We had a multi-million-dollar solution go down the toilet because neither the software manufacturer nor the doctor's practice nor the local medical board could assure us we were going to be HIPAA-compliant.
Hell, even the US-friggin-government couldn't tell us we would be compliant. Bottom-line? The customer walked because there WAS no solution. No-one knows what HIPAA is right now; it is just a loosely-defined, vague, treatise on what you SHOULD be doing.
Groupware IS a hard problem but I can only agree with part of your adoration of Notes. The backend might have been well-thought-out but the client is one of the worst conglomerations of crap I have ever used.
I gave it a chance...a good, long, two-years-worth of a chance...even migrated to the new Domino client. I'm sorry. The Notes client is an enormous kludge, no matter the well-designed backend.
You can dictate a whole _lot_ of end-user data retention by creating (and in some cases forcing) roaming profile usage. This will ensure that everytime an end-user logs off their workstation, that their Word/Excel/Whatever files (in My Documents) gets saved to a central point on your network such as a file server.
Most programs (such as any Office program) can also be set to use a mapped network share as a default save location. If you include a mapped network drive to a folder within their login script or user profile, this same central point can hold THAT information as well.
From that point, you simply backup this central repository.
In the case of users NOT logging off their workstation, boot 'em off with time/day-based login restrictions. I have found that if you keep preaching the use of end-users' network drive for storage, you stand a good chance of permanently altering their behaviour. The trick is to keep reminding them of it!!!
I saw both movies. Both movies were entertaining. Why do I go to movies? To be entertained, of course. OK, a small part of me wants to see the "rest of the story" but the entertainment factor is what rates movies in my opinion.
Spiderman: blahblahblah. I read Spidey comics when I was still pissing in my training pants. I know the story and I know the characters.. *ahem* does anyone remember how Spidey's web was originally? How about clever mechanical contraptions strapped to his wrists and fed by cannisters....ring any bells? It was fun to watch.
Episode II: TPM was a _totally_ different movie. AOTC was darker and more involved...certainly more Jedi action. For a prepubescent as I was then, the original Trilogy was very mysterious about the Force and the Jedi. There was alot you _didn't_ know. This second Trilogy is for me. It fills in the gaps and entertains the once-child in me. My kids ate it up, too. It, too, was fun to watch.
The hype: I saw more Spidey ads this past month that I can stomach. I certainly saw lots of Jedi spin from Mr. Lucas but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as with TPM. Let the dollars fall as they may. I am a die-hard comics fan (Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby ROCK!!!) and I am a die-hard believer in the Force...both movie houses raked in plenty of dough and we are not likely to see them stop production on either sequel from _lack_ of dollars so who cares, really???
Y'know, it is bullcrap FUD and marketing spin like Microsoft's "Naked PC" campaign that really piss me the hell OFF!!!
What rationale are you supposed to use if the person buying the "naked PC" already HAS an OS (either purchased separately or from a previous, junked, PC)??? Are we blindly supposed to accept whatever "latest and greatest" OS that Microsoft has to offer? What if we are perfectly content with our PREVIOUS OS?
I'd like to sit back with a box of popcorn and listen to Microsoftians answer my perfectly legitimate and valid questions just to HEAR the crap flow from their mouths!!!
I'm sorry but I don't think a sequel will be able to capture the same early-geek innocence. It was a little like the Old West back in the days... the graphics avaialable today will just kill it for me...
Instead of "RSM", the post-er should have written GNU/Richard GNU/Stallman. He is a prolific GNU/man these days as I caught a GNU/letter of his being published in last GNU/month's Network Computing GNU/magazine.
TriBBS was truly great, though. Not only that, but I _did_ program in RIPscript. I also helped run a PCBoard BBS running on DESQview. We used a PPP gateway with it to provide access to the Internet.
Damn, where's my qwk reader??? BLUE WAVE TO THE RESCUE!!!
-PONA-
King of the Who?.sig
Re:StarOffice 6 XML. *waves goodbye to Tex forever
on
Writing Documentation
·
· Score: 2, Informative
*SHHESH* !!!!
FINALLY, a post which really talks to the question this thread was started for!!!
Damn that.sig was right: "Putting a lameness filter on Slashdot is like putting a shit filter on your ass!!!"
We _all_ have to, at one time or another, create documentation for something. I have to create documents for the Luddite users on my network so they know how to keep their trousers from becoming unzipped in front of their customers...
I have used Word on a great many of these documentation projects, great *and* small. It has always performed fine for me. There are a crapload of features I'm sure I could be taking advantage of to make my documentation even snazzier but I'm too lazy to really LEARN Word. Like as not I've been holding out for an Open Source alternative like Star Office or something to step up to the plate...and the latest version really holds up well. Compatibility with MS-Office's formats helps a great deal with the transition and it is available for Windows AND *n*X.
For exeptionally large jobs, I would recommend an actual professional layout package like PageMaker/FrameMaker on the closed source OS's. For simplicity's sake, TeX and LaTeX for simple ASCII-text-with-markup in them.
Your subject and your audience really dictate the format and platform of your documentation. A new version of Apache doesn't come with a README in Word/RTF format but your latest FPS game will.
...and, like {Free,Net,Open}BSD, it's a volunteer project, not a commercial product. If somebody wants to compare the BSDs to a Linux distribution, Debian is probably the most appropriate one with which to compare them.
If you look at Linux distributions in comparison to *BSD, Slackware is the most *BSD-like of them all. I grew up on Open Source Slackware and found it very comfortable switching from Slack to *BSD. and it is _not_ a large commercial organization, either. Patrick (as in Volderking) has maintained a good "leg" off the Linux family tree while sticking to traditional UN*X roots...
How about a computer which morphs to accomodate the OS riding on top of it? Sounds like Crusoe to me. Couldn't the Crusoe "pretend" to be the platform of a SNES or a N64? This would solve alot of manufacturing problems and provide a unified framework for handheld/low-power devices.
Wouldn't YOU like to see StrongARM have some good competition?
I can't think of a single OS for any 64-bit architecture either [sun.com]
PONA-Boy chimes in:
How about this OTHER one? I have to say that, for a commercial UNIX, TRU64 is _very_ friendly and it runs (*GASP*) natively on the non-iNTEL chip of choice: ALPHA!!! Linux fans everywhere CHEER!!!
I have more of a problem giving out my personal information for things I AM paying for. Like when Radio Shack, or some other stores, ask you for your address after a purchase, so they can mail you spam, I suppose.
PONA-Boy chimes in:
Since I was a Radio Shack employee for (too) many years, I feel uniquely qualified to add my two cents on the name/address issue here. When you are indoctrinated into the Radio Shack system of retail bliss, it is ingrained in you that an enormous amount of return business is generated from the seemingly-intrusive practice of asking for names and addresses. It was, to me, an uncomfortable practice to get into the habit of doing but I eventually relented and pursued it. In fact, your performance reviews were partly weighted by your name/address percentage rate.
Believe it or not, the truth is that the marketing geniuses ad Tandy Corporate were right - the more names and addresses we gathered, the more monthly flyers and promotions were mailed out to people in our area, the more advertising revenue went into our district, the more people came into our store, and the more money Tandy (and we lowly slugs) made. I can remember asking overandover again for the last four digits in someone's phone number...which was how the POS system managed groups of names back then.
It was intrusive and borderline downright obnoxious but it really did generate a great deal of revenue for our business. I assume it still does...
I saw the trailer at Monsters, Inc, this weekend myself. As much as I am going to try and insulate myself from the marketing chatter and numerous spoilers, I still enjoyed seeing those brief glimpses of what is to come. Looks like Ewan's got a beard in this one!!!
When I heard about the shakedown at Walnut Creek with the whole Wind River debacle, I was on the phone with all my other Slack devotees looking for ways to help fund Patrick (Volderking)'s continuation of the Slackware project.
I have used Slackware since its infancy when we are all excited to load up a new box full of floppy disksets on our boxen. There were long nights spent swapping floppies out as the install progressed. It wasn't easy or quick or (especially) fun, but it ALWAYS worked and it was ALWAYS stable.
Slack continues to run my boxen since it gives me a really granular level of control over what gets installed and what doesn't in a way that I've seen VERY few other distros replicate. Not only that but I don't have to feel crippled or out-of-touch by using RPM (or RPM-like managers) for installing software. I just donwload the source, edit what files I need to, and run a 'make' on it. I thought this was what Linux was supposed to be about - easy access to source and the tools to set it up on our boxes. One look at the directory trees from other distros (like SuSe, for instance) makes me cringe for anyone who has to admin those boxes from the CLI.
When I got my Slack 8.0, I moved into the 2.4 kernel era...there isn't ANYthing stone-age about ANY of my machines. I run just as current (if not MORE current) code than most of the Red Hat fanatics I've met. Heck, most of THEM rag me about no package manager...to which I reply that Slackware has had (its own) package management for longer than RPM has been floating around. People claiming that Slack is out-of-date really should step back and analyze just what "out-of-date" means.
Slackware is the closest Linux derivative to a "real" UN*X or *BSD. In fact, it is very easy to switch from on to the other. It is also one of the cleanest distros in terms of where things are put in the directory tree. I don't have to wonder where everything is at 'cause it is very close to POSIX. Allright, I could keep rambling onandon..but why???
I would really hate for Slackware to go away but if it did, I'd be lining up for my latest El Torito from Free (or Open) BSD!!!
[...] don't realize that just about everything good about Windows comes from UNIX with the exception of the GUI which Billy-boy stole from the Mac and did a piss-poor job of stealing it.
I'm sure someone will correct me promply if I'm wrong but I do believe that Bill Gates got his GUI from Xerox. The same Xerox who was _very_ instrumental in the early days of UN*X.
What's the big friggin' deal? I have managed to ubiquitously entrench a couple of Linux boxes here in the network and have slowly gained leverage over the fee-based applications here. Our workstations are all wintel boxen and will probably stay that way for the rest of their usable life. We don't have 2000 right now and _certainly_ aren't planning to move to XP!!!
Our current hardware (sans the occasional failure) is more than capable to handle our business functions for the next upteen years. If you factor in a move to Open Source applications, we can extend their usability out even longer. The release of XP is _such_ a non-event!!!
BIND Configuration Tool-Simple setup of forward and backward name resolutions and DNS lookups.
I thought it wa REVERSE name resolution, not BACKWARD name resolution. I may be mistaken here but reverse and backward are two different things entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
And then???
Absolutely true!!!
We had a multi-million-dollar solution go down the toilet because neither the software manufacturer nor the doctor's practice nor the local medical board could assure us we were going to be HIPAA-compliant.
Hell, even the US-friggin-government couldn't tell us we would be compliant. Bottom-line? The customer walked because there WAS no solution. No-one knows what HIPAA is right now; it is just a loosely-defined, vague, treatise on what you SHOULD be doing.
-PONA-
I do not understand why Notes is such a taboo here.
Don't get me wrong. I admire Notes for their single-minded dedication to their product. I just can't STAND the client.
Groupware IS a hard problem but I can only agree with part of your adoration of Notes. The backend might have been well-thought-out but the client is one of the worst conglomerations of crap I have ever used.
I gave it a chance...a good, long, two-years-worth of a chance...even migrated to the new Domino client. I'm sorry. The Notes client is an enormous kludge, no matter the well-designed backend.
-PONA-
popup ads, popunder ads, UCE, and telemarketers all rate the same with me: number ONE with a bullet... .45ACP, that is.
don't call me, don't spam my mailbox, and don't plaster your crude, marketing-unsavvy, advertisements on my monitor screen!!! Period. End of story.
-PONA-
I know, I know...it is ONLY a Windows application AND is shareware but it looks like another viable alternative...
Personally, I am very happy to avoid using a Java utility...
Check it here
-PONA-
You can dictate a whole _lot_ of end-user data retention by creating (and in some cases forcing) roaming profile usage. This will ensure that everytime an end-user logs off their workstation, that their Word/Excel/Whatever files (in My Documents) gets saved to a central point on your network such as a file server.
Most programs (such as any Office program) can also be set to use a mapped network share as a default save location. If you include a mapped network drive to a folder within their login script or user profile, this same central point can hold THAT information as well.
From that point, you simply backup this central repository.
In the case of users NOT logging off their workstation, boot 'em off with time/day-based login restrictions. I have found that if you keep preaching the use of end-users' network drive for storage, you stand a good chance of permanently altering their behaviour. The trick is to keep reminding them of it!!!
I saw both movies. Both movies were entertaining. Why do I go to movies? To be entertained, of course. OK, a small part of me wants to see the "rest of the story" but the entertainment factor is what rates movies in my opinion.
Spiderman: blahblahblah. I read Spidey comics when I was still pissing in my training pants. I know the story and I know the characters.. *ahem* does anyone remember how Spidey's web was originally? How about clever mechanical contraptions strapped to his wrists and fed by cannisters....ring any bells? It was fun to watch.
Episode II: TPM was a _totally_ different movie. AOTC was darker and more involved...certainly more Jedi action. For a prepubescent as I was then, the original Trilogy was very mysterious about the Force and the Jedi. There was alot you _didn't_ know. This second Trilogy is for me. It fills in the gaps and entertains the once-child in me. My kids ate it up, too. It, too, was fun to watch.
The hype: I saw more Spidey ads this past month that I can stomach. I certainly saw lots of Jedi spin from Mr. Lucas but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as with TPM. Let the dollars fall as they may. I am a die-hard comics fan (Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby ROCK!!!) and I am a die-hard believer in the Force...both movie houses raked in plenty of dough and we are not likely to see them stop production on either sequel from _lack_ of dollars so who cares, really???
Make Mine Marvel
'Nuff said.
Y'know, it is bullcrap FUD and marketing spin like Microsoft's "Naked PC" campaign that really piss me the hell OFF!!!
What rationale are you supposed to use if the person buying the "naked PC" already HAS an OS (either purchased separately or from a previous, junked, PC)??? Are we blindly supposed to accept whatever "latest and greatest" OS that Microsoft has to offer? What if we are perfectly content with our PREVIOUS OS?
I'd like to sit back with a box of popcorn and listen to Microsoftians answer my perfectly legitimate and valid questions just to HEAR the crap flow from their mouths!!!
(*insert upraised middle finger here*)
...crap like this make me wanna puke...
-PONA-
I'm sorry but I don't think a sequel will be able to capture the same early-geek innocence. It was a little like the Old West back in the days... the graphics avaialable today will just kill it for me...
Instead of "RSM", the post-er should have written GNU/Richard GNU/Stallman. He is a prolific GNU/man these days as I caught a GNU/letter of his being published in last GNU/month's Network Computing GNU/magazine.
TriBBS...long live the bored, *ahem*, BOARD!!!
TriBBS was truly great, though. Not only that, but I _did_ program in RIPscript. I also helped run a PCBoard BBS running on DESQview. We used a PPP gateway with it to provide access to the Internet.
Damn, where's my qwk reader??? BLUE WAVE TO THE RESCUE!!!
-PONA-
King of the Who?.sig
*SHHESH* !!!!
.sig was right: "Putting a lameness filter on Slashdot is like putting a shit filter on your ass!!!"
FINALLY, a post which really talks to the question this thread was started for!!!
Damn that
We _all_ have to, at one time or another, create documentation for something. I have to create documents for the Luddite users on my network so they know how to keep their trousers from becoming unzipped in front of their customers...
I have used Word on a great many of these documentation projects, great *and* small. It has always performed fine for me. There are a crapload of features I'm sure I could be taking advantage of to make my documentation even snazzier but I'm too lazy to really LEARN Word. Like as not I've been holding out for an Open Source alternative like Star Office or something to step up to the plate...and the latest version really holds up well. Compatibility with MS-Office's formats helps a great deal with the transition and it is available for Windows AND *n*X.
For exeptionally large jobs, I would recommend an actual professional layout package like PageMaker/FrameMaker on the closed source OS's. For simplicity's sake, TeX and LaTeX for simple ASCII-text-with-markup in them.
Your subject and your audience really dictate the format and platform of your documentation. A new version of Apache doesn't come with a README in Word/RTF format but your latest FPS game will.
-PONA-
King of the Who?.sig
Personally, I want a Recognizer to putter to work in. Better to smash people out of my parking space in.
If you look at Linux distributions in comparison to *BSD, Slackware is the most *BSD-like of them all. I grew up on Open Source Slackware and found it very comfortable switching from Slack to *BSD. and it is _not_ a large commercial organization, either. Patrick (as in Volderking) has maintained a good "leg" off the Linux family tree while sticking to traditional UN*X roots...
-PONA-
I anxiously await the coming of the Yog-Sothoth!!
Ereb Cthulu!!! Charles Dexter Ward was right!!!
I know this is just humour but...
How about a computer which morphs to accomodate the OS riding on top of it? Sounds like Crusoe to me. Couldn't the Crusoe "pretend" to be the platform of a SNES or a N64? This would solve alot of manufacturing problems and provide a unified framework for handheld/low-power devices.
Wouldn't YOU like to see StrongARM have some good competition?
-PONA-
(ex) Radio Shack brethren UNTIE!!!!
No more names & addresses!!! No more putting out force feed!!! No more late-night inventories and (bad) pizza!!! No more battery club cards!!!
Y A Y !!!
Three cheers for (being) a Technology Professional after 30!!!
(party-poopers out there: YES, I spelled UNITE as UNTIE...it's commonly associated with my own (tm) brand of communication called HUMOUR!!!)
-PONA-
King of the who?.sig
ceesco blurted out:
I can't think of a single OS for any 64-bit architecture either [sun.com]
PONA-Boy chimes in:
How about this OTHER one? I have to say that, for a commercial UNIX, TRU64 is _very_ friendly and it runs (*GASP*) natively on the non-iNTEL chip of choice: ALPHA!!! Linux fans everywhere CHEER!!!
-PONA-
When I mow my lawn, I pray for silence
John Booty Writes:
I have more of a problem giving out my personal information for things I AM paying for. Like when Radio Shack, or some other stores, ask you for your address after a purchase, so they can mail you spam, I suppose.
PONA-Boy chimes in:
Since I was a Radio Shack employee for (too) many years, I feel uniquely qualified to add my two cents on the name/address issue here. When you are indoctrinated into the Radio Shack system of retail bliss, it is ingrained in you that an enormous amount of return business is generated from the seemingly-intrusive practice of asking for names and addresses. It was, to me, an uncomfortable practice to get into the habit of doing but I eventually relented and pursued it. In fact, your performance reviews were partly weighted by your name/address percentage rate.
Believe it or not, the truth is that the marketing geniuses ad Tandy Corporate were right - the more names and addresses we gathered, the more monthly flyers and promotions were mailed out to people in our area, the more advertising revenue went into our district, the more people came into our store, and the more money Tandy (and we lowly slugs) made. I can remember asking overandover again for the last four digits in someone's phone number...which was how the POS system managed groups of names back then.
It was intrusive and borderline downright obnoxious but it really did generate a great deal of revenue for our business. I assume it still does...
I saw the trailer at Monsters, Inc, this weekend myself. As much as I am going to try and insulate myself from the marketing chatter and numerous spoilers, I still enjoyed seeing those brief glimpses of what is to come. Looks like Ewan's got a beard in this one!!!
-PONA-
King of the who?.sig
Actually, I believe the first "real" commercial Linux distro was Ygddrasil.
-PONA-
When I heard about the shakedown at Walnut Creek with the whole Wind River debacle, I was on the phone with all my other Slack devotees looking for ways to help fund Patrick (Volderking)'s continuation of the Slackware project.
I have used Slackware since its infancy when we are all excited to load up a new box full of floppy disksets on our boxen. There were long nights spent swapping floppies out as the install progressed. It wasn't easy or quick or (especially) fun, but it ALWAYS worked and it was ALWAYS stable.
Slack continues to run my boxen since it gives me a really granular level of control over what gets installed and what doesn't in a way that I've seen VERY few other distros replicate. Not only that but I don't have to feel crippled or out-of-touch by using RPM (or RPM-like managers) for installing software. I just donwload the source, edit what files I need to, and run a 'make' on it. I thought this was what Linux was supposed to be about - easy access to source and the tools to set it up on our boxes. One look at the directory trees from other distros (like SuSe, for instance) makes me cringe for anyone who has to admin those boxes from the CLI.
When I got my Slack 8.0, I moved into the 2.4 kernel era...there isn't ANYthing stone-age about ANY of my machines. I run just as current (if not MORE current) code than most of the Red Hat fanatics I've met. Heck, most of THEM rag me about no package manager...to which I reply that Slackware has had (its own) package management for longer than RPM has been floating around. People claiming that Slack is out-of-date really should step back and analyze just what "out-of-date" means.
Slackware is the closest Linux derivative to a "real" UN*X or *BSD. In fact, it is very easy to switch from on to the other. It is also one of the cleanest distros in terms of where things are put in the directory tree. I don't have to wonder where everything is at 'cause it is very close to POSIX. Allright, I could keep rambling onandon..but why???
I would really hate for Slackware to go away but if it did, I'd be lining up for my latest El Torito from Free (or Open) BSD!!!
-PONA-
"Make Mine Slakware!!!"
[...] don't realize that just about everything good about Windows comes from UNIX with the exception of the GUI which Billy-boy stole from the Mac and did a piss-poor job of stealing it.
I'm sure someone will correct me promply if I'm wrong but I do believe that Bill Gates got his GUI from Xerox. The same Xerox who was _very_ instrumental in the early days of UN*X.
-PONA-
sig for all sigs.sig
I really (dion't) hate to say it but:
What's the big friggin' deal? I have managed to ubiquitously entrench a couple of Linux boxes here in the network and have slowly gained leverage over the fee-based applications here. Our workstations are all wintel boxen and will probably stay that way for the rest of their usable life. We don't have 2000 right now and _certainly_ aren't planning to move to XP!!!
Our current hardware (sans the occasional failure) is more than capable to handle our business functions for the next upteen years. If you factor in a move to Open Source applications, we can extend their usability out even longer. The release of XP is _such_ a non-event!!!
-PONA-
King of the who?.sig
I know everyone's scrounging to FP on a topic. How's about LAST post to a topic?
from the "whats new in Red Hat" page:
BIND Configuration Tool-Simple setup of forward and backward name resolutions and DNS lookups.
I thought it wa REVERSE name resolution, not BACKWARD name resolution. I may be mistaken here but reverse and backward are two different things entirely.
-PONA-
"I was funny, now I'm just boring".sig