Many folks fail to see that the iPhone is a luxury item, and thus by definition it is niche, and the niche it is serving are the people that use words and sentences like the ones above in polite conversation with a straight face.
Please, what does that have to do with working efficiently?
People certainly have to be reined in if they are wasting time, but if you enforce a dress code (Why? Really, Why?) you will now have a team of well dressed time wasters.
That is a romanticized, inaccurate view of the office of writing.
Most writers I know of don't have a sudden rush of creativity, the mundane truth is that they work very hard, starting early, working for quite a long time, breaking fur lunch and then working some more, they have to structure what they write in a coherent way, some writers go to great pains to give their work internal coherence.
Now, there you have some good practices programmers could emulate from writers.
I know programmers have this soft touch for believing they are creative types just because they are eccentric, which creative types tend to be as well.
The problem is that professionally done programming has to abide to a set of standard rules and procedures, the very anathema of a creative profession.
But of course the programmers that believe that programming in the fly in front of the screen, without any prior planning or analysis, is the way to go are legion, and there is even extreme programming and agile development that legitimises lazy engineering practices...
The history of art is littered with examples of stuff that looked great at the time but which the passing of the years became obvious it wasn't that great.
The custodians of these things (film historians and critics) are already very doubtful about the artistic values of both of these movies, and in any case we are far too close to them in order to judge them objectively.
Hollywood is shit scared of the spiralling of costs.
Basically they are betting all or nothing in a few movies, if you check carefully blockbuster's credits you will see very often that companies that would be otherwise competing against each other, are collaborating and sharing the enormous risk. That is not a sign of strength, but an implicit acknowledgement of how broken the blockbuster model is.
It is simply an economic model that will not scale.
The saner attitude, which every production company is following, is to make smaller, less risky movies that if win, win big, and if lose, can't bankrupt the company.
Most likely most movies one watches don't cost $43 million.
If your only criteria to watch movies is how much they cost it is completely understandable you would not care about the plot. But that is nothing to boast about to be frank, unless you think ignorance and bad taste is a badge of honour to be worn proudly.
Look, if you are not sophisticated that is not my or anybody else's problem, what is grating is how some people wear their ignorance about a given topic as a badge of honour.
You can google about the utter and complete lack of originality of the plot. Gosh, I have heard from "Smurfahontas" , "Dancing with Smurfs" and many other monikers that make perfectly clear how formulaic and predictable the plot is.
Many people are contradicting themselves frankly: if the plot is so unimportant and all what matters is the 3D, then for bunnies sakes, people should acknowledge that the director could have been half brave and take a risk with the damn plot: at worst most people will not care since the 3D is so gorgeous, at best you start a new era in cinema. As it is, the result is visually interesting but completely lacking in one of the pillars of cinematography: the bloody damn plot.
And yet another contradiction: lots of people are saying they went with low expectations, and when those expectations are confirmed with what was on show on screen, they get all touchy because people point out that the general low expectations were fulfilled in the plot department. So which one was it then?
Cinema may be a visual art, but people that exhibit what you identify as "fake sophistication" (it is called education old chum) know that the history of cinema revolves around a well constructed plot which is advanced by the visual imagery. Normally the better the plot the better the movie, and Avatar is no exception, its redeeming grace being the certainly astounding special effects.
If you have got nothing to say then all the 3D trickery of the world will not make your movie any better, it will just make it impressive, which are not necessarily the same things (the history of movie making is littered with the corpses of enterprises like this, of which Avatar is the most recent example).
It comes as surprise to me that serious companies are not auditing what IT people do.
Network and Sys Admin managers should be heavily audited and constrained, precisely because they have so much power and *will* eventually abuse the power that has been conveyed to them (this is not an "if" but "when" situation).
So any properly run company will set policies in place, will ask the different IT teams to implement them and then will ask a 3rd team, without administrative rights, to check that the IT teams are adhering to the policies and procedures as requested.
Any company in which IT people can abuse their privileges has to look again at how they are organizing their support.
There is no chance whatsoever that such request would have being honoured in the sites where I have worked, at least not requisting things in such a casual manner.
I have seen many networks that have proper policies in place with effective walls between support teams and people that would benefit from breaking those policies. In many instances nowadays they don't even know each other and may not even speak the same language, so it is impossible for somebody to beg for exceptions to the rules.
... email will not allow you to send any substantial amount of data out of the firm.
Any attachments that could not be inspected on their way out would be dropped, or worst, passed to specific approvers to ensure you are not stealing data.
More and more clued up companies are taking full ownership of their IT resources, people should frankly get used to it.
Any company trusting employees is deluded, not because more employees are untrustworthy, but because you can guarantee that all are, which means restrictions for everybody.
It is no wonder that computing is the cesspool of insecurity it is, when most people in this thread find all kind of inane justifications in order to jeopardize the companies they are supposed to be serving in a professional manner.
Many people on this thread claim that they can't do their job without admin rights of some kind, which is patently untrue:
- Do you need to install an application? Then ask your Sys Admin. Too much work for them? Then reorganize how the Sys Admin deals with development support. Ain't going to happen? You are working in the wrong company then.
-I need to install X,Y or Z application, library, whatever.: No, you don't. Refer to the list of approved software and use that, if some new software is needed then follow the procedure to get it included into the list. The procedure to get hold of new software is too long? Fix the procedure, you installing random stuff from the net is not the fix.
- I need a program that requires elevated privileges!: use a different program, the one you are using now does not care about the safety of your IT infrastructure, if this is not possible pick the damn phone and ask the software provider to fix the program, if they don't fix it expose them t public ridicule. Again, you don't need privileged access.
I have worked in many shops, both big and small, where people were reluctant to let the privileged account go (the real reasons were normally more mundane: could not download the latest and greatest games, could not use an arcane utility that was unmaintainable, you name it). Once appropriate policies and levels of support were in place the need for privileged local accounts became non existent (and the instances of security problems decreased dramatically).
Giving privileges to anybody but the sys admins is a sure way to create nasty problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Stylish design, user friendly....
Empty marketing words.
Check the numbers and Nokia is the world leader.
Many folks fail to see that the iPhone is a luxury item, and thus by definition it is niche, and the niche it is serving are the people that use words and sentences like the ones above in polite conversation with a straight face.
"In this economy, *if you are in the US*, you can be replaced easily and getting another job is near impossible"
There, corrected for you.
In any case, I would do exactly the same, economy or not economy, regardless of the country.
People need to grow some balls.
... have insisted in dress codes.
All of them.
Coincidence?
Please, what does that have to do with working efficiently?
People certainly have to be reined in if they are wasting time, but if you enforce a dress code (Why? Really, Why?) you will now have a team of well dressed time wasters.
That is a romanticized, inaccurate view of the office of writing.
Most writers I know of don't have a sudden rush of creativity, the mundane truth is that they work very hard, starting early, working for quite a long time, breaking fur lunch and then working some more, they have to structure what they write in a coherent way, some writers go to great pains to give their work internal coherence.
Now, there you have some good practices programmers could emulate from writers.
I know programmers have this soft touch for believing they are creative types just because they are eccentric, which creative types tend to be as well.
The problem is that professionally done programming has to abide to a set of standard rules and procedures, the very anathema of a creative profession.
But of course the programmers that believe that programming in the fly in front of the screen, without any prior planning or analysis, is the way to go are legion, and there is even extreme programming and agile development that legitimises lazy engineering practices...
Is what you are most likely to need.
Funny, in Mexico I did both. UNAM rules yet again.
Some of them may hate Western values, but there is no Socialist regime left in the region.
How do you know?
The history of art is littered with examples of stuff that looked great at the time but which the passing of the years became obvious it wasn't that great.
The custodians of these things (film historians and critics) are already very doubtful about the artistic values of both of these movies, and in any case we are far too close to them in order to judge them objectively.
You are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
No wonder children have so low aspirations. Many adults think that the right fare to be offered to them should be "simple and stupid".
Comments like the PP makes me be all more grateful for my older relatives taking me to see challenging stuff when I was young.
Also I never insult the intelligence of any children by assuming they are mentally challenged.
Gosh, to think that there are people out ther thinking is those terms is really depressing.
Hollywood is shit scared of the spiralling of costs.
Basically they are betting all or nothing in a few movies, if you check carefully blockbuster's credits you will see very often that companies that would be otherwise competing against each other, are collaborating and sharing the enormous risk. That is not a sign of strength, but an implicit acknowledgement of how broken the blockbuster model is.
It is simply an economic model that will not scale.
The saner attitude, which every production company is following, is to make smaller, less risky movies that if win, win big, and if lose, can't bankrupt the company.
I heard a sight of relief when all the silliness was finished. And this was inner London, not a leafy rich suburb.
Finally objective proof that European audiences are more discerning :-P
And the rest of us have to live with the consequences.
Rule of the mob is all fine and dandy, a fact of life, but there is nothing to be proud about being part of the lowest common denominator.
Most likely most movies one watches don't cost $43 million.
If your only criteria to watch movies is how much they cost it is completely understandable you would not care about the plot. But that is nothing to boast about to be frank, unless you think ignorance and bad taste is a badge of honour to be worn proudly.
Look, if you are not sophisticated that is not my or anybody else's problem, what is grating is how some people wear their ignorance about a given topic as a badge of honour.
You can google about the utter and complete lack of originality of the plot. Gosh, I have heard from "Smurfahontas" , "Dancing with Smurfs" and many other monikers that make perfectly clear how formulaic and predictable the plot is.
Many people are contradicting themselves frankly: if the plot is so unimportant and all what matters is the 3D, then for bunnies sakes, people should acknowledge that the director could have been half brave and take a risk with the damn plot: at worst most people will not care since the 3D is so gorgeous, at best you start a new era in cinema. As it is, the result is visually interesting but completely lacking in one of the pillars of cinematography: the bloody damn plot.
And yet another contradiction: lots of people are saying they went with low expectations, and when those expectations are confirmed with what was on show on screen, they get all touchy because people point out that the general low expectations were fulfilled in the plot department. So which one was it then?
Cinema may be a visual art, but people that exhibit what you identify as "fake sophistication" (it is called education old chum) know that the history of cinema revolves around a well constructed plot which is advanced by the visual imagery. Normally the better the plot the better the movie, and Avatar is no exception, its redeeming grace being the certainly astounding special effects.
If you have got nothing to say then all the 3D trickery of the world will not make your movie any better, it will just make it impressive, which are not necessarily the same things (the history of movie making is littered with the corpses of enterprises like this, of which Avatar is the most recent example).
The themes concern mostly an US audience, people elsewhere have outgrown those themes long time ago.
It comes as surprise to me that serious companies are not auditing what IT people do.
Network and Sys Admin managers should be heavily audited and constrained, precisely because they have so much power and *will* eventually abuse the power that has been conveyed to them (this is not an "if" but "when" situation).
So any properly run company will set policies in place, will ask the different IT teams to implement them and then will ask a 3rd team, without administrative rights, to check that the IT teams are adhering to the policies and procedures as requested.
Any company in which IT people can abuse their privileges has to look again at how they are organizing their support.
There is no chance whatsoever that such request would have being honoured in the sites where I have worked, at least not requisting things in such a casual manner.
I have seen many networks that have proper policies in place with effective walls between support teams and people that would benefit from breaking those policies. In many instances nowadays they don't even know each other and may not even speak the same language, so it is impossible for somebody to beg for exceptions to the rules.
You can simply log suspicious IPs and if you can't find them in a white list, block them.
People relying on their home network will find very soon that they run out of IP addresses.
You can lock down pretty well any network, the "clever" people stand out immediately in security logs and can be scrutinized further.
... email will not allow you to send any substantial amount of data out of the firm.
Any attachments that could not be inspected on their way out would be dropped, or worst, passed to specific approvers to ensure you are not stealing data.
More and more clued up companies are taking full ownership of their IT resources, people should frankly get used to it.
Any company trusting employees is deluded, not because more employees are untrustworthy, but because you can guarantee that all are, which means restrictions for everybody.
It is no wonder that computing is the cesspool of insecurity it is, when most people in this thread find all kind of inane justifications in order to jeopardize the companies they are supposed to be serving in a professional manner.
Many people on this thread claim that they can't do their job without admin rights of some kind, which is patently untrue:
- Do you need to install an application? Then ask your Sys Admin. Too much work for them? Then reorganize how the Sys Admin deals with development support. Ain't going to happen? You are working in the wrong company then.
-I need to install X,Y or Z application, library, whatever.: No, you don't. Refer to the list of approved software and use that, if some new software is needed then follow the procedure to get it included into the list. The procedure to get hold of new software is too long? Fix the procedure, you installing random stuff from the net is not the fix.
- I need a program that requires elevated privileges!: use a different program, the one you are using now does not care about the safety of your IT infrastructure, if this is not possible pick the damn phone and ask the software provider to fix the program, if they don't fix it expose them t public ridicule. Again, you don't need privileged access.
I have worked in many shops, both big and small, where people were reluctant to let the privileged account go (the real reasons were normally more mundane: could not download the latest and greatest games, could not use an arcane utility that was unmaintainable, you name it). Once appropriate policies and levels of support were in place the need for privileged local accounts became non existent (and the instances of security problems decreased dramatically).
Giving privileges to anybody but the sys admins is a sure way to create nasty problems.
I would have identified the offending programs next day and had a serious disciplinary talk with your mate.
Nowadays there are plenty of tools to audit machines to stop these kind of shenanigans.