The place I work for (government entity) falls under the sunshine law here in Florida. That states that all electronic communications have to be logged, whether it be email, or IM messages, or the history of web sites. In fact, if you wanted to see all of the web sites I had gone to for the past week, all you, as a citizen, would have to do is make a public records request.
Phone calls do not fall under this domain, and while it may be silly, that is the way it is and the reason we do not allow IM messages.
It's not completely the sysadmins problem
on
Ethical Obligations
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· Score: 3
Looking at this from a business perspective, the sysadmin should never have to make that decision. As the article mentioned, the company should already have policies in place to handle that. Not just policies that say "If our data is comprimised do this" but also policies that prevent the data from being comprimised like not exposing the DB server to the internet, using firewalls, making sure the site properly handles user variables to prevent SQL injection attacks, etc.
However, one all of that has failed, the decision then gets forced onto the sysadmin. That person then is stuck with the delimma of making that decision and losing his or her job. Even worse, if they are under contract, they could be personally sued as well for breaking terms of the contract.
It's a shame that we even have to read articles like this. The SANS institute was way off - I would rather know that something happened to my CC so that I can simply get it replaced then have my credit card used to purchase items (like equipment for the "enemy") and have to dispute the charges.
Re:I Cancelled My Earthlink Account
on
Disconnecting
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· Score: 2
You can do it online as well. By using their Customer Service chat. Seemed fairly easy, and only took me about 10 minutes total.
>Flash is nearly always used to provide images that are irrelevant to the content.
Ahem. I'd like to take that point out.
As with any technology, you get people who have no idea what they are doing who shouldn't be doing it. As an earlier poster pointed out, taking HTML created by Frontpage and doing anything meaningful with it is a nightmare. If you start with the standards all along, then conforming to them is a lot easier.
But Flash is more than just a pretty image viewer. Actionscript can be a powerful tool not only for manipulating frames, but for XML parsing, server to client communication, and lots of other uses. Take for example a prototype at http://www.cornetdesign.com/e2xml.asp. Nothing flashy about it, it's primary job is to take a dynamically generated XML document from Everything and convert it to a format for people using Pocket PC's. Is it the best for the platform? Maybe, maybe not. Another group of developers is working on a native platform viewer.
So please spare me the argument that because lousy designers do lousy stuff with a product, that the product sucks. I'm sure I could build a C++ application that would really suck. But that does not mean that the language sucks, only that I didn't know the proper methods.
This also falls into the long load times. It does not cause long load times when it is streamed properly. But if you get some lazy developer who does not feel like using that, then you get long load times. Again, a developer issue.
And Flash might be proprietary (though my spidey sense reminds me of a open-source viewer and builder I have seen somewhere), but what it is built on - SVG - is not.
>For website viewers who do not want to run Flash and other Macromedia software, or cannot, web sites using it are broken.
Unless the website designers have taken the time to develop a version that is accessible to all. But there are some things that, in order to do the things the customer wants, require you to exclude certain browser users. This is not (actually should not) be because of the developer, but because of what the client wants most of the time. I have fought many a battle for our site to keep it from being taken over by DHTML and the like. The day I see "Best viewed by" at the bottom of the site is the day I know I have lost.
So again, please don't let the crappy developers, or the lazy developers, or the ones who have been instructed to do what they have done or lose their job detracted from the things that can be done with Flash when done properly.
Re:Have artists ever been compensated for their mu
on
Web Radio and the RIAA
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· Score: 2
>If people really started buying a lot of music directly from the artists, you would see the RIAA come up with a law against it.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I bet those CD's you bought were from relatively smaller bands, not larger ones. Most of the larger ones record labels would have a FIT if the band skipped around them to sell CD's. I know that was the case when we were with a label (albeit a much smaller one than Sony or similar). They were present at the shows selling our albums.
Where I work, the web team started out on the 28th floor in a shared office with cubicles. It was a large office, housing 5 people in a generous cubicle configuration. My front wall was a gigantic window over the city of Tampa. After about eight months, they decided that because we were moving so much stuff to the web that we needed to be moved with the other 28 members of our section because their skills (Clarion development) were becoming outdated and our management wanted us to 'rub off on them'.
Don't get me wrong, I fully understand why they wanted us to be moved with the other developers (which they moved us all to the 21st floor). However, mu cubicle is now in a high traffic area with low walls in front of the break room, with the nearest window being a good 50 feet away. I ended up snatching a bunch of foam core board from our GIS department and building walls, then going out and spening about 100 bucks on a set of noise-cancelling Sony digital headphones. Even then, I get interrupted at least 10-15 times a day for questions like, "Where'd you get those headphones?" and "Isn't my fish cool!" and blah blah blah.
Our web teams morale dropped quite a bit, and I also find myself going in about 6am to get any work done at all. My advice would be do whatever is necessary for the company, but also look at what moving the workers is going to do to their unspoken side like morale, etc.
Unless you use your personal email accounts to subscribe to developer mailing lists such as I do. Or perhaps go to Google or various troubleshooting boards to find information on the problem you are having.
We use websense at work, and even it blocks stuff that occasionally I need to get into. Luckily I can either find the info somewhere else or use Googles cached feature, but if I had *no* internet access it would make things rather difficult.
I for one don't use the music sharing software like I used to. I have an MP3 player in my truck, and routinely make trips that are 11 hours each way. MP3s are a Godsend for that. But when I am at home or at work, I listen to streaming music from Live 365 which is so much better then my MP3 collection. Don't get me wrong, I have nearly 20 gigs of MP3s (owning about 70% of the respective albums with most of the rest being songs you just can't buy), but the streaming music has a broader selection, *I* get to pick what I want to listen to, and I don't have to lug around my MP3 collection.
Good luck getting me to buy a CD. I would rather pay for a streaming service that has that variety anyday.
Re:Why tell us where to buy it...
on
Dot.Con
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· Score: 2
It is about impartiality. Yes, this reviewer thought this book was crap. But that is not necessarily the view of Slashdot/OSDN/etc, so it is proper for them to link to it.
Also, it would be easy for someone to submit a review like this that was completely off-base and have it slip past the editors. Think of it as a form of reviewer's reviewing process.
Finally, I was thinking about going out and getting this book, not because of the "high quality writing" but because if something that wrong made it through the publisihing monster, it will make a great example to show people what *not* to do.
The one thing that I respect most about my manager is that he trusts us to make decisions where he doesn't fully understand what we are doing. He is a Punch Card/Fortran programmer, and we are incorporating more web-based programming that he doesn't understand the exact syntax of. He makes an effort to learn, but when it comes down to technical decisions that he doesn't grasp (or doesn't have the time to), he trusts and respects our decision to make the right choice.
Of course, with that comes responsibility on our part to actually make the right choice, but we know if we lose that trust, life will be much harder.
First, the situation you are in sucks. Some of the posters are correct that you really should determine if you want to stay there under the supervision of someone who doesn't want you there.
And as much as it sucks, federally there is nothing you can do. The EEO laws state that age discrimination applies to 40 and above. The best thing you can do at this point is check your state laws to see if there is something that can be done.
A third option you might have is to get a hold of your representatives in the house and senate. While there may be nothing that could be done to help you, you might be able to get laws past that could help others.
But more than likely, if they want you gone, they will find some way to do it that is legal. A director isn't a director because he/she fell into it, they are a director because they have survived, and they know what it takes to make it through.
Mainly because of the number of molecules it takes to perform that feat. "IBM chemists designed and made a new molecule that has seven nuclear spins" - exactly enough to solve the simple factor. You need many more spins than that to perform complex calculations.
But once the molecules are put together and they can control them properly, then nothing really stops it. That is why they say that a fundamental change in cryptography is on the horizon.
Weather.com has these as well, but they are MUCH more annoying. The one I had filled up the lower half of your screen with water and a broken pipe, and then had someone standing there, and it was an advertisement for insurance.
We responded by pulling our partnership with Weather.com. As we explained to them, banner ads and pop-up ads are one thing, but anything that literally takes over the users computer will not by tolerated.
I have already received 17 copies of the virus. But you know, following the rules that I teach in my Internet Basic class - don't open anything you aren't expecting, verify it first - worked charms in this case. The first person I got it from I called and they had no idea about it, which raised little red flags with me.
Is Outlook to blame? Sure, partially. But is stupid users who open attachments at random without verifying it also to blame? Absolutely.
It's a shame that you don't have any contact information for you. Can you email me sometime? I'd be interested in hearing your comments or some of the issues you talked about.
Thanks for the laugh. Yes, unfortunately being involved with a lot of the tech organizations, I know how many people would love to have a job where they complain.
So I figure if I can come up with a grandeur enough vision, I'll be able to employ everyone!
We don't have a VP. We don't have a CIO, CTO, yadda yadda. We have four seperate managers spread across two different (highly political) departments. I am trying to make a case that having a CIO (or something similar) of web operations is the way to go.
I woked for a dot-com for about three months, and what you mentioned above is what I saw. They wanted to build a site with DHTML out the wazoo, completely cross-compatible, with no databases allowed, or any other technology then Javascript. I walked into a development envornment that had three 7,000 line Javascript include files being passed with each page, which of course did not work as soon as N6 came out.
We have quite a bit of integration into the systems. We allow citizens to search for permits online, sign up for updates, customize portions of the site (thought that *needs* a redesign), and quite a bit else.
And we actually bill the departments for the work that we do. If it is under 8 hours, we set it up as a help desk case (IT staffs a help desk off-site of 6-8 people who handle all tech support calls), otherwise it becomes a project. If it is really big, then it becomes part of the Strategic Automation plan, which are things like (for example) creating a system to tie into our 911 dispatching system that would automatically map out the route the ambulance or firetruck would go and beam it to a Palm 7x wirelessly so they would have it there.
Actually, this is one of the best parts of the site. We use a Citizens Action Center that handles ALL incoming email, and forwards it to the appropriate department. That form you saw is used in every departments section as a way for them to contact us. That way if someone leaves it still goes to the right person.
We also use an autoreponder that is immediately sent out, and they will be contacted by phone or email. And if it is destined for one of the commissioners, we have a Correspondence Tracking system that assigns it a number and is tracked throughout the organization.
Sorry. Some of us see the web as a useful tool, and want to make it something that works and is enjoyed by everyone. Is it an uphill battle? Sure. But each and every positive (and not-so-positive) comment I have gotten has not only shown better ways to do it, but made it worth it.
Actually, that page is maintained by the Hillsborough Sherriff's Office IT staff - not us. We get a lot of that confusion though, so I understand completely!:)
Ummm..Slashdot? See, one of the lists I'm on for a programming language had a joke instead of, like, a real language question on there. And, umm, I'm not real sure whether I should quit my job and leave my girlfriend or not. Umm, what would you do in this situation?
Slashdot Mirror
For even more interesting views, check out this one
Phone calls do not fall under this domain, and while it may be silly, that is the way it is and the reason we do not allow IM messages.
However, one all of that has failed, the decision then gets forced onto the sysadmin. That person then is stuck with the delimma of making that decision and losing his or her job. Even worse, if they are under contract, they could be personally sued as well for breaking terms of the contract.
It's a shame that we even have to read articles like this. The SANS institute was way off - I would rather know that something happened to my CC so that I can simply get it replaced then have my credit card used to purchase items (like equipment for the "enemy") and have to dispute the charges.
You can do it online as well. By using their Customer Service chat. Seemed fairly easy, and only took me about 10 minutes total.
The article states that it comes with a tripod adapter. Probably be better off using that then a music stand.
Ahem. I'd like to take that point out.
As with any technology, you get people who have no idea what they are doing who shouldn't be doing it. As an earlier poster pointed out, taking HTML created by Frontpage and doing anything meaningful with it is a nightmare. If you start with the standards all along, then conforming to them is a lot easier.
But Flash is more than just a pretty image viewer. Actionscript can be a powerful tool not only for manipulating frames, but for XML parsing, server to client communication, and lots of other uses. Take for example a prototype at http://www.cornetdesign.com/e2xml.asp. Nothing flashy about it, it's primary job is to take a dynamically generated XML document from Everything and convert it to a format for people using Pocket PC's. Is it the best for the platform? Maybe, maybe not. Another group of developers is working on a native platform viewer.
So please spare me the argument that because lousy designers do lousy stuff with a product, that the product sucks. I'm sure I could build a C++ application that would really suck. But that does not mean that the language sucks, only that I didn't know the proper methods.
This also falls into the long load times. It does not cause long load times when it is streamed properly. But if you get some lazy developer who does not feel like using that, then you get long load times. Again, a developer issue.
And Flash might be proprietary (though my spidey sense reminds me of a open-source viewer and builder I have seen somewhere), but what it is built on - SVG - is not.
>For website viewers who do not want to run Flash and other Macromedia software, or cannot, web sites using it are broken.
Unless the website designers have taken the time to develop a version that is accessible to all. But there are some things that, in order to do the things the customer wants, require you to exclude certain browser users. This is not (actually should not) be because of the developer, but because of what the client wants most of the time. I have fought many a battle for our site to keep it from being taken over by DHTML and the like. The day I see "Best viewed by" at the bottom of the site is the day I know I have lost.
So again, please don't let the crappy developers, or the lazy developers, or the ones who have been instructed to do what they have done or lose their job detracted from the things that can be done with Flash when done properly.
>If people really started buying a lot of music directly from the artists, you would see the RIAA come up with a law against it.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I bet those CD's you bought were from relatively smaller bands, not larger ones. Most of the larger ones record labels would have a FIT if the band skipped around them to sell CD's. I know that was the case when we were with a label (albeit a much smaller one than Sony or similar). They were present at the shows selling our albums.
Don't get me wrong, I fully understand why they wanted us to be moved with the other developers (which they moved us all to the 21st floor). However, mu cubicle is now in a high traffic area with low walls in front of the break room, with the nearest window being a good 50 feet away. I ended up snatching a bunch of foam core board from our GIS department and building walls, then going out and spening about 100 bucks on a set of noise-cancelling Sony digital headphones. Even then, I get interrupted at least 10-15 times a day for questions like, "Where'd you get those headphones?" and "Isn't my fish cool!" and blah blah blah.
Our web teams morale dropped quite a bit, and I also find myself going in about 6am to get any work done at all. My advice would be do whatever is necessary for the company, but also look at what moving the workers is going to do to their unspoken side like morale, etc.
We use websense at work, and even it blocks stuff that occasionally I need to get into. Luckily I can either find the info somewhere else or use Googles cached feature, but if I had *no* internet access it would make things rather difficult.
Good luck getting me to buy a CD. I would rather pay for a streaming service that has that variety anyday.
Also, it would be easy for someone to submit a review like this that was completely off-base and have it slip past the editors. Think of it as a form of reviewer's reviewing process.
Finally, I was thinking about going out and getting this book, not because of the "high quality writing" but because if something that wrong made it through the publisihing monster, it will make a great example to show people what *not* to do.
Of course, with that comes responsibility on our part to actually make the right choice, but we know if we lose that trust, life will be much harder.
And as much as it sucks, federally there is nothing you can do. The EEO laws state that age discrimination applies to 40 and above. The best thing you can do at this point is check your state laws to see if there is something that can be done.
A third option you might have is to get a hold of your representatives in the house and senate. While there may be nothing that could be done to help you, you might be able to get laws past that could help others.
But more than likely, if they want you gone, they will find some way to do it that is legal. A director isn't a director because he/she fell into it, they are a director because they have survived, and they know what it takes to make it through.
Good luck. Sounds like you are going to need it.
But once the molecules are put together and they can control them properly, then nothing really stops it. That is why they say that a fundamental change in cryptography is on the horizon.
Weather.com has these as well, but they are MUCH more annoying. The one I had filled up the lower half of your screen with water and a broken pipe, and then had someone standing there, and it was an advertisement for insurance.
We responded by pulling our partnership with Weather.com. As we explained to them, banner ads and pop-up ads are one thing, but anything that literally takes over the users computer will not by tolerated.
Is Outlook to blame? Sure, partially. But is stupid users who open attachments at random without verifying it also to blame? Absolutely.
It's a shame that you don't have any contact information for you. Can you email me sometime? I'd be interested in hearing your comments or some of the issues you talked about.
Thanks for the laugh. Yes, unfortunately being involved with a lot of the tech organizations, I know how many people would love to have a job where they complain.
So I figure if I can come up with a grandeur enough vision, I'll be able to employ everyone!
I woked for a dot-com for about three months, and what you mentioned above is what I saw. They wanted to build a site with DHTML out the wazoo, completely cross-compatible, with no databases allowed, or any other technology then Javascript. I walked into a development envornment that had three 7,000 line Javascript include files being passed with each page, which of course did not work as soon as N6 came out.
If you'll notice - I work somewhere else now. :)
And we actually bill the departments for the work that we do. If it is under 8 hours, we set it up as a help desk case (IT staffs a help desk off-site of 6-8 people who handle all tech support calls), otherwise it becomes a project. If it is really big, then it becomes part of the Strategic Automation plan, which are things like (for example) creating a system to tie into our 911 dispatching system that would automatically map out the route the ambulance or firetruck would go and beam it to a Palm 7x wirelessly so they would have it there.
Thanks a lot for the input!
We also use an autoreponder that is immediately sent out, and they will be contacted by phone or email. And if it is destined for one of the commissioners, we have a Correspondence Tracking system that assigns it a number and is tracked throughout the organization.
Sorry. Some of us see the web as a useful tool, and want to make it something that works and is enjoyed by everyone. Is it an uphill battle? Sure. But each and every positive (and not-so-positive) comment I have gotten has not only shown better ways to do it, but made it worth it.
Sorry for making you roll out of bed to comment.
Actually, that page is maintained by the Hillsborough Sherriff's Office IT staff - not us. We get a lot of that confusion though, so I understand completely! :)
*sigh*