It's not that they don't care - it's not on a standardized test. "Penmanship" is not something the No Child Left Behind Act requires; neither is memorizing Latin verse. Just as one has gone the way of the dodo, so is the other going, for sheer pragmatic reasons of budget and schedule. What else could the valuable class time be used for, if you drop penmanship?
BTW, my local public school system dropped it altogether from the elementary curriculum several years back - apart from a few predictable hysterical letters to the editor, gone in a week, nobody noticed.
How else to explain ever-shirnking deadlines, complete lack of willingness to slip by managers, and complete inability to create viable and realistic estimates by developers? It's not a science yet, any more than alchemy was - we're still in that indistinct area between engineering and art, where experimentation and failure spell progress.
The hell of it is, since there's usually no "right" way to do "it" that everyone can agree on, because you can do things so many different ways in software, that we're prevented from developing the disciplines that turned alchemy into chemistry, philosophy into biology, chemistry, physics, and anthropology... just because it's so easy to "make it work" with crap.
If you watch the boot screens in XP closely, there's a black screen with short vertical white bars running across the screen about an inch above the bottom, which gets filled in (turning into a solid bar) pretty quickly as something runs (I think it's a bootstrap status indicator, I don't pretend to know XP internals) - when there is a solid bar across the bottom, the XP splash screen comes up and you get the little green Cylon lights going back and forth in the nominal boot case. I'm starting to get a suspicion that something in that bootstrap is corrupted - email and public advice has given me some new ideas to try (probably this weekend, when I have time and CDs to burn).
I don't think it's power - I'd had those fail, and I'd like to think I'd recognize one.
It's what came with her system. If she didn't have to use some Microsoft-only software, and the kids' games and education software wasn't all MS-format, I'd install Red Hat - but that's the way the world is today. I have different windmills on my list right now.
Reimage and reinstall - to reimage is to low-level reformat the hard drive, completely wiping anything resembling data from it, and install the operating system freshly. To reinstall is to go through the next four hours shuffling CDs as I put her applications and my daughter's games and educational software back onto the system, then restoring their data the way it was.
I can see where my words may have been interpreted incorrectly. In the future I will attempt to pass them through a more sophisticated idiot filter before hitting Submit.
I haven't experienced a single problem due to a Windows update.
I have. My Wife's XP system stopped booting after a Windows Update. It's a semi-random thing - 75% of the time, after POST (and the "Windows failed to start properly last time" screen) we get a blank screen, black, forever. Power down and try again. Another 10% of the time, we get a black screen with white bars across the bottom. Power down and try again. Maybe 15% of the time, XP boots cleanly.
Using the different boot options doesn't help, either - same results, if you're bringing up Windows and not a command prompt. Rolling back the system to two weeks prior to the behavior starting didn't fix it, either. Now, when she gets it to boot, she leaves it on (and hopes it doesn't crash and shut down when she changes users to let our daughter play Barbie games), and we fight through multiple attempts when we reboot.
Someday, she'll get upset enough to let me reimage it for her and reinstall XP (yes, she has to use MS-only software for her job). Until then - we try, try again....
Finding a bi-lingual database admin is tough - finding one who understand the semantics of the different engines is tougher - finding one who can speak more than two database lingos is almost impossible, and when you do find them, they're already working for someone else and making MUCH more than you can afford to pay them.
It's nigh unto impossible to do a mechanical conversion of Oracle-specific PL/SQL triggers into something SQL92. AND, last time I checked, MySQL didn't support all of SQL92 (almost nobody does). Your conversion has to be knowledgeable about both source and target database flavors, while using SQL92 plus extensions (probably made up by whoever's doing the converting) as an intermediate representation.
It's hard enough converting between major revisions of Oracle (say, 7.1 to 9i), and they provide support for that. Noone that I'm aware of provides support for migrating away from their own product.
What, you want a glue factory replacing your "native" ODBC library? Given how db-specifics still seem to creep into ODBC, I don't blame these guys for tackling a solvable problem. JDBC has the advantage that it was constructed from the ground up to be actually used, and subjected to a lot of prototyping and early scrutiny, as opposed to ODBC, which has parts that look like they got put in by vendor reps going "Heh heh heh - they'll never figure out how to use this!"
Because with P2P you REALLY need to trust the other "P" you're getting the software from. An advantage of the "repositories" is that they watch over their code - remember the trojaned binaries that were found on a few sites last year? If someone had gotten them through a P2P network, noone (but the trojeners) would know.
And that's why it's done. Even if the virus won't actively infect your files (assuming you're all not using M$) - if, for instance, it contains a macro virus, and the free software you use to open it and review it doesn't recognize the macros, you're safe - now you forward the file to someone who is vulnerable, and you've become part of a chain of infection. Computer viruses are like infection disease in the "real" world - having a cure helps, but stopping transmission helps even more.
AUGH! The never-sufficiently-cursed SUN keyboard layout with CTL where Caps Lock should go - drove me nuts one semester. We who were forced to learn to touch type (HS pre-req for Computer II - I didn't need it, but I wanted the credit) get seriously hosed when you start moving major keys around.
I try to remember to remap those Windows keys - the one on the left is ALT+CTL, and the two on the right are ALT+CTL and SHIFT+ALT+CTL, respectively.
Does YOUR RS/600 keyboard have the fat ENTER key? I got been moved out of the cubical farm and into an office with full walls and a door because my typing was anno^H^H^H^H distracting the neighbors (it was a past life - I've never gone back).
Alas, my current main system is a laptop - I've had to learn to be gentle, since Dell keyboards can't take the force and speed I prefer.
I have found myself able to type on the cheapo keyboards you get from the computer show folks - it helps that they're only $15 to replace, so you can buy more than one at a time. My Dell docking station keyboard holds up fairly well - but I still miss the feel of that IBM.
It's an IBM. Practically bulletproof. I finally started to believe people who told me I typed too hard when i broke one of the springs under the ENTER key on my RS/6000 - good thing there were two:)
I still have two of these things in the closet at home, and I have a buddy who salvaged a dozen when LockMart "excessed" a bunch of equipment they'd inherited from IBM FSD.
Whatever they do, they must consider the media - it took a lot of work to make IP work over Avian Carrier, and new standards should take things like this into consideration.
Ha! If you think this kind of checking is what's necessary to prevent security problems, go program in Ada!
initializes old-fogey memory mode
Aeons ago, I had to make a C++ program and an Ada program interoperate, integrating them both into one gonzo executable - ended up finding some interesting bugs in the C++ compiler, a couple of bugs in the Ada compiler, and a whole lotta bugs in the C++ code we were pulling in. When we ran the profiler (after we got it all to link - 2 errors there, required esoteric options to get enough stack space), our original Ada code was clean, the C++ was fairly clean - and the OS libraries were what was leaking/overflowing/accessing uninitialized memory, etc.
exit old-fogey memory mode
Gawd, what a language. If it would compile, it would run - not so much a credit to the language, but a testimony to the standards the compilers had to meet to be called "Ada".
... shortly after which, you will need MASSIVE amounts of water, hot, cold, it don't matter, just so long as it's liquid, and an extremely thick, high-melting-point foundation under your containment building... of course, the cloud of radioactive steam that results may present issues.
The smokescreen becomes relevant, again. Make the air opaque to the wavelength of the laser, and it has to burn through that 1500 meters, dispersing all the way.
IIRC (and I think I do) Reason also had a long cable that ended in a fractal-ball heat exchanger, which was boiling a piece of the ocean as they floated along in their life raft, trailing a plume of steam....
Give the guy a break. How many non-O'Reilly techinical book editors are willing to let a book go to press that ignores M$ entirely? It was a savvy business move... from my readings, I think he's agnostic on.Net - it's just another set of tools, and if the client already has a base of systems built on M$ tech, that's the logical set of tools to use to expand/enhance it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not that they don't care - it's not on a standardized test. "Penmanship" is not something the No Child Left Behind Act requires; neither is memorizing Latin verse. Just as one has gone the way of the dodo, so is the other going, for sheer pragmatic reasons of budget and schedule. What else could the valuable class time be used for, if you drop penmanship?
BTW, my local public school system dropped it altogether from the elementary curriculum several years back - apart from a few predictable hysterical letters to the editor, gone in a week, nobody noticed.
AMEN, Brother! Preach On!
How else to explain ever-shirnking deadlines, complete lack of willingness to slip by managers, and complete inability to create viable and realistic estimates by developers? It's not a science yet, any more than alchemy was - we're still in that indistinct area between engineering and art, where experimentation and failure spell progress.
The hell of it is, since there's usually no "right" way to do "it" that everyone can agree on, because you can do things so many different ways in software, that we're prevented from developing the disciplines that turned alchemy into chemistry, philosophy into biology, chemistry, physics, and anthropology... just because it's so easy to "make it work" with crap.
If you watch the boot screens in XP closely, there's a black screen with short vertical white bars running across the screen about an inch above the bottom, which gets filled in (turning into a solid bar) pretty quickly as something runs (I think it's a bootstrap status indicator, I don't pretend to know XP internals) - when there is a solid bar across the bottom, the XP splash screen comes up and you get the little green Cylon lights going back and forth in the nominal boot case. I'm starting to get a suspicion that something in that bootstrap is corrupted - email and public advice has given me some new ideas to try (probably this weekend, when I have time and CDs to burn).
I don't think it's power - I'd had those fail, and I'd like to think I'd recognize one.
Thanks for the useful advice.
Thanks, I'll give that a shot and see what it says.
It's what came with her system. If she didn't have to use some Microsoft-only software, and the kids' games and education software wasn't all MS-format, I'd install Red Hat - but that's the way the world is today. I have different windmills on my list right now.
Reimage and reinstall - to reimage is to low-level reformat the hard drive, completely wiping anything resembling data from it, and install the operating system freshly. To reinstall is to go through the next four hours shuffling CDs as I put her applications and my daughter's games and educational software back onto the system, then restoring their data the way it was.
I can see where my words may have been interpreted incorrectly. In the future I will attempt to pass them through a more sophisticated idiot filter before hitting Submit.
Oops - too late.
What's the figure-of-merit for dwarves?
I haven't experienced a single problem due to a Windows update.
I have. My Wife's XP system stopped booting after a Windows Update. It's a semi-random thing - 75% of the time, after POST (and the "Windows failed to start properly last time" screen) we get a blank screen, black, forever. Power down and try again. Another 10% of the time, we get a black screen with white bars across the bottom. Power down and try again. Maybe 15% of the time, XP boots cleanly.
Using the different boot options doesn't help, either - same results, if you're bringing up Windows and not a command prompt. Rolling back the system to two weeks prior to the behavior starting didn't fix it, either. Now, when she gets it to boot, she leaves it on (and hopes it doesn't crash and shut down when she changes users to let our daughter play Barbie games), and we fight through multiple attempts when we reboot.
Someday, she'll get upset enough to let me reimage it for her and reinstall XP (yes, she has to use MS-only software for her job). Until then - we try, try again....
Doesn't SAP sponsor the open-source SAPDb?
Finding a bi-lingual database admin is tough - finding one who understand the semantics of the different engines is tougher - finding one who can speak more than two database lingos is almost impossible, and when you do find them, they're already working for someone else and making MUCH more than you can afford to pay them.
It's nigh unto impossible to do a mechanical conversion of Oracle-specific PL/SQL triggers into something SQL92. AND, last time I checked, MySQL didn't support all of SQL92 (almost nobody does). Your conversion has to be knowledgeable about both source and target database flavors, while using SQL92 plus extensions (probably made up by whoever's doing the converting) as an intermediate representation.
It's hard enough converting between major revisions of Oracle (say, 7.1 to 9i), and they provide support for that. Noone that I'm aware of provides support for migrating away from their own product.
What, you want a glue factory replacing your "native" ODBC library? Given how db-specifics still seem to creep into ODBC, I don't blame these guys for tackling a solvable problem. JDBC has the advantage that it was constructed from the ground up to be actually used, and subjected to a lot of prototyping and early scrutiny, as opposed to ODBC, which has parts that look like they got put in by vendor reps going "Heh heh heh - they'll never figure out how to use this!"
Because with P2P you REALLY need to trust the other "P" you're getting the software from. An advantage of the "repositories" is that they watch over their code - remember the trojaned binaries that were found on a few sites last year? If someone had gotten them through a P2P network, noone (but the trojeners) would know.
And that's why it's done. Even if the virus won't actively infect your files (assuming you're all not using M$) - if, for instance, it contains a macro virus, and the free software you use to open it and review it doesn't recognize the macros, you're safe - now you forward the file to someone who is vulnerable, and you've become part of a chain of infection. Computer viruses are like infection disease in the "real" world - having a cure helps, but stopping transmission helps even more.
Ignore that troll beneath the gantry... if/when one of these private gigs takes off, he'll be crisped in the backwash....
AUGH! The never-sufficiently-cursed SUN keyboard layout with CTL where Caps Lock should go - drove me nuts one semester. We who were forced to learn to touch type (HS pre-req for Computer II - I didn't need it, but I wanted the credit) get seriously hosed when you start moving major keys around.
I try to remember to remap those Windows keys - the one on the left is ALT+CTL, and the two on the right are ALT+CTL and SHIFT+ALT+CTL, respectively.
Mwuahahahaha! Another "Monster Typer!"
Does YOUR RS/600 keyboard have the fat ENTER key? I got been moved out of the cubical farm and into an office with full walls and a door because my typing was anno^H^H^H^H distracting the neighbors (it was a past life - I've never gone back).
Alas, my current main system is a laptop - I've had to learn to be gentle, since Dell keyboards can't take the force and speed I prefer.
I have found myself able to type on the cheapo keyboards you get from the computer show folks - it helps that they're only $15 to replace, so you can buy more than one at a time. My Dell docking station keyboard holds up fairly well - but I still miss the feel of that IBM.
It's an IBM. Practically bulletproof. I finally started to believe people who told me I typed too hard when i broke one of the springs under the ENTER key on my RS/6000 - good thing there were two :)
I still have two of these things in the closet at home, and I have a buddy who salvaged a dozen when LockMart "excessed" a bunch of equipment they'd inherited from IBM FSD.
Whatever they do, they must consider the media - it took a lot of work to make IP work over Avian Carrier, and new standards should take things like this into consideration.
Ha! If you think this kind of checking is what's necessary to prevent security problems, go program in Ada!
initializes old-fogey memory mode
Aeons ago, I had to make a C++ program and an Ada program interoperate, integrating them both into one gonzo executable - ended up finding some interesting bugs in the C++ compiler, a couple of bugs in the Ada compiler, and a whole lotta bugs in the C++ code we were pulling in. When we ran the profiler (after we got it all to link - 2 errors there, required esoteric options to get enough stack space), our original Ada code was clean, the C++ was fairly clean - and the OS libraries were what was leaking/overflowing/accessing uninitialized memory, etc.
exit old-fogey memory mode
Gawd, what a language. If it would compile, it would run - not so much a credit to the language, but a testimony to the standards the compilers had to meet to be called "Ada".
... shortly after which, you will need MASSIVE amounts of water, hot, cold, it don't matter, just so long as it's liquid, and an extremely thick, high-melting-point foundation under your containment building... of course, the cloud of radioactive steam that results may present issues.
"Master Control Program - transfer all Flynn games and projects to userspace Dillinger and revoke all Flynn access to all ENCOM systems."
What, you mean YOUR computer can't do that?
We've slashdotted AOL :-D
The smokescreen becomes relevant, again. Make the air opaque to the wavelength of the laser, and it has to burn through that 1500 meters, dispersing all the way.
IIRC (and I think I do) Reason also had a long cable that ended in a fractal-ball heat exchanger, which was boiling a piece of the ocean as they floated along in their life raft, trailing a plume of steam....
Give the guy a break. How many non-O'Reilly techinical book editors are willing to let a book go to press that ignores M$ entirely? It was a savvy business move... from my readings, I think he's agnostic on .Net - it's just another set of tools, and if the client already has a base of systems built on M$ tech, that's the logical set of tools to use to expand/enhance it.