Python, Perl, Lisp, Scheme, BASIC, Java, JavaScript, shell... it doesn't matter. Pick up whatever feels most comfortable, or whatever tool is most readily available. Learn the basics of flow control, data structures, and the most fundamental algorithms. Learn how to debug, document, log, build, install and maintain.
Once you've mastered these basics, move immediately to C (not C++). Programming in C will teach you what it is that you're actually doing in that high level language, and force you to manage everything that you want to do. You don't just instantiate a new class to get a thread or forget about that variable's storage when you're done with it. You have to think about the details and understand them, and even if your entire career is spent writing Python, you still need to understand these things. I'd recommend assembly, but there's a lot more well documented sample code in C to work from, and getting larger projects done in C is still practical, if somewhat painful.
Once C is something you're comfortable with, trying out C++ is an excellent next step, but that's probably best determined by what you want to / have to work on.
What makes you think you can't do both? By that I mean to have a good solid plan but also remain flexible and adaptable?
Again, what value is a 20 year plan that you know will be rendered moot? Outlining a set of guiding principles and building the capabilities required to quickly adapt to change would seem to me to be more effective.
Also, remember that for about 50 years in the 20th century, there was only moderate change int he scope of business communications. Telephones revolutionized business, and caused nearly everything that businesses did to change. The ability to effectively manage organizational units over long distances as well as to instantly communicate with customers and vendors anywhere caused a major upheaval in the corporate landscape, but after that it was a relatively smooth increase (Faxes changed things a bit, but not all that much).
The introduction of the Internet and more specifically, the World Wide Web has been far more disruptive than the telephone, however. It didn't just change communication fundamentally. It also introduced vast new markets and opportunities directly. 5 of the 30 DJIA companies are pure computer/Internet companies today, none of whom were on that list (and in most cases, didn't exist) prior to the 1980s.
People might hate IT so much that they are willing to give up control of their primary business assets, tools and functionality to someone else
But that's just the problem, isn't it? IT isn't a primary business asset, and never has been, in most industries. And yet, it sucks down as much as a third of many large organizations' budgets!
I'll point out, though, that I was replying to your comments about long-term planning, not the merits of cloud computing (which I think is horribly over-simplified in most contexts).
So it removes the federal laws against marijuana, legalizing marijuana federally. Got it.
No, it explicitly does not do that, which is what Slashdot got so wrong.
Marijuana, under this proposed law, would still be illegal at the Federal level, but the Federal Government would have no power to act in cases where there was no inter-state transport.
So, for example, if you grow pot and sell it to your neighbor, only the state would get involved. If the state wants to prosecute you for that, they can. If you sell it to your friend in the next state over, on the other hand, then you're still committing a feral crime.
The Washington Post article clarifies this (even though they still refer to it as "legalization" in the beginning of the story) along with pouring cold water on the idea that this bill is even a long-shot. It's not going to make it out of committee.
Almost all of my original media (CDs and LPs) for about 60% of my collection were lost in a fire several years ago.
Re-ripping isn't an option. RIAA says if I download a new copy, it is illegal and I have to buy new media, which RIAA claims is only a license to have one copy, which I already bought. Sort of like if I lost the title to my car I couldn't get a new title without buying a new car.
So fuck them. Just upload the music you have. If you bought more than 30% of it you're probably better than most.
While the above is atrocious legal advice, it's more likely than not going to be the norm. It's just sad that we're living in a time between the dark ages of zero digital media and the advent of a true digital media culture. It's patently obvious that we're going to have to get to the point that the average person can exist in a known legal state with respect to their media collection, but that's practically impossible today unless you single-source your media from a behemoth distributor who will stand behind you in court. That's not satisfactory.
My collection consists of a hodgepodge of tracks I ripped on Linux laptops at the dawn of cdparanoia from disks that have long since been lost during moves or destroyed, iTunes rips, iTunes purchases, Amazon MP3 free downloads, Amazon MP3 purchases, downloads from Jamendo and free online distributors and netlables, downloads from my musician friends of their own tracks, podcasts, and so on and so forth.
There is no practical way for me to "prove" that all of my music tracks are licensed for my use. It's simply an impossibility. Then we get into the legal grey area of ripping friends' CDs... the labels would love to claim that this is not legitimate, and that you must purchase the CDs in question... but that may or may not be defensible in court.
It gets even worse: legitimate bootlegs (e.g. of bands who allow recording); mashups; rips Web sources; recordings that include background music; and so forth.
In an ideal world, I'd say that we need the Federal Government to step in and provide a set of consumer- and artist- friendly media usage laws, but the problem is that the U.S. Congress is for sale, and most world governments follow U.S. lead with respect to media legislation (for the most part, but with notable exceptions).
I get upset with Glen Beck for calling everyone he disagrees with a Nazi, so I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't admonish you for going hyperbolic on this one.
universal healthcare is just insurance, that's all it is.
The U.S. plan passed by Obama is just insurance (well, that's the largest part of it). But, that's not what universal healthcare is in general. There are quite a few different systems out there. I think it was Frontline that recently did a pretty good job of dissecting the British, German, Swiss and Japanese systems to compare the different ways that they provide healthcare. It's enlightening to actually see what these countries do and what works well and does not, rather than just listening to U.S. politicians dismissively refer to all universal healthcare systems outside the U.S. as "socialism".
I'm not a VZW subscriber (I have AT&T unlimited data) but just with regular use alone I'm bumping up close to 2GB monthly (just e-mail, web, and social media use).
That said, I can burn through 2GB in a day in an airport watching Netflix over 3G. Hell, I've burned through half of that on the Stairmaster doing the same.
The bandwidth caps are entirely too low especially as the carriers roll out bigger pipes to the devices. This is nothing more than a money making venture for them (much like GSM networks charging for SMS) and it needs to be stopped by the people voting w/their feet to some new startup carrier that is smart enough to buck the trends.
Here's the problem from VZW's perspective: the usage you just pointed out is rare, right now, and completely new in terms of how their network gets used (e.g. movies). So, what should they do when usage, and thus costs start to go up? Just raise rates to pay for the extra towers and upstream bandwidth? Sure, they can do that, but joe average who just wants a way to phone, text and occasionally check email is probably not going to be able to justify the extra expense when his plan goes up dramatically.
So, what they're trying to do is create tiers, within which similar usage patterns pay for each other.
To my mind, the problems are: 1) There needs to be a tier with truly unlimited usage at the top so that that app I installed which gets far greedier than I thought it would, doesn't cost me a few thousand! 2) These companies need to start truly competing which each other in order to balance against the temptation to increase margins with every plan change, which I think is going to require opening up more spectrum to more players. The feds have to get involved in that last item. I also think that mergers (including T-Mobil) should require forfeiting most of the spectrum owned by the smaller of the two companies, to be divided up among other, smaller players in the market. Why? Because otherwise encouraging competition only feeds the merger-mill.
Why can't we discuss the risk of a coming ice age without it having to be a refutation of an unstated argument about its impact on global warming? Can't we just discuss it on its own merits?
The phrase, "not entirely true," is a clever deceit, often used in debates and the press, when the assumption is that the reader/listener doesn't know enough to see the trap. The fact of the matter is that, since the responder cannot know the full truth for certain, any use of this phrase is immediately void.
That pretty much describes the recent and current trends in business. When was the last time you heard "20 year plan" let alone "10 year plan" or even "5 year plan"? I used to hear that all the time as businesses made their strategies and plans with longevity and long term goals in mind. These days, you hear planning by the year and the quarter. Long term projects are killed because they cost short-term money with no immediate returns. If there is anything that kills progress, it is this.
TL;DR? Business has gotten immature and impatient.
Oh really?
What would a 20 year plan for IT have looked like 20 years ago when the ViolaWWW Hypermedia Browser and PGP had just been introduced?
I know that anything I laid out would have to be course-corrected several dozen times between then and now, and would probably have slowed any company down when it came to being able to adapt swiftly and adopt relevant technologies.
I don't think businesses have gotten immature. I think every business that couldn't adapt to radical and fundamental change in the technology landscape went out of business.
Whoops our entire corporate data has been stolen. Who is the blame? Sorry that was stolen from the cloud... Who gave the order to give our data to a foreign company? It is not so easy not to blame the person who was responsible for the cloud outsourcing.
Doom! Doom, I tells ya!
Truth is that there's no data in most companies that's not handled by external entities. Your medical data? Handed out to a dozen companies before you even get to see it (if you get to see it).
Instead of running around yelling about risk, why not actually perform a solid risk assessment? Start by analyzing the risks your own IT department poses. Especially in companies where what IT does has little to do with their core competency, it's usually a safe bet that they haven't managed to hire the best and the brightest (it's just not in their toolbox to select the right folks), so that risk is probably going to be key.
"No, I won't do that, that violates HIPAA," (or SOX or what have you) is not a valid answer. "We can do that, but I want to circle back through legal for the HIPAA implications," is the correct answer.
It's not your job to say, "no.' It most certainly is legal's job.
As to the example with the traveling salesman problem: I guess we have to come to an understanding about what "IT" is. When you talk about writing code for a customer... that's not what I see as an IT role, so I can't speak to it, but in a non-IT organization that would do that, and where the architects who know the job can't reasonably be done aren't involved in the specification and sign-off on the project, there's probably no future in the organization anyway, so just pack your bags and go.
It's certainly not a model which you can use to judge actual functional organizations.
So they'll "write a check" for the "cloud" service, but we are expected to provide whatever they want for free. I don't have a magic room where I keep equipment (and people) that I can pull out at the drop of a hat. Resources cost money, but they do not want to pay fr them wen the resources are internal, but can always find money to hire outsiders.
I've been on all sides of this argument, so let me take the contrary position: cloud services companies like Google spend an awful lot of time productizing. You want corporate email, document editing and $minimal amount of storage with the following 20 features over the Web and mobile devices? Pay $50/year per user. Various addon and third-party services are also provided, each with a per-user-per-year pricing model.
Now, I go over to my IT department and I ask what they're offering. After a half hour or so, I think I've generally got an idea of what we have and what it costs, but scaling costs are kind of fuzzy, and there's a lot of "unless something unexpected happens," and every time a new service is added, we'll end up hiring at least half a full time equivalent.
So, it's not a matter of "writing a check," or politics, so much as a clear understanding of how the service fits into your business now, and as your needs grow, both technically and financially.
The only environments in which I've worked where I don't think this would be an improvement are those where IT was run as if it were an external service provider, and that makes you wonder... if the external service provider model is the right one, why does it need to be in-house?
If the data is sensitive, you should be encrypting it anyway
Sure, because if the data is encrypted, the only people who can get into it are those with gigantic server farms. (Like Google)
This is a classic failure to perform risk analysis. There are risks associated with any data management plan. Storing the data on hosts maintained by your company can be extremely dangerous, especially if maintaining that environment isn't part of your company's core competency. All too often, companies find out that what they thought was a knowledgeable CTO was really just winging it, and hoping the IT staff they hired knew more than they did.
It doesn't matter, however. Cloud services aren't a fad. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of new, non-technical startups will all be forced into the cloud because the economics of supporting internal infrastructure for the typical business will become a competitive disadvantage. In fact, that's probably already the case. Once that happens, even technical businesses will be hard-pressed to continue to claim that having hard drives in your own hands represents some sort of critical benefit.
In-house IT staffs that sucked down 1/8th to 1/3rd of an organization's budget made sense for a brief window, there, but we had to know that we couldn't keep going on like that.
But, of course, any photo in which it could be determined whether or not the woman was wearing a burka would be a violation of the law, and you could heap on any number of other reasons for someone to be offended.
This means that when people say "the Republican party is the party of Abe Lincoln!", what they really mean to say is "I have no understanding of history, and how political parties can change with time, and how the continuity of a name does not imply the continuity of ideals".
No, that's not fair at all. The Republican party is the party of Abe Lincoln, just as the United States Government is the government of George Washington. It doesn't mean that there is a direct and unbroken line of political thought between the two.
Sure, Republicans have changed over time (as have the party from which they derived, the Democrats). But I don't see that as a reason to deny their history.
So, why don't you trust Google to hold your data, out of curiosity. I'm biased for various reasons, but I think it's a fair question to ask. I trust my bank to hold my data, even though I'm pretty sure they abuse it (after calling to ask about a refinance of my mortgage, for example, I got 5 cold-calls about mortgages in 2 days). I trust my ISP with my private data even though I'm pretty sure they have a direct tap for warrantless wiretapping. I trust all sorts of entities with my data who I know to be lying bastards, but I've never known Google to be such.
Everyone I know who works for them honestly believes that they try to do the right thing as often as they can. My friends who work for Yahoo! don't say that. My friends who work for Amazon don't quite say that, though they think it's better than most. My friends who work for many large corporations laugh a little or just get real quiet if you ask them that...
So the evidence that I have at my disposal says that:
There's no developmental deficiency (cognitive or otherwise) involved in the creation of contractions. In English, we've often denoted these with apostrophes, but they're not required. Adding new contractions to the language is usually a gradual process, and I'm sure the same will be true for leet... it's been in use for the better part of a generation, now, so it's definitely getting to the point that we should consider it seriously.
L33t? Wtf is wrong with these people?
The OED, contrary to what some may feel about it, isn't an arbiter of language. They record and reflect the language as it has existed in the past, and as it is used in the modern day. They also try to determine the difference between a passing neologism and an actual shift in the language. This isn't always easy, and l33t is a definite edge case that will require some thought, but Google says that the "33" spelling is in extremely common use, and was first used at least 16 years ago. Adding glyphs to the standard set of letters used in American and British English words is a big step, I admit, and doing so opens a floodgate, but it doesn't help anyone for the OED to ignore that it has happened.
It'd be time to give the cockroaches a go when that happens.
As a friend of mine once pointed out: language is not just about communicating information, it's (possibly just as importantly) about hiding it.
More specifically, we modify language in order to identify members of our social groups in ways that those outside of those groups do not understand. As a social group gains dominance, so too do their modifications to the language. Of course, the process of gaining a dominant position in a human society is an inherently contentious one.
This is why the parent post is comparing, favorably, the addition of a modified word that he does not approve of with the extinction of the human race. It's simple primate social dominance behavior (though it does demonstrate a lack of control over one's baser impulses).
You are assuming that the cable was "owned" by an entity that currently exists. In the case of that area of the world, this is not a valid assumption. In the Unite States or some of the more established parts of Europe, this would be valid, but in a country which has seen as many fundamental infrastructure changes as Georgia, I would not expect that to be true by default. In fact, I would expect a good chunk of the copper to have been laid by the former Soviet Union.
pontificating about the evils of software patents. Then he turned around and sued his biggest competitor, Barnes and Noble for infringing his one-click patent. Because when push comes to shove, those who have the weapons will use them.
The proper reaction to Google's statement is a collective eye roll.
Bull.
I'm sorry, but you're so far off-base, there's no way to even evaluate your statement. Google has been entirely on the side of patent reform since they started. We might disagree on some points (among ourselves and with Google), but there's no arguing which side of this battle they've been on.
I think this decision was an unfortunate one. I do think the terms of the settlement should have been challenged, but striking it entirely puts Google Books in jeopardy. Lest anyone forget, what Google has managed to do is to produce a reasonably accurate electronic library of millions of books, many of which do not exist in any other digital collection, even that of the publishers (and some publishers no longer exist). This is a vastly valuable asset. This ruling basically sends us back to the drawing board on how and when they can give the world access to it, if at all.
In 20 years, I suspect we'll look back at the state of digital publishing and wonder, "why did the library die?" Well, when we ask that question, this decision will be the answer. For lack of perfect, we selected nothing.
Oh, and this story is misleading. The summary says, "efforts are underway elsewhere to create a massive, public digital library, spurred in part by the recent ruling against Google Books." That's not true. This article is about an effort to study what form such a library should take and how it might be done. There's currently no effort I know of that's moving forward in any way other than Google Books.
Oh please, we're Slashdot. Can we not imagine a plethora of uses of an automated car that could advance the cause of transportation without being full-on-sleep-at-the-wheel robotic?! I'm imagining cargo-only highways, AI-lanes, robotic-assist-cruise-control, cars that drive themselves off the highway after an accident (presumably at the direction of the owner or law enforcement so they don't drag wounded people around), acceleration moderation for fuel efficiency, and perhaps robotic-assist during conditions where human vision sucks (i.e. fog).
I take strong exception to everyone in the financial sector being labeled a thief. I've worked for some excellent financial firms that have helped people to manage their finances and invest for the future. That there are amoral scumbags in the world is no shock, but just as most of the lawyers I've known are good people who try to do good in the world through their work (while their profession is tainted by the loudest minority), bankers and other fiduciaries provide an essential service which all too often does not receive the respect it deserves.
Slashdot Mirror
Python, Perl, Lisp, Scheme, BASIC, Java, JavaScript, shell... it doesn't matter. Pick up whatever feels most comfortable, or whatever tool is most readily available. Learn the basics of flow control, data structures, and the most fundamental algorithms. Learn how to debug, document, log, build, install and maintain.
Once you've mastered these basics, move immediately to C (not C++). Programming in C will teach you what it is that you're actually doing in that high level language, and force you to manage everything that you want to do. You don't just instantiate a new class to get a thread or forget about that variable's storage when you're done with it. You have to think about the details and understand them, and even if your entire career is spent writing Python, you still need to understand these things. I'd recommend assembly, but there's a lot more well documented sample code in C to work from, and getting larger projects done in C is still practical, if somewhat painful.
Once C is something you're comfortable with, trying out C++ is an excellent next step, but that's probably best determined by what you want to / have to work on.
What makes you think you can't do both? By that I mean to have a good solid plan but also remain flexible and adaptable?
Again, what value is a 20 year plan that you know will be rendered moot? Outlining a set of guiding principles and building the capabilities required to quickly adapt to change would seem to me to be more effective.
Also, remember that for about 50 years in the 20th century, there was only moderate change int he scope of business communications. Telephones revolutionized business, and caused nearly everything that businesses did to change. The ability to effectively manage organizational units over long distances as well as to instantly communicate with customers and vendors anywhere caused a major upheaval in the corporate landscape, but after that it was a relatively smooth increase (Faxes changed things a bit, but not all that much).
The introduction of the Internet and more specifically, the World Wide Web has been far more disruptive than the telephone, however. It didn't just change communication fundamentally. It also introduced vast new markets and opportunities directly. 5 of the 30 DJIA companies are pure computer/Internet companies today, none of whom were on that list (and in most cases, didn't exist) prior to the 1980s.
People might hate IT so much that they are willing to give up control of their primary business assets, tools and functionality to someone else
But that's just the problem, isn't it? IT isn't a primary business asset, and never has been, in most industries. And yet, it sucks down as much as a third of many large organizations' budgets!
I'll point out, though, that I was replying to your comments about long-term planning, not the merits of cloud computing (which I think is horribly over-simplified in most contexts).
So it removes the federal laws against marijuana, legalizing marijuana federally. Got it.
No, it explicitly does not do that, which is what Slashdot got so wrong.
Marijuana, under this proposed law, would still be illegal at the Federal level, but the Federal Government would have no power to act in cases where there was no inter-state transport.
So, for example, if you grow pot and sell it to your neighbor, only the state would get involved. If the state wants to prosecute you for that, they can. If you sell it to your friend in the next state over, on the other hand, then you're still committing a feral crime.
The Washington Post article clarifies this (even though they still refer to it as "legalization" in the beginning of the story) along with pouring cold water on the idea that this bill is even a long-shot. It's not going to make it out of committee.
Almost all of my original media (CDs and LPs) for about 60% of my collection were lost in a fire several years ago.
Re-ripping isn't an option. RIAA says if I download a new copy, it is illegal and I have to buy new media, which RIAA claims is only a license to have one copy, which I already bought. Sort of like if I lost the title to my car I couldn't get a new title without buying a new car.
So fuck them. Just upload the music you have. If you bought more than 30% of it you're probably better than most.
While the above is atrocious legal advice, it's more likely than not going to be the norm. It's just sad that we're living in a time between the dark ages of zero digital media and the advent of a true digital media culture. It's patently obvious that we're going to have to get to the point that the average person can exist in a known legal state with respect to their media collection, but that's practically impossible today unless you single-source your media from a behemoth distributor who will stand behind you in court. That's not satisfactory.
My collection consists of a hodgepodge of tracks I ripped on Linux laptops at the dawn of cdparanoia from disks that have long since been lost during moves or destroyed, iTunes rips, iTunes purchases, Amazon MP3 free downloads, Amazon MP3 purchases, downloads from Jamendo and free online distributors and netlables, downloads from my musician friends of their own tracks, podcasts, and so on and so forth.
There is no practical way for me to "prove" that all of my music tracks are licensed for my use. It's simply an impossibility. Then we get into the legal grey area of ripping friends' CDs... the labels would love to claim that this is not legitimate, and that you must purchase the CDs in question... but that may or may not be defensible in court.
It gets even worse: legitimate bootlegs (e.g. of bands who allow recording); mashups; rips Web sources; recordings that include background music; and so forth.
In an ideal world, I'd say that we need the Federal Government to step in and provide a set of consumer- and artist- friendly media usage laws, but the problem is that the U.S. Congress is for sale, and most world governments follow U.S. lead with respect to media legislation (for the most part, but with notable exceptions).
Sigh.
is haiti, somalia
I get upset with Glen Beck for calling everyone he disagrees with a Nazi, so I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't admonish you for going hyperbolic on this one.
universal healthcare is just insurance, that's all it is.
The U.S. plan passed by Obama is just insurance (well, that's the largest part of it). But, that's not what universal healthcare is in general. There are quite a few different systems out there. I think it was Frontline that recently did a pretty good job of dissecting the British, German, Swiss and Japanese systems to compare the different ways that they provide healthcare. It's enlightening to actually see what these countries do and what works well and does not, rather than just listening to U.S. politicians dismissively refer to all universal healthcare systems outside the U.S. as "socialism".
PS: Ah yes, in fact, here's their comparison: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/
I'm not a VZW subscriber (I have AT&T unlimited data) but just with regular use alone I'm bumping up close to 2GB monthly (just e-mail, web, and social media use).
That said, I can burn through 2GB in a day in an airport watching Netflix over 3G. Hell, I've burned through half of that on the Stairmaster doing the same.
The bandwidth caps are entirely too low especially as the carriers roll out bigger pipes to the devices. This is nothing more than a money making venture for them (much like GSM networks charging for SMS) and it needs to be stopped by the people voting w/their feet to some new startup carrier that is smart enough to buck the trends.
Here's the problem from VZW's perspective: the usage you just pointed out is rare, right now, and completely new in terms of how their network gets used (e.g. movies). So, what should they do when usage, and thus costs start to go up? Just raise rates to pay for the extra towers and upstream bandwidth? Sure, they can do that, but joe average who just wants a way to phone, text and occasionally check email is probably not going to be able to justify the extra expense when his plan goes up dramatically.
So, what they're trying to do is create tiers, within which similar usage patterns pay for each other.
To my mind, the problems are: 1) There needs to be a tier with truly unlimited usage at the top so that that app I installed which gets far greedier than I thought it would, doesn't cost me a few thousand! 2) These companies need to start truly competing which each other in order to balance against the temptation to increase margins with every plan change, which I think is going to require opening up more spectrum to more players. The feds have to get involved in that last item. I also think that mergers (including T-Mobil) should require forfeiting most of the spectrum owned by the smaller of the two companies, to be divided up among other, smaller players in the market. Why? Because otherwise encouraging competition only feeds the merger-mill.
Why can't we discuss the risk of a coming ice age without it having to be a refutation of an unstated argument about its impact on global warming? Can't we just discuss it on its own merits?
Not entirely true
The phrase, "not entirely true," is a clever deceit, often used in debates and the press, when the assumption is that the reader/listener doesn't know enough to see the trap. The fact of the matter is that, since the responder cannot know the full truth for certain, any use of this phrase is immediately void.
That pretty much describes the recent and current trends in business. When was the last time you heard "20 year plan" let alone "10 year plan" or even "5 year plan"? I used to hear that all the time as businesses made their strategies and plans with longevity and long term goals in mind. These days, you hear planning by the year and the quarter. Long term projects are killed because they cost short-term money with no immediate returns. If there is anything that kills progress, it is this.
TL;DR? Business has gotten immature and impatient.
Oh really?
What would a 20 year plan for IT have looked like 20 years ago when the ViolaWWW Hypermedia Browser and PGP had just been introduced?
I know that anything I laid out would have to be course-corrected several dozen times between then and now, and would probably have slowed any company down when it came to being able to adapt swiftly and adopt relevant technologies.
I don't think businesses have gotten immature. I think every business that couldn't adapt to radical and fundamental change in the technology landscape went out of business.
Whoops our entire corporate data has been stolen.
Who is the blame? Sorry that was stolen from the cloud...
Who gave the order to give our data to a foreign company?
It is not so easy not to blame the person who was responsible for the cloud outsourcing.
Doom! Doom, I tells ya!
Truth is that there's no data in most companies that's not handled by external entities. Your medical data? Handed out to a dozen companies before you even get to see it (if you get to see it).
Instead of running around yelling about risk, why not actually perform a solid risk assessment? Start by analyzing the risks your own IT department poses. Especially in companies where what IT does has little to do with their core competency, it's usually a safe bet that they haven't managed to hire the best and the brightest (it's just not in their toolbox to select the right folks), so that risk is probably going to be key.
All of your points are equally valid in an organization that outsources most of the routine IT infrastructure to cloud-based service providers.
IT still has a role, but it's a much smaller role once you've gotten rid of a large chunk of it.
"No, I won't do that, that violates HIPAA," (or SOX or what have you) is not a valid answer. "We can do that, but I want to circle back through legal for the HIPAA implications," is the correct answer.
It's not your job to say, "no.' It most certainly is legal's job.
As to the example with the traveling salesman problem: I guess we have to come to an understanding about what "IT" is. When you talk about writing code for a customer... that's not what I see as an IT role, so I can't speak to it, but in a non-IT organization that would do that, and where the architects who know the job can't reasonably be done aren't involved in the specification and sign-off on the project, there's probably no future in the organization anyway, so just pack your bags and go.
It's certainly not a model which you can use to judge actual functional organizations.
So they'll "write a check" for the "cloud" service, but we are expected to provide whatever they want for free. I don't have a magic room where I keep equipment (and people) that I can pull out at the drop of a hat. Resources cost money, but they do not want to pay fr them wen the resources are internal, but can always find money to hire outsiders.
I've been on all sides of this argument, so let me take the contrary position: cloud services companies like Google spend an awful lot of time productizing. You want corporate email, document editing and $minimal amount of storage with the following 20 features over the Web and mobile devices? Pay $50/year per user. Various addon and third-party services are also provided, each with a per-user-per-year pricing model.
Now, I go over to my IT department and I ask what they're offering. After a half hour or so, I think I've generally got an idea of what we have and what it costs, but scaling costs are kind of fuzzy, and there's a lot of "unless something unexpected happens," and every time a new service is added, we'll end up hiring at least half a full time equivalent.
So, it's not a matter of "writing a check," or politics, so much as a clear understanding of how the service fits into your business now, and as your needs grow, both technically and financially.
The only environments in which I've worked where I don't think this would be an improvement are those where IT was run as if it were an external service provider, and that makes you wonder... if the external service provider model is the right one, why does it need to be in-house?
If the data is sensitive, you should be encrypting it anyway
Sure, because if the data is encrypted, the only people who can get into it are those with gigantic server farms. (Like Google)
This is a classic failure to perform risk analysis. There are risks associated with any data management plan. Storing the data on hosts maintained by your company can be extremely dangerous, especially if maintaining that environment isn't part of your company's core competency. All too often, companies find out that what they thought was a knowledgeable CTO was really just winging it, and hoping the IT staff they hired knew more than they did.
It doesn't matter, however. Cloud services aren't a fad. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of new, non-technical startups will all be forced into the cloud because the economics of supporting internal infrastructure for the typical business will become a competitive disadvantage. In fact, that's probably already the case. Once that happens, even technical businesses will be hard-pressed to continue to claim that having hard drives in your own hands represents some sort of critical benefit.
In-house IT staffs that sucked down 1/8th to 1/3rd of an organization's budget made sense for a brief window, there, but we had to know that we couldn't keep going on like that.
Nope. Based on just those two requirements, this image of a woman would be acceptable: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meissnera.jpg
But, of course, any photo in which it could be determined whether or not the woman was wearing a burka would be a violation of the law, and you could heap on any number of other reasons for someone to be offended.
This means that when people say "the Republican party is the party of Abe Lincoln!", what they really mean to say is "I have no understanding of history, and how political parties can change with time, and how the continuity of a name does not imply the continuity of ideals".
No, that's not fair at all. The Republican party is the party of Abe Lincoln, just as the United States Government is the government of George Washington. It doesn't mean that there is a direct and unbroken line of political thought between the two.
Sure, Republicans have changed over time (as have the party from which they derived, the Democrats). But I don't see that as a reason to deny their history.
So, why don't you trust Google to hold your data, out of curiosity. I'm biased for various reasons, but I think it's a fair question to ask. I trust my bank to hold my data, even though I'm pretty sure they abuse it (after calling to ask about a refinance of my mortgage, for example, I got 5 cold-calls about mortgages in 2 days). I trust my ISP with my private data even though I'm pretty sure they have a direct tap for warrantless wiretapping. I trust all sorts of entities with my data who I know to be lying bastards, but I've never known Google to be such.
Everyone I know who works for them honestly believes that they try to do the right thing as often as they can. My friends who work for Yahoo! don't say that. My friends who work for Amazon don't quite say that, though they think it's better than most. My friends who work for many large corporations laugh a little or just get real quiet if you ask them that...
So the evidence that I have at my disposal says that:
1) Google's S1 filing is fairly honest (go read it... it's fascinating)
2) Google is, at worst, an altruistic company that may well change over time.
3) Given the choices that you do make to share personal data (with banks, ISPs, etc.) Google looks pretty good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beige_box
"Leet".. retarded but okay.
There's no developmental deficiency (cognitive or otherwise) involved in the creation of contractions. In English, we've often denoted these with apostrophes, but they're not required. Adding new contractions to the language is usually a gradual process, and I'm sure the same will be true for leet... it's been in use for the better part of a generation, now, so it's definitely getting to the point that we should consider it seriously.
L33t? Wtf is wrong with these people?
The OED, contrary to what some may feel about it, isn't an arbiter of language. They record and reflect the language as it has existed in the past, and as it is used in the modern day. They also try to determine the difference between a passing neologism and an actual shift in the language. This isn't always easy, and l33t is a definite edge case that will require some thought, but Google says that the "33" spelling is in extremely common use, and was first used at least 16 years ago. Adding glyphs to the standard set of letters used in American and British English words is a big step, I admit, and doing so opens a floodgate, but it doesn't help anyone for the OED to ignore that it has happened.
It'd be time to give the cockroaches a go when that happens.
As a friend of mine once pointed out: language is not just about communicating information, it's (possibly just as importantly) about hiding it.
More specifically, we modify language in order to identify members of our social groups in ways that those outside of those groups do not understand. As a social group gains dominance, so too do their modifications to the language. Of course, the process of gaining a dominant position in a human society is an inherently contentious one.
This is why the parent post is comparing, favorably, the addition of a modified word that he does not approve of with the extinction of the human race. It's simple primate social dominance behavior (though it does demonstrate a lack of control over one's baser impulses).
You are assuming that the cable was "owned" by an entity that currently exists. In the case of that area of the world, this is not a valid assumption. In the Unite States or some of the more established parts of Europe, this would be valid, but in a country which has seen as many fundamental infrastructure changes as Georgia, I would not expect that to be true by default. In fact, I would expect a good chunk of the copper to have been laid by the former Soviet Union.
pontificating about the evils of software patents. Then he turned around and sued his biggest competitor, Barnes and Noble for infringing his one-click patent. Because when push comes to shove, those who have the weapons will use them.
The proper reaction to Google's statement is a collective eye roll.
Bull.
I'm sorry, but you're so far off-base, there's no way to even evaluate your statement. Google has been entirely on the side of patent reform since they started. We might disagree on some points (among ourselves and with Google), but there's no arguing which side of this battle they've been on.
Instead, let's try a history lesson:
Once again, Slashdot take careful aim at the supporters of our favorite causes... go us :-/
I think this decision was an unfortunate one. I do think the terms of the settlement should have been challenged, but striking it entirely puts Google Books in jeopardy. Lest anyone forget, what Google has managed to do is to produce a reasonably accurate electronic library of millions of books, many of which do not exist in any other digital collection, even that of the publishers (and some publishers no longer exist). This is a vastly valuable asset. This ruling basically sends us back to the drawing board on how and when they can give the world access to it, if at all.
In 20 years, I suspect we'll look back at the state of digital publishing and wonder, "why did the library die?" Well, when we ask that question, this decision will be the answer. For lack of perfect, we selected nothing.
Oh, and this story is misleading. The summary says, "efforts are underway elsewhere to create a massive, public digital library, spurred in part by the recent ruling against Google Books." That's not true. This article is about an effort to study what form such a library should take and how it might be done. There's currently no effort I know of that's moving forward in any way other than Google Books.
Oh please, we're Slashdot. Can we not imagine a plethora of uses of an automated car that could advance the cause of transportation without being full-on-sleep-at-the-wheel robotic?! I'm imagining cargo-only highways, AI-lanes, robotic-assist-cruise-control, cars that drive themselves off the highway after an accident (presumably at the direction of the owner or law enforcement so they don't drag wounded people around), acceleration moderation for fuel efficiency, and perhaps robotic-assist during conditions where human vision sucks (i.e. fog).
I take strong exception to everyone in the financial sector being labeled a thief. I've worked for some excellent financial firms that have helped people to manage their finances and invest for the future. That there are amoral scumbags in the world is no shock, but just as most of the lawyers I've known are good people who try to do good in the world through their work (while their profession is tainted by the loudest minority), bankers and other fiduciaries provide an essential service which all too often does not receive the respect it deserves.