On the other end of the scale, I worked for a small company of 18 employees about a year ago. I was able to convince the president of the company that encryption was a Good Thing, so he gave me the go-ahead as long as we used a well-known commercial product. So we started looking around the NAI site(s) for how to buy it.
I don't know how many have tried that, but it seemed as though NAI didn't really want to sell products on their website. At that point in time, you couldn't buy PGP (or any other NAI products) over the net.
If you were an individual looking to buy PGP, they wouldn't sell it to you. Your only option was to download PGP Freeware. If you were a company, you had to send mail and have a sales droid call you back.
So, we sent mail and waited to hear from the sales droid. He called back pretty quickly, but it just amazed me that they could afford the overhead of people whose only function was to call people and verify; "Yes, I really, really want to buy your product."
It took about two weeks to finally buy the product - which we couldn't get without the mail plugins, IDS, firewall and other extras that invariably broke the other applications.
I'm just surprised their stellar business model hadn't collapsed before now...
Wasn't the question about computer books, not just programming books?
While I stand in awe of Knuth, Sjoustroup, Kernighan, and the rest, I think a computer library should also include other topics.
My suggestions:
Practical Unix and Internet Security by Simson Garfinkel and Gene Spafford
The Politics of Information Management by Paul A. Strassman
Interconnections - Bridges and Routers by Radia Perlman
Internet Routing Architecture by Bassam Halabi
Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
The Hardware Bible by Winn L. Rosch
Fundamentals of Digital Logic and Microcomputer Design by Mohamed Rafiquzzaman
Spaf has been around since dirt and so has Practical U. and I. Security, but they're both still worth paying attention to. This here's a 10-year old O'Reilly book that's still useful and pertinent. If you're looking at starting to learn about security, this is a great foundation.
If you ever want to be more than a bit-twiddler, you're going to have to understand what goes on the head of the CxO. Politics isn't a substitute for practical experience or an MIS degree from a worthwhile university (any suggestions?), but it will help you understand the rationales behind those incomprehensible IT executive decisions.
The Perlman and Halabi books come from Cisco Press. If you know anyone who's cocky about their 1337 r0ut1ng sk1llz, give 'em one of these books. They're both well-written, readable, and absolutely fascinating. These books are enough to teach you how much you don't know about routing (and how much more there is to learn).
Goedel, Escher, Bach is a great book on many levels and from many different directions. Just trust me on this one.
The Hardware Bible is a little long in the tooth these days, but if you want a complete, detailed history of PCs and PC standards, this is the best place to get it. We used to give a copy of this book to everyone who did PC support at an old company. I still pull it out for the troubleshooting guides and interface specifications.
And if you want to get into the real nitty-gritty, you can start chewing on Fundamentals. It's an EE-level book, but with enough plain English to make it accessible to anyone with a solid basis in Logic (not necessarily digital logic, just the old-fashioned kind - like Grampa used to have) and computer architecture (like you can get by reading the good stuff on Tom's, Ars Technica, and Anandtech.).
I think we've covered programming tomes pretty well. I'd be interested to see what the/. community can add to the list of computer-related non-programming books...
My company (a large PC manufacturer - doesn't rhyme with heaven) has varying policies about training depending on how the employee affects the bottom line. I've done training here for 9 years - in tech support, engineering, IT, and technical marketing (glorified salespeople). Guess which department gets the most money for training... [one hint: it's not IT]
On average, though, we try to have everyone spend between 10 and 20 percent of their time in training. That includes technical, soft skills, and other stuff like export compliance and "diversity" training.
Surprisingly (to me, at least) the time-based metric seems to work well overall. As far as budget goes, when we have money, we do more technical training. When we don't, we work "soft" skills. Also, when budgets are tight, we squeeze the vendors to give us more training. Even if it's having a Cisco SE come in and talk about a new switch technology or having a RedHat SE talk about their cluster solutions, we can always provide something that valuable to someone.
I also spent just over a year in the dotcom world at a little security consultancy where I was responsible for all of the training. I can't begin to describe what a different world that was.
First of all, the budget for training included my salary and nothing else. No one had time to spend in training and we didn't even have space where more than a couple of people at a time could get together to talk about what we were supposed to be learning. I ended up running a few seminars for customers and teaching a few classes for them. To my knowledge, no one at the company ever got any training (either before, during or after my time there).
So, having been exposed to both extremes, I have a few personal reflections to share:
If you want training, don't be a pain, but don't let up about it. If you let management forget that it's a priority for you, they will.
Give management some alternatives: does the local community college offer classes? If so, can the company get tax credit for reimbursing you? You pay up front and the company pays you up front, but eventually you're both reimbursed and you both benefit.
You're probably going to have to do it yourself. There's no better way to learn something than to take the time to put together a class on your own. Pick someone who understands it less than you do and try to teach it to them. You'll be amazed at how much you learn.
If you're not really committed to making it happen for yourself, it's not going to happen. Good luck.
Well, we could apply the same rules to all industries as the ones that apply to the pharmaceutical industry. We might not even need to keep them from forming another company. As an example, if a pharaceutical company is caught falsifying records during an FDA trial of a product, the following sanctions are enforced:
the company can NEVER again submit a product for review by the FDA
no other company in the industry can hire ANYONE who was employed by the offending company EVER
That works now... I believe that's a bit harsh for the technology industry, but if the people want it bad enough, Congress can make it happen...
Once again - great checklist. I have a few more of my own to add...
It was stated earlier, but can't be repeated often enough: Use Conduit!
Considering item #3 (Always pull a string), it's even more important - and helpful - to run conduit. I wouldn't exactly call it future-proof, but it certainly helps...
A couple of more items from my own recent experience:
1) Clean Power is nice! SmartHome sells in-line power conditioners (read: whole house surge-suppressor) for less than $50US. You can have it wired in at the breaker box by the electrician for a couple of bucks. I cannot stress enough what a difference this makes to X10 installations. And the peace of mind that comes with not having to put every PC/stereo component/TV/etc. on its own surge suppressor is nice, too.
Most modern homes have an external breaker box that splits the incoming line into two: one that feeds the 110V breaker box inside, and another that feeds the 220V appliances like air conditioner/heat pump/furnace, oven, electric clothes drier, etc... The power conditioner goes to the 110V box.
2) If you have the space to set aside a server closet, then do it right.
a. Twin-pole (telecom-grade) racks are cheap and easy to install. If installed properly, they can support a couple of hundred pounds without issue. You can use them to mount your stereo equipment, PCs, switches, routers, etc. This makes cabling a breeze, too.
b. Back to that power thing... Be sure the server closet isn't on the same circuit as some large appliance (or your hairdryer). Have the electrician run a dedicated circuit to that room, using 12 gauge wire. 14 gauge is standard for residential, 12 is slightly larger. It's usually used for 220V lines, but is also useful for higher amperage loads - like lots of computers.
c. Electrical equipment generates heat. Lots of heat. Do whatever you can to minimize this heat, but you're probably going to have to ventilate. Running a duct to the closet will NOT work. You're pumping cold air in, but you still have to pump hot air out. Plus, what are you going to do in the winter? Your heat pump/furnace will be pumping hot air out of those ducts, toasting your servers.
Suggestions: 1-Use a window unit that ventilates to the outside. Ugly, but cheap and workable. 2-Use a ductless split-vent system. This is a smaller version of your home unit that doesn't use ducts. The compressor sits outside, where it compresses coolant before pumping it back into the house. The chiller/fan unit sits in the server closet and blows hot air over the chillers, extracting the heat from the closet. Expensive, but SO nice. You'll never have to worry about your hardware overheating. You may, however, have to run the drip from the chiller to a humidifier, since these systems tend to dry the air, causing major static electricity buildup. 3-This is what worked for me: Put the server closet in the garage. Install a window unit in the closet, but vent it into the garage. That way you can't see the window unit from outside.
Hopefully the cooling aspect isn't as big a deal for you as it is for me. I live in Central Texas and I have a couple of big, honking Dell toaster... er... servers in my rack. It gets warm.
Dr. Bernard Greenberg, head of the Dept. of Biostatistics for the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, testified that not only did the cases of polio increase substantially after mandatory vaccinations (50% increase from 1957 to 1958, 80% increase from 1958 to 1959), but that the statistics were manipulated by the Public Health Service to give the opposite impression.
Hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, 87th Congress, Second Session on H.R. 10541, May 1962, p.94.
None of that changes the fact that Salk was a great humanitarian who made an admirable, human decision. The facts of the time also point to the reality that even though Salk didn't try to take credit for the vaccine, the public credited him solely for its discovery, forever alienating him from the dozens of other researchers who contributed to the discovery. An accident of history made Jonas Salk a hero to the public. The fact that he would not take credit for the vaccine only made him more of a hero to the public and more of an irritant to his peers. Salk founded the Salk Institue for Biological Sciences and was reputed to have said, "I couldn't possibly have become a member of this institute if I hadn't founded it myself."
lumpy at EFF SEE DOT NET
"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."
There's been a scare for the past few years about a cork shortage. Actually, the worldwide cork crop (>90% of which is grown in Portugal) has been susceptible to a taint known as 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA). If you've ever uncorked a bottle and it smelled musty, like damp cardboard or old newspaper, you've experienced a "corked" or tainted bottle of wine. Unfortunately, the human palate can detect as few as 4 parts per trillion of TCA.
Over the past few years, tremendous research has gone into both cork alternatives and remedies to this blight. So, currently we can choose between a number of plastic and other artificial cork alternatives (Cellukork, Twin Top). At the same time, the TCA blight seems to have been at least contained, if not eliminated. According to Amorim, the cork crop is growing at around 4% per year. This is good news, but considering the fact that cork can be harvested from a tree only once every 9 years, I believe we're going to see a lot more artificial replacements in the future...
deGleep
lumpy@DONTLIKEPORKINACAN.fc.net
"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."
Slashdot Mirror
On the other end of the scale, I worked for a small company of 18 employees about a year ago. I was able to convince the president of the company that encryption was a Good Thing, so he gave me the go-ahead as long as we used a well-known commercial product. So we started looking around the NAI site(s) for how to buy it.
I don't know how many have tried that, but it seemed as though NAI didn't really want to sell products on their website. At that point in time, you couldn't buy PGP (or any other NAI products) over the net. If you were an individual looking to buy PGP, they wouldn't sell it to you. Your only option was to download PGP Freeware. If you were a company, you had to send mail and have a sales droid call you back.
So, we sent mail and waited to hear from the sales droid. He called back pretty quickly, but it just amazed me that they could afford the overhead of people whose only function was to call people and verify; "Yes, I really, really want to buy your product."
It took about two weeks to finally buy the product - which we couldn't get without the mail plugins, IDS, firewall and other extras that invariably broke the other applications.
I'm just surprised their stellar business model hadn't collapsed before now...
While I stand in awe of Knuth, Sjoustroup, Kernighan, and the rest, I think a computer library should also include other topics.
My suggestions:
- Practical Unix and Internet Security by Simson Garfinkel and Gene Spafford
- The Politics of Information Management by Paul A. Strassman
- Interconnections - Bridges and Routers by Radia Perlman
- Internet Routing Architecture by Bassam Halabi
- Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
- The Hardware Bible by Winn L. Rosch
- Fundamentals of Digital Logic and Microcomputer Design by Mohamed Rafiquzzaman
Spaf has been around since dirt and so has Practical U. and I. Security, but they're both still worth paying attention to. This here's a 10-year old O'Reilly book that's still useful and pertinent. If you're looking at starting to learn about security, this is a great foundation.If you ever want to be more than a bit-twiddler, you're going to have to understand what goes on the head of the CxO. Politics isn't a substitute for practical experience or an MIS degree from a worthwhile university (any suggestions?), but it will help you understand the rationales behind those incomprehensible IT executive decisions.
The Perlman and Halabi books come from Cisco Press. If you know anyone who's cocky about their 1337 r0ut1ng sk1llz, give 'em one of these books. They're both well-written, readable, and absolutely fascinating. These books are enough to teach you how much you don't know about routing (and how much more there is to learn).
Goedel, Escher, Bach is a great book on many levels and from many different directions. Just trust me on this one.
The Hardware Bible is a little long in the tooth these days, but if you want a complete, detailed history of PCs and PC standards, this is the best place to get it. We used to give a copy of this book to everyone who did PC support at an old company. I still pull it out for the troubleshooting guides and interface specifications.
And if you want to get into the real nitty-gritty, you can start chewing on Fundamentals. It's an EE-level book, but with enough plain English to make it accessible to anyone with a solid basis in Logic (not necessarily digital logic, just the old-fashioned kind - like Grampa used to have) and computer architecture (like you can get by reading the good stuff on Tom's, Ars Technica, and Anandtech.).
I think we've covered programming tomes pretty well. I'd be interested to see what the
On average, though, we try to have everyone spend between 10 and 20 percent of their time in training. That includes technical, soft skills, and other stuff like export compliance and "diversity" training.
Surprisingly (to me, at least) the time-based metric seems to work well overall. As far as budget goes, when we have money, we do more technical training. When we don't, we work "soft" skills. Also, when budgets are tight, we squeeze the vendors to give us more training. Even if it's having a Cisco SE come in and talk about a new switch technology or having a RedHat SE talk about their cluster solutions, we can always provide something that valuable to someone.
I also spent just over a year in the dotcom world at a little security consultancy where I was responsible for all of the training. I can't begin to describe what a different world that was.
First of all, the budget for training included my salary and nothing else. No one had time to spend in training and we didn't even have space where more than a couple of people at a time could get together to talk about what we were supposed to be learning. I ended up running a few seminars for customers and teaching a few classes for them. To my knowledge, no one at the company ever got any training (either before, during or after my time there).
So, having been exposed to both extremes, I have a few personal reflections to share:
- If you want training, don't be a pain, but don't let up about it. If you let management forget that it's a priority for you, they will.
- Give management some alternatives: does the local community college offer classes? If so, can the company get tax credit for reimbursing you? You pay up front and the company pays you up front, but eventually you're both reimbursed and you both benefit.
- You're probably going to have to do it yourself. There's no better way to learn something than to take the time to put together a class on your own. Pick someone who understands it less than you do and try to teach it to them. You'll be amazed at how much you learn.
If you're not really committed to making it happen for yourself, it's not going to happen. Good luck.Well, we could apply the same rules to all industries as the ones that apply to the pharmaceutical industry. We might not even need to keep them from forming another company. As an example, if a pharaceutical company is caught falsifying records during an FDA trial of a product, the following sanctions are enforced:
- the company can NEVER again submit a product for review by the FDA
- no other company in the industry can hire ANYONE who was employed by the offending company EVER
That works now... I believe that's a bit harsh for the technology industry, but if the people want it bad enough, Congress can make it happen...Once again - great checklist. I have a few more of my own to add...
It was stated earlier, but can't be repeated often enough: Use Conduit!
Considering item #3 (Always pull a string), it's even more important - and helpful - to run conduit. I wouldn't exactly call it future-proof, but it certainly helps...
A couple of more items from my own recent experience:
1) Clean Power is nice!
SmartHome sells in-line power conditioners (read: whole house surge-suppressor) for less than $50US. You can have it wired in at the breaker box by the electrician for a couple of bucks. I cannot stress enough what a difference this makes to X10 installations. And the peace of mind that comes with not having to put every PC/stereo component/TV/etc. on its own surge suppressor is nice, too.
Most modern homes have an external breaker box that splits the incoming line into two: one that feeds the 110V breaker box inside, and another that feeds the 220V appliances like air conditioner/heat pump/furnace, oven, electric clothes drier, etc... The power conditioner goes to the 110V box.
2) If you have the space to set aside a server closet, then do it right.
a. Twin-pole (telecom-grade) racks are cheap and easy to install. If installed properly, they can support a couple of hundred pounds without issue. You can use them to mount your stereo equipment, PCs, switches, routers, etc. This makes cabling a breeze, too.
b. Back to that power thing... Be sure the server closet isn't on the same circuit as some large appliance (or your hairdryer). Have the electrician run a dedicated circuit to that room, using 12 gauge wire. 14 gauge is standard for residential, 12 is slightly larger. It's usually used for 220V lines, but is also useful for higher amperage loads - like lots of computers.
c. Electrical equipment generates heat. Lots of heat.
Do whatever you can to minimize this heat, but you're probably going to have to ventilate. Running a duct to the closet will NOT work. You're pumping cold air in, but you still have to pump hot air out. Plus, what are you going to do in the winter? Your heat pump/furnace will be pumping hot air out of those ducts, toasting your servers.
Suggestions:
1-Use a window unit that ventilates to the outside. Ugly, but cheap and workable.
2-Use a ductless split-vent system. This is a smaller version of your home unit that doesn't use ducts. The compressor sits outside, where it compresses coolant before pumping it back into the house. The chiller/fan unit sits in the server closet and blows hot air over the chillers, extracting the heat from the closet. Expensive, but SO nice. You'll never have to worry about your hardware overheating. You may, however, have to run the drip from the chiller to a humidifier, since these systems tend to dry the air, causing major static electricity buildup.
3-This is what worked for me: Put the server closet in the garage. Install a window unit in the closet, but vent it into the garage. That way you can't see the window unit from outside.
Hopefully the cooling aspect isn't as big a deal for you as it is for me. I live in Central Texas and I have a couple of big, honking Dell toaster... er... servers in my rack. It gets warm.
Good luck!
While I agree with the sentiment expressed, don't jump to conclusions about the efficacy of the IPV (Injected Polio Vaccine).
Sorry about the off-topic post, but I'll throw out a couple of factoids (suitably footnoted) for your edification and entertainment:
None of that changes the fact that Salk was a great humanitarian who made an admirable, human decision. The facts of the time also point to the reality that even though Salk didn't try to take credit for the vaccine, the public credited him solely for its discovery, forever alienating him from the dozens of other researchers who contributed to the discovery. An accident of history made Jonas Salk a hero to the public. The fact that he would not take credit for the vaccine only made him more of a hero to the public and more of an irritant to his peers. Salk founded the Salk Institue for Biological Sciences and was reputed to have said, "I couldn't possibly have become a member of this institute if I hadn't founded it myself."
lumpy at EFF SEE DOT NET
"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."
There's been a scare for the past few years about a cork shortage. Actually, the worldwide cork crop (>90% of which is grown in Portugal) has been susceptible to a taint known as 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA). If you've ever uncorked a bottle and it smelled musty, like damp cardboard or old newspaper, you've experienced a "corked" or tainted bottle of wine. Unfortunately, the human palate can detect as few as 4 parts per trillion of TCA.
Over the past few years, tremendous research has gone into both cork alternatives and remedies to this blight. So, currently we can choose between a number of plastic and other artificial cork alternatives (Cellukork, Twin Top). At the same time, the TCA blight seems to have been at least contained, if not eliminated. According to Amorim, the cork crop is growing at around 4% per year. This is good news, but considering the fact that cork can be harvested from a tree only once every 9 years, I believe we're going to see a lot more artificial replacements in the future...
deGleep
lumpy@DONTLIKEPORKINACAN.fc.net
"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."