I don't agree I think journalism is far better than it was a decade ago. The blog community is providing excellent journalism and the cable news networks because they can focus on narrow segments of the market are increasing their quality to a level that I think is unmatched in television history.
I don't think there is any doubt you need to go back to the 1950s to find the kind of investigative reporting that is now readily available, and honestly I don't think even the 1950s is comparable.
I should say the NYTimes of 1953 could possibly charge for content. I can't see what the NYtimes of 2010 does that is far enough above the norm to survive when most competitors are free.
ou mean like having the vendor go out of business and you can't get the source code? In 1990's, I managed a large data center. All of our hardware (and most of the software) came from the #2 player in the industry -- Digital Equipment Corporation.
I'm not sure I would say that DEC was the #2 by the mid 1990s, they were already on the ropes. And how it turned out was Compaq bought them and the platform died slowly. Even today HP openVMS is still a supported platform.
I agree completely about 9/11 I've been saying the same thing since then. And telling people how different it would be after the negligence of the last decade if 9/11/2011 were to bring down a major data / communications center with personnel.
As for the agony... Those were the last of the glory datas. the IT grunts were making a lot of money back then. I'd trade those days for these days in a heartbeat.
No I likely have to fire them, or ice them or cut them out... if they were successful. But I also realize I have a deep structural problem. Why do they think they need to lie to me to get their job done? If the Directors and VPs are acting Somalian warlords the problem is really with me not them. I consider getting middle management to genuinely buy into the program important. I don't want yes men, if I don't get accurate feedback then I have no clue what's really happening.
My guess is stuff skips generations. I'm not making the mistakes of the guys who were in charge in the late 1990s, when I was on my way up. Maybe I'm mistakes of the guys who were in charge in the late 1970s when the senior management of the 1990s were on their way up? I just don't know what those were since I was a kid then.:-)
It depends on whether we are talking a one liner like Haskell or a one liner like Perl.
Perl and C have an incredibly powerful syntax which allows for mashing programs down to one cool line of code. These techniques can be used for structuring the program to keep the emphasis where it should be.
Conversely Haskell tends to make you think long and hard about the true nature of the problem. That one line represents a perfect understanding of the algorithm if it doesn't make absolute sense, in a "it could be no other way" you shouldn't be touching the code. The result is 3000 line programs become 60 lines of really interesting ideas.
Actually there have been tests. The problem they are very specific to platform / language / development techniques in vogue. For example the whole hungarian variables debates from 20 years ago.
The next programmer in line may not need to understand the complex multi threaded stuff at all. For example he may be revising the UI or the backend datastore. Reading your multi threaded comment may be effectively him just having a comment that the is no I/O and that the block is all CPU / memory; and that is good enough.
a) Let sea levels rise 100 meters and say have to replace or substantially change 1/2 the cities in the world over the next 3 centuries b) Drop human energy consumption by 80% of the next 3 centuries.
It is not at all obvious to me that (a) is cheaper than (b). I believe in global warming but I don't think it helps the case to pretend that humans can't and haven't adapted to huge environmental changes.
The problem is the IT guys didn't know which systems would fail and how bad it would be. What they were facing was IT guys in every major company in the United States saying there would be some unknown degree of damage and risk and no one had done a risk assessment. And no one had any idea of what thousands of systems going down together would do to the complex interrelations needed to run our society.
Think about 1 year after that, losing a skyscraper + some damage to the pentagon has cost us over $2t.
I guess I'm that group. First computer was a PET and I know 6502 Assembler. My first structured language was Pascal and the second was C, which was all about performance tricks. I was mid level around 2000 and a CIO today.
And let me tell you I still believe in rip out and replace unless there is substantial business intelligence embedded in the apps. Maintaining crap is expensive and demoralizing. And quite often systems can pay for themselves in 3 -5 years. We don't live in a society with 75% interest rates, our tech spending should not reflect those interest rates.
That is how most projects get funded, they tie themselves to popular initiatives. In 2002 Darlene and John argue their upgrades are needed for the war on terror and in 2011 they are going to be needed to support public health care.
I wish more rational budget processes where middle managers genuinely considered the budget to be fair and reflective and thus were emotionally invested in supporting its integrity. But it is wrong to think that people like to be cogs. Good for Darlene and John for doing what they think is right in a despotic system to make it more consensus driven.
We have a over a 2 trillion dollar deficit for physical infrastructure that isn't being fixed. Dams which are failing inspection, bridges that are entirely unsafe, piping that is leaking badly but not badly enough to fix.
By 2038 I think the attitude towards infrastructure spending will be what is was like during the middle of the 20th century, enthusiastically supportive, when people could still remember dams failing and flooding towns and villages in a matter of hours. The stupidity of the last decade will be very evident long before 2038.
The FAA didn't think planes falling out of the sky was an exaggeration. The system air traffic controllers used wasn't Y2K compliant. Had the fixes not happened at midnight of 2000 the airtraffic controllers would have radars full of planes that they couldn't identify.
Would there have been a crash under those circumstances? Probably. Hundreds, no. But one, yeah I don't that was unreasonable.
After 1999 infrastructure spending of all sorts dried up. We didn't spend for FEMA, we allowed transportation, water gas and military infrastructure to start to fail. Since then infrastructure spending has been reactive than proactive across the economy.
Americans made a choice in 2000 when faced between * Mr "wishing makes it so" Bush * Mr "lets proactively deal with problems" Gore that they liked wishing makes it so. We now have an infrastructure deficit over 2 trillion. I agree with everything in the article, but the collapse in IT spending that we are still in is a result of the move to systematic corruption and grotesque inequality of George Bush. We had a president who ran on Après moi le déluge, why are we shocked that CEOs would be willing to do that?
No I'm not reversing it, this is the point with settlements with non disclosure clauses. As for the dates it was an example of tortable limitations, which the gp had argued don't exist.
That's just not true. For example here is a list of limitations for personal injury by state. And this isn't a slow release payment situation, this is a situation where the person has been paid in a settlement violates it and is then sued.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't agree I think journalism is far better than it was a decade ago. The blog community is providing excellent journalism and the cable news networks because they can focus on narrow segments of the market are increasing their quality to a level that I think is unmatched in television history.
I don't think there is any doubt you need to go back to the 1950s to find the kind of investigative reporting that is now readily available, and honestly I don't think even the 1950s is comparable.
I should say the NYTimes of 1953 could possibly charge for content. I can't see what the NYtimes of 2010 does that is far enough above the norm to survive when most competitors are free.
I'm not sure I would say that DEC was the #2 by the mid 1990s, they were already on the ropes. And how it turned out was Compaq bought them and the platform died slowly. Even today HP openVMS is still a supported platform.
HTML renders based on the browser and printer The forms are not remotely similar from computer to computer. Same thing with word processing programs.
PDF is a ubiquitous format for which allows for paper like documents which requires only free software. What other format comes close.
HTML = not remotely paper like
forms -> typeset: not ubiquitous
etc...
I agree completely about 9/11 I've been saying the same thing since then. And telling people how different it would be after the negligence of the last decade if 9/11/2011 were to bring down a major data / communications center with personnel.
As for the agony... Those were the last of the glory datas. the IT grunts were making a lot of money back then. I'd trade those days for these days in a heartbeat.
No I likely have to fire them, or ice them or cut them out... if they were successful. But I also realize I have a deep structural problem. Why do they think they need to lie to me to get their job done? If the Directors and VPs are acting Somalian warlords the problem is really with me not them. I consider getting middle management to genuinely buy into the program important. I don't want yes men, if I don't get accurate feedback then I have no clue what's really happening.
My guess is stuff skips generations. I'm not making the mistakes of the guys who were in charge in the late 1990s, when I was on my way up. Maybe I'm mistakes of the guys who were in charge in the late 1970s when the senior management of the 1990s were on their way up? I just don't know what those were since I was a kid then. :-)
It depends on whether we are talking a one liner like Haskell or a one liner like Perl.
Perl and C have an incredibly powerful syntax which allows for mashing programs down to one cool line of code. These techniques can be used for structuring the program to keep the emphasis where it should be.
Conversely Haskell tends to make you think long and hard about the true nature of the problem. That one line represents a perfect understanding of the algorithm if it doesn't make absolute sense, in a "it could be no other way" you shouldn't be touching the code. The result is 3000 line programs become 60 lines of really interesting ideas.
Actually there have been tests. The problem they are very specific to platform / language / development techniques in vogue. For example the whole hungarian variables debates from 20 years ago.
The next programmer in line may not need to understand the complex multi threaded stuff at all. For example he may be revising the UI or the backend datastore. Reading your multi threaded comment may be effectively him just having a comment that the is no I/O and that the block is all CPU / memory; and that is good enough.
No one is talking about 20% = 200,000 parts per million.
The debate is about 350-900 parts per million.
Humans know how to migrate.
a) Let sea levels rise 100 meters and say have to replace or substantially change 1/2 the cities in the world over the next 3 centuries
b) Drop human energy consumption by 80% of the next 3 centuries.
It is not at all obvious to me that (a) is cheaper than (b). I believe in global warming but I don't think it helps the case to pretend that humans can't and haven't adapted to huge environmental changes.
The problem is the IT guys didn't know which systems would fail and how bad it would be. What they were facing was IT guys in every major company in the United States saying there would be some unknown degree of damage and risk and no one had done a risk assessment. And no one had any idea of what thousands of systems going down together would do to the complex interrelations needed to run our society.
Think about 1 year after that, losing a skyscraper + some damage to the pentagon has cost us over $2t.
I guess I'm that group. First computer was a PET and I know 6502 Assembler. My first structured language was Pascal and the second was C, which was all about performance tricks. I was mid level around 2000 and a CIO today.
And let me tell you I still believe in rip out and replace unless there is substantial business intelligence embedded in the apps. Maintaining crap is expensive and demoralizing. And quite often systems can pay for themselves in 3 -5 years. We don't live in a society with 75% interest rates, our tech spending should not reflect those interest rates.
That is how most projects get funded, they tie themselves to popular initiatives. In 2002 Darlene and John argue their upgrades are needed for the war on terror and in 2011 they are going to be needed to support public health care.
I wish more rational budget processes where middle managers genuinely considered the budget to be fair and reflective and thus were emotionally invested in supporting its integrity. But it is wrong to think that people like to be cogs. Good for Darlene and John for doing what they think is right in a despotic system to make it more consensus driven.
We have a over a 2 trillion dollar deficit for physical infrastructure that isn't being fixed. Dams which are failing inspection, bridges that are entirely unsafe, piping that is leaking badly but not badly enough to fix.
By 2038 I think the attitude towards infrastructure spending will be what is was like during the middle of the 20th century, enthusiastically supportive, when people could still remember dams failing and flooding towns and villages in a matter of hours. The stupidity of the last decade will be very evident long before 2038.
By 2000 we had interconnected systems. So you might have something that did a formula:
Amount of stress this gate can take is: C - M*years old
now the gate reports its age and if years old becomes a negative number look what happens.
Good point. Defense is the same way.
The FAA didn't think planes falling out of the sky was an exaggeration. The system air traffic controllers used wasn't Y2K compliant. Had the fixes not happened at midnight of 2000 the airtraffic controllers would have radars full of planes that they couldn't identify.
Would there have been a crash under those circumstances? Probably. Hundreds, no. But one, yeah I don't that was unreasonable.
After 1999 infrastructure spending of all sorts dried up. We didn't spend for FEMA, we allowed transportation, water gas and military infrastructure to start to fail. Since then infrastructure spending has been reactive than proactive across the economy.
Americans made a choice in 2000 when faced between
* Mr "wishing makes it so" Bush
* Mr "lets proactively deal with problems" Gore
that they liked wishing makes it so. We now have an infrastructure deficit over 2 trillion. I agree with everything in the article, but the collapse in IT spending that we are still in is a result of the move to systematic corruption and grotesque inequality of George Bush. We had a president who ran on Après moi le déluge, why are we shocked that CEOs would be willing to do that?
Exactly. Reread the last line.
Just to make sure you have the original context: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1492406&cid=30583874
No I'm not reversing it, this is the point with settlements with non disclosure clauses. As for the dates it was an example of tortable limitations, which the gp had argued don't exist.
That's just not true. For example here is a list of limitations for personal injury by state. And this isn't a slow release payment situation, this is a situation where the person has been paid in a settlement violates it and is then sued.
True, but the sites are 3rd parties the injunction at least is against the sites not against the page.
But you're right a page could be both.
X is the one violating and for Y's act the statute of limitations has often passed.