I guess I don't view this as a technology problem - more of an 'economic demand' issue. Looking at the evolution of email (and I know this is a simplification)... There were lots and lots of proprietary walled-garden email solutions pre-Internet. They worked fine for what they were - electronic memo systems for corporate users. The Internet changed the game, of course, and all those corporate users became interested in inter-operability - i.e. Company A want to exchange emails with Company B. My perspective is that email standards only gained real traction because of this economic imperative. People were willing to pay for email inter-operability and vendors were only too happy to adopted technology standards to make some money off their products.
Where instant messaging is concerned, I don't think we have a economic imperative to drive a market that can pick winners and losers. Interestingly, there are plenty of walled-garden IM platforms in corporate use - e.g. Lync, Groove/Spark, etc. There is some amount of demand for inter-operability, but it's minimal in my experience. So without an economic impetus to standardize - here we are.
Ummm.... I live in Southwestern Ontario, I hate Toronto, and I'm still Canadian. I don't watch the newscasts that flow from south of the 49th - nor does anyone I know. I tend to wath CTV for national news and my local station for the - ummm- local stuff. Are people in my environs shaped by geography? Sure they are. And I've lived in or at least visited every province and territory and I can tell you that uniqueness abounds everywhere you go. But I've always felt Canadian no matter where I am in this country or any other. And, yes, I know where Ottawa *is* (been there, too).
I'm not sure *you are*, but you've obviously got a chip on your shoulder about Toronto. Welcome to the funnest pasttime in CanadaLand, dude.
As for the original post - I'm a little bewildered about the Harper/Bush/Israel comments. Maybe I'm just not paying attention, but I cannot recall Harper making comments about Israel - at least not on a weekly basis. Nor have I ever seen any evidence that he's a Bush lapdog. Methinks Cutman has an agenda.
Damn straight. I'm dog-tired of the attitide that easy == dumb. The success of Ubuntu is owed (in no small way) to a new population of Linux users who have no skill and/or desire to tinker and just need to get stuff done. When my mom/brother/pastor/friend/whatever buys a car, they typically don't expect to have to tune it or install their own dashboard controls to make it easier to use. They just want it to drive them places with minimal mantenance involved. Why should a high-end computing appliance be any different for these folks?
I work for TD. There is a TD Waterhouse Canada, and there used to be TD Waterhouse USA. The later was recently mergered into Ameritrade, which then became TD Ameritrade. TD Waterhouse Canada remains a separate subsidiary.
You raise a good point, and I would agree with a background check there as a condition of being offered a job (vs. a condition of being offered an interview). This is a different situation - IMHO - than a job at a financial institution. But I think the 'meta' of the issue is around the direct risks inherent in a position. I just don't believe a corporate IT job warrants fingerprinting. That doesn't preclude background checks.
Ummm... what colour is the sky in your world? I've worked in financial institutions for over 20 years (in Canada, UK, etc.), and I've yet to run into ANY situation where finger-printing is required. That includes IT staff, managers, executives, traders, lenders, etc.
We do use annual attestations where one must sign a legal document promising to keep data private, declare stock trades (in certain situations), etc. As for programming mysterious back-doors into systems, you manage this risk (minimal though it is) through processes that involve lots of people providing oversight, testing, audit, etc.
I'm sorry - but fingerprinting should not be a requirement for this type of position. My sense is this symptomatic of the general state of mindless paranoia in the world today.
You make some valid points, but you're off-base on the 'customized apps' comments. True, they are a bitch to support sometimes. But oftentimes they are critical to an org in that they reflect whatever it is that's unique about that org. Said another way, customized apps will often reflect an org's competitive advantage (or at least a perception of it).
Consider the banking industry. How does one bank compete with another? They all sell mortgages and savings accounts and credit cards. They all have access to the same (or similar) COTS solutions. How, then, do they differentiate? IMHO it is custom apps that reflect value-adds such as paperless processing, customer-centric processing, etc.
Dude... I sense some anger! I agree that the sales of HD-ready sets is accelerating, but you've got to think through a few things - and think about them from the perspective of a non-geek shopping at Walmart.
First, is it HD that's driving people to buy new TVs? I'm thinking the answer is 'no'. It's form and function - big screens, viewing angle, prices becoming affordable by mere mortals, etc. HD is just a feature for most folks, I'll wager.
Second, the business case for a network is not there. It just ain't. Who cares what the engineers think? While 'going digital' is a forgone conclusion, networks will never, ever recoup the initial infrastructure outlay for supporting HD. Advertisers could care less about HD (why should they?) and it's still 'quality content' that sets ad rates.
Frankly, I don't need my eyes examined. HD looks fantastic; no debate. But it's just not important enough to matter to me very much. And it certainly isn't an experience anywhere close to 'profound'. Ask yourself this: if the FCC was not mandating networks to go digital, would we even be taking about HD? Now, do yourself a favour. Turn off the TV. Go outside. Chill, man.
Truly an insightful post. I am 43 year-old geek and can concur than many of the things you say are, indeed, true.
The upside of 40's: you're comfy, you're kinda settled, you're kinda content in a Maslow's Hierarchy kinda way.
The downside: You have the $$$ and the desire to do the Geek Projects you've always wanted (damn you "Make" magazine), but you don't have the time. Family, friends, a fuller life all conspire to get in your way.
Life is great at 40 - but you'll need naps. Really.
Whoa dude! As a parent of an ADD kid (clinically tested), I gotta tell you you're off base. ADD kids tend to gravitate towards because it suits their attention-span, not the other way around.
As for hyperactivity, I think what you're really refering to is an age-old problem called the "Sesame Street Attention Span". Instant gratification and sound-bite information can lead kids to develop certain expectations about their world. When those expectations are not met (like...in real life), we call it hyperactivity.
And you'll notice I did not attempt to mention the logical fallacies behind the "studies have shown" phrase. Others have done it for me.;)
I'll agree with you to a point. What you're talking about is, really, the old fat vs thin client approach. Fat clients (a la Swing, SWT, whatever) makes loads of sense if:
you're in control of your clients/endpoints (i.e. sys mgmt not an issue)
you have skinny network connectivity
you have sophisticated and/or performance-sensitive GUI
A thin client approach makes sense if:
you are NOT in control of your endpoints
you have adequate connectivity
you have simple GUI and linear dialogue flows
sub-second performance is not a primary requirement
I've worked (too many) years in both environments and seen them done right and done wrong. For what it's worth, the bank at which I work has it's teller-line app (rich GUI, sub-second performance, etc.) developed in Java (ported from C++) and using Swing. It works just great, but required great design.
Dude.... I gotta comment. I'm a senior architect at a very large multi-national back and I can attest that (in our case):
Java interoperability is extremely important. It's not about running the same code on different platforms, though. It's more about being able to switch out the platform when we need to (e.g. going from Wintel servers, to Linux and z/OS)
.NET is not knocking the socks off of Java. They are both shaping up to find their places. In our org, anything we write is Java (any tier, including clients where balls-to-the-wall performance is required). When we buy stuff, we look at Java (very few products) and.NET (more products).
Web Services are simply grand. But someone please wake me up when there's a full-featured implementation that's interoperable. Until then, Java has not lost any advatange here (if there ever was an advantage here).
your comments about 'beloved Linux desktops' simply describes the power of a Web interface, which is not specific to ASP.NET. Incidently, a Web interface is not always the right solution, so how does the Linux front-end play with the Windows back-end there?
Not trying to diss you here. Just trying to give some perspective from this corner.
You, my friend, are fortunate. I cannot begin to enumerate how many family vacations, special occasions, etc. I have experienced solely through a vidcam viewfinder. Just when I manage to ween myself off the vidcam habit, a new technology emerges and my nasty habit returns. Digital video, DVD burners, consumer-grade editting software...bah! I've a monkey on my back that makes me spend too many hours in a dark corner watching, re-watching, and tweaking footage of my kids' birthdays past. How I long for realtime...
I'm probably a bit of a Luddite here, but I still like using DV tape, if only for archival purposes. I do a LOT of taping with my Sony DV camera and I do a LOT of editting to create really boring home movies on DVD. What I like about the tape format is that I still a have "raw footage" archive of everything without a lot of management effort. Going to a tapeless camera means that I either have to buy/keep an inventory of SD cards (or whatever) for big $$$ compared to DV tape (I think) OR get into the pain that it is managing disk/optical-based archiving of my raw footage.
I just find that, with tapes, I can store them away without worrying too much (yet) about managing them. When the day somes that my DV camera gets replaced by something else, I'll convert the tapes to something else (as I've already done by transferring my old 8mm tapes to DV tape).
Flame away....
Sony's MicroDV format is, indeed, proprietary (altho I believe other vendors are giving some support to this). MiniDV, however, is widely supported and I have used a variety of software (Premier, Pinnacle, etc. etc.) to upload/download off my MiniDV Sony camera.
I think the point being made is that it's really a pain-in-the-ass to build and manage Web function with these kinds of features. Sure, it IS technically feasilble through a variety of means to do this stuff (Javascript would be the LAST choice for me). But how much effort and complexity is worth the results?
It really depends on the audience you're writing for, I think. In a corp IT shop (my background), it just makes sense to go the rich client route for doing any function that requires high responsiveness, richer interface, etc. We can do this because we (a) own all the clients and sys mgmt process and (b) it's easier to develop/maintain these types of apps vs. Web-based function.
I loved your posts here. My family (wife, 2 kids) have ploughed mega-bucks into Disney's coffers over the years - movies, toys, trips to DisneyWorld, even a few Disney cruises. If I could have dinner with any famous 'historical' figure, it would probably be Walt Disney himself. The man was a genius (in my mind).
For the most part, the Disney products and services we've purchased have always delivered. While they do sell a lot of crap for sure, we've never been disappointed in what we've been returned for the money we've spent. It's all about the content - and about discerning the wheat from the chaff.
Context, as you've said, is another matter. Disney has been a pretty crappy corporate citizen in recent times. Poor management, poor decision-making, abandonment of core values, the list goes on. We separate this context from the content, for sure. But we do participate (as very minor shareholders) in trying to correct the context. Witness the on-going efforts to turf Eisner.
Anyways...I'm meandering here, but I agree wholeheartedly with the context vs. content perspective.
True... the black box worked in favour of getting an a-hole off the road. Unfortunately, democracy is a messy business and the right to live without state surveilance should be paramount. Black boxes, photo radar, RFIDs, etc. all have some purpose for sure - but the right to privacy ought to trump them all.
I'll go one better. Back in 1982, the Tandy/Radio Shack folks sold a palm-ish computing device here in Canada called the TRS-80 PC-3. Built by Sharp, this little gem run run BASIC apps and could dock with a thermal printer and tape drive.
My friend's dad - an engineer - bought one of these and my friend and I used it regularly to complete our CS degrees back then. A wonderful piece of tech for its time.
It's questionable that PIPEDA would come into play here. It really hinges on whether an email address can be defined as personal info that could be tied to your specific identity (e.g. your real name, etc.).
Nevertheless, I say we head to Kitchener, Ontarion and break their kneecaps. It's just a few hours down the highway from my place. Ant takers?
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I don't view this as a technology problem - more of an 'economic demand' issue. Looking at the evolution of email (and I know this is a simplification)... There were lots and lots of proprietary walled-garden email solutions pre-Internet. They worked fine for what they were - electronic memo systems for corporate users. The Internet changed the game, of course, and all those corporate users became interested in inter-operability - i.e. Company A want to exchange emails with Company B. My perspective is that email standards only gained real traction because of this economic imperative. People were willing to pay for email inter-operability and vendors were only too happy to adopted technology standards to make some money off their products. Where instant messaging is concerned, I don't think we have a economic imperative to drive a market that can pick winners and losers. Interestingly, there are plenty of walled-garden IM platforms in corporate use - e.g. Lync, Groove/Spark, etc. There is some amount of demand for inter-operability, but it's minimal in my experience. So without an economic impetus to standardize - here we are.
You can already just email your money in Canada. Anyone use this service? http://www.interac.ca/consumers/productsandservices_ol_emt.php
Ummm.... I live in Southwestern Ontario, I hate Toronto, and I'm still Canadian. I don't watch the newscasts that flow from south of the 49th - nor does anyone I know. I tend to wath CTV for national news and my local station for the - ummm- local stuff. Are people in my environs shaped by geography? Sure they are. And I've lived in or at least visited every province and territory and I can tell you that uniqueness abounds everywhere you go. But I've always felt Canadian no matter where I am in this country or any other. And, yes, I know where Ottawa *is* (been there, too). I'm not sure *you are*, but you've obviously got a chip on your shoulder about Toronto. Welcome to the funnest pasttime in CanadaLand, dude. As for the original post - I'm a little bewildered about the Harper/Bush/Israel comments. Maybe I'm just not paying attention, but I cannot recall Harper making comments about Israel - at least not on a weekly basis. Nor have I ever seen any evidence that he's a Bush lapdog. Methinks Cutman has an agenda.
Damn straight. I'm dog-tired of the attitide that easy == dumb. The success of Ubuntu is owed (in no small way) to a new population of Linux users who have no skill and/or desire to tinker and just need to get stuff done. When my mom/brother/pastor/friend/whatever buys a car, they typically don't expect to have to tune it or install their own dashboard controls to make it easier to use. They just want it to drive them places with minimal mantenance involved. Why should a high-end computing appliance be any different for these folks?
I work for TD. There is a TD Waterhouse Canada, and there used to be TD Waterhouse USA. The later was recently mergered into Ameritrade, which then became TD Ameritrade. TD Waterhouse Canada remains a separate subsidiary.
You raise a good point, and I would agree with a background check there as a condition of being offered a job (vs. a condition of being offered an interview). This is a different situation - IMHO - than a job at a financial institution. But I think the 'meta' of the issue is around the direct risks inherent in a position. I just don't believe a corporate IT job warrants fingerprinting. That doesn't preclude background checks.
Maybe in the US - but I've spent 20 years in the financial industry in Canada and elsewhere and have NEVER seen this requirement.
Ummm... what colour is the sky in your world? I've worked in financial institutions for over 20 years (in Canada, UK, etc.), and I've yet to run into ANY situation where finger-printing is required. That includes IT staff, managers, executives, traders, lenders, etc. We do use annual attestations where one must sign a legal document promising to keep data private, declare stock trades (in certain situations), etc. As for programming mysterious back-doors into systems, you manage this risk (minimal though it is) through processes that involve lots of people providing oversight, testing, audit, etc. I'm sorry - but fingerprinting should not be a requirement for this type of position. My sense is this symptomatic of the general state of mindless paranoia in the world today.
You make some valid points, but you're off-base on the 'customized apps' comments. True, they are a bitch to support sometimes. But oftentimes they are critical to an org in that they reflect whatever it is that's unique about that org. Said another way, customized apps will often reflect an org's competitive advantage (or at least a perception of it). Consider the banking industry. How does one bank compete with another? They all sell mortgages and savings accounts and credit cards. They all have access to the same (or similar) COTS solutions. How, then, do they differentiate? IMHO it is custom apps that reflect value-adds such as paperless processing, customer-centric processing, etc.
Dude... I sense some anger! I agree that the sales of HD-ready sets is accelerating, but you've got to think through a few things - and think about them from the perspective of a non-geek shopping at Walmart.
First, is it HD that's driving people to buy new TVs? I'm thinking the answer is 'no'. It's form and function - big screens, viewing angle, prices becoming affordable by mere mortals, etc. HD is just a feature for most folks, I'll wager.
Second, the business case for a network is not there. It just ain't. Who cares what the engineers think? While 'going digital' is a forgone conclusion, networks will never, ever recoup the initial infrastructure outlay for supporting HD. Advertisers could care less about HD (why should they?) and it's still 'quality content' that sets ad rates.
Frankly, I don't need my eyes examined. HD looks fantastic; no debate. But it's just not important enough to matter to me very much. And it certainly isn't an experience anywhere close to 'profound'. Ask yourself this: if the FCC was not mandating networks to go digital, would we even be taking about HD? Now, do yourself a favour. Turn off the TV. Go outside. Chill, man.
Two words about Ray Ozzie - Notes and Groove.
Sure, choices are good. But inter-operability standards are better.
The upside of 40's: you're comfy, you're kinda settled, you're kinda content in a Maslow's Hierarchy kinda way.
The downside: You have the $$$ and the desire to do the Geek Projects you've always wanted (damn you "Make" magazine), but you don't have the time. Family, friends, a fuller life all conspire to get in your way.
Life is great at 40 - but you'll need naps. Really.
Whoa dude! As a parent of an ADD kid (clinically tested), I gotta tell you you're off base. ADD kids tend to gravitate towards because it suits their attention-span, not the other way around. As for hyperactivity, I think what you're really refering to is an age-old problem called the "Sesame Street Attention Span". Instant gratification and sound-bite information can lead kids to develop certain expectations about their world. When those expectations are not met (like...in real life), we call it hyperactivity. And you'll notice I did not attempt to mention the logical fallacies behind the "studies have shown" phrase. Others have done it for me. ;)
- you're in control of your clients/endpoints (i.e. sys mgmt not an issue)
- you have skinny network connectivity
- you have sophisticated and/or performance-sensitive GUI
A thin client approach makes sense if:- you are NOT in control of your endpoints
- you have adequate connectivity
- you have simple GUI and linear dialogue flows
- sub-second performance is not a primary requirement
I've worked (too many) years in both environments and seen them done right and done wrong. For what it's worth, the bank at which I work has it's teller-line app (rich GUI, sub-second performance, etc.) developed in Java (ported from C++) and using Swing. It works just great, but required great design.- Java interoperability is extremely important. It's not about running the same code on different platforms, though. It's more about being able to switch out the platform when we need to (e.g. going from Wintel servers, to Linux and z/OS)
- .NET is not knocking the socks off of Java. They are both shaping up to find their places. In our org, anything we write is Java (any tier, including clients where balls-to-the-wall performance is required). When we buy stuff, we look at Java (very few products) and
.NET (more products).
- Web Services are simply grand. But someone please wake me up when there's a full-featured implementation that's interoperable. Until then, Java has not lost any advatange here (if there ever was an advantage here).
- your comments about 'beloved Linux desktops' simply describes the power of a Web interface, which is not specific to ASP.NET. Incidently, a Web interface is not always the right solution, so how does the Linux front-end play with the Windows back-end there?
Not trying to diss you here. Just trying to give some perspective from this corner.You, my friend, are fortunate. I cannot begin to enumerate how many family vacations, special occasions, etc. I have experienced solely through a vidcam viewfinder. Just when I manage to ween myself off the vidcam habit, a new technology emerges and my nasty habit returns. Digital video, DVD burners, consumer-grade editting software...bah! I've a monkey on my back that makes me spend too many hours in a dark corner watching, re-watching, and tweaking footage of my kids' birthdays past. How I long for realtime...
I'm probably a bit of a Luddite here, but I still like using DV tape, if only for archival purposes. I do a LOT of taping with my Sony DV camera and I do a LOT of editting to create really boring home movies on DVD. What I like about the tape format is that I still a have "raw footage" archive of everything without a lot of management effort. Going to a tapeless camera means that I either have to buy/keep an inventory of SD cards (or whatever) for big $$$ compared to DV tape (I think) OR get into the pain that it is managing disk/optical-based archiving of my raw footage. I just find that, with tapes, I can store them away without worrying too much (yet) about managing them. When the day somes that my DV camera gets replaced by something else, I'll convert the tapes to something else (as I've already done by transferring my old 8mm tapes to DV tape). Flame away....
Sony's MicroDV format is, indeed, proprietary (altho I believe other vendors are giving some support to this). MiniDV, however, is widely supported and I have used a variety of software (Premier, Pinnacle, etc. etc.) to upload/download off my MiniDV Sony camera.
I think the point being made is that it's really a pain-in-the-ass to build and manage Web function with these kinds of features. Sure, it IS technically feasilble through a variety of means to do this stuff (Javascript would be the LAST choice for me). But how much effort and complexity is worth the results? It really depends on the audience you're writing for, I think. In a corp IT shop (my background), it just makes sense to go the rich client route for doing any function that requires high responsiveness, richer interface, etc. We can do this because we (a) own all the clients and sys mgmt process and (b) it's easier to develop/maintain these types of apps vs. Web-based function.
I loved your posts here. My family (wife, 2 kids) have ploughed mega-bucks into Disney's coffers over the years - movies, toys, trips to DisneyWorld, even a few Disney cruises. If I could have dinner with any famous 'historical' figure, it would probably be Walt Disney himself. The man was a genius (in my mind). For the most part, the Disney products and services we've purchased have always delivered. While they do sell a lot of crap for sure, we've never been disappointed in what we've been returned for the money we've spent. It's all about the content - and about discerning the wheat from the chaff. Context, as you've said, is another matter. Disney has been a pretty crappy corporate citizen in recent times. Poor management, poor decision-making, abandonment of core values, the list goes on. We separate this context from the content, for sure. But we do participate (as very minor shareholders) in trying to correct the context. Witness the on-going efforts to turf Eisner. Anyways...I'm meandering here, but I agree wholeheartedly with the context vs. content perspective.
Read a book or two that doesn't contain "Dummies" in the title. Then we might be able to have a civil conversation.
True... the black box worked in favour of getting an a-hole off the road. Unfortunately, democracy is a messy business and the right to live without state surveilance should be paramount. Black boxes, photo radar, RFIDs, etc. all have some purpose for sure - but the right to privacy ought to trump them all.
My friend's dad - an engineer - bought one of these and my friend and I used it regularly to complete our CS degrees back then. A wonderful piece of tech for its time.
See more here
It's questionable that PIPEDA would come into play here. It really hinges on whether an email address can be defined as personal info that could be tied to your specific identity (e.g. your real name, etc.). Nevertheless, I say we head to Kitchener, Ontarion and break their kneecaps. It's just a few hours down the highway from my place. Ant takers?