It never seems to amaze me at how different the rate of complexity in mathematical education varies around the world. I found the Australian curriculum slow after early childhood experience overseas.
Maybe 2nd grade doesn't mean the same thing to you as me (I'm referring to is as the "2" in K,1,2,3...12, for context), but to put it into perspective, I had to master long division to graduate from 2nd grade while overseas. In Australia, we didn't begin to learn long division until 5th or 6th grade. The thing was, the rate of learning accelerated in Australia, such that an advanced student in 12th grade (what we call "4 Unit Maths") ended up doing what was introductory university-level mathematics in the country that made kids to long division in 2nd grade.
My evidence may be anecdotal, but I've found that the country with the more advanced mathematics early in life resulted in a population whose adult median mathematical ability was higher.
There's no reason why you couldn't have an OpenID for each and every single site and a single shared password for all of them, e.g. site.yourname.openidprovider.net, since either way you're trusting the identity management capability.
There is a major problem with the approach you have described: it builds inflexible organisational silos where cross-functional business processes are extremely expensive to establish (due to interoperability issues politically and technically), operate (due to forgoing economies of scale possible with rationalised, consolidated technology investment) and adapt (due to the impact on existing complex interdependencies resulting from point-to-point integrations). This is particularly problematic for companies that have a complex arrangement of multiple customer service channels (e.g. retail presences, call centres, websites) and multiple loosely-related product/service offerings (e.g. sale of goods, provision of services) -- doubly so when this occurs under a unified brand.
The issue is that with every functional business unit owning their individual line-of-business applications, each with its own business rules, state management, reference data (e.g. customer identity/contact info) and transactional information (e.g. purchases), the organisation can fail to leverage important cross-selling, customer acquisition and retention opportunities, never mind falling afoul of regulatory compliance issues. Simply put, the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing and the customer experience suffers, causing the company to suffer. Centralised full-function IT has its place, though you may be able to federate decentralised departmental development capabilities with a combination of governance and technology (e.g. the SOA approach).
While the technology environment can degrade over time due to poor processes, just as important is getting it right in the first place. In my experience, the IT team often lacks any architectural capability when the department is set up, typically because it's "too small" or their needs are "simple". As a result, nobody with the necessary qualifications/experience/mindset really thinks about the business' strategic requirements, they just go for "best practice". Unsurprisingly, "best practice" by itself simply means whatever fad the technology industry is pushing at the time.
Many of the posters above are right in saying that simply throwing it all out isn't the solution, however, throwing away all the assumptions, determining the strategic requirements and then reconciling those with the existing landscape is the way to do this. Sometimes that then results in things being replaced, but sometimes it does not.
Every other business unit does (or should be doing) this during the corporate strategic planning cycle, why does IT not? Sadly, the reason is normally the organisation only really has one "primary" business unit and it excludes IT from the strategic planning altogether. It's IT's job to convince the decision makers that they ought to be partners in strategy, but IT's normal lack of rigour in processes and particularly in financial management that prevents them from having the ammunition to fight for a place at the table.
I do a lot of interviewing for technical positions, and I don't give code challenges. Anything beyond CS101 fodder is too time-consuming, and asking CS101 questions doesn't really tell me anything... I'm a big fan of "what's the difference?" questions. I'll take two similar technologies from their resume and ask what's the difference between them.
This is how I do it, too, asking first for the difference then for examples of where you'd use each. I find it's much more time-efficient than programming exams.
Not an old wives' tale at all. The brighter the level of light available (and contrast), the less your pupils have to dilate and the greater the depth of field you'll experience, resulting in less continuous adjustment of focus and hence less eyestrain.
We use CounterSoft's Gemini bug tracker for managing tasks. It's easy to use and what's most important for us is that you can define your own workflow, not be bound to what works for other people.
It's ironic that with respect to best practices you happened to choose "an IT bible... that spelled out procedures for running an IT shop": it's called ITIL. Anyone in IT should make themselves familiar with it and benefit from decades of tried and tested best practices. They were true long before modern commodity technology but are still applicable. Admittedly, anyone who claimed their product is critical to any of these process-oriented best practices is spouting crap.
You've also completely missed the point with SOA: it's not about Web Services, it's about business service orientation. It's an approach that can be used to design systems that work like their organisations, promoting ownership, the lack of which can make even the most technically correct systems not just worthless but a negative influence on the company.
Considering that Neverwinter Nights 2 is probably the last of the DND franchise to be made for some time, I am thinking that these games are also going the way of the dodo
Unless you're specifically referring to the D&D ruleset Dragon's Age: Origins should keep you happy for some time.
Examples of RPG/FPS merging well: Deus Ex, Morrowind, Gothic 2, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Star Wars: KoToR, Oblivion, Fallout 3.
Probable near-future examples: Alpha Protocol, Borderlands, Mass Effect 2.
RPG isn't dead and has dramatically improved ever since Pool of Radiance:)
At risk of trolling: code monkeys get trained, developers learn.
I understand what you're saying, insofar as a real developer has the motivation, background knowledge and aptitude to learn on their own initiative.
However, for the benefit of newbies (so they don't dismiss the concept of training out of hand), when a project on a tight timeframe comes along that requires a specific and new skill set, it's normally quicker to send the developer on a dedicated training course than wait for them to figure it out themselves, or to hire a contractor with the necessary skill.
There's a world of difference between an accidental trespasser immediately leaving the property and one posting photos taken of people who have an expectation of privacy then posting them on the Internet.
Once such a photo hits the Internet, just removing it will not magically delete it from everywhere it has been distributed to.
Many companies have standardised on sans-serif fonts for internal documents to optimise on-screen readability. These then get printed before meetings, etc and thrown away shortly thereafter.
As the AC that responded to you (with Score:0) earlier said, the report suggests that drinking hot tea increases the cancer risk, as does drinking too much tea.
That's a poor analogy. The reason MAD was so frightening and why the world has been working towards reducing the threat level is because in the event of MAD, life on Earth as we know it would end.
In the event of a crazy person with a gun going on a shooting spree, he might kill a few people before getting shot down and then the violence would be over and the rest of the world gets on with their lives, since our infrastructure has not been significantly affected.
That's not to say having everyone walk about armed is a good idea.:)
1. The user, for not knowing that the black-box implementation of Office documents can and does leave underlying data and previously-deleted information within documents, when there is nothing in the application UI to point this out?
2. Microsoft for building their software to silently include such information?
Your typical user will have no idea this is occurring, much less that they can search for "remove hidden data" in the Microsoft technical support knowledge base to find a tool that allows documents to be purged of unnecessary information.
I'd pick Oblivion, too, but unless I could take it with me as well, I'd end up spending the first year or three re-creating the various mods that make it enjoyable (OOO, Landmarks, BTmod and unofficial patch at a minimum).
People enjoyed it so much less that the most popular mods for the game are those like Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, which at it's core is about making it so the Level 1 newbie can't realistically expect to face off against the mightiest beings in the world and expect to live for longer than a second. It brings back the sense of awe and underlying fear that make the world seem more alive, as well as the sense of accomplishment when you finally do gain enough experience for your hero to hand that boss it's arse on a platter.
Slashdot Mirror
It never seems to amaze me at how different the rate of complexity in mathematical education varies around the world. I found the Australian curriculum slow after early childhood experience overseas.
Maybe 2nd grade doesn't mean the same thing to you as me (I'm referring to is as the "2" in K,1,2,3...12, for context), but to put it into perspective, I had to master long division to graduate from 2nd grade while overseas. In Australia, we didn't begin to learn long division until 5th or 6th grade. The thing was, the rate of learning accelerated in Australia, such that an advanced student in 12th grade (what we call "4 Unit Maths") ended up doing what was introductory university-level mathematics in the country that made kids to long division in 2nd grade.
My evidence may be anecdotal, but I've found that the country with the more advanced mathematics early in life resulted in a population whose adult median mathematical ability was higher.
There's no reason why you couldn't have an OpenID for each and every single site and a single shared password for all of them, e.g. site.yourname.openidprovider.net, since either way you're trusting the identity management capability.
Aquamation may supercede cremation due to releasing less greenhouse gases and otherwise wasting less of the body's nutrients.
There is a major problem with the approach you have described: it builds inflexible organisational silos where cross-functional business processes are extremely expensive to establish (due to interoperability issues politically and technically), operate (due to forgoing economies of scale possible with rationalised, consolidated technology investment) and adapt (due to the impact on existing complex interdependencies resulting from point-to-point integrations). This is particularly problematic for companies that have a complex arrangement of multiple customer service channels (e.g. retail presences, call centres, websites) and multiple loosely-related product/service offerings (e.g. sale of goods, provision of services) -- doubly so when this occurs under a unified brand.
The issue is that with every functional business unit owning their individual line-of-business applications, each with its own business rules, state management, reference data (e.g. customer identity/contact info) and transactional information (e.g. purchases), the organisation can fail to leverage important cross-selling, customer acquisition and retention opportunities, never mind falling afoul of regulatory compliance issues. Simply put, the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing and the customer experience suffers, causing the company to suffer. Centralised full-function IT has its place, though you may be able to federate decentralised departmental development capabilities with a combination of governance and technology (e.g. the SOA approach).
While the technology environment can degrade over time due to poor processes, just as important is getting it right in the first place. In my experience, the IT team often lacks any architectural capability when the department is set up, typically because it's "too small" or their needs are "simple". As a result, nobody with the necessary qualifications/experience/mindset really thinks about the business' strategic requirements, they just go for "best practice". Unsurprisingly, "best practice" by itself simply means whatever fad the technology industry is pushing at the time.
Many of the posters above are right in saying that simply throwing it all out isn't the solution, however, throwing away all the assumptions, determining the strategic requirements and then reconciling those with the existing landscape is the way to do this. Sometimes that then results in things being replaced, but sometimes it does not.
Every other business unit does (or should be doing) this during the corporate strategic planning cycle, why does IT not? Sadly, the reason is normally the organisation only really has one "primary" business unit and it excludes IT from the strategic planning altogether. It's IT's job to convince the decision makers that they ought to be partners in strategy, but IT's normal lack of rigour in processes and particularly in financial management that prevents them from having the ammunition to fight for a place at the table.
Alternative breaking options:
* falling on its edge and cracking
* repeated extreme heating/cooling cycles causing the disk to crack
I do a lot of interviewing for technical positions, and I don't give code challenges. Anything beyond CS101 fodder is too time-consuming, and asking CS101 questions doesn't really tell me anything ... I'm a big fan of "what's the difference?" questions. I'll take two similar technologies from their resume and ask what's the difference between them.
This is how I do it, too, asking first for the difference then for examples of where you'd use each. I find it's much more time-efficient than programming exams.
SSLed checksums for the binaries... oh, wait, Mozilla doesn't bother publishing those, for some reason.
Not an old wives' tale at all. The brighter the level of light available (and contrast), the less your pupils have to dilate and the greater the depth of field you'll experience, resulting in less continuous adjustment of focus and hence less eyestrain.
We use CounterSoft's Gemini bug tracker for managing tasks. It's easy to use and what's most important for us is that you can define your own workflow, not be bound to what works for other people.
It's ironic that with respect to best practices you happened to choose "an IT bible ... that spelled out procedures for running an IT shop": it's called ITIL. Anyone in IT should make themselves familiar with it and benefit from decades of tried and tested best practices. They were true long before modern commodity technology but are still applicable. Admittedly, anyone who claimed their product is critical to any of these process-oriented best practices is spouting crap.
You've also completely missed the point with SOA: it's not about Web Services, it's about business service orientation. It's an approach that can be used to design systems that work like their organisations, promoting ownership, the lack of which can make even the most technically correct systems not just worthless but a negative influence on the company.
Considering that Neverwinter Nights 2 is probably the last of the DND franchise to be made for some time, I am thinking that these games are also going the way of the dodo
Unless you're specifically referring to the D&D ruleset Dragon's Age: Origins should keep you happy for some time.
Examples of RPG/FPS merging well: Deus Ex, Morrowind, Gothic 2, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Star Wars: KoToR, Oblivion, Fallout 3.
Probable near-future examples: Alpha Protocol, Borderlands, Mass Effect 2.
RPG isn't dead and has dramatically improved ever since Pool of Radiance :)
At risk of trolling: code monkeys get trained, developers learn.
I understand what you're saying, insofar as a real developer has the motivation, background knowledge and aptitude to learn on their own initiative.
However, for the benefit of newbies (so they don't dismiss the concept of training out of hand), when a project on a tight timeframe comes along that requires a specific and new skill set, it's normally quicker to send the developer on a dedicated training course than wait for them to figure it out themselves, or to hire a contractor with the necessary skill.
There's a world of difference between an accidental trespasser immediately leaving the property and one posting photos taken of people who have an expectation of privacy then posting them on the Internet.
Once such a photo hits the Internet, just removing it will not magically delete it from everywhere it has been distributed to.
Many companies have standardised on sans-serif fonts for internal documents to optimise on-screen readability. These then get printed before meetings, etc and thrown away shortly thereafter.
The top 2 very worst uses of Windows are, in reverse order:
2. government and
1. schools ... alongside Microsoft Office.
I can understand having to pay royalties to use Microsoft code to read/write to an open document format.
I can't understand having to pay royalties to enable others to use code I've written to read/write to an "open" document format.
This isn't "open".
As the AC that responded to you (with Score:0) earlier said, the report suggests that drinking hot tea increases the cancer risk, as does drinking too much tea.
Hud: Hey, you're aware of Superman?!? ... Are you aware of Garfield?
Marlene: Wow, you know who Superman is?
btw, I get seasick extraordinarily easily and experienced no motion sickness as a result of the shakeycam filming style, so people's mileage may vary.
That's a poor analogy. The reason MAD was so frightening and why the world has been working towards reducing the threat level is because in the event of MAD, life on Earth as we know it would end.
:)
In the event of a crazy person with a gun going on a shooting spree, he might kill a few people before getting shot down and then the violence would be over and the rest of the world gets on with their lives, since our infrastructure has not been significantly affected.
That's not to say having everyone walk about armed is a good idea.
I saw the same thing and started laughing out loud. :)
So who is at fault:
1. The user, for not knowing that the black-box implementation of Office documents can and does leave underlying data and previously-deleted information within documents, when there is nothing in the application UI to point this out?
2. Microsoft for building their software to silently include such information?
Your typical user will have no idea this is occurring, much less that they can search for "remove hidden data" in the Microsoft technical support knowledge base to find a tool that allows documents to be purged of unnecessary information.
I'd say that without revealing the exact patents and where they apply, Microsoft has no grounds to sue anyone.
Why waste your resources on producing something your opponent has to give you for free at some point?
I'd pick Oblivion, too, but unless I could take it with me as well, I'd end up spending the first year or three re-creating the various mods that make it enjoyable (OOO, Landmarks, BTmod and unofficial patch at a minimum).
People enjoyed it so much less that the most popular mods for the game are those like Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, which at it's core is about making it so the Level 1 newbie can't realistically expect to face off against the mightiest beings in the world and expect to live for longer than a second. It brings back the sense of awe and underlying fear that make the world seem more alive, as well as the sense of accomplishment when you finally do gain enough experience for your hero to hand that boss it's arse on a platter.