Are you telling me that thousands of companies with a load of data are installing SQL Server without having a database admin to do the work? Sweet, they deserve what they get. What kind of people install SQL Server without putting a password for the SA account? Apparently, plenty:)
This is a typical Slashdot response, but I don't think most businesspeople would agree. Without in any way excusing Microsoft for their security practices, it may occur to you that 90% or more of businesses exist to do something other than IT functions. They need transportation, they go out and buy a truck. They need a machine tool, they go out and buy one. They need a copy machine, they have one installed. Although some of these tools can certainly be dangerous, there is a basic expectation that when buying, say, a machine tool (a) it will more or less do what it says it will do (b) it won't suddenly explode and destroy an entire city block.
Along comes e-mail, the Internet, databases, web sites, etc. Joe Enthusiastic runs into the President's office and says, "Mr. Smith! I have found a great new way to communicate with our customers!". Mr. Smith, though he is 90 years old, takes a look and says, "Yeah, that looks interesting. Buy one and set it up".
So the company buys one (database server, e-mail server, web site, etc.) and sets it up according the skimpy directions in the box. It works for a while, then blows up, seriously damaging the business.
NOW the company is told, oh, you should have known. You should have known the instructions in the box were incomplete and dangerous. You should have known you needed an 80k/year DBA to use that. You should have known the product was dangerous. You should have known...
Sorry. I am not buying it anymore. And I think the general business world isn't going to buy it much longer. Either the Internet will be abandoned, or there will be heavy, heavy government regulation of who can connect and how. Sort of like the phone company in the 1950's.
Most of the Google enhancements I have seen work only with Microsoft Internet Explorer. Since I switch among browsers as appropriate I find this annoying, as well as against the spirit of the Net.
I can only hope that if AOL switches to Mozilla as their core code, and Google starts seeing millions of Mozilla hits, they might rethink this decision.
It's not just a tool, GNU utils are what make the kernel usable. How hard is it to understand that. Let's try a little experiment. Install run, and use Linux without GNU tools, let me know how much work you get done. GNU tools, GCC included are not hammers and screwdrivers that have no contact with a project post assembly.
I guess that's the crux of the disagreement. It would be virtually impossible to build a house without a hammer and saw, but we call it a "house by Frank Lloyd Wright", or if we are speaking to knowledgable/interested people we say "a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, constructed by Palumbo Construction". Stanley Tool Works, as invaluable as their contribution may be, isn't credited. And I have never heard them whining about it.
BTW, Linux was bootstrapped using a compiler other than GCC; Linus switched to GCC later. Which says something as well.
Why not simply do it out of deference to Stallman for the huge huge contribution that the GNU project (and Stallman in particular) has made. If anyone deserves the right to make a wacky, imposing request on our community, isn't it RMS?
Because many people have made contributions to the world of software. There was free and open source software before RMS. There is the work of all the mathematicians, logicians, electrical engineers, and compiler writers who came before Linus, before RMS, and before K&R for that matter.
The rule in life is, the maker of the tool is acknowledged for his work on the tool. And praised well if appropriate. The maker of the next object who uses the tool is acknowledged for his creation. The maker of the tool is not acknowledged for the subsequent creation, nor is the maker of the creation acknowledged for the tool.
That's the way it is. If RMS doesn't like that, fine. But let's stop trying to force his view on this pedantic issue onto everyone else.
1. How do you determine whether applicants have this skill when you have lots of resumes go through? 2. How do you know you have this skill? 3. How do you convey that you have this skill in a resume?
It's called experience;-).
Seriously, the help wanted ad/paper resume/interview cycle are supposed to be obsolete, dangerous, symptoms of old economy thinking, inside-the-box, etc. Whereas whenever I put an ad in the paper and get a stack of 500 resumes, I am amazed at how fast I can go through them and separate the "potentials" from the "probably nots" to the "no chance for this positions". Usually for 500 resumes I can pick 10 interview candidates and get 2 good choices. When I have been forced by HR to interview some of the other 490, I have almost never been wrong. The way that a person presents himself/herself in a resume and 1-hour interview usually tells the tale of the next 3 years.
How do you interview for positions above your level of knowledge? That is a difficult topic in itself, and I think whole books have been written on it (including the ones by Scott Adams!). It is indeed very tough.
There was a great article by Fischer Black (of the option pricing fame) that analyzed the various tradeoffs. I doubt you will find the paper on the net though.
Yes, I have a copy at home. Spent 2 years of MBA finance classes staring at it and similar stock/bond/option pricing models. Interesting to look at, and your point is well taken.
However, there are two other things to consider: (1) human behaviour changes based on experience and is not fully rational in any case. So it is not entirely clear that these pricing models work over the long term (2) $1 cash in hand is worth some amount > $1 of retained earnings locked up in the corporation. Yeah, they might spend it wisely. But they might waste it on a corporate jet, too. Lots of work done in this area as well. And don't forget Mr. Kerkorian! He seems to like his cash up front.
I hire technical people on their ability to solve problems. Between two people of equal problem-solving ability, I will pick the one with the best non-technical communication skills.
To the extent that certifications act as a marker for a person's curosity, desire to learn, and humbleness in the face of the unknown, I will take them into account. However, I would rather have an English Lit major with zero technical background who can solve an unfamiliar problem from scratch than a 3 month/employer guy with a bag full of paper certifications.
To the extent that I consider certifications at all, I will look in order at Cisco certs (past the CNA), Novell CNE or Master CNE, Pine Mountain Group network analyst certs, a broad background in Unix, and of course any professional engineer certs.
But for what kind of job, you ask? Remember, I don't match up specific certs to my current position needs. I have never seen a person with a deep knowledge of Netware have any problem picking up what he needs to know about NT, but I have certainly seen the person with 38 Microsoft certs be unable to figure out how to configure a 2-router Cisco network.
Yeh. Right. Do me one. You're going to try to take the stand and make the case that you know more about "maximising total return to the shareholders" than Alfred Sloan? Surely you realize that by 1970 GM will have a 100% market share in North America?
Anyway, we are talking about extreme cases (always difficult) of financial theory (which doesn't have a whole lot of theory behind it to a humble engineer) in situations that, as you imply, will probably never arise.
However, you may want to look at the MSFT price graph for the last 2 years, and keep in mind that they have a LOT of option grants coming up in the next 2. Trees don't grow to the sky and Microsoft is no exception. Problem is MSFT is valued as if they do.
Plenty of other firms have been doing this for years, legally, especially firms in wildly cyclitical industries, like Microsoft.
Agreed - up to a point, it is legal. However, any student of the auto industry will tell you that when cash reserves become excessive, both Kirk Kekorian and the Justice Dept. come knocking, and the reserves either get used for some constructive purpose or paid out. Particularly in an anti-trust situation having a $40B overhang of cash is generally not going to be in accordance with the corporate charter.
Where is this notion that Microsoft "avoids" paying dividends come from? They have no obligation whatsoever to pay out dividends if management decides not to.
Up to a point. However, if the company stops growing, and continues to retain cash in excess of its reasonable operating requirements, there comes a point where the management can be accused of failing in their fiduciary duty to maximize total return to the stockholders.
What is that point? Hard to say since it varies from industry to industry, from board of directors to board of directors, and from presidential administration to presidential administration. However, in the auto industry the tipping point has usually been around $5 billion (USD, US billion) on annual sales of $50B. Past that point shareholders, the SEC, and the Justice Dept. start getting restive.
Zero-inventory = getting the supplies only when you need them, saving overhead in storage and so on. Hiring contractors instead of maintaining employees is analogous. Get workers only when you need them.
JIT worked really well for Toyota. For a while, in Japan, anyway. It worked for Toyota and a few others in North America, for a while anyway.
The UPS strike of a couple years ago, and the events of September/October 2001, have put a real dent in the JIT theory. It doesn't do much good to be able to track your critical inventory to 1 cm with GPS+RF tags when you find the inventory stuck in a customs queue at the Canadian border.
I would have to think the same sort of problems would apply to "JIT employees".
The main thing that came out of this committee was a slogan: "We're a Public Utility, not a Software Company." Management agreed and the decision was made to phase out in-house software developement. The goal was to grab ready-made, off-the-shelf, tested and proven solutions, modify them only as necessary and deploy them company wide.
I worked (note past tense) for a large midwestern utility that tried the same thing. After they fired all the 40-year DP veterans, they found that (a) there is no substitute for 40 years of business-specific knowledge (b) really smart 22 year-olds who hop from job to job at the drop of a dime are not a good substitute for reasonably smart 46 year-olds with stable lives (c) consultants who have no loyalty to the organization are interested in one thing only: grabbing as much loot as possible, then moving on to the next victim.
This company's outsourced customer service system was 3 years late, and when it was turned on it failed to bill half the customers for at least 9 months. Cost them $3 billion in lost revenue. Good move.
"We are not a software company" - yeah - makes some sense. "We are a customer service company and solid, well-understood tools that are under are control are required to serve customers" - well - that makes some sense, too!
There is an assumption in modern Western society that
newer = more advanced = better
When dealing with stuff that directly hits the human sensory system and/or is directly operated by human beings, this is not necessarily the case. Analog gauges are superior to digital readouts in most control applications (e.g. auto speedometers), for example.
However, as Julian Hirsch pointed out 10 years ago, once a digital method of doing something becomes available, it quickly becomes less expensive to manufacture than the analog technology, and shortly thereafter drives the analog technology off the market. That is not to say that the digital technology is better than the analog, just cheaper to manufacture and easier to modify.
Oh, and one last thing - never give anyone your social security number. Or your mother's maiden name.
Social Security Numbers are public records. They are not, and never were intended to be, secret. If any organization builds a system which depends on keeping the SSN "secret" for security, it is incompetent (and possibly criminally neglegant), but if you depend on your SSN being secret for anything you are being foolish.
Mother's maiden names are similarly public records. In practice they have been harder to track down in the past, but wiht various records including those of the Mormon church coming on-line that information is not fully accessible as well. See first paragraph for implications.
You need probably close to a thousand hours of flight time before you are officially a licensed pilot.
The minimum flight hours required to obtain a private pilot license from the US FAA is 40. Here's a link to one flight training school I just happened to find with Google. At that point you are technically able to rent a plane and fly by yourself, although the rental agency's insurance company may have other thoughts.
If you want a high-power, instrument, multi-engine, or ATP (airline) certificate many more hours are of course required. However, 1000 hours is close to what you need to get an airline job, not to cruise around on weekends in a 172!
Are there any home flight sims that support multiple monitors in W2K or WXP? I like flying CSF2, but it always seems to me that if I could get some basic peripheral vision from 2 additional monitors showing left and right views (or to go nuts, a total of 5 monitors: forward, left, right, up, and back) that it would be a LOT more realistic.
I would think a dual processor Xeon system with 2 GB RAM and 3 video cards should have enough horsepower (sic) to handle this type of setup, but is there any software that can do it?
Saw an essay in "Private Pilot" mag about a year ago. The author visited a friend's house, and the friend proudly showed him his super-flight-simulator setup, with everything possible in a home environment except full motion. The author asked his friend how much it all cost, and the friend stated, "Around $8000". The author replied, "You DO realize that you can generally get your private pilot license for around $4000, leaving you with $4000 left over to rent time in a real airplane?".
Who said, "Every interface is learned, only the nipple is intuitive"?
This chestnut is a Slashdot Posting Standard(tm), but it happens to be untrue. A large percentage of babies, perhaps as high as 50%, need to be led to the nipple and encouraged to suck the first dozen feedings or so.
I suppose this will be marked off-topic, since the poster is asking about digitization hardware. But whenever I see coworkers with tons of books on their desk shelf, I wonder to myself why they really need them. Do they actually have time to read them? Or are they more for show?
Because once you have developed the skill of processing technical books/documentation, you can scan through them and pick up critical information rapidly - far faster than you could click through them as hypertext.
Case in point: I recently took a position where I had to do some work with Oracle, which I had not used previously. After some skimming at B&N, I purchased 5 good texts. A lot of pages, but when you need to figure something out you can open 2 or 3 of them, mark multiple pages, and get the outline of what you need very quickly.
sPh
Re:You cannot deny GCC is the heart of free softwa
on
The Stallman Factor
·
· Score: 2
We're talking about running code that is still in widespread use after nearly 20 years, not paid research that was eventually perfected by others to resemble what we today think of as a compiler. Stallman is *the* person who started all of this, by himself, on his own time,
Algol, Fortran (including WATFOR), COBOL, Pascal, PL/I (including the "open source" PL/C), B, and C, to name a few, are all chopped meat? There were plenty of compilers, and plenty of free (in both senses) and "open source", compilers available for many different platforms in 1980. In fact, the computer world was a much more varied and open environment then than it is today (2002). Stallman has helped maintain openness against forces that would deny it, but he did not invent fire or the wheel.
sPh
Re:You cannot deny GCC is the heart of free softwa
on
The Stallman Factor
·
· Score: 2
RMS wrote GCC. From scratch. By himself. GDB too. That's not the same as what Hopper did (which was paid research). It's not easy to appreciate what RMS went through to do this, especially given when it was done (mid 1980s).
While writing a production quality compiler using clean-room techniques is a notable feat, it remains that GCC is a descendent of C and all the work that went before it. It is not original.
Whereas Hopper invented the idea of the compiler. Without her work, no compilers, including GCC, would exist [1]. That's a bit of a difference IMHO.
sPh
[1] Typically, big ideas occur to several people when the time is right (e.g. calculus to Newton and Liebeitz), so probably someone else would have come up with the compiler if Hopper hadn't. But the difference between cloning and originality remains.
Re:You cannot deny GCC is the heart of free softwa
on
The Stallman Factor
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Every major free work can trace its roots to GCC (which Stallman originally wrote)
So it is really 'Hopper/GNU/Linux', since Grace Hopper invented the compiler? Or 'Turing/Hopper/GNU/Linux'? 'Babbage+Boole/Turing/Hopper/GNU/Linux'? Do the inventors of the transistor, or all the Army guys who worked on analog computers get their names in there also? Kernighan and Ritchie?
Where does it end, and why there? Please be as precise in your answer as Mr. Stallman prefers to be in his.
The linux kernel is just that, a kernel. You really don't have a complete OS with just that. Generally gnu utilities and libraries are used to provide the rest of the OS. So, it is reasonable to refer to the OS as 'GNU/Linux' (or equally 'Linux/GNU').
An automobile design is just that, a design. You really don't have a complete car with just that. Generally seats, starters, tires, CPUs, and similar components are used to provide the rest of the car. So it is reasonable to refer to the car as a 'Lear/Nippondenso/Goodyear/Motorola/Ford rather than just a 'Ford'.
I vow that if all other stores have discount cards which track your purchases, I will personally open a store which doesn't. So for my lifetime at least, those opinions are wrong.
Not trying to get into a flame war here dude - I hope you are right!
But prey tell, where will you get the stock for your store? From a wholesaler, eh? And when the wholesaler starts requiring a data dump of your customers' purchase habits before he will make a delivery? Or your bank requires same before it will give you a letter of credit, which you will need to be able to import all those exotic beers?
When "just about everyone" starts capturing data, it really won't be feasible to be the only one who doesn't.
Slashdot Mirror
Along comes e-mail, the Internet, databases, web sites, etc. Joe Enthusiastic runs into the President's office and says, "Mr. Smith! I have found a great new way to communicate with our customers!". Mr. Smith, though he is 90 years old, takes a look and says, "Yeah, that looks interesting. Buy one and set it up".
So the company buys one (database server, e-mail server, web site, etc.) and sets it up according the skimpy directions in the box. It works for a while, then blows up, seriously damaging the business.
NOW the company is told, oh, you should have known. You should have known the instructions in the box were incomplete and dangerous. You should have known you needed an 80k/year DBA to use that. You should have known the product was dangerous. You should have known...
Sorry. I am not buying it anymore. And I think the general business world isn't going to buy it much longer. Either the Internet will be abandoned, or there will be heavy, heavy government regulation of who can connect and how. Sort of like the phone company in the 1950's.
My 0.02 anyway.
sPh
I can only hope that if AOL switches to Mozilla as their core code, and Google starts seeing millions of Mozilla hits, they might rethink this decision.
sPh
BTW, Linux was bootstrapped using a compiler other than GCC; Linus switched to GCC later. Which says something as well.
sPh
The rule in life is, the maker of the tool is acknowledged for his work on the tool. And praised well if appropriate. The maker of the next object who uses the tool is acknowledged for his creation. The maker of the tool is not acknowledged for the subsequent creation, nor is the maker of the creation acknowledged for the tool.
That's the way it is. If RMS doesn't like that, fine. But let's stop trying to force his view on this pedantic issue onto everyone else.
sPh
Seriously, the help wanted ad/paper resume/interview cycle are supposed to be obsolete, dangerous, symptoms of old economy thinking, inside-the-box, etc. Whereas whenever I put an ad in the paper and get a stack of 500 resumes, I am amazed at how fast I can go through them and separate the "potentials" from the "probably nots" to the "no chance for this positions". Usually for 500 resumes I can pick 10 interview candidates and get 2 good choices. When I have been forced by HR to interview some of the other 490, I have almost never been wrong. The way that a person presents himself/herself in a resume and 1-hour interview usually tells the tale of the next 3 years.
How do you interview for positions above your level of knowledge? That is a difficult topic in itself, and I think whole books have been written on it (including the ones by Scott Adams!). It is indeed very tough.
sPh
However, there are two other things to consider: (1) human behaviour changes based on experience and is not fully rational in any case. So it is not entirely clear that these pricing models work over the long term (2) $1 cash in hand is worth some amount > $1 of retained earnings locked up in the corporation. Yeah, they might spend it wisely. But they might waste it on a corporate jet, too. Lots of work done in this area as well. And don't forget Mr. Kerkorian! He seems to like his cash up front.
sPh
To the extent that certifications act as a marker for a person's curosity, desire to learn, and humbleness in the face of the unknown, I will take them into account. However, I would rather have an English Lit major with zero technical background who can solve an unfamiliar problem from scratch than a 3 month/employer guy with a bag full of paper certifications.
To the extent that I consider certifications at all, I will look in order at Cisco certs (past the CNA), Novell CNE or Master CNE, Pine Mountain Group network analyst certs, a broad background in Unix, and of course any professional engineer certs.
But for what kind of job, you ask? Remember, I don't match up specific certs to my current position needs. I have never seen a person with a deep knowledge of Netware have any problem picking up what he needs to know about NT, but I have certainly seen the person with 38 Microsoft certs be unable to figure out how to configure a 2-router Cisco network.
My 0.02.
sPh
Anyway, we are talking about extreme cases (always difficult) of financial theory (which doesn't have a whole lot of theory behind it to a humble engineer) in situations that, as you imply, will probably never arise.
However, you may want to look at the MSFT price graph for the last 2 years, and keep in mind that they have a LOT of option grants coming up in the next 2. Trees don't grow to the sky and Microsoft is no exception. Problem is MSFT is valued as if they do.
sPh
sPh
What is that point? Hard to say since it varies from industry to industry, from board of directors to board of directors, and from presidential administration to presidential administration. However, in the auto industry the tipping point has usually been around $5 billion (USD, US billion) on annual sales of $50B. Past that point shareholders, the SEC, and the Justice Dept. start getting restive.
sPh
The UPS strike of a couple years ago, and the events of September/October 2001, have put a real dent in the JIT theory. It doesn't do much good to be able to track your critical inventory to 1 cm with GPS+RF tags when you find the inventory stuck in a customs queue at the Canadian border.
I would have to think the same sort of problems would apply to "JIT employees".
sPh
This company's outsourced customer service system was 3 years late, and when it was turned on it failed to bill half the customers for at least 9 months. Cost them $3 billion in lost revenue. Good move.
"We are not a software company" - yeah - makes some sense. "We are a customer service company and solid, well-understood tools that are under are control are required to serve customers" - well - that makes some sense, too!
sPh
However, as Julian Hirsch pointed out 10 years ago, once a digital method of doing something becomes available, it quickly becomes less expensive to manufacture than the analog technology, and shortly thereafter drives the analog technology off the market. That is not to say that the digital technology is better than the analog, just cheaper to manufacture and easier to modify.
sPh
Mother's maiden names are similarly public records. In practice they have been harder to track down in the past, but wiht various records including those of the Mormon church coming on-line that information is not fully accessible as well. See first paragraph for implications.
sPh
sPh
If you want a high-power, instrument, multi-engine, or ATP (airline) certificate many more hours are of course required. However, 1000 hours is close to what you need to get an airline job, not to cruise around on weekends in a 172!
sPh
I would think a dual processor Xeon system with 2 GB RAM and 3 video cards should have enough horsepower (sic) to handle this type of setup, but is there any software that can do it?
sPh
Something to think about.
sPh
sPh
Case in point: I recently took a position where I had to do some work with Oracle, which I had not used previously. After some skimming at B&N, I purchased 5 good texts. A lot of pages, but when you need to figure something out you can open 2 or 3 of them, mark multiple pages, and get the outline of what you need very quickly.
sPh
sPh
Whereas Hopper invented the idea of the compiler. Without her work, no compilers, including GCC, would exist [1]. That's a bit of a difference IMHO.
sPh
[1] Typically, big ideas occur to several people when the time is right (e.g. calculus to Newton and Liebeitz), so probably someone else would have come up with the compiler if Hopper hadn't. But the difference between cloning and originality remains.
Where does it end, and why there? Please be as precise in your answer as Mr. Stallman prefers to be in his.
sPh
sPh
But prey tell, where will you get the stock for your store? From a wholesaler, eh? And when the wholesaler starts requiring a data dump of your customers' purchase habits before he will make a delivery? Or your bank requires same before it will give you a letter of credit, which you will need to be able to import all those exotic beers?
When "just about everyone" starts capturing data, it really won't be feasible to be the only one who doesn't.
sPh