Which leads me to this question...why is the cloud not doing backups? The cloud provider should be backing up the data within the cloud. I had assumed (wrongfully it turns out) that one of the benefits of using a cloud was that your data was backed up in some distributed fashion. It turns out that doesn't seem to be the case.
Well with the former I can pull the hard drive and shove it in a new machine and be at least trying to recover my data inside of an hour. With the latter, the systems team could be doing the equivalent inside of a day (as the servers don't tend to be in the office).
If my remote document storage/app server/whatever goes down, even transiently, there's nothing I can do until it comes back up (other than hope that it does come back up).
So yes, backups are your friend, but the situation isn't quite the same.
Maybe nothing you can do personally, but I would imagine the cloud's system team would be doing the same thing. Attempting by whatever means possible to recover the data. As cloud computing matures one would expect them to become the 'experts' in date reliability and uptime. Otherwise they won't have very much business.
I guess I would have to define 'paid off.' Monetarily you're right. I'm not getting paid more because of an MS (yet?). Will having an MS open doors in the future? That remains to be seen. I will always argue that it will not hurt, especially with the increasing global competition for jobs.
It had paid off in other ways though. I'm always reading, etc... anyways so getting my MS was fun. Like college I was exposed to more areas than I normally would have been on my own. An expanded knowledge base is never a bad thing in any field, especially technology.
All you did was pay a lot of money for a long and painful "Human networking" class.
One of the huge reasons to go to Wharton, Hardvard or Yale business schools is exactly that. To meet people who are going to be the future leaders. What I did was obviously on a much smaller scale (and much much less expensive), but it doesn't take long to learn it's all about who you know. I wasn't just able to meet people in my class, but learn if they were actually any good and I hope I showed them that I also was competent.
The CEO isn't impressed with HOW IT does what it does, he's only concerned about the WHY and WHEN. He has a vision and it is the role of a CIO to help put into motion that vision using IT as a tool, not a means to an end.
Exactly! My last boss did this for an SVP at my current company. He took the SVP's vision and made it an IT reality. Less than a year once he did this successfully another company in our industry got wind of it and plucked him away and made him their CIO.
So, would you say the same thing about getting an MFA in basket weaving?
If basket weaving is your chosen profession then it may be a good thing. If it's something your just interested in, then there is also no harm in it. It might not change your entire life, but could open up opportunities that I'm unaware of.
I saw the writing on the wall - as I got older, it became harder and harder to get work. They want young guys coding and designing. I went back to school in my late thirties to get an MBA trying to get into the business side of things, foolishly thinking getting more education and training is always a good thing, only to find out that it meant nothing. One guy actually told me that getting my MBA makes it look like that I'm unemployable.
I think nowadays MBAs are often the minimum needed to be in business. So getting one just makes you equal rather than ahead of others in the business world. I took a different route and got my MSCS instead of an MBA (I may get it later), because there are less of them and I think the degree is 'worth' more. If I ever do get an MBA it will be in a concentration such as finance and not just a general one. And thinking an MBA would suddenly make it possible for you to move onto the business side isn't what the MBA was for. Hopefully you now have a better understanding of the business side and can show that in your daily work which will make you able to move over. See the connection? Walking in and saying "I have my MBA now, make me management" is never going to happen and is short sighted. BTW, I have a friend who didn't get his undergrad in CS until he was 30, got his MBA at 40 and now runs a team in a large company with about 30 people and 10 concurrent projects. His degrees sure made him look unemployable...
Then there's my uncle: only a 2 year degree in accounting and is a self made millionaire. Yep, education did me good.
Everyone finds success their own way. I consider education the 'go to' default way. If you're sitting idle, then learn something. Either on your own or through a school environment. Once you get that education you need to use it.
Of course people have a knack for seeing deals and capitalizing, and still others are just lucky. Although I find most 'lucky' people end up being prepared and willing to take a risk when an opportunity arises.
But what happens to all the people who are only good for tedious, mind-numbing, repetitive work?
The same thing that happened to the people who where only good at fixing wagon wheels, picking cotton or pumping gas, etc... they figure out something else to do. I hope you're not going to argue that we need to keep mind-numbing repetitive work around so people have something to do. If we did that in the past we'd still be living the stone age. What we need to do is bring these people up to speed the best we can while their generation is still around. One of the sad truths is that over time this will mostly take care of itself as a newer generation grows up with naturally more skills than the last. The even sadder thing is that many (most?) American youths don't see the global competition on the horizon. They are slacking in their education and are going to end up on the wrong side of the ongoing globalization shift that's occurring.
It also shows that jobs are out there - I didn't have much trouble finding a job, once I got serious about my search. In one of the other comments in the thread (I can't find it at the moment), someone mentioned that the lower level IT jobs and maintenance jobs are the ones getting impacted.
I agree. We've been trying to hire two more people for a couple months now. A mid-level database developer and a mid-level.net web developer. So far every phone interview has lasted about 10 minutes with completely clueless people. Their resume says they know databases then they can't explain anything beyond a simple select statement or explain some simple normalization techniques./sigh
I'm now hoping we might be able to pull a couple qualified people I used to work with from their current jobs.
An investment actually pays off. I've yet to see someone learning "a valuable new skill set" do better in life.
What are you talking about? Learning a new skill always pays off. It may not immediately mean more money or a better job, but education is something that is never a bad investment. I'm one class away from having my MSCS. Is it automatically going to mean more money? Probably not. Did I learn lots of stuff that I now use daily in my job? No, although I did learn a lot of fun, interesting things. What I have gotten out my additional education is a deeper understanding of CS which I can build upon and I've met lots of people that I otherwise wouldn't have met. Many of these people have already offered me jobs where they work or at the companies they own.
It's easy to blame your current situation on forces outside your control, but learning new skills is one way to take control and change your situation.
I'll just quote the second comment in the graph you sent since it summarized the poor analysis much better than I would:
Oh my. You know you are in for a silly analysis when it starts by referring to the evil "supply-siders" as "zealots" and labels a mischaracterization as a "cherished belief". No knowledgable supply-sider states that ALL marginal tax-rate cuts result in an increase in total revenues. It simply depends on which side of the peak of the Laffer Curve you are on. Secondly, your sarcastic statement "But that would amount to admitting that forces other than the capital gains tax rate determine the course of the stock market. Perish the thought!" is actually offensive! Of course other economic factors apply and must be taken into account. Where do supply siders deny that? Thirdly, the twin sister of "all marginal tax rates cause increased revenue" is the equally silly "all marginal rate increases cause increased revenues" which you seem to indicate must be one of your "cherished beliefs". In fact, evidence from CBO reports (data not verbiage) indicate that the 2003 tax cuts earned $26 billion in 2004 (estimated $125 billion loss but actually a $26 billion 2 year gain!)
Additionally, every time I've seen Obama's economic people questioned on the matter they don't even argue the point. They just say so what we want to raise them anyway. Kudlow (I believe it was last Monday night) finally got an Obama economic advisor to admit that yes, the whole point of raising the capital gains tax (all taxes actually) is simply to redistribute the wealth. It's not to increase government receipts or help with government spending. It's to take money from those who have it and give it those who don't. We've seen what the first economic stimulus did (nothing) and now we want to have another? Lets print even more money and continue to push inflation higher. Genius I tell you!
The larger lacking is the need for a physical medium to watch a movie. People don't rent movies anymore (check out blockbuster and their reports on rentals, etc...), they just use the on-demand. It's cheaper and faster to boot. Sure, much of it isn't HD quality yet, but that has to be coming. Once large HD on-demand rollouts happen I expect BR to slowly pickup and take over the low end DVD market for kids and the super high end market. The average person though...I just don't see it happening because it'll be too late.
You're assuming your employer doesn't get either a) get driven out of business to maintain these benefits or b) your benefits get negotiated away when hard times arise. The pension alone I bet you don't end up getting (depending on how old you are) since that's something in the future the company can agree to now and simply go bankrupt on later.
And yes, it amazes me when IT workers accept crap work environments. I never have and hopefully won't have to due to unforeseen market conditions. Then again, I've negotiated at every job I've taken and feel I've always gotten a pretty fair deal. I've also walked away from jobs where we couldn't find a common ground for compensation.
True, I love how Obama's people keep ignoring the fact that the lower capital gains tax has actually increased capital gains revenues. I kinda hope Obama gets elected so we can see how he isn't any different than any other politician.
I'm not sure what this has to do with the current Apple case, but I agree with you that health insurance is f'd up in this country. IMHO, part of the problem is having companies involved in it at all, but in the genius wisdom of the government that is the only way to get the tax break.
I'm not defending the Bush administration on anything you said. The thing is that the Clintons were pretty good at helping their friends and evading prosecution also. It seems to me it's not a Bush or Republican or Democrat thing, but a big government/politician thing. Standard practice in government seems to be "if you help me get elected (ie, give money), I'll make sure to help you later with contracts/pardons/information/whatever."
The process sucks and makes me agree more every day with a quote I once heard, "Any man who wants to be President, should immediately be disqualified from being President for that fact."
Look up the workout "Death By Bodyweight". It's amazing what kind of workout you can get with only your body weight.
The submitter mentioned pushups and situps. Those are okay, but on their own not very effective. You need to add squatting and some sort of row or pullup.
Should the federal government pay for every little museum, board walk, and beach hut because "it is a social investment"
My first reaction is 'hell no!', but then I think about how much money the federal government steals...err takes from the states through taxes. The states then have to jump through hoops to get that money sent back to them. Look at how states have to comply with federal laws to get road money back that should have never left the state in the first place. Schools are another good example. At the end of the day it's all about control. The federal gov. wants more of it and sadly the states are for the most part letting them have it.
Get this through your heads already: Apple is not Steve Jobs. He does not personally do all of the stuff Apple does. Assuming Apple's engineers (the people who actually matter) don't quit when Jobs leaves, Apple will do just fine after Jobs.
I disagree. If there is one company that is its leader it's Apple. Of course Jobs doesn't personally do the engineering, but what he does is get people to work long hours for normal pay to be part of something that they feel is bigger than themselves. He also inspires tons of people to buy products for the simple reason they are cool. I obviously don't know him personally, but from the stories I've read he has an exacting, perfectionist personality that he uses to drive all of these engineers and thus the products.
What's with all the doom and gloom predictions and massive stock declines every time one of the 'underdog' companies (AMD, Apple, etc.) has a rough year?
70%+ of all stock trades are now done by a computer making a decision. These computers aren't trained to look at the long or even medium term. The look at the day to day, week to week trends and trade accordingly. Knowing this, when companies slip up and drop, it can represent buying opportunities. If you think AMD is going to comeback and have another Athlon type performance then this is a great time to buy them.
Personally, I've seen this coming for years. Prior to the Athlon I did a research/write up comparison on Intel vs. AMD. I concluded that AMD would eventually fail so I wouldn't own their stock, bonds or lend them money. Obviously I would have missed the Athlon runup, but it was something that just wasn't sustainable. For all of Intels screw ups, it's their manufacturing methods that have kept them grounded. Their yields are unbelievable. Their scale gives them advantages AMD could never achieve at their size. In the end, it's AMD who got lucky with the Athlon. All it did was delay the inevitable.
Ok, which programs do you want to cut? I've never seen a (mainstream) Republican candidate actually spell this out. They rail against Government spending but never offer any specifics of what they would actually cut spending on. This suggests to me that they either don't have a plan or they do have a plan but know it would face opposition if the details were actually known.
I'm agree with you about Republican candidates. Both sides want to spend too much IMHO. I think the entire budget needs to be looked at and re-verified that each penny is being used properly. We can start buy cutting out all of the pork and then work from there. The libertarian candidates have some decent ideas and so did Ron Paul. Problem is as soon as you start talking about shrinking gov., social program immediately come up and with a majority of the population on some social program you're then fighting an uphill battle.
and raise lower taxes.
That's a great idea! Because in a time when income growth for the lower classes has stagnated and everything from energy to food is going up in price we need to tax the lower income earners more.
That was a typo. Meant to say lower taxes in general. Of course this will be spun as a tax cut for the rich since they are the only ones who pay taxes. Owell...
Slashdot Mirror
George Carlin...is that you?
Which leads me to this question...why is the cloud not doing backups? The cloud provider should be backing up the data within the cloud. I had assumed (wrongfully it turns out) that one of the benefits of using a cloud was that your data was backed up in some distributed fashion. It turns out that doesn't seem to be the case.
Maybe nothing you can do personally, but I would imagine the cloud's system team would be doing the same thing. Attempting by whatever means possible to recover the data. As cloud computing matures one would expect them to become the 'experts' in date reliability and uptime. Otherwise they won't have very much business.
What do you do when your local computer shuts down? How about a server on your company intranet? The cloud is no different. Backups are your friend!
I guess I would have to define 'paid off.' Monetarily you're right. I'm not getting paid more because of an MS (yet?). Will having an MS open doors in the future? That remains to be seen. I will always argue that it will not hurt, especially with the increasing global competition for jobs.
It had paid off in other ways though. I'm always reading, etc... anyways so getting my MS was fun. Like college I was exposed to more areas than I normally would have been on my own. An expanded knowledge base is never a bad thing in any field, especially technology.
One of the huge reasons to go to Wharton, Hardvard or Yale business schools is exactly that. To meet people who are going to be the future leaders. What I did was obviously on a much smaller scale (and much much less expensive), but it doesn't take long to learn it's all about who you know. I wasn't just able to meet people in my class, but learn if they were actually any good and I hope I showed them that I also was competent.
Just because each person finds success their own way doesn't mean that everyone finds it or even looks for it. I could have worded it differently:
Every successful person traveled their own unique path to reach success.
Exactly! My last boss did this for an SVP at my current company. He took the SVP's vision and made it an IT reality. Less than a year once he did this successfully another company in our industry got wind of it and plucked him away and made him their CIO.
If basket weaving is your chosen profession then it may be a good thing. If it's something your just interested in, then there is also no harm in it. It might not change your entire life, but could open up opportunities that I'm unaware of.
I think nowadays MBAs are often the minimum needed to be in business. So getting one just makes you equal rather than ahead of others in the business world. I took a different route and got my MSCS instead of an MBA (I may get it later), because there are less of them and I think the degree is 'worth' more. If I ever do get an MBA it will be in a concentration such as finance and not just a general one. And thinking an MBA would suddenly make it possible for you to move onto the business side isn't what the MBA was for. Hopefully you now have a better understanding of the business side and can show that in your daily work which will make you able to move over. See the connection? Walking in and saying "I have my MBA now, make me management" is never going to happen and is short sighted. BTW, I have a friend who didn't get his undergrad in CS until he was 30, got his MBA at 40 and now runs a team in a large company with about 30 people and 10 concurrent projects. His degrees sure made him look unemployable...
Everyone finds success their own way. I consider education the 'go to' default way. If you're sitting idle, then learn something. Either on your own or through a school environment. Once you get that education you need to use it.
Of course people have a knack for seeing deals and capitalizing, and still others are just lucky. Although I find most 'lucky' people end up being prepared and willing to take a risk when an opportunity arises.
The same thing that happened to the people who where only good at fixing wagon wheels, picking cotton or pumping gas, etc... they figure out something else to do. I hope you're not going to argue that we need to keep mind-numbing repetitive work around so people have something to do. If we did that in the past we'd still be living the stone age. What we need to do is bring these people up to speed the best we can while their generation is still around. One of the sad truths is that over time this will mostly take care of itself as a newer generation grows up with naturally more skills than the last. The even sadder thing is that many (most?) American youths don't see the global competition on the horizon. They are slacking in their education and are going to end up on the wrong side of the ongoing globalization shift that's occurring.
I agree. We've been trying to hire two more people for a couple months now. A mid-level database developer and a mid-level .net web developer. So far every phone interview has lasted about 10 minutes with completely clueless people. Their resume says they know databases then they can't explain anything beyond a simple select statement or explain some simple normalization techniques. /sigh
I'm now hoping we might be able to pull a couple qualified people I used to work with from their current jobs.
What are you talking about? Learning a new skill always pays off. It may not immediately mean more money or a better job, but education is something that is never a bad investment. I'm one class away from having my MSCS. Is it automatically going to mean more money? Probably not. Did I learn lots of stuff that I now use daily in my job? No, although I did learn a lot of fun, interesting things. What I have gotten out my additional education is a deeper understanding of CS which I can build upon and I've met lots of people that I otherwise wouldn't have met. Many of these people have already offered me jobs where they work or at the companies they own.
It's easy to blame your current situation on forces outside your control, but learning new skills is one way to take control and change your situation.
I'll just quote the second comment in the graph you sent since it summarized the poor analysis much better than I would:
Additionally, every time I've seen Obama's economic people questioned on the matter they don't even argue the point. They just say so what we want to raise them anyway. Kudlow (I believe it was last Monday night) finally got an Obama economic advisor to admit that yes, the whole point of raising the capital gains tax (all taxes actually) is simply to redistribute the wealth. It's not to increase government receipts or help with government spending. It's to take money from those who have it and give it those who don't. We've seen what the first economic stimulus did (nothing) and now we want to have another? Lets print even more money and continue to push inflation higher. Genius I tell you!
The larger lacking is the need for a physical medium to watch a movie. People don't rent movies anymore (check out blockbuster and their reports on rentals, etc...), they just use the on-demand. It's cheaper and faster to boot. Sure, much of it isn't HD quality yet, but that has to be coming. Once large HD on-demand rollouts happen I expect BR to slowly pickup and take over the low end DVD market for kids and the super high end market. The average person though...I just don't see it happening because it'll be too late.
You're assuming your employer doesn't get either a) get driven out of business to maintain these benefits or b) your benefits get negotiated away when hard times arise. The pension alone I bet you don't end up getting (depending on how old you are) since that's something in the future the company can agree to now and simply go bankrupt on later.
And yes, it amazes me when IT workers accept crap work environments. I never have and hopefully won't have to due to unforeseen market conditions. Then again, I've negotiated at every job I've taken and feel I've always gotten a pretty fair deal. I've also walked away from jobs where we couldn't find a common ground for compensation.
True, I love how Obama's people keep ignoring the fact that the lower capital gains tax has actually increased capital gains revenues. I kinda hope Obama gets elected so we can see how he isn't any different than any other politician.
I'm not sure what this has to do with the current Apple case, but I agree with you that health insurance is f'd up in this country. IMHO, part of the problem is having companies involved in it at all, but in the genius wisdom of the government that is the only way to get the tax break.
Well, they didn't have to work at Apple. If working there was so bad then why didn't they just find other jobs?
What worker rights do you want enshrined into law?
I'm not defending the Bush administration on anything you said. The thing is that the Clintons were pretty good at helping their friends and evading prosecution also. It seems to me it's not a Bush or Republican or Democrat thing, but a big government/politician thing. Standard practice in government seems to be "if you help me get elected (ie, give money), I'll make sure to help you later with contracts/pardons/information/whatever."
The process sucks and makes me agree more every day with a quote I once heard, "Any man who wants to be President, should immediately be disqualified from being President for that fact."
Look up the workout "Death By Bodyweight". It's amazing what kind of workout you can get with only your body weight.
The submitter mentioned pushups and situps. Those are okay, but on their own not very effective. You need to add squatting and some sort of row or pullup.
My first reaction is 'hell no!', but then I think about how much money the federal government steals...err takes from the states through taxes. The states then have to jump through hoops to get that money sent back to them. Look at how states have to comply with federal laws to get road money back that should have never left the state in the first place. Schools are another good example. At the end of the day it's all about control. The federal gov. wants more of it and sadly the states are for the most part letting them have it.
Maybe in the consumer space, but in the corporate space they sell a lot of server. Their corp laptops aren't half bad either.
I disagree. If there is one company that is its leader it's Apple. Of course Jobs doesn't personally do the engineering, but what he does is get people to work long hours for normal pay to be part of something that they feel is bigger than themselves. He also inspires tons of people to buy products for the simple reason they are cool. I obviously don't know him personally, but from the stories I've read he has an exacting, perfectionist personality that he uses to drive all of these engineers and thus the products.
70%+ of all stock trades are now done by a computer making a decision. These computers aren't trained to look at the long or even medium term. The look at the day to day, week to week trends and trade accordingly. Knowing this, when companies slip up and drop, it can represent buying opportunities. If you think AMD is going to comeback and have another Athlon type performance then this is a great time to buy them.
Personally, I've seen this coming for years. Prior to the Athlon I did a research/write up comparison on Intel vs. AMD. I concluded that AMD would eventually fail so I wouldn't own their stock, bonds or lend them money. Obviously I would have missed the Athlon runup, but it was something that just wasn't sustainable. For all of Intels screw ups, it's their manufacturing methods that have kept them grounded. Their yields are unbelievable. Their scale gives them advantages AMD could never achieve at their size. In the end, it's AMD who got lucky with the Athlon. All it did was delay the inevitable.
You're assuming that progress continues and that we somehow don't blow ourselves up and have to start over.
I'm agree with you about Republican candidates. Both sides want to spend too much IMHO. I think the entire budget needs to be looked at and re-verified that each penny is being used properly. We can start buy cutting out all of the pork and then work from there. The libertarian candidates have some decent ideas and so did Ron Paul. Problem is as soon as you start talking about shrinking gov., social program immediately come up and with a majority of the population on some social program you're then fighting an uphill battle.
That was a typo. Meant to say lower taxes in general. Of course this will be spun as a tax cut for the rich since they are the only ones who pay taxes. Owell...