A bunch of people will assign random names to arbitrary objects nobody will ever see. Using a dubious system which may or may not be representative of the populace, after it's been vetted to be inoffensive, boring and tidy.
Name them, don't name them, number them, don't number them -- this is purely a publicity stunt, and will have no impact on your life, or anybody else's life for that matter.
It's like naming cats, it doesn't really serve any purpose except to the people who assigned the names.
Let's not get all bogged down in how inclusive and representative this actually is. Because, well, it's kind of pointless, and fretting over it is kind of a waste of time.
So much so, that you could continue to call any of these planets anything you like -- and people still won't know where it is, or care. And nobody will come along and lock you up for using the wrong one.
Don't like the name they came up with? Hold your own contest, or just make up your own name. Nobody else will know what you're talking about, nor will they care -- just like this.;-)
Unless you think your life is going to be damaged by this, feel free to ignore it. If you do think your life is going to be damaged by this... well, the same applies, really.
I recently saw a cyclist come from the sidewalk on my right, cross an intersection diagonally across me (between two left-turning lanes of north/south traffic), get back up onto the sidewalk, and then later get into the bike lane going the wrong way, at an alarming speed.
As a motorist and a cyclist, I was completely stunned. It's cyclists like that why motorists hate cyclists.
Nobody can avoid killing you if you don't even pretend to follow the rules of traffic. But many many drivers forget that they are required by law to not run over cyclists, even if they are inconvenient.
I have seen more cyclists do ridiculous things than I could count. I give them a wide berth, but, I have to admit, some of them seem like they're trying to get killed.
Likewise, a lot of drivers more or less don't give a damn and will practically run them over, or off the road, or door them. Sometimes buses don't even obey bike lanes.
Oh, I automate deployments, and I automate some monitoring. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to automation.
Like all programmers, I'm lazy and would rather code it once instead of doing it by hand many many times.
That doesn't mean I'd walk away from it and leave it unattended. To me, that's just asking to get bit in the ass.
These days, anything which is low risk maintenance is stuff I do during the daytime because it's not Production. For our Production environments, everything is considered high risk because the systems are mission critical. Any change at all is high risk, because if it breaks, it costs the company large amounts of money to be down.
You have to understand what your threshold of risk is, and what your actual risks are before you do any automation. Some systems you can play fast and loose with. Others, not so much.
Your best is to get out of Managed Services and into Professional Services. You just build out new environments / servers / apps and hand them off to the MS guys. Once its off your hands, you never have to worry about a server crashing, maintenance windows, or being on call. Plus, you are generally paid more.
In my experience (personal and professional), those people do a half assed job of building those systems, have no concept of what will be required to maintain them, and are then subsequently unavailable when their stuff falls apart.
This raises the question of why people don't just avoid the pedantic bickering by saying "raises the question".
Because, generally speaking, pedants are tedious and annoying, and nobody else cares about the trivial minutia they like to get bogged down in because it's irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Everyone here is going to tell you that a human needs to be there because that is their livelihood.
No, many of us will tell you a human needs to be there because we've been in the IT industry long enough to have seen stuff go horribly wrong, and have learned to plan for the worst because it makes good sense.
I had the misfortune of working with a guy once who would make major changes to live systems in the middle of the day because he was a lazy idiot. He once took several servers offline for a few days because of this. I consider that kind of behavior lazy and incompetent, because I've seen the consequences of it.
If you consider "doing our jobs correctly, and mitigating business risk" to be job security, you're right. If you think we do these things simply to make ourselves look useful, you're clueless about what it means to maintain production systems which are business critical.
Part of my job is to minimize business risk. And people keep me around because I actually do that.
BUT if the maintenance gets botched and services are still down or under-performing through normal business hours, nobody outside of IT will notice
Then you're maintaining trivial, boring, and unimportant systems that nobody will notice. If your job is to do that... well, your job is trivial and unimportant.
The stuff that I maintain, if it was down or under-performing during normal business hours... we would immediately start getting howls from the users, and the company would literally be losing vast sums of money every hour. Because our stuff is tied into every aspect of the business, and is deemed to be necessary for normal operations.
Sorry, but some of us actually maintain stuff which is mission critical to the core business, and people would definitely notice it.
As one of the technical people who does cover after hours maintenance... if a technical person suggested we automate our changes and not monitor them, they wouldn't get a sympathetic ear from me either.
There may be systems like you describe. And, as I said before, if that's the case, do your maintenance windows in the middle of the day.
I'm seeing this increasingly often......misuse of the phrase "begs the question". Why don't you look it up?
There are now two distinct phrases in the English language:
There is the logical fallacy of begging the question.
Sometimes, an event happens which begs (for) the question of why nobody planned for it.
You might think you sound all clever and stuff, but you're wrong. They sound similar, but they aren't the same. The second one has been in common usage for decades now, and has nothing to do with the logical fallacy.
Some of us would argue that doing maintenance unattended is preparing for failure -- or at least giving yourself the best possible chance of failure.
I work in an industry where if we did our maintenance badly, and there was an outage it would literally cost millions of dollars/hour.
If what you're doing it so unimportant you can leave the maintenance unattended, there's probably no reason you couldn't do the outage in the middle of the day.
You don't monitor maintenance windows for when everything goes well and is all boring. You monitor them for when things go all to hell and someone needs to correct it.
In any organization I've worked in, if you suggested that, you'd be more or less told "too damned bad, this is what we do".
I'm sure your business users would love to know that you're leaving it to run unattended and hoping it works. No, wait, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't.
I know lots of people who work off hours shifts to cover maintenance windows. My advise to you: suck it up, princess, that's part of the job.
This just sounds like risk taking in the name of being lazy.
Yeah. It's not exactly "boldly going where no man has gone before", is it?
Oh, I don't know... this just seems to be one more step in codifying the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition as the law of the land and setting the tone for future space exploration.
If the reinfection is also from the mother (which is what is most likely) then how can they tell whether it is the original infection or a reinfection from the mother as presumably it's still the same strain in the mother.
I *think* it tends to mutate when it spreads.
If it has the virus exact same DNA as the mother (or at least the same strain the child already had), then it likely means that this is the strain the child got while in utero. If it was a fresh infection it would be slightly different from the original infection.
It sounds like the people who study these things and know what they mean have ruled it out as being a re-infection, but the same infection which has re-emerged.
I'm going to go with the people who study these things.
This sounds like a stupid idea, only tell people the upbeat things and let them live in blissful ignorance of what's actually happening in the world. The world doesn't work like that.
What next, not telling us when governments misbehave, or when some atrocity happens so we don't all get sad?
This language gets around the provision of the Outer Space Treaty that says states are forbidden to establish national sovereignty over celestial bodies, which would be a prerequisite to the United States allowing a private entity to own an asteroid. It rather grants mineral rights to the asteroid, something the treaty does not mention.
So, if you as a country don't have the right to claim sovereignty over these celestial bodies... then how on Earth (or space) do you have the authority to grant mineral rights? They're not your rights to give are they?
This is using authority you don't have to grant mineral rights to corporations. Can the US grant mineral rights to nations they don't control too? Because that's awfully special.
This just sounds like the typical ignore the intent of the treaty and make sure corporations have more avenues to make money without restriction.
Always nice when lawmakers pass laws over stuff they really have no jurisdiction.
Is is too much to ask that we could have some comments from posters who are interested in, you know, math and science?
I'm sure many of us are interested, but seriously out of our depth on the topic -- I don't even know what stupid questions to ask first without sounding even more stupid.:-P
I have no idea of what this actually means in terms of anything practical.
Here I was getting ready to dredge up all that symmetry and topology that got drilled in to me in grad school.
By all means, bust it out.. because the whinging about "soccer v football" are kind of boring, and I'd love to know what this actually implies to chemists. But since the extent of my chemistry background is from Grade 11, and since that was a very long time ago, this is a little out of my grasp.
I really with I could follow this part better... it sounds like you guys are the only ones talking about the chemistry, and that's the part that I'm most baffled by.:-P
Jesus fuck. That's your go-to amazing moment for soccer? Don't waste your time watching the video, kids. The dude kicks the ball from a moderate distance at moderate speed and it goes into the net.
On behalf of those of us who didn't do so well in gym class... that would be somewhat amazing. Even if the net was empty.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
You're placing too much value on this.
A bunch of people will assign random names to arbitrary objects nobody will ever see. Using a dubious system which may or may not be representative of the populace, after it's been vetted to be inoffensive, boring and tidy.
Name them, don't name them, number them, don't number them -- this is purely a publicity stunt, and will have no impact on your life, or anybody else's life for that matter.
It's like naming cats, it doesn't really serve any purpose except to the people who assigned the names.
Let's not get all bogged down in how inclusive and representative this actually is. Because, well, it's kind of pointless, and fretting over it is kind of a waste of time.
So much so, that you could continue to call any of these planets anything you like -- and people still won't know where it is, or care. And nobody will come along and lock you up for using the wrong one.
Don't like the name they came up with? Hold your own contest, or just make up your own name. Nobody else will know what you're talking about, nor will they care -- just like this. ;-)
Unless you think your life is going to be damaged by this, feel free to ignore it. If you do think your life is going to be damaged by this ... well, the same applies, really.
I recently saw a cyclist come from the sidewalk on my right, cross an intersection diagonally across me (between two left-turning lanes of north/south traffic), get back up onto the sidewalk, and then later get into the bike lane going the wrong way, at an alarming speed.
As a motorist and a cyclist, I was completely stunned. It's cyclists like that why motorists hate cyclists.
Nobody can avoid killing you if you don't even pretend to follow the rules of traffic. But many many drivers forget that they are required by law to not run over cyclists, even if they are inconvenient.
I have seen more cyclists do ridiculous things than I could count. I give them a wide berth, but, I have to admit, some of them seem like they're trying to get killed.
Likewise, a lot of drivers more or less don't give a damn and will practically run them over, or off the road, or door them. Sometimes buses don't even obey bike lanes.
I won't ride a bicycle on city streets anymore.
Oh, I automate deployments, and I automate some monitoring. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to automation.
Like all programmers, I'm lazy and would rather code it once instead of doing it by hand many many times.
That doesn't mean I'd walk away from it and leave it unattended. To me, that's just asking to get bit in the ass.
These days, anything which is low risk maintenance is stuff I do during the daytime because it's not Production. For our Production environments, everything is considered high risk because the systems are mission critical. Any change at all is high risk, because if it breaks, it costs the company large amounts of money to be down.
You have to understand what your threshold of risk is, and what your actual risks are before you do any automation. Some systems you can play fast and loose with. Others, not so much.
Or, worse, guyliner.
In my experience (personal and professional), those people do a half assed job of building those systems, have no concept of what will be required to maintain them, and are then subsequently unavailable when their stuff falls apart.
They're hit and run artists.
But, they sure to get paid lots of money.
Because, generally speaking, pedants are tedious and annoying, and nobody else cares about the trivial minutia they like to get bogged down in because it's irrelevant to the topic at hand.
At least, that's what my wife tells me. ;-)
No, many of us will tell you a human needs to be there because we've been in the IT industry long enough to have seen stuff go horribly wrong, and have learned to plan for the worst because it makes good sense.
I had the misfortune of working with a guy once who would make major changes to live systems in the middle of the day because he was a lazy idiot. He once took several servers offline for a few days because of this. I consider that kind of behavior lazy and incompetent, because I've seen the consequences of it.
If you consider "doing our jobs correctly, and mitigating business risk" to be job security, you're right. If you think we do these things simply to make ourselves look useful, you're clueless about what it means to maintain production systems which are business critical.
Part of my job is to minimize business risk. And people keep me around because I actually do that.
Then you're maintaining trivial, boring, and unimportant systems that nobody will notice. If your job is to do that ... well, your job is trivial and unimportant.
The stuff that I maintain, if it was down or under-performing during normal business hours ... we would immediately start getting howls from the users, and the company would literally be losing vast sums of money every hour. Because our stuff is tied into every aspect of the business, and is deemed to be necessary for normal operations.
Sorry, but some of us actually maintain stuff which is mission critical to the core business, and people would definitely notice it.
As one of the technical people who does cover after hours maintenance ... if a technical person suggested we automate our changes and not monitor them, they wouldn't get a sympathetic ear from me either.
There may be systems like you describe. And, as I said before, if that's the case, do your maintenance windows in the middle of the day.
We've listed several things which could do it, but we really have no freakin' idea of what causes them, so this is all purely speculation.
There are now two distinct phrases in the English language:
There is the logical fallacy of begging the question.
Sometimes, an event happens which begs (for) the question of why nobody planned for it.
You might think you sound all clever and stuff, but you're wrong. They sound similar, but they aren't the same. The second one has been in common usage for decades now, and has nothing to do with the logical fallacy.
Some of us would argue that doing maintenance unattended is preparing for failure -- or at least giving yourself the best possible chance of failure.
I work in an industry where if we did our maintenance badly, and there was an outage it would literally cost millions of dollars/hour.
If what you're doing it so unimportant you can leave the maintenance unattended, there's probably no reason you couldn't do the outage in the middle of the day.
If it is important, you don't leave it to chance.
You don't monitor maintenance windows for when everything goes well and is all boring. You monitor them for when things go all to hell and someone needs to correct it.
In any organization I've worked in, if you suggested that, you'd be more or less told "too damned bad, this is what we do".
I'm sure your business users would love to know that you're leaving it to run unattended and hoping it works. No, wait, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't.
I know lots of people who work off hours shifts to cover maintenance windows. My advise to you: suck it up, princess, that's part of the job.
This just sounds like risk taking in the name of being lazy.
Dorks in space? ;-)
Oh, I don't know ... this just seems to be one more step in codifying the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition as the law of the land and setting the tone for future space exploration.
You know, I've seen this cited several times lately.
Show us, exactly, where the law says this.
It's illegal to be in possession of stolen goods. This is not grade 3.
So, you believe if I can take it from you by force, it's mine?
Well, here's hoping someone takes your stuff from you, and then we'll see if you stand by that statement.
I don't want them to pick only the negative stuff. I don't want them to bias towards the happy stuff.
I want to know what is actually happening, not what some editor thinks I want to know is happening, or stories which will increase ad revenue.
I will evaluate good and bad on my own.
I *think* it tends to mutate when it spreads.
If it has the virus exact same DNA as the mother (or at least the same strain the child already had), then it likely means that this is the strain the child got while in utero. If it was a fresh infection it would be slightly different from the original infection.
It sounds like the people who study these things and know what they mean have ruled it out as being a re-infection, but the same infection which has re-emerged.
I'm going to go with the people who study these things.
LOL ... not the kind of headlines I was looking for.
News for Nerds. Porn that Matters.
I don't want upbeat headlines. I want the news.
That will include good and bad headlines.
This sounds like a stupid idea, only tell people the upbeat things and let them live in blissful ignorance of what's actually happening in the world. The world doesn't work like that.
What next, not telling us when governments misbehave, or when some atrocity happens so we don't all get sad?
"time for...Capitalist...Piiiiiigs...iiiin...spaaaaaaace!"
Just sayin'.
So, if you as a country don't have the right to claim sovereignty over these celestial bodies ... then how on Earth (or space) do you have the authority to grant mineral rights? They're not your rights to give are they?
This is using authority you don't have to grant mineral rights to corporations. Can the US grant mineral rights to nations they don't control too? Because that's awfully special.
This just sounds like the typical ignore the intent of the treaty and make sure corporations have more avenues to make money without restriction.
Always nice when lawmakers pass laws over stuff they really have no jurisdiction.
I'm sure many of us are interested, but seriously out of our depth on the topic -- I don't even know what stupid questions to ask first without sounding even more stupid. :-P
I have no idea of what this actually means in terms of anything practical.
By all means, bust it out .. because the whinging about "soccer v football" are kind of boring, and I'd love to know what this actually implies to chemists. But since the extent of my chemistry background is from Grade 11, and since that was a very long time ago, this is a little out of my grasp.
I really with I could follow this part better ... it sounds like you guys are the only ones talking about the chemistry, and that's the part that I'm most baffled by. :-P
On behalf of those of us who didn't do so well in gym class ... that would be somewhat amazing. Even if the net was empty. ;-)
OK ... so mathematicians proved you could have molecules with a symmetry similar to a new fangled soccer ball.
Is this good? Is it not good? Is it useful in any way? Or it this purely an intellectual exercise?
I'm afraid I don't grok chemistry with fullness, so I don't know if different symmetries give us different materials, or prettier chemicals.
I know shape usually defines the other kinds of bonds it can make, but I have no idea if this specific thing is of any benefit to anybody.
Can anybody give a lay summary for what the practical applications of this tidbit of knowledge actually are? Because I've got nothing solid here.