One of the funniest things I ever saw on a corporate network:
A manager had a bunch of machines in his office, and IT couldn't/wouldn't add any more network drops for him. So, he bought a little router. It turns out that the 192.168.* addresses it gave to his machine corresponded exactly to the ones the Exchange servers used, and something about the NAT crossed some signals.
Once they pieced together why email had stopped working, they immediately put a ban on those things, and immediately got him a switch which didn't do DHCP so he could have more networking in his office.
The whole time the developers were howling and thinking "really, that's the IP addresses they chose for critical infrastructure? The first one in the open pool?"
Everything defaults to starting at 192.168.0.1, which means if you're using it you might not like the results.
"I'm glad to see that they are willing to talk about the trends they observe in the existing system, but by making this switch, Microsoft is not just cutting through the clutter, they are hiding their security report card from the general public"
Could it be as simple as PR and making it look like they patch fewer security holes?
While that may or may not be true, it's kind of random.
These things were intended to last 90 days or so. It's been 11 years.
At this point, if they're still able to apply updates to make fixes to the damned thing it means this has outlived its originally planned lifespan by a massive amount of time.
I hardly think that's a fair critique of SSD in general. I'd say pretty much every part of that rover has performed well beyond anything it was ever expected to.
Nobody conceived they'd still be running that long, but if they'd been designed to fail they would have done so by now. Having your usable life be decades longer than expected is not evidence of bad quality.
If code written in the mid 70's is still running 40 years later, that's kind of the opposite of doomed to fail. Code written in 1974 was old enough to vote or buy alcohol by the time Y2K came along.
I predict very little code written in 2015 will be running in 2055.
Tell you what, build a concrete structure which will be left in salt water for the next two thousand years and see if it lasts.
The Romans could do it, we still can't.
Say what you will, but there are actually ancient construction techniques we really cannot duplicate.
They may have had what we consider to be primitive tools and materials, but there are things which were built that modern engineers are trying to understand how it was done -- precisely because they know we can't duplicate the feat.
It's only in the last year or two that people are starting to understand some of the mechanics of Roman concrete.
But it far exceeds anything we can make these days.
Well, it's the way I've always heard Russian engineering described... in the absence of finesse or the assumption of a skilled operator, you build the heck out of it, like you said. Take all of your tolerances and double them just to be sure. If you don't know your tolerances, build it as heavy as you can manage.
The techniques used to build stuff out of stone had been learned over a very long period of human history, and was used to build stuff you expected to last forever.
Roman roads, or some Roman concrete structures have lasted far longer than any modern equivalent... so much so that people are trying to figure out some of the process. Because the Romans made piers and bridges which still stand in salt water, and we really can't come close to that.
My guess, if humankind were wiped out tomorrow much of our engineering wouldn't last a hundred years, let a lone a thousand. And, in fairness, we build for different purposes and with different constraints.
I firmly believe that a tiny fraction of structures would last long enough to suggest a survivor bias... in fact, I suspect long after the modern stuff had fallen apart some ancient stuff would still be standing.
Well, the problem happens when some technology evangelist or manager who doesn't know a damned thing about the existing system claims it's easy to migrate it to modern tools.
And neither the customer, nor the guy saying it's easy, has the barest clue about just how many other things depend on that system, and nobody can fully enumerate the functionality and corner cases.
And then you end up trying to shoe-horn a purpose built piece of software which has ran fine for decades into a modern paradigm, and realize you are failing utterly.
Because the modern tools usually simply can't accommodate all of the rules and logic in that system. They can't be cajoled into having enough flexibility, or simply can't do the same task.
People consistently underestimate just how well these systems do their job, and just how many little corner cases and integration points have been woven into them over the years. The platform is no longer elegant, or easy to explain, but it just keeps working. But dozens of other things rely on it, and if you change the underlying thing you rebuild everything else.
I've been on several projects trying to replace stuff built in the 60's and 70's -- and I wouldn't go near another one without very loudly saying how much risk is involved. Hell, even a system which has been around only since the 90s might be non-trivial to migrate away from -- precisely because in the 90s people were still building much more purpose-specific software.
It's a catch 22... they get increasingly difficult to maintain, but they sometimes are impossible to replace.
As I said, if it was easy to replace these systems, it would have been done already. Discovering just how difficult this can be has been the downfall of many a naive person who claims it's an easy thing to do.
That's what's known as survivor bias. The only examples you see of thousand-year-old buildings are the ones that didn't fall down
Except of course the overwhelming majority of stuff we make today would have no chance in hell of lasting 1000 years.
There are literally concrete structures created by the Romans we couldn't even begin to recreate.
This isn't just a survivor bias, it's stuff which was built incredibly well, and using techniques we can't reproduce. Even modern engineers admit that it's more than just luck that those things lasted.
Give me what that system cost in 1974 inflation adjusted dollars and I'll be happy to flip out a modern system every year.
Sorry, I'm calling complete and utter bullshit.
I've worked on enough legacy systems to know they didn't start off with some astronomical budget. They built it based on a set of requirements, coded it in house, and then it gradually expanded over many years of service.
Mainframe applications aren't sexy or glamorous, they're built on relatively simple interfaces, and slowly expand in scope over time.
They keep running because eventually they're woven into fabric of every other business process you have until they become something you can't trivially get rid of... because every other damned thing relies on it even if it isn't obvious to the user. You end up having to replace everything
My experience with migrating from legacy apps says you'd churn out a half asses solution, which isn't compatible with the existing stuff, and which can't be made so, and which would eventually be abandoned as untenable.
You'd produce some solution which might be good if it didn't depend on throwing away every other system which touched this.
The vast majority of people who claim they could produce a functional replacement for legacy software in a short period of time have never been involved in that kind of process.
If it was easy, they'd have replaced it by now.
The problem with looking for a "track record of transitioning a large enterprise from ageing mainframe technologies to next generation web, social, mobile cloud, Big Data and deep learning technologies" is that it's a set of requirements written by idiots who don't want to replace the system, they want something completely different which will involve re-tooling everything else that touches this existing system.
Put your money where your mouth is, apply for the damned job.
I know the law requires you to be making a statement under oath... but since it was bought and paid for by *AA lawyers, it has the "if we're incompetent but thought we were right" escape clause, they can probably weasel out of it.
I really hate this that piece of shit law was written in such a way as to stack the deck for those companies. Because it's not a level playing field, and they can go all scorched earth and later just say "oops".
Somehow they managed to put the burden of proof and cost onto those saying "WTF are you talking about?" instead of themselves.
Assholes.
There really needs to be some penalties for these clowns, otherwise they and every other copyright troll can just do this indiscriminately.
I frequently find it appalling how petty little idiots get elected and suddenly think they wield supreme power.
Can you be so stupid as to believe you as an elected official get to prevent the news media from reporting on you? Sure, libel will get them in trouble... but the epic arrogance and stupidity which seems to accompany this kind of attitude boggles the mind.
That's getting into full fledged moron territory.
But, then, I guess it's pretty common for elected officials to become supremely arrogant assholes who feel they are exempt from the law.
When one revenue stream goes away, corporations will gouge their customers in other ways to make up the difference, or make more money in the long run.
The cable companies are screwing us now, and will continue to screw us in the future using whatever means available to them.
It's a rigged game, played by people who feel entitled to the revenue, and who have more power than we do.
And before anybody makes a claim to the contrary, here's the FDA definition:
"an instrument, apparatus, implement, machine, contrivance, implant, in vitro reagent, or other similar or related article, including a component part, or accessory which is:
recognized in the official National Formulary, or the United States Pharmacopoeia, or any supplement to them,
intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, in man or other animals, or
intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals, and which does not achieve its primary intended purposes through chemical action within or on the body of man or other animals and which is not dependent upon being metabolized for the achievement of any of its primary intended purposes."
Emphasis mine.
This is a medical device, and will be treated as such.
If the device is not intended to diagnose or treat a health condition, then the FDA has no authority over it.
The device is claiming it can alter your mood by attaching to your head.
I'm pretty sure you'll find that meets the definition of 'medical device'.
So, either they have some science to back this medical claim up... in which case they know they're a medical device. Or they don't have any science, in which case it's quackery, and an illegal medical device.
But you can't make the assertion that by strapping that thing to your head it can make a change to your mood, in a way that's supposed to be good for you and safe, and NOT be a medical device.
And, you can't just hide behind being a tech company and say the law doesn't apply. Uber might sue you for infringing on their business process.
Slashdot Mirror
He said he wanted cheap home automation.
Sounds like he's already willing to spend far more than it will save him, so clearly efficiency is not a constraint. :-P
Bah, do what people have been doing for centuries ... have kids and make them get up and do it.
One of the funniest things I ever saw on a corporate network:
A manager had a bunch of machines in his office, and IT couldn't/wouldn't add any more network drops for him. So, he bought a little router. It turns out that the 192.168.* addresses it gave to his machine corresponded exactly to the ones the Exchange servers used, and something about the NAT crossed some signals.
Once they pieced together why email had stopped working, they immediately put a ban on those things, and immediately got him a switch which didn't do DHCP so he could have more networking in his office.
The whole time the developers were howling and thinking "really, that's the IP addresses they chose for critical infrastructure? The first one in the open pool?"
Everything defaults to starting at 192.168.0.1, which means if you're using it you might not like the results.
It looks like it's official, people who make networking gear are either incompetent or lazy.
Possibly both.
Could it be as simple as PR and making it look like they patch fewer security holes?
While that may or may not be true, it's kind of random.
These things were intended to last 90 days or so. It's been 11 years.
At this point, if they're still able to apply updates to make fixes to the damned thing it means this has outlived its originally planned lifespan by a massive amount of time.
I hardly think that's a fair critique of SSD in general. I'd say pretty much every part of that rover has performed well beyond anything it was ever expected to.
They were NOT designed to fail.
Nobody conceived they'd still be running that long, but if they'd been designed to fail they would have done so by now. Having your usable life be decades longer than expected is not evidence of bad quality.
If code written in the mid 70's is still running 40 years later, that's kind of the opposite of doomed to fail. Code written in 1974 was old enough to vote or buy alcohol by the time Y2K came along.
I predict very little code written in 2015 will be running in 2055.
Tell you what, build a concrete structure which will be left in salt water for the next two thousand years and see if it lasts.
The Romans could do it, we still can't.
Say what you will, but there are actually ancient construction techniques we really cannot duplicate.
They may have had what we consider to be primitive tools and materials, but there are things which were built that modern engineers are trying to understand how it was done -- precisely because they know we can't duplicate the feat.
It's only in the last year or two that people are starting to understand some of the mechanics of Roman concrete.
But it far exceeds anything we can make these days.
Well, it's the way I've always heard Russian engineering described ... in the absence of finesse or the assumption of a skilled operator, you build the heck out of it, like you said. Take all of your tolerances and double them just to be sure. If you don't know your tolerances, build it as heavy as you can manage.
The techniques used to build stuff out of stone had been learned over a very long period of human history, and was used to build stuff you expected to last forever.
Roman roads, or some Roman concrete structures have lasted far longer than any modern equivalent ... so much so that people are trying to figure out some of the process. Because the Romans made piers and bridges which still stand in salt water, and we really can't come close to that.
My guess, if humankind were wiped out tomorrow much of our engineering wouldn't last a hundred years, let a lone a thousand. And, in fairness, we build for different purposes and with different constraints.
I firmly believe that a tiny fraction of structures would last long enough to suggest a survivor bias ... in fact, I suspect long after the modern stuff had fallen apart some ancient stuff would still be standing.
Well, the problem happens when some technology evangelist or manager who doesn't know a damned thing about the existing system claims it's easy to migrate it to modern tools.
And neither the customer, nor the guy saying it's easy, has the barest clue about just how many other things depend on that system, and nobody can fully enumerate the functionality and corner cases.
And then you end up trying to shoe-horn a purpose built piece of software which has ran fine for decades into a modern paradigm, and realize you are failing utterly.
Because the modern tools usually simply can't accommodate all of the rules and logic in that system. They can't be cajoled into having enough flexibility, or simply can't do the same task.
People consistently underestimate just how well these systems do their job, and just how many little corner cases and integration points have been woven into them over the years. The platform is no longer elegant, or easy to explain, but it just keeps working. But dozens of other things rely on it, and if you change the underlying thing you rebuild everything else.
I've been on several projects trying to replace stuff built in the 60's and 70's -- and I wouldn't go near another one without very loudly saying how much risk is involved. Hell, even a system which has been around only since the 90s might be non-trivial to migrate away from -- precisely because in the 90s people were still building much more purpose-specific software.
It's a catch 22 ... they get increasingly difficult to maintain, but they sometimes are impossible to replace.
As I said, if it was easy to replace these systems, it would have been done already. Discovering just how difficult this can be has been the downfall of many a naive person who claims it's an easy thing to do.
Except of course the overwhelming majority of stuff we make today would have no chance in hell of lasting 1000 years.
There are literally concrete structures created by the Romans we couldn't even begin to recreate.
This isn't just a survivor bias, it's stuff which was built incredibly well, and using techniques we can't reproduce. Even modern engineers admit that it's more than just luck that those things lasted.
Sorry, I'm calling complete and utter bullshit.
I've worked on enough legacy systems to know they didn't start off with some astronomical budget. They built it based on a set of requirements, coded it in house, and then it gradually expanded over many years of service.
Mainframe applications aren't sexy or glamorous, they're built on relatively simple interfaces, and slowly expand in scope over time.
They keep running because eventually they're woven into fabric of every other business process you have until they become something you can't trivially get rid of ... because every other damned thing relies on it even if it isn't obvious to the user. You end up having to replace everything
My experience with migrating from legacy apps says you'd churn out a half asses solution, which isn't compatible with the existing stuff, and which can't be made so, and which would eventually be abandoned as untenable.
You'd produce some solution which might be good if it didn't depend on throwing away every other system which touched this.
The vast majority of people who claim they could produce a functional replacement for legacy software in a short period of time have never been involved in that kind of process.
If it was easy, they'd have replaced it by now.
The problem with looking for a "track record of transitioning a large enterprise from ageing mainframe technologies to next generation web, social, mobile cloud, Big Data and deep learning technologies" is that it's a set of requirements written by idiots who don't want to replace the system, they want something completely different which will involve re-tooling everything else that touches this existing system.
Put your money where your mouth is, apply for the damned job.
Could it involve that gun that streams to the interwebs? Please?
Yes, I know, I'm a bad person ... but .... they're only lawyers.
We could even hold out for the "varmint gun" version to make it sporting.
I know the law requires you to be making a statement under oath ... but since it was bought and paid for by *AA lawyers, it has the "if we're incompetent but thought we were right" escape clause, they can probably weasel out of it.
I really hate this that piece of shit law was written in such a way as to stack the deck for those companies. Because it's not a level playing field, and they can go all scorched earth and later just say "oops".
Somehow they managed to put the burden of proof and cost onto those saying "WTF are you talking about?" instead of themselves.
Assholes.
There really needs to be some penalties for these clowns, otherwise they and every other copyright troll can just do this indiscriminately.
I frequently find it appalling how petty little idiots get elected and suddenly think they wield supreme power.
Can you be so stupid as to believe you as an elected official get to prevent the news media from reporting on you? Sure, libel will get them in trouble ... but the epic arrogance and stupidity which seems to accompany this kind of attitude boggles the mind.
That's getting into full fledged moron territory.
But, then, I guess it's pretty common for elected officials to become supremely arrogant assholes who feel they are exempt from the law.
I hope he gets laughed out of office.
Don't worry, by the time it goes viral it will. :-P
This man will be remembered as a first class fool.
What bitcoin exchanges have any real responsibility or accountability?
Isn't it, by definition, unregulated? You want FDIC insurance or something? Like a bank?
There's some scary internet videos waiting to happen.
When one revenue stream goes away, corporations will gouge their customers in other ways to make up the difference, or make more money in the long run.
The cable companies are screwing us now, and will continue to screw us in the future using whatever means available to them.
It's a rigged game, played by people who feel entitled to the revenue, and who have more power than we do.
This isn't a surprise, nor should it be.
And before anybody makes a claim to the contrary, here's the FDA definition:
Emphasis mine.
This is a medical device, and will be treated as such.
The device is claiming it can alter your mood by attaching to your head.
I'm pretty sure you'll find that meets the definition of 'medical device'.
So, either they have some science to back this medical claim up ... in which case they know they're a medical device. Or they don't have any science, in which case it's quackery, and an illegal medical device.
But you can't make the assertion that by strapping that thing to your head it can make a change to your mood, in a way that's supposed to be good for you and safe, and NOT be a medical device.
And, you can't just hide behind being a tech company and say the law doesn't apply. Uber might sue you for infringing on their business process.
No, it runs on melons. ;-)
"louis wu wirehead"
"Larry niven wirehead"
"ringworld wirehead"
Seriously, have you actually used google before? It's remarkably good at getting you there from vague inputs.
Well I hope diminished spelling isn't one of the side effects. ;-)
LOL ... you still let things drive you crazy before you google it? Really?
Sounds very masochistic. :-P