If the web tier is split across 2 data centers, how do you manage the synchro of the back-end data?
Take web registration as an example; we have 5 web servers for that. When a student registers for a class, the web registration application submits the data to the PeopleSoft app servers for processing. We currently have 3 app servers (running on Sun hardware) across both data centers... soon to be 4. The app servers save all data into the database tier (also running on Sun hardware.)
It's not like the web servers are also the database servers. Eventually, data has to get to a single point/tier.
There are other parts of the architecture that I won't go into, because they are not Linux-specific (and would be off-topic.)
According to the NCES stats, the hisghest enrollment among any University in the country is 57K. Apparently your University has at least 15,000 zombie students that you might want to purge from your highly redundant data centers 1.4 miles apart. Moron!!
I assure you, we do have that many students across the whole system. True, our largest campus (the whole system of our 4 coordinate campuses is probably not counted as a "single university") doesn't have more than about 45,000 students. But don't forget - we also have a number of part-time students.
Yes, we do have about 70,000 students, counting full-time and part-time students together. Perhaps I should have been more specific about that in my original post.
Our data centers processes all web registration activity across all 4 coordinate campuses. We also run the PeopleSoft system (and other applications) for all 4 campuses. So I tend to view all 4 campuses as one, for what I do.
Let me preface this by saying I'm the Enterprise IT Manager for a large, Big-10 University. "Enterprise" means I am responsible for all servers that run the University, not just a small department. My userbase is 70,000+ students, and somewhere between 15,000-20,000 faculty and staff.
We run a variety of hardware platforms, including a large Linux deployment. Yes, it really does depend on what you want to do with that server, before you can decide to go with a bunch of servers behind a load balancer v. a larger, fault-tolerant server.
For our production web servers (PeopleSoft, web registration, etc.) we run a bunch of cheap servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and we distribute them across two data centers (for redundancy.) We run a load balancer in front of them, so that users access one URL, and the load balancer automagically distributes traffic to the servers on both data centers. For a lightly-used application, we may only run 2 web servers. For heavily-used applications (web registration) we run 5 web servers. Those are IBM x-series now, but we are in the process of moving to IBM BladeCenters.
With multiple servers in production, I can lose any single web server and not experience downtime on the application. We usually only have a single PSU in each server, because there's no point in the extra expense when we have redundancy at the server level. And because we've split our web servers across two data centers, I can actually lose an entire data center and only experience slow response time on the application. (Note to the paranoid: while the data centers are only 1.4miles apart, they are on separate power grids, etc. The other back-end infrastructure is also split between data centers.) We run a lot of sites behind load balancers, so we can afford to have a separate load balancer pair at each site (which can provide backup to each other.)
However, for large applications we may use a single fault-tolerant Linux server. For example, we used to do this with a database server. Multiple power supplies, multiple network connections, RAID storage, etc. To be honest, though, we tend to run databases on "big iron" hardware such as Sun SPARC (E25000, V890, etc.) and IBM p-series. We don't have any Linux database servers left, but that's not because Linux wasn't up to the task (our DBAs preferred to have the same platform for all databases, to make debugging and knowledge-sharing easier.)
In a few cases, we have a third tier. If the application is low-priority (i.e. a development server) and/or low-volume (i.e. a web site that doesn't get much traffic), we run a single server for that. The server is a cheap IBM x-series box running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, usually with no built-in redundancy.
Yes, for us Linux has been able to play along quite nicely with the "big iron" UNIX systems. We've run Linux at the Enterprise level since 1998 or 1999, and Linux is definitely considered part of our Enterprise solution.
And while Star Wars episode 6, err 3, was more critically acclaimed than the previous two, should it really have been the movie to not get hit by the slump, if quality is the reason for said slump?
I think I can explain why Episode 3 didn't do so well at the box office. While it indeed was better than Ep1 and Ep2, it still sucked.
For myself, I went to see Episode 3 just to put a sense of finality on the whole thing. I loved the original trilogy, but the prequel trilogy seems to be more about making the money than good movies.
I'm really glad I didn't buy a subscription to Slashdot this year, or I'd feel really ripped off. This "article" looks like nothing more than an ad. Mod me as a "troll" if you will, but I think I'm seeing more and more of these "slashvertisements" in the last few months. I hope Kodak paid for this ad.
Isn't it enough that we have ads on the site already, without being presented with slashvertisements? Mod me a troll if you will, but I think I've been seeing more of this lately.
I agree that people who distributed a screener copy of the movie were in violation of their agreement (if you don't want to be bound by it, don't sign it) and are in the wrong. Still, it makes me think: Episode III only earned $380 million... the editorial jab implies it's because of the leak. But would it have earned more if it didn't suck?
I listened to a story about this on NPR in the Spring. It was very interesting. The simulator will give a blood flow response, etc. It's not perfect - no blood vessels, rubbery skin,... but the simulator still feels pretty much like it does in real life when you feel it through surgical gloves. While prepping each simulator for a new trainee is expensive, it's possible to make mistakes (and learn from them) on a dummy without actually killing anyone.
The audio story has Nell Boyce running through a surgical procedure on an actual dummy. Her reaction was that it feels very much like a live person.
Wait... now come on, who ELSE are they targetting? Gotta be MS Outlook users. Nobody uses Oracle Corporate Time.
Actually, we use Oracle Corporate Time, and we like it a lot. While it's not 100% ideal (and I doubt anything really could be) it does support all the major platforms in use here: Windows, Linux, and Mac. The web client is also very nice, and I actually prefer it over the (Motif) native Linux client.
Meeting announcements/invites are sent via email, which makes it a perfect fit for integration with an email package. That said, I would love to integrate my (Thunderbird) email and (Oracle CT) calendaring into one application!
'In this place may our fertile tree bloom with fruits in strange elysium, where in the place of the chosen, angels surround the origin'." Something big is about to happen.
There was a time I thought Romero was interesting: before I actually learned anything about him and just knew he was part of ID. Talk about letting a little success go to your head... he's like a warning label for the entire concept of ego overtaking your rational thought processes.
No kidding! I just finished reading Masters of Doom and didn't realize until then how much of a prick John Romero really was. For those who haven't read the book - it's a "rise and fall of Id Software" book. It's interesting that after DOOM was released, Romero clearly became more interested in playing games than writing them. He pretty much left all the game-writing to John Carmack. The book spells out how Romero was a better programmer in the beginning, but Carmack quickly surpassed him and left Romero behind. Pretty much because Romero lost focus.
These days, Romero is a big hype machine. Diakatana, anyone? Ha ha ha ha!
I've played several games that have evoked an emotional response. Ico brought a tear to my eye as I played through the ending. (SPOILER) After all that Yorda and I had been through together, after protecting her from the shadow guys and defeating her evil witch mother, Yorda was the one that became strong and made the self sacrifice to save me. It was a very dramatic ending. However, if you stick through the end credits you get a very satisfying second ending.
Another game that evoked a different kind of emotional response was Deus Ex. I remember when I played it, after I was given the three different possible ending scenarios, I stopped playing the game for a week or more while I worked through the mutually-exclusive options that I had, trying to figure out which was most true to how I viewed myself in the game. (SPOILER) In the end, I decided to bring about the Second Dark Age, that despite that huge cost, the benefits it gave (freedom for the people) outweighed them.
You may also be interested in GNU Robots. I wrote this several years ago, but stopped working on it in 2000 (it was complete, though.) The GNU Savannah site still lists me as project owner, but zeenix now does the development. He last checked in changes 2 weeks ago, so looks like it's still active.
I wrote GNU Robots because I had fond memories of the old Mac game, Chipwits. In Chipwits, you construct a "program" for a simple robot by setting down "tiles" or "chips" in a grid, where each "chip" contained a single action (check the space ahead of you, pick up an object, turn, move forward, etc.) There were T/F "chips" to make checks. Each "chip" was wired to the chips around it. This was a gentle introduction to the concepts of computer programming. I was already a programmer of sorts, but I found the game fascinating.
GNU Robots is a much simpler version of that, but (in theory) should be extensible to something like Chipwits. A robot program is written in Scheme, where you have functions available to make the robot turn, move, etc. You might be able to construct a programmer's GUI to set up a "tile" for each action, where each "tile" can be represented by Scheme code. And the wired connections to each "tile" can be represented by tail-recursion. I lacked the GUI programming knowledge to create this at the time, which is why I left it as a simple Scheme program. (If anyone out there is interested in doing this, many people will thank you for it.)
FYI: the Chipwits home page shows it as "coming soon" since 1999. So there's no hope in a return of the original.
Excuse me, but didn't Sun drop JDS as a standalone product? As of release 3, they integrated JDS into Solaris. I didn't think JDS was available anymore just on its own.
Release 3 of Sun Java Desktop System is shipping now as part of the Solaris 10 Operating System. Release 2 for Linux OS, which includes an integrated Linux operating system, is also available.
Okay, so release 2 is still available on its own. But Sun's site seems to imply the standalone version is a dead-end, not developed anymore as a Linux distro / platform, that JDS has been wrapped into Solaris. I wonder why Indonesia went with a dead-end product?
Wouldn't it be damn sweet to have a game come on a DVD with knoppix on it? Install it into windows or linux and run it, or boot from the DVD to really make it fly!?
Or better yet, invent some kind of dedicated system where you insert the game DVD, boot it, and play your game without worrying about OS overhead. That would be sweet!
Oh wait, that's what a game console does. Never mind.
It's true - if you leave network.enableIDN set to 'true' then the browser will demonstrate the problem. Toggle it to 'false' and the problem doesn't appear.
How terrible it has been for them, to have this guy as their worst nightmare.
Didn't ESR actually visit Microsoft back in, say, 1999 to give a presentation about Open Source? Seems to have been on friendly enough terms with them, in the past.
What a pompous ass to feel he has to be this over-the-top when a simple "I think you've made a mistake, I'm not really a Microsoft guy - I prefer open source systems, like Linux" would have sufficed.
I would love to buy my music off the iTunes Music Store. As it is, iTunes is pretty much the only reason I have a Windows partition anymore. I bought CrossOver for Linux to run iTunes. I can run iTunes, but I can't seem to buy music off the store.
Hell, I'd pay Apple to have a version of iTunes for Linux. If they're concerned about distro compatibility, then release it as a Java application!
Note to Apple: please make it easier for me to give you my money.
Refusing to give GNU proper credit is to do them a great disservice, because it is their work that has predominantly shaped the operating system was have today that we flippantly call "Linux."
I'm not refusing to give GNU credit... I'm refusing to let them "brand" Linux as their own. GNU hasn't been shy about the fact that they considered the Linux kernel a stop-gap until Hurd was ready. Based on that, I don't think GNU gets to infer Linux as their brand, and IMO that's what "GNU/Linux" is meant to do. It comes across as "GNU Linux" and that's not right.
I proposed Linux/GNU instead, which still gives the GNU guys credit without inferring that Linux is a "brand" of GNU.
Stallman thinks the issue of naming the product is not so clear cut. "Most of the time, when people call something 'Linux', it's the GNU system with Linux as the kernel. Maybe this policy will encourage people to call it GNU," Stallman told the Sydney Morning Herald. "I prefer to say GNU/Linux' so as to give the kernel's developer a share of the credit."
You know, I wouldn't have a problem with RMS trying to get "GNU" in there if he didn't want to put it on the front of the name. The way he wants it, the name sounds like "GNU Linux", so it sounds like a product of the FSF ("GNU Emacs", etc.)
Whenever it comes to that naming issue, I prefer Linux/GNU instead. As RMS states on the GNU site, "the whole system is basically GNU, with Linux functioning as its kernel" and "Many people have made major contributions to the free software in the system, and they all deserve credit." So Linux/GNU should be just as good as GNU/Linux.
Previews have also reached the point where they reveal too much about the movie. I'd prefer they give me a flavor of what the movie is about, but leave the mystery for me when I go see it. Instead, we seem to be getting a "Readers Digest" version of the movie, so there's little point to go see it.
Take Firefly. I never watched the show when it originally aired, but now that SciFi is re-running it, I've started to get into it and decided I'd like to see the movie. Except that I've been turned off by the extended non-trailers for the movie they run during the show on SciFi. Sheesh, I think I have seen about the entire movie by now. I'm pretty sure I've seen all the plot twists.
Quality support people can be difficult to find. Of course, I hate always hearing that I might get hit by a Mack truck...
I used to hate that saying, too... until I got hit by a truck on my walk to work.
Seriously, I was crossing the street with a walk signal and this pickup truck comes up to the red stop light, driver glances left, sees no oncoming traffic, and proceeds to pull forward. Never mind that I was in the middle of the street. I wasn't seriously injured, fortunately. He knocked me down, but it was all bruises. After a trip to the hospital, I was given the all-clear and my wife asked to monitor me over the next 24 hrs.
Now, I take support very seriously, and make sure we have levels of redundancy and a clear chain of "command" if I were to be suddenly gone (I'm a manager.) A few months later, I was unexpectedly out of the office for a week, but things ran smoothly in my absence.
I know you weren't saying this, but it's not a loss of job security to make sure that there are several levels of coverage within an organization.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, we do off-site backups, and we've been working with one of our coordinate campuses (about 4 hours away, by car) to set up live data bunkering.
If the web tier is split across 2 data centers, how do you manage the synchro of the back-end data?
Take web registration as an example; we have 5 web servers for that. When a student registers for a class, the web registration application submits the data to the PeopleSoft app servers for processing. We currently have 3 app servers (running on Sun hardware) across both data centers... soon to be 4. The app servers save all data into the database tier (also running on Sun hardware.)
It's not like the web servers are also the database servers. Eventually, data has to get to a single point/tier.
There are other parts of the architecture that I won't go into, because they are not Linux-specific (and would be off-topic.)
According to the NCES stats, the hisghest enrollment among any University in the country is 57K. Apparently your University has at least 15,000 zombie students that you might want to purge from your highly redundant data centers 1.4 miles apart. Moron!!
I assure you, we do have that many students across the whole system. True, our largest campus (the whole system of our 4 coordinate campuses is probably not counted as a "single university") doesn't have more than about 45,000 students. But don't forget - we also have a number of part-time students.
Yes, we do have about 70,000 students, counting full-time and part-time students together. Perhaps I should have been more specific about that in my original post.
Our data centers processes all web registration activity across all 4 coordinate campuses. We also run the PeopleSoft system (and other applications) for all 4 campuses. So I tend to view all 4 campuses as one, for what I do.
Let me preface this by saying I'm the Enterprise IT Manager for a large, Big-10 University. "Enterprise" means I am responsible for all servers that run the University, not just a small department. My userbase is 70,000+ students, and somewhere between 15,000-20,000 faculty and staff.
We run a variety of hardware platforms, including a large Linux deployment. Yes, it really does depend on what you want to do with that server, before you can decide to go with a bunch of servers behind a load balancer v. a larger, fault-tolerant server.
For our production web servers (PeopleSoft, web registration, etc.) we run a bunch of cheap servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and we distribute them across two data centers (for redundancy.) We run a load balancer in front of them, so that users access one URL, and the load balancer automagically distributes traffic to the servers on both data centers. For a lightly-used application, we may only run 2 web servers. For heavily-used applications (web registration) we run 5 web servers. Those are IBM x-series now, but we are in the process of moving to IBM BladeCenters.
With multiple servers in production, I can lose any single web server and not experience downtime on the application. We usually only have a single PSU in each server, because there's no point in the extra expense when we have redundancy at the server level. And because we've split our web servers across two data centers, I can actually lose an entire data center and only experience slow response time on the application. (Note to the paranoid: while the data centers are only 1.4miles apart, they are on separate power grids, etc. The other back-end infrastructure is also split between data centers.) We run a lot of sites behind load balancers, so we can afford to have a separate load balancer pair at each site (which can provide backup to each other.)
However, for large applications we may use a single fault-tolerant Linux server. For example, we used to do this with a database server. Multiple power supplies, multiple network connections, RAID storage, etc. To be honest, though, we tend to run databases on "big iron" hardware such as Sun SPARC (E25000, V890, etc.) and IBM p-series. We don't have any Linux database servers left, but that's not because Linux wasn't up to the task (our DBAs preferred to have the same platform for all databases, to make debugging and knowledge-sharing easier.)
In a few cases, we have a third tier. If the application is low-priority (i.e. a development server) and/or low-volume (i.e. a web site that doesn't get much traffic), we run a single server for that. The server is a cheap IBM x-series box running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, usually with no built-in redundancy.
Yes, for us Linux has been able to play along quite nicely with the "big iron" UNIX systems. We've run Linux at the Enterprise level since 1998 or 1999, and Linux is definitely considered part of our Enterprise solution.
And while Star Wars episode 6, err 3, was more critically acclaimed than the previous two, should it really have been the movie to not get hit by the slump, if quality is the reason for said slump?
I think I can explain why Episode 3 didn't do so well at the box office. While it indeed was better than Ep1 and Ep2, it still sucked.
For myself, I went to see Episode 3 just to put a sense of finality on the whole thing. I loved the original trilogy, but the prequel trilogy seems to be more about making the money than good movies.
I'm really glad I didn't buy a subscription to Slashdot this year, or I'd feel really ripped off. This "article" looks like nothing more than an ad. Mod me as a "troll" if you will, but I think I'm seeing more and more of these "slashvertisements" in the last few months. I hope Kodak paid for this ad.
Fer crying out loud, its not only a repost, its *still* up on the /. front page!!!
You know, I think I'll submit this same story tomorrow, and see if they post it ... :-)
Isn't it enough that we have ads on the site already, without being presented with slashvertisements? Mod me a troll if you will, but I think I've been seeing more of this lately.
I agree that people who distributed a screener copy of the movie were in violation of their agreement (if you don't want to be bound by it, don't sign it) and are in the wrong. Still, it makes me think: Episode III only earned $380 million ... the editorial jab implies it's because of the leak. But would it have earned more if it didn't suck?
I listened to a story about this on NPR in the Spring. It was very interesting. The simulator will give a blood flow response, etc. It's not perfect - no blood vessels, rubbery skin, ... but the simulator still feels pretty much like it does in real life when you feel it through surgical gloves. While prepping each simulator for a new trainee is expensive, it's possible to make mistakes (and learn from them) on a dummy without actually killing anyone.
The audio story has Nell Boyce running through a surgical procedure on an actual dummy. Her reaction was that it feels very much like a live person.
Very interesting, I thought.
Wait... now come on, who ELSE are they targetting? Gotta be MS Outlook users. Nobody uses Oracle Corporate Time.
Actually, we use Oracle Corporate Time, and we like it a lot. While it's not 100% ideal (and I doubt anything really could be) it does support all the major platforms in use here: Windows, Linux, and Mac. The web client is also very nice, and I actually prefer it over the (Motif) native Linux client.
Meeting announcements/invites are sent via email, which makes it a perfect fit for integration with an email package. That said, I would love to integrate my (Thunderbird) email and (Oracle CT) calendaring into one application!
Be careful where you point that "nobody".
'In this place may our fertile tree bloom with fruits in strange elysium, where in the place of the chosen, angels surround the origin'." Something big is about to happen.
All hail the Ori!
There was a time I thought Romero was interesting: before I actually learned anything about him and just knew he was part of ID. Talk about letting a little success go to your head... he's like a warning label for the entire concept of ego overtaking your rational thought processes.
No kidding! I just finished reading Masters of Doom and didn't realize until then how much of a prick John Romero really was. For those who haven't read the book - it's a "rise and fall of Id Software" book. It's interesting that after DOOM was released, Romero clearly became more interested in playing games than writing them. He pretty much left all the game-writing to John Carmack. The book spells out how Romero was a better programmer in the beginning, but Carmack quickly surpassed him and left Romero behind. Pretty much because Romero lost focus.
These days, Romero is a big hype machine. Diakatana, anyone? Ha ha ha ha!
I've played several games that have evoked an emotional response. Ico brought a tear to my eye as I played through the ending. (SPOILER) After all that Yorda and I had been through together, after protecting her from the shadow guys and defeating her evil witch mother, Yorda was the one that became strong and made the self sacrifice to save me. It was a very dramatic ending. However, if you stick through the end credits you get a very satisfying second ending.
Another game that evoked a different kind of emotional response was Deus Ex. I remember when I played it, after I was given the three different possible ending scenarios, I stopped playing the game for a week or more while I worked through the mutually-exclusive options that I had, trying to figure out which was most true to how I viewed myself in the game. (SPOILER) In the end, I decided to bring about the Second Dark Age, that despite that huge cost, the benefits it gave (freedom for the people) outweighed them.
You may also be interested in GNU Robots. I wrote this several years ago, but stopped working on it in 2000 (it was complete, though.) The GNU Savannah site still lists me as project owner, but zeenix now does the development. He last checked in changes 2 weeks ago, so looks like it's still active.
I wrote GNU Robots because I had fond memories of the old Mac game, Chipwits. In Chipwits, you construct a "program" for a simple robot by setting down "tiles" or "chips" in a grid, where each "chip" contained a single action (check the space ahead of you, pick up an object, turn, move forward, etc.) There were T/F "chips" to make checks. Each "chip" was wired to the chips around it. This was a gentle introduction to the concepts of computer programming. I was already a programmer of sorts, but I found the game fascinating.
GNU Robots is a much simpler version of that, but (in theory) should be extensible to something like Chipwits. A robot program is written in Scheme, where you have functions available to make the robot turn, move, etc. You might be able to construct a programmer's GUI to set up a "tile" for each action, where each "tile" can be represented by Scheme code. And the wired connections to each "tile" can be represented by tail-recursion. I lacked the GUI programming knowledge to create this at the time, which is why I left it as a simple Scheme program. (If anyone out there is interested in doing this, many people will thank you for it.)
FYI: the Chipwits home page shows it as "coming soon" since 1999. So there's no hope in a return of the original.
Excuse me, but didn't Sun drop JDS as a standalone product? As of release 3, they integrated JDS into Solaris. I didn't think JDS was available anymore just on its own.
From http://www.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/:
Okay, so release 2 is still available on its own. But Sun's site seems to imply the standalone version is a dead-end, not developed anymore as a Linux distro / platform, that JDS has been wrapped into Solaris. I wonder why Indonesia went with a dead-end product?
Wouldn't it be damn sweet to have a game come on a DVD with knoppix on it? Install it into windows or linux and run it, or boot from the DVD to really make it fly!?
Or better yet, invent some kind of dedicated system where you insert the game DVD, boot it, and play your game without worrying about OS overhead. That would be sweet!
Oh wait, that's what a game console does. Never mind.
MOD PARENT UP
It's true - if you leave network.enableIDN set to 'true' then the browser will demonstrate the problem. Toggle it to 'false' and the problem doesn't appear.
How terrible it has been for them, to have this guy as their worst nightmare.
Didn't ESR actually visit Microsoft back in, say, 1999 to give a presentation about Open Source? Seems to have been on friendly enough terms with them, in the past.
What a pompous ass to feel he has to be this over-the-top when a simple "I think you've made a mistake, I'm not really a Microsoft guy - I prefer open source systems, like Linux" would have sufficed.
I would love to buy my music off the iTunes Music Store. As it is, iTunes is pretty much the only reason I have a Windows partition anymore. I bought CrossOver for Linux to run iTunes. I can run iTunes, but I can't seem to buy music off the store.
Hell, I'd pay Apple to have a version of iTunes for Linux. If they're concerned about distro compatibility, then release it as a Java application!
Note to Apple: please make it easier for me to give you my money.
What are you talking about? The serial numbers are blocked out:
Not all of them, try this one.
Who has dev kit #X806033-001 1792 // XEDK-1 Rev.A ... ?
Refusing to give GNU proper credit is to do them a great disservice, because it is their work that has predominantly shaped the operating system was have today that we flippantly call "Linux."
I'm not refusing to give GNU credit ... I'm refusing to let them "brand" Linux as their own. GNU hasn't been shy about the fact that they considered the Linux kernel a stop-gap until Hurd was ready. Based on that, I don't think GNU gets to infer Linux as their brand, and IMO that's what "GNU/Linux" is meant to do. It comes across as "GNU Linux" and that's not right.
I proposed Linux/GNU instead, which still gives the GNU guys credit without inferring that Linux is a "brand" of GNU.
From TFA:
You know, I wouldn't have a problem with RMS trying to get "GNU" in there if he didn't want to put it on the front of the name. The way he wants it, the name sounds like "GNU Linux", so it sounds like a product of the FSF ("GNU Emacs", etc.)
Whenever it comes to that naming issue, I prefer Linux/GNU instead. As RMS states on the GNU site, "the whole system is basically GNU, with Linux functioning as its kernel" and "Many people have made major contributions to the free software in the system, and they all deserve credit." So Linux/GNU should be just as good as GNU/Linux.
Hear hear!
Previews have also reached the point where they reveal too much about the movie. I'd prefer they give me a flavor of what the movie is about, but leave the mystery for me when I go see it. Instead, we seem to be getting a "Readers Digest" version of the movie, so there's little point to go see it.
Take Firefly. I never watched the show when it originally aired, but now that SciFi is re-running it, I've started to get into it and decided I'd like to see the movie. Except that I've been turned off by the extended non-trailers for the movie they run during the show on SciFi. Sheesh, I think I have seen about the entire movie by now. I'm pretty sure I've seen all the plot twists.
Quality support people can be difficult to find. Of course, I hate always hearing that I might get hit by a Mack truck...
I used to hate that saying, too ... until I got hit by a truck on my walk to work.
Seriously, I was crossing the street with a walk signal and this pickup truck comes up to the red stop light, driver glances left, sees no oncoming traffic, and proceeds to pull forward. Never mind that I was in the middle of the street. I wasn't seriously injured, fortunately. He knocked me down, but it was all bruises. After a trip to the hospital, I was given the all-clear and my wife asked to monitor me over the next 24 hrs.
Now, I take support very seriously, and make sure we have levels of redundancy and a clear chain of "command" if I were to be suddenly gone (I'm a manager.) A few months later, I was unexpectedly out of the office for a week, but things ran smoothly in my absence.
I know you weren't saying this, but it's not a loss of job security to make sure that there are several levels of coverage within an organization.