that was a small price to pay to make sure you could get pixel-perfect alignment, wasn't it?
(I really wish I were joking about this. There really was a product that promised to do exactly what I'm describing here, although I can't remember the name.)
That's actually kind of inaccurate, if I understand the situation correctly.
mod_ruby is apparently a very limited way of embedding ruby code inside a web page, a la mod_php and the PHP language. Ruby on Rails works through the use of a CGI (or, preferably, a fast_cgi) script called the Dispatcher, which is (unsurprisingly) written in Ruby. The dispatcher handles the translation of requests and URIs to the code you've written using Ruby and the Rails framework.
It would be more accurate to say that Ruby is to Rails as PHP/Coldfusion is to Fusebox.
It's worse than you think.
Not long after starting my first real tech job, I got called into my boss' office to help him when he complained that he didn't have network connectivity to his computer. (Note: the boss was the director of an organization which later supplied internet access to about 100k people).
I walked into his office, and looked at the laptop. Back then (1997 or so), the ethernet came via a PCMCIA card. They were Xircom combo-cards, which I remember mostly for being bright red. I think that's why I can remember with crystal clarity the way the card looked that day, with the accompanying ethernet cable sitting next to it, disconnected, about six inches away. I plugged it in and walked out.
"Fixed now," I mentioned on the way out. "Connectivity issue." That seemed to satisfy him.