Now, what do you do about the aggregators and the folks who are receiving your feed but not viewing it, burning your bandwidth at no benefit to you? The ones who after 3 months of hourly advertisements are still receiving that feed?
hitting up 127.0.0.1 will probably confuse some newsreaders.
You're hitting my server years after you should reasonably have stopped requesting the feed AND after I've done reasonable things like sending a message through the feed alerting to its termination and sending a 404 for a while. I'm supposed to care that with the final turndown your newsreader flakes out?
Worse, you've added a bit of complexity.
That's a cop-out. If the DNS hostname is the same as the feed ID in your database you can automatically generate the DNS zone straight from the DB, no muss no fuss.
A. What's your point? That the average worker doesn't think about continual change? That he's stuck in a rut? You may be right. But then the average worker doesn't get to make major decisions about the business, especially not right out of college. If you want to be a leader, you have to become better than average.
B. I no longer work for the DNC. My goal in joining the DNC was to defeat Bush/Cheney and their policies. With that goal achieved, I've moved to a better paying job in which I've more discretion.
Your best bet is to think about it beforehand. Assign each feed a unique DNS hostname. When it's time to retire the feed, change the DNS hostname to point to 127.0.0.1 with a TTL of 30 days.
That won't help you with the feeds you've already created but it'll help you with the ones you're creating now.
That isn't really true. IM augments the telephone. Face to face is still a important for rapidly building trust relationships with your peers and keeping up with their lives so you can accurately predict how their behavior will affect the things you want to do.
That's why I don't recommend working from home more than two days a week. When you do, the folks who are in the office start to forget to include you in their calculations.
You know what the customers "need" to be doing? Really? I've been in the business for 15 years and I still don't know what the customers "need" to be doing. I know a great many things that might help my customers improve their processes, but I don't know one single thing that they "need" to be doing.
First, at 70:1 oversubscription there is no bandwidth shaping policy which will improve the user experience, so you'll piss off the top 10% of your users without making the other 90% any happier.
I'd explain to the boss that the accepted norm for residential oversubscription is 10:1 and that oversubscription rates in excess of 20:1 flat out don't work. You either need to increase your system bandwidth reduce your subscriber bandwidth. In other words, you either buy more T1s at the head end or you drop those 5 meg lines to 768kbps and be honest about it.
Next, implement traffic shaping for ports other than UDP 53, TCP 22, 25, 80 and 443 during the prime time hours on your graph. You'll piss off the torrent freaks in the top 10%, but oh well.
Bull. Finding another office is just a matter of ordering modular office furniture that goes all the way to the ceiling instead of stopping at 5 feet and allocating 100 square feet to the employee instead of 64.
if you're in an office there might be less communication, etc.
If you're an introvert doing an introvert's work (like writing software) that will noticeably improve your productivity. It isn't about how much you communicate; it's about how well you communicate.
I just had a job interview where I advised the senior people at this company that they should be using a version control system,
There are a few no-brainers out there. Gee, you don't have an SCM and you should. Gee, you don't have backups and you should. Gee, you don't have any sort of bug/feature/request management system and you should. Those ideas have merit two weeks in whether you're fresh from college or almost ready to retire.
But ideas along the lines of, "You should do this on Linux instead of on Windows like you're doing now" aren't welcome 2 weeks in. Those are discussions for later: "Hey, now that I'm comfortable working this process over here on the Windows box and I'm familiar with how the rest of the staff interact with it, I'd like to bend your ear about Linux. I think we can double our productivity at this, this and this by moving these three processes to a Debian Linux server at a rough transition cost of $X and here's why."
By the time that I'm fully "trained" on the job I will be completely unmotivated to attempt to try to change the practices of the 40 other people in my department.
Well, that's your loss. If the only time you can imagine change is before you know anything about the job then you'll be of very limited use to me. Be sure that limitation will be reflected in your treatment.
the fact that they point out problems which you have become immune to is something to capitalize upon.
Without a doubt. I didn't hire you to warm a chair, I hired you for your brain and I fully intend to pick it.
But let's face it: until you've learned how and why the system was built the way it was, especially the "why" part, that lack of knowledge will both impair your ability to successfully redesign it and eliminate any chance of accurately estimating the costs.
Take the newbie where I work who wants to dump accurev in favor of subversion. He's a smart guy and in the long run, he may be right. In the short run, half his reasons reflect a lack of training on accurev. He hasn't estimated the cost of running another SCM, especially the interim cost in which both systems need to run in parallel. He hasn't considered the security implications. Or how to back it up. Or the degree to which his recollection of subversion's functionality is really a memory of Tortoise which isn't applicable in our Linux environment.
Or whether there's work he could be doing which adds more value than futzing with the SCM.
Now, I'm glad he's shown initiative. That impresses me. Six months from now after he's learned accurev, implemented some of his ideas in accurev and really gotten up to speed on the project overall, if he still thinks we'd see a significant net gain with Subversion, I'll want to hear all about it. But today I'd prefer he focus on learning the existing methods and solving problems for which we don't already have a working solution.
When the delta cost between an modest office and a cube is around $2k/year, I frankly have a hard time seeing why a $50k professional shouldn't have one if he wants it. If he asked you for $2k additional salary to work for you, you'd give it to him. So why not a $2k office?
That he's expected to settle for a cube is almost pure PHB. It says that the organization is more interested in the petty politics of oneupmanship than the are in their employees' comfort and productivity.
On the other hand, my eyes head for the ceiling when the guy who has been there two weeks starts explaining the half dozen major changes we should make to the business. Spend six months learning how to do it my way you greenie! When you're fully trained on the job, I'll be interested in your opinions on how to improve it.
If you want to provide a flash-based player, that's a good thing.
If you want to make it default so that I don't have to make a choice, that's fine too.
If you want to insist that I use your suck ass flash player instead of the A/V playback tools I prefer, then you're an incompetent boob who doesn't understand your customer very well.
Bell got the basic idea for the liquid microphone from Gray's caveat, which he gained access to when the examiner summoned Bell to defend an earlier version of Bell's application in light of Gray's caveat. The liquid microphone led Bell in a new direction that significantly improved the invention.
But here's the hitch: Gray didn't have a working telephone. He only had a better microphone... and at the end of the day it was only an intermediate step: a liquid microphone wasn't practical in production; Bell had to invent something else. At the time, Gray even publicly acknowledged Bell as the inventor of the telephone.
The situation was a lot like the Wright brothers. A bunch of folks were competing to invent the multiple telegraph, all were closing in on what became the telephone, and Bell finally got all the pieces to come together.
No disrespect is intended to Gray or Meucci, each geniuses in their own right. But Bell was finally the inventor of the telephone.
Step 1: Decide whether or not you intend to teach computer programming or programming advocacy.
Script hacking and web programming are great fun. They'll tend to draw in folks who have the interest and talent to develop computer software. But they will teach you very little about actual computer science... you'll have the modern equivalent of fogeys who proclaim their programming expertise in Excel and Dbase.
Step 2: If you picked advocacy, you're on the right track with Python and Mindstorms. You'll make it possible for your students to assess whether they have the knack for computer programming in a manner which is highly engaging.
Step 3: If you picked programming, select either pascal or java. They are the best-of-breed languages for illustrating correct functional and object oriented programming technique respectively. They're not particularly flashy and much of the course will involve teaching students what -not- to do, but students who are genuinely interested in computer programming will find that you haven't wasted their time with mere toys.
Unless [...] the contract gets voided, why shouldn't Microsoft be demanding payment?
Maybe it's unconscionable?
Verizon's always setting up deals like this too. They satisfy the FCC's open access rules but do it in a way that crushes the folks who dare accept the deal the first time business suffers a downturn.
"Our stuff, our rules" means the author/owners of Linux get to choose what the rules of Linux use are. The rules they chose happen to include requiring folks to release their changes as source code whenever they release modified binaries based on that code.
"Our stuff, our rules" means Hula gets to choose the rules of the content they control as well.
Boxee taking (or helping take) that content in a manner where Hula disapproves is no different than Linksys taking the Linux kernel in a manner incompatible with the GPL.
You like the latter because it advantages you. You dislike the former because it inhibits you. Fair enough. But when you step beyond like and dislike and use words like "right" and "wrong" you cross the line into hypocrisy.
Probably like a person with a very broken business model, but that's just me.
Then your solution is what? Hula should shut down completely instead of just excluding Boxee? How does that help anyone?
If you park your car downtown with the windows rolled down and the keys in the ignition, you may be an idiot. But the guy who takes it is still a thief. And the quiet little towns where nobody will take it... those are treasures.
Having been there for 7 years, are you on good personal terms with either your boss or his boss?
If not, why the hell not? If you couldn't get on good terms with your bosses, you should have left years ago.
If so, explain the situation and ask for a written recommendation.
Almost nobody checks the full employment history. They check your three references and they check your immediately preceding employer and that's about it. If you ever need a clearance, they'll check your employment history but don't sweat it: they almost don't care what your employer says about you as long as it matches what you claimed they'd say about you.
The conclusion being that relational databases and key value stores aren't really mutually exclusive and instead are different tools for different requirements.
No surprise that T-Mobile had so much trouble. I've heard they're OK elsewhere, but in the DC area their coverage is horrible. Pity too because they have the best phones... First the sidekick and now android.
Slashdot Mirror
that is lost mindshare and lost traffic.
I'll buy that.
Now, what do you do about the aggregators and the folks who are receiving your feed but not viewing it, burning your bandwidth at no benefit to you? The ones who after 3 months of hourly advertisements are still receiving that feed?
It would be bad SEO
I'll have to take your word for that.
hitting up 127.0.0.1 will probably confuse some newsreaders.
You're hitting my server years after you should reasonably have stopped requesting the feed AND after I've done reasonable things like sending a message through the feed alerting to its termination and sending a 404 for a while. I'm supposed to care that with the final turndown your newsreader flakes out?
Worse, you've added a bit of complexity.
That's a cop-out. If the DNS hostname is the same as the feed ID in your database you can automatically generate the DNS zone straight from the DB, no muss no fuss.
A. What's your point? That the average worker doesn't think about continual change? That he's stuck in a rut? You may be right. But then the average worker doesn't get to make major decisions about the business, especially not right out of college. If you want to be a leader, you have to become better than average.
B. I no longer work for the DNC. My goal in joining the DNC was to defeat Bush/Cheney and their policies. With that goal achieved, I've moved to a better paying job in which I've more discretion.
Your best bet is to think about it beforehand. Assign each feed a unique DNS hostname. When it's time to retire the feed, change the DNS hostname to point to 127.0.0.1 with a TTL of 30 days.
That won't help you with the feeds you've already created but it'll help you with the ones you're creating now.
That isn't really true. IM augments the telephone. Face to face is still a important for rapidly building trust relationships with your peers and keeping up with their lives so you can accurately predict how their behavior will affect the things you want to do.
That's why I don't recommend working from home more than two days a week. When you do, the folks who are in the office start to forget to include you in their calculations.
You know what the customers "need" to be doing? Really? I've been in the business for 15 years and I still don't know what the customers "need" to be doing. I know a great many things that might help my customers improve their processes, but I don't know one single thing that they "need" to be doing.
In my situation, what would you do?
First, at 70:1 oversubscription there is no bandwidth shaping policy which will improve the user experience, so you'll piss off the top 10% of your users without making the other 90% any happier.
I'd explain to the boss that the accepted norm for residential oversubscription is 10:1 and that oversubscription rates in excess of 20:1 flat out don't work. You either need to increase your system bandwidth reduce your subscriber bandwidth. In other words, you either buy more T1s at the head end or you drop those 5 meg lines to 768kbps and be honest about it.
Next, implement traffic shaping for ports other than UDP 53, TCP 22, 25, 80 and 443 during the prime time hours on your graph. You'll piss off the torrent freaks in the top 10%, but oh well.
Often it's hard to "find another office"
Bull. Finding another office is just a matter of ordering modular office furniture that goes all the way to the ceiling instead of stopping at 5 feet and allocating 100 square feet to the employee instead of 64.
if you're in an office there might be less communication, etc.
If you're an introvert doing an introvert's work (like writing software) that will noticeably improve your productivity. It isn't about how much you communicate; it's about how well you communicate.
I just had a job interview where I advised the senior people at this company that they should be using a version control system,
There are a few no-brainers out there. Gee, you don't have an SCM and you should. Gee, you don't have backups and you should. Gee, you don't have any sort of bug/feature/request management system and you should. Those ideas have merit two weeks in whether you're fresh from college or almost ready to retire.
But ideas along the lines of, "You should do this on Linux instead of on Windows like you're doing now" aren't welcome 2 weeks in. Those are discussions for later: "Hey, now that I'm comfortable working this process over here on the Windows box and I'm familiar with how the rest of the staff interact with it, I'd like to bend your ear about Linux. I think we can double our productivity at this, this and this by moving these three processes to a Debian Linux server at a rough transition cost of $X and here's why."
By the time that I'm fully "trained" on the job I will be completely unmotivated to attempt to try to change the practices of the 40 other people in my department.
Well, that's your loss. If the only time you can imagine change is before you know anything about the job then you'll be of very limited use to me. Be sure that limitation will be reflected in your treatment.
the fact that they point out problems which you have become immune to is something to capitalize upon.
Without a doubt. I didn't hire you to warm a chair, I hired you for your brain and I fully intend to pick it.
But let's face it: until you've learned how and why the system was built the way it was, especially the "why" part, that lack of knowledge will both impair your ability to successfully redesign it and eliminate any chance of accurately estimating the costs.
Take the newbie where I work who wants to dump accurev in favor of subversion. He's a smart guy and in the long run, he may be right. In the short run, half his reasons reflect a lack of training on accurev. He hasn't estimated the cost of running another SCM, especially the interim cost in which both systems need to run in parallel. He hasn't considered the security implications. Or how to back it up. Or the degree to which his recollection of subversion's functionality is really a memory of Tortoise which isn't applicable in our Linux environment.
Or whether there's work he could be doing which adds more value than futzing with the SCM.
Now, I'm glad he's shown initiative. That impresses me. Six months from now after he's learned accurev, implemented some of his ideas in accurev and really gotten up to speed on the project overall, if he still thinks we'd see a significant net gain with Subversion, I'll want to hear all about it. But today I'd prefer he focus on learning the existing methods and solving problems for which we don't already have a working solution.
When the delta cost between an modest office and a cube is around $2k/year, I frankly have a hard time seeing why a $50k professional shouldn't have one if he wants it. If he asked you for $2k additional salary to work for you, you'd give it to him. So why not a $2k office?
That he's expected to settle for a cube is almost pure PHB. It says that the organization is more interested in the petty politics of oneupmanship than the are in their employees' comfort and productivity.
On the other hand, my eyes head for the ceiling when the guy who has been there two weeks starts explaining the half dozen major changes we should make to the business. Spend six months learning how to do it my way you greenie! When you're fully trained on the job, I'll be interested in your opinions on how to improve it.
If you want to provide a flash-based player, that's a good thing.
If you want to make it default so that I don't have to make a choice, that's fine too.
If you want to insist that I use your suck ass flash player instead of the A/V playback tools I prefer, then you're an incompetent boob who doesn't understand your customer very well.
Hula is beholden to current laws, so they need to follow those rules.
You believe that Hula is legally obligated to serve up content to Boxee users? Seriously?
<A HREF="voicemail-message-1.mp3">
'nuff said.
Google Voice Basics: Requirements
Print
To use Google Voice, you just need a touch-tone phone and a Flash-enabled browser
Oh well. It was -almost- really cool.
Bell got the basic idea for the liquid microphone from Gray's caveat, which he gained access to when the examiner summoned Bell to defend an earlier version of Bell's application in light of Gray's caveat. The liquid microphone led Bell in a new direction that significantly improved the invention.
But here's the hitch: Gray didn't have a working telephone. He only had a better microphone... and at the end of the day it was only an intermediate step: a liquid microphone wasn't practical in production; Bell had to invent something else. At the time, Gray even publicly acknowledged Bell as the inventor of the telephone.
The situation was a lot like the Wright brothers. A bunch of folks were competing to invent the multiple telegraph, all were closing in on what became the telephone, and Bell finally got all the pieces to come together.
No disrespect is intended to Gray or Meucci, each geniuses in their own right. But Bell was finally the inventor of the telephone.
Step 1: Decide whether or not you intend to teach computer programming or programming advocacy.
Script hacking and web programming are great fun. They'll tend to draw in folks who have the interest and talent to develop computer software. But they will teach you very little about actual computer science... you'll have the modern equivalent of fogeys who proclaim their programming expertise in Excel and Dbase.
Step 2: If you picked advocacy, you're on the right track with Python and Mindstorms. You'll make it possible for your students to assess whether they have the knack for computer programming in a manner which is highly engaging.
Step 3: If you picked programming, select either pascal or java. They are the best-of-breed languages for illustrating correct functional and object oriented programming technique respectively. They're not particularly flashy and much of the course will involve teaching students what -not- to do, but students who are genuinely interested in computer programming will find that you haven't wasted their time with mere toys.
Unless [...] the contract gets voided, why shouldn't Microsoft be demanding payment?
Maybe it's unconscionable?
Verizon's always setting up deals like this too. They satisfy the FCC's open access rules but do it in a way that crushes the folks who dare accept the deal the first time business suffers a downturn.
"Our stuff, our rules" means the author/owners of Linux get to choose what the rules of Linux use are. The rules they chose happen to include requiring folks to release their changes as source code whenever they release modified binaries based on that code.
"Our stuff, our rules" means Hula gets to choose the rules of the content they control as well.
Boxee taking (or helping take) that content in a manner where Hula disapproves is no different than Linksys taking the Linux kernel in a manner incompatible with the GPL.
You like the latter because it advantages you. You dislike the former because it inhibits you. Fair enough. But when you step beyond like and dislike and use words like "right" and "wrong" you cross the line into hypocrisy.
If there's no authentication, and they just cough up the data when you ask for it, then you're clearly not stealing
Next week you'll react with outrage when some vendor refuses to release their modified Linux kernel. Our stuff, our rules. Don't like? Don't use.
Probably like a person with a very broken business model, but that's just me.
Then your solution is what? Hula should shut down completely instead of just excluding Boxee? How does that help anyone?
If you park your car downtown with the windows rolled down and the keys in the ignition, you may be an idiot. But the guy who takes it is still a thief. And the quiet little towns where nobody will take it... those are treasures.
Having been there for 7 years, are you on good personal terms with either your boss or his boss?
If not, why the hell not? If you couldn't get on good terms with your bosses, you should have left years ago.
If so, explain the situation and ask for a written recommendation.
Almost nobody checks the full employment history. They check your three references and they check your immediately preceding employer and that's about it. If you ever need a clearance, they'll check your employment history but don't sweat it: they almost don't care what your employer says about you as long as it matches what you claimed they'd say about you.
The conclusion being that relational databases and key value stores aren't really mutually exclusive and instead are different tools for different requirements.
In related news, black is not white.
No surprise that T-Mobile had so much trouble. I've heard they're OK elsewhere, but in the DC area their coverage is horrible. Pity too because they have the best phones... First the sidekick and now android.