The idea of corporate accountability is a good thing. The implementation of SOX in many companies is an utter nightmare.
Large companies have the economy of scale to spend money and do a proper SOX implementation. For smaller companies, this is simply cost prohibitive. One company I worked at briefly left me sitting around for probably 30-40% of my day because there was no work "authorized" for me to do. I would go almost every day to my boss and ask for something to do and he would tell me straight up that there was nothing I was allowed to do. I saw opportunities all over the company and would specifically ask him if I could do x or y and would be told no. He was scared "someone" would catch me doing unauthorized work, since we had already had one poor SOX audit.
I went to a director in the marketing division and asked him if I could help him out in some specific ways until he hired for some of his positions and got a similar response. Because I was in IT, I wasn't ALLOWED to do any work for marketing. Because of SOX.
Everything we did had a paper trail, which again in theory is a good thing. Except, because of SOX, everything has TWO "paper" trails: one on the intranet, and one in filing cabinets. The old, electronically based system was not 100% SOX compliant so they had to do a paper one for SOX until <insert unreasonably expensive SOX system/> was installed.
Sure, a lot of these problems are due to poor, inept management. However, it hamstrung the 80% of us who WANTED to do a great job (including my boss) and just couldn't. This is the spectre of SOX, and why it's hurting many medium-sized publicly traded businesses.
I'm glad to be working for privately held "me" again:-)
In all seriousness, if even 1% of the people reading this discussion sent a few DVDs like this to a friend somewhere, it would probably swamp the whole procedure and they'd have to stop or rethink.
Someone with more free time on their hands than me should organize this:-)
According to Wikipedia, the first web browser wasn't released until February 26, 1991. That seems as good a place as any to mark the beginning of the "Web", which would make it a little over 15 years old.
You're right - you'd still hope that even now, Slashdot submitters and editors would understand the distinction between the www and the internet.
I live in Ontario, Canada now, but until last fall I lived for 9 years in southern California where it is almost always warm and dry.
This would probably never work in the litigious USA, but my master plan was to take part of the left lane and shoulder of every major highway and turn it into a motorcycle-only lane. Sort of like the carpool lanes, but narrower and only for motorcycles. Then apply a stricter testing methodology including more defensive riding classes for all new motorcycle licensees, as well as mandatory motorcycle safety lessons of some sort for ALL motorists. Then promote the use of the motorcycle lanes by providing some sort of tax benefit to riding a motorcycle instead of driving.
A plan like this could significantly reduce urban traffic congestion as well as smog. Unfortunately it would work until little Johnny was a dumbass and got himself killed because the GOVERNMENT gave him money to ride a motorcycle and his mommy sues and wins.
Slightly OT perhaps, but you might be interested in knowing that SageTV will do the same thing. It's commercial PVR software that runs on Windows and Linux.
Wow, that was an annoying post. Do you yell "BZZZ" at people when you disagree with them in person, or just carry around a buzzer?
The original comment spawning this debate was "I've tried MythTV, and for all the work you put into it, it's still just a beta system that will fail you when you least expect it." A setup conflict that is resolved and goes away is not the same as a product "failing when you least expect it". Presumably, once set up it's solid.
I'm currently tweaking the setup of my computer-based PVR, and it's annoying. I haven't successfully installed MythTV on Debian, and I don't want to use another distro. I've tried Windows with other PVR software, but there appears to be no version of Windows that does what I need it to. MythTV may be difficult to set up, but that's not the same as being solid once in use.
I would/do. I have a hotspot set up on my monitor and lock my screensaver whenever I leave my computer, even in secure locations on clients' premises. The only place I don't do this is at home, but I also have the screensaver come on after 10 minutes anyway. Additionally, I have File Vault turned on which encrypts my home directory.
I also use a physical lock to secure my powerbook to a desk if I'm in an environment I'm a little sketchy about, and of course in somewhere like a Starbucks or an airport I'd never leave my computer more than a metre away from me anyway. I imagine most people who have had a portable for a while and haven't had one stolen exercise a similar level of caution.
The inconvenience of doing this is dwarfed by the convenience of owning a portable computer.
While I'm not fan of pharmaceuticals in general, the fact that you're making this comment suggests to me that you're not in a high-risk group. I didn't RTFA, but even the summary gives a couple ways this type of drug is already being used before a person contracts HIV.
If, for example, you worked with HIV-positive people you couldn't trust or were sexually active within a high-risk group you might have a different opinion. I don't condone visiting prostitutes, but I can see that HIV/AIDS infections amongst prostitutes were lower, the virus would spread less quickly. Using antiretroviral drugs as a prophylactic might help in this situation and in the end it's hard to argue with saving people's lives.
Not only that, but have you ever called 911 and NOT been put on hold? I've called it a few times, and I can't remember ever just getting through. I think they usually attempt some sort of triage first, but I recall being left on hold for several minutes once when I witnessed a rather bad single car accident and called 911.
If you break an American law in the USA and then flee to another country with which the United States has an extradition treaty, then yes your comment is valid.
However, if someone is breaking into American computers from his mom's basement in Estonia, and computer cracking is not a crime in Estonia (I'm sure it is), then the point of Estonia's extradition treaty with the United States is moot as the script kiddie has not broken the law.
For instance, the legal drinking age here in Ontario, Canada is 19. Obviously a law-abiding 19 year old is not going to be hauled out of a restaurant here and thrown in jail in the USA for underage drinking.
I think much of the fault lies at the feet of ZDNet/CNet. They'll write anything to get page views. It doesn't matter if a piece on their site is entirely non- or anti-factual as long as it inflames enough people to read it out of pure disgust.
I'm still subscribed to some of their newsletters, where they email me about what this or that person has "blogged" on their site recently. I guess if you call it blogging then you don't have to do any journalism, but they'll have two people playing off both sides of an argument so so we'll keep clicking and ringing their page count up.
I think the best solution is to ignore them so they'll go away, or otherwise to make sure you make judicious use of Adblock.
It's also worth noting that this might be a Macromedia application, rather than an Adobe one. It's hosted on Macromedia.com (http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom) and requires a Macromedia login rather than an Adobe login to download the beta.
I have absolutely zero inside knowledge of this, but it would be interesting to know how much inside knowledge Macromedia had of Apple's Aperture, how much input Adobe actually had in the Lightroom product, and what impact, if any, Lightroom had on Adobe's decision to purchase Macromedia.
Or maybe Adobe just thought Macromedia's site was better for hosting betas.
My solution is to refuse projects that make me do.NET development. I'm happier doing that than I would be using Windows. I do MSSQL work regularly but yes you need to be online to do it, or have your powerbook maxed out with RAM and run it in VPC. Running SQL Server in VPC is fine if you have the RAM and aren't working with production-sized databases, but please don't try running.NET studio in VPC. Actually go ahead and try, but I sure haven't...
If you feel the need to do.NET development to make a living, then yes you'll need Windows still. Eclipse/Mono doesn't really seem to cut it.
Well that's why I bought my 15" powerbook a month or so ago -- because I needed it. When it's a tool you rely on for your job, then it's worth buying. I also wouldn't buy an Intel Powerbook for probably 6 months after it came out if I could avoid it just to let other people learn the hard lessons, so I just wan't prepared to continue to use my old 12" 867MHz Powerbook for 8+ more months.
If you're buying a Mac as a "toy", like a Mac Mini for your living room, then I totally agree. I'm poor after buying my Powerbook, but I'm waiting for the Intel Mac mini before I buy one too.
I don't work in Python so I can't comment on the state of any Python plugins, but I use Eclipse for Java and ColdFusion development and love it. Eclipse with the CFEclipse plugin (for ColdFusion) is IMHO better than Dreamweaver and I've actually uninstalled Dreamweaver from my Mac since I never use it any more.
With 7200rpm 100GB drives out as well as 5400rpm 120GB drives, why put a 60GB drive or a 100GB 5400rpm drive in at all? For a computer like this, it seems like it's targetting the I'm-rich-and-want-the-ultimate-gaming-portable-no- hold-barred crowed. Why not 2 100GB 7200 drives in RAID-0 (or separately as configured)?
Remember, this is a GAMING portable. Look, I have a brand new 1 week old 15" powerbook here with the ATI mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card with 128MB of RAM. I'm happy with how it games, but I'm not going to pretend that it will drive Doom 3 at 1600x1200 and 30fps with all the texture mapping, anistropic filtering, etc. turned on. It just won't.
Whether a mac sucks for gaming or is great depends on what your expectations and demands are, as well as what you're trying to play. The portable in this advertisement is not meant to pull out at a coffee shop to work on; it's meant to pull out at a LAN party to game on. And for that, it sounds almost perfect.
One thing to remember about OS X vs. Windows XP is that XP actually has the edge when it comes to resolution scaling. Mac OS X 10.4 won't let you change the DPI of your monitor like Windows will, although it's sort of buggy in Windows (surprise surprise). It would be great if I could change the DPI of this 17" monitor I'm using at 1600x1200 from the Mac's default 72dpi to 118 which is what it really is but I can't. So I have to end up changing the default font sizes everywhere to sort of try to compensate.
BTW I just got the new 15" powerbook a week ago and it's niiice. Congratulations on your imminent purchase:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Large companies have the economy of scale to spend money and do a proper SOX implementation. For smaller companies, this is simply cost prohibitive. One company I worked at briefly left me sitting around for probably 30-40% of my day because there was no work "authorized" for me to do. I would go almost every day to my boss and ask for something to do and he would tell me straight up that there was nothing I was allowed to do. I saw opportunities all over the company and would specifically ask him if I could do x or y and would be told no. He was scared "someone" would catch me doing unauthorized work, since we had already had one poor SOX audit.
I went to a director in the marketing division and asked him if I could help him out in some specific ways until he hired for some of his positions and got a similar response. Because I was in IT, I wasn't ALLOWED to do any work for marketing. Because of SOX.
Everything we did had a paper trail, which again in theory is a good thing. Except, because of SOX, everything has TWO "paper" trails: one on the intranet, and one in filing cabinets. The old, electronically based system was not 100% SOX compliant so they had to do a paper one for SOX until <insert unreasonably expensive SOX system /> was installed.
Sure, a lot of these problems are due to poor, inept management. However, it hamstrung the 80% of us who WANTED to do a great job (including my boss) and just couldn't. This is the spectre of SOX, and why it's hurting many medium-sized publicly traded businesses.
I'm glad to be working for privately held "me" again :-)
Mee tooo...
I like an open, airy design, but that huge white hole just seems like wasted space in this case.
In all seriousness, if even 1% of the people reading this discussion sent a few DVDs like this to a friend somewhere, it would probably swamp the whole procedure and they'd have to stop or rethink.
:-)
Someone with more free time on their hands than me should organize this
And once you've done that, you can take the bottle and do this.
You're right - you'd still hope that even now, Slashdot submitters and editors would understand the distinction between the www and the internet.
This would probably never work in the litigious USA, but my master plan was to take part of the left lane and shoulder of every major highway and turn it into a motorcycle-only lane. Sort of like the carpool lanes, but narrower and only for motorcycles. Then apply a stricter testing methodology including more defensive riding classes for all new motorcycle licensees, as well as mandatory motorcycle safety lessons of some sort for ALL motorists. Then promote the use of the motorcycle lanes by providing some sort of tax benefit to riding a motorcycle instead of driving.
A plan like this could significantly reduce urban traffic congestion as well as smog. Unfortunately it would work until little Johnny was a dumbass and got himself killed because the GOVERNMENT gave him money to ride a motorcycle and his mommy sues and wins.
Slightly OT perhaps, but you might be interested in knowing that SageTV will do the same thing. It's commercial PVR software that runs on Windows and Linux.
The original comment spawning this debate was "I've tried MythTV, and for all the work you put into it, it's still just a beta system that will fail you when you least expect it." A setup conflict that is resolved and goes away is not the same as a product "failing when you least expect it". Presumably, once set up it's solid.
I'm currently tweaking the setup of my computer-based PVR, and it's annoying. I haven't successfully installed MythTV on Debian, and I don't want to use another distro. I've tried Windows with other PVR software, but there appears to be no version of Windows that does what I need it to. MythTV may be difficult to set up, but that's not the same as being solid once in use.
Apple sells hardware. Apple sells software. So obviously they are BOTH a hardware and a software company. Duh. Or, as you put it, a systems company.
I also use a physical lock to secure my powerbook to a desk if I'm in an environment I'm a little sketchy about, and of course in somewhere like a Starbucks or an airport I'd never leave my computer more than a metre away from me anyway. I imagine most people who have had a portable for a while and haven't had one stolen exercise a similar level of caution.
The inconvenience of doing this is dwarfed by the convenience of owning a portable computer.
If, for example, you worked with HIV-positive people you couldn't trust or were sexually active within a high-risk group you might have a different opinion. I don't condone visiting prostitutes, but I can see that HIV/AIDS infections amongst prostitutes were lower, the virus would spread less quickly. Using antiretroviral drugs as a prophylactic might help in this situation and in the end it's hard to argue with saving people's lives.
Not only that, but have you ever called 911 and NOT been put on hold? I've called it a few times, and I can't remember ever just getting through. I think they usually attempt some sort of triage first, but I recall being left on hold for several minutes once when I witnessed a rather bad single car accident and called 911.
However, if someone is breaking into American computers from his mom's basement in Estonia, and computer cracking is not a crime in Estonia (I'm sure it is), then the point of Estonia's extradition treaty with the United States is moot as the script kiddie has not broken the law.
For instance, the legal drinking age here in Ontario, Canada is 19. Obviously a law-abiding 19 year old is not going to be hauled out of a restaurant here and thrown in jail in the USA for underage drinking.
I think much of the fault lies at the feet of ZDNet/CNet. They'll write anything to get page views. It doesn't matter if a piece on their site is entirely non- or anti-factual as long as it inflames enough people to read it out of pure disgust.
I'm still subscribed to some of their newsletters, where they email me about what this or that person has "blogged" on their site recently. I guess if you call it blogging then you don't have to do any journalism, but they'll have two people playing off both sides of an argument so so we'll keep clicking and ringing their page count up.
I think the best solution is to ignore them so they'll go away, or otherwise to make sure you make judicious use of Adblock.
I have absolutely zero inside knowledge of this, but it would be interesting to know how much inside knowledge Macromedia had of Apple's Aperture, how much input Adobe actually had in the Lightroom product, and what impact, if any, Lightroom had on Adobe's decision to purchase Macromedia.
Or maybe Adobe just thought Macromedia's site was better for hosting betas.
Loosing a lot of face sounds both painful AND disgusting.
If you feel the need to do .NET development to make a living, then yes you'll need Windows still. Eclipse/Mono doesn't really seem to cut it.
While we're on the subject
If you're buying a Mac as a "toy", like a Mac Mini for your living room, then I totally agree. I'm poor after buying my Powerbook, but I'm waiting for the Intel Mac mini before I buy one too.
Google was my friend and it can be yours too. Here's some info on Python plugins for Eclipse: http://wiki.python.org/moin/EclipsePythonIntegrati on
That's great and all, but I've really been looking for data on how many more engineers the United States produces per THOUSAND...
Sorry, the article was obviously not written by an engineer, or hopefully at least not an American one ;-)
With 7200rpm 100GB drives out as well as 5400rpm 120GB drives, why put a 60GB drive or a 100GB 5400rpm drive in at all? For a computer like this, it seems like it's targetting the I'm-rich-and-want-the-ultimate-gaming-portable-no- hold-barred crowed. Why not 2 100GB 7200 drives in RAID-0 (or separately as configured)?
Whether a mac sucks for gaming or is great depends on what your expectations and demands are, as well as what you're trying to play. The portable in this advertisement is not meant to pull out at a coffee shop to work on; it's meant to pull out at a LAN party to game on. And for that, it sounds almost perfect.
BTW I just got the new 15" powerbook a week ago and it's niiice. Congratulations on your imminent purchase :-)
Oh no. Now you've gone and disproved evolution. I'd say the "migratory bird lifespan observation" was its strongest proof yet.