Well, there is a huge difference between ending a war and starting one. This is what separates justified and unjustified military action.
Oh, c'mon, that is a patently ridiculous assertion. Just a couple of examples:
US Revolutionary War - started to secure freedoms denied by the British crown - that's unjustifiable?
French Revolutionary War - much the same, but if the cause of revolt against tyranny is justifiable, then was all of the bloodshed and infighting justified?
US Civil War - fought against secession and slavery - again, by your reckoning, the Confederacy should have been left alone.
There is no hard and fast rule about justifiable war; aggression, "he started it," defense of this, opposition to that, it doesn't matter. History will ALWAYS make assessments of justifiability after the dust has settled; that's the way of it.
Regardless of justifiability (and no, the point of this is not to defend this or any other particular military action), the critical thing is how the war is conducted. In fact, views of justifiability are always going to be informed by actions like rape/torture/murder vs. active effort to keep civilians out of harm's way. The US military is far from perfect, but I don't believe that there is another army out there with a better record of accountability in recent years. Unfortunately, this became policy because of the horrific atrocities in Vietnam.
Let's face it; every war has atrocities, and every country has been at various times responsible for horrible and aggressive action that has resulted in massive deaths. This includes the US, France, the UK, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Turkey, Germany, Russia, India, Pakistan, China, Japan, Nigeria, Australia, the Vatican, Spain, et. al. There are no "peace-loving" peoples; everyone wants peace. There are no "war-mongering" peoples, everyone gets involved in wars. Everyone and no-one is innocent.
If your goal is peace, fighting wars rarely makes sense; however, if your goal is better world relations, neither does demonizing 280 million people.
Oh, c'mon, you can't blame Keynes for not fixing the problems in Japan. The notion that an influx of cash into an economy would spark increased economic output assumed a few things:
1. Population is growing (not so in Japan) 2. The savings rate isn't too high 3. Starting from a sound economic/fiscal base
The Japanese economy is in the tanks because the banks are, at best, shaky, the Japanese federal gov't debt is monstrous (far worse than the US, at least for the time being), and the Japanese people have no confidence in the economic system or leadership.
>> 2. Objectstore, at the time, had no concept of administration: OODB's are lacking in administrative sophistication. That's improving rapidly, but the point is still taken.
>> 5. There was no way to get a read-consistent hot backup Again, when you're fighting products with 20 years and $billions behind them, some features aren't going to be there. Since your project needed this, OS wasn't a valid option. However, you could have found that out in 15 minutes.
However, all of your programming-related arguments show some real misunderstanding of OO, and I suspect you know it.
The data could easily be modeled in an RDBMS because most programmers think of objects in terms of function, not in terms of data.
The arbitrary queries that you spoke about are a bit more difficult to do in an OODB, because typically the relationships are defined without input from the domain model, and therefore the levels of indirection rack up.
If other people wanted to use data, it's easy to give them views in the form of interfaces or aggregating indirection objects; no more complex than creating a view, but can enforce integrity and semantics.
In a nutshell, what happens is this: programmers here all of the glory stuff (no joins/CP, no conversion, no impedance mismatch), jump on the bandwagon, and get frustrated when they can't use the tool in the same way. They think that because they know dbs (almost always exclusively RDBMS) and oop (usually not very well) that they can jump in to a new technology without any time to familiarize themselves.
And don't give me that song and dance about how great these guys are; the issue isn't one of skill, it's a willingness to step out of one's comfort area.
I still think that OODB's (as this technology essentially is) represent the wave of the future. Who sells and RDBMS anymore? Last time I checked, they can all store object data, and call themselves ORDBMS.
First, let me start by saying that for specific applications, Citrix is great. It can do a lot of neat things. However, like many software packages, it is sold to meet whatever needs you have.
I worked for a while for a company that was setting up Citrix and selling the service to K-12. We had Citrix experience in-house, and the ability to put together enough hardware to render a movie. However, it just proved cost-ineffective when compared with other options. Citrix has very high costs that are not always obvious. It has never been called "easy to administer", and companies often have to hire Citrix consultants at least to do the initial setup.
I assume that you are running Windows, and that it isn't an option to switch to Linux. If I'm wrong, well, look at the LTSP posts. However, if I'm right, you can save a ton of money. The only thing preventing many schools from doing this is the stupidity of the IT managers.
0. Hire students, train them to replace hardware.
1. Dump Dell, Gateway, etc. PC hardware is a commodity, so why pay a premium? The usual reason is that "that's how a business is run." Businesses are typically run poorly.
2. Schedule everything around rotation and disposal. Don't throw out machines, cannibalize parts when you can. Have your student employees scavenge everything. When you do buy new, buy not-quite-state-of-the-art (not old, mind you, but do a price/performance graph of, say, processors, and you'll see a leveling of the curve; buy what's at the bend of the curve; this should take 2 minutes in a spreadsheet, yet it isn't done very much).
3. Don't replace monitors. This is such a boneheard maneuver. Typically, the reason given is that "they're so cheap now." Ugh. Your current monitor is free. Same goes for peripherals, keyboards, mice, etc.
4. Dump the expensive shared drives. They're nice, but no student ever said, "I'm not going there because I have to drag a disk around." Stick a zip drive and a CDROM burner in each PC, and stick a vending machine with zips and cdrw's in the lab. Hardware-wise, this might be more expensive (although it usually isn't), but hardware isn't the big cost for shared-drive servers. Software and maintenance and support contracts, etc., will be the expensive part. Local drives are virtually maintenance-free.
5. Don't buy a maintenance contract on anything! This is important; it's where companies make their profits, because the margin is so high. So what if you know some parts will fail? Chance are they'll fail under mfg. warranty, so you won't have to buy a new one. The usual response is, "it's only $200" or "but we need a contract for our $80,000 whozits". The first is silly, $200 is more than any single part in the whole machine. It also typically buys you service that doesn't exist; no one ever comes to your home or business within 24 hours, if ever; they don't make money doing that. As for the second, what are you doing with an $80,000 whozits? $80,000 is for supercomputers (beowulf Linux, of course). Get rid of it.
Most computer labs have a "burdened cost" per PC of over $4000/yr, including support. This is patently ridiculous. Before buying/buying into any system, including mine, figure out what your burdened cost is, then ask if your grandma could do better without any help. If the answer is yes, well, look for other options.
One of my favorite profs once said that all you need for a university is a room, some chairs, faculty, students, and a photocopier.
Why is it relevant that this is an Israeli company? I've done a search, and the country of origin is almost never mentioned, and yet here it's the third word of the blurb. It's given higher priority than any other piece of information. Why is that?
I'm not saying that I know why the author chose this contruction, but when labels are used like this, especially in the context of a critical (indeed, ridiculing) comment, it's hard not to wonder about the motivation.
Most of the hijackers were legally in the US, but the people who were going to blow up LAX on New Years 2000 came in through Canada. The border with Canada is, frankly, wide open. Remember, this isn't about fixing 9/11; that happened in the past, this is about the future. We may not be able to stop all terrorist attacks, but there is ample evidence that we can stop at least some.
I agree. Anyone who says that judges aren't an important part of the legal process need only look to Bush v. Gore. Judicial activism is one of the few signs that our democracy is alive and well, and even if I don't agree with every instance of it, it is creating a fair bit of churn.
As for judges not having leeway, well, I don't know about that. They may be limited to interpreting the law, but interpretation is a powerful tool, and the precedent of using the Constitution as a rule to defend civil liberties is as old as the federal court system itself.
1. Aerons, for office chairs, are inexpensive. A quick look online shows that my Haworth Improv (a fairly standard office chair) retails in the $850-900 range. In fact, very few people really have $100 office max cheapies because they break - remember, an office chair has someone's butt in it ~2000 hours a year. Most other chairs (including home-office specials and La-Z-Boys) have to go through a lot less wear and tear. Even a cheap office chair is $400 (you'd be surprise how little that gets you).
2. Aerons, for these companies, were good investments. I would be willing to bet that nothing that any of these companies put money into, from software to hardware to development to video games was cashed out for more than 50 cents on the dollar. Think about that; a $1500 computer goes for $150 a year later (10 cents on the dollar), but a 3-year-old Aeron is still $350 (50 cents on the dollar).
I'm pretty sure that I used a Mozilla 0.93 beta a few years back. It was back in '95, 'afore the turn of the century. Yep, I remember it like yesterday. It was a fancy new browser, much better'n Mosaic. And it still fit on a floppy disk, too. Y'know, the old 3.5-inchers, like you see in museums today. Had good jpeg support, that browser did, and a funny-lookin' dragon-thing in the corner.
Seriously, though, from the release of the _original_ 0.93 beta, they release Netscape 1.0 (was it called Navigator originally, or did that come later?) within 4 months (if'n I remember correctly). I wonder if it would be worthwhile starting a pool on when Moz will go gold. I wish them all the luck in the world (I'm really tired of other browsers).
- Try to ask the same questions to all candidates, but feel free to customize your follow-ups when warranted. The single biggest mistake I've seen is a scenario where candidates are asked very different questions, and no real comparison can be made.
- Ask questions that relate to the job at hand. Don't get theoretical unless the job involves heavy theory. A good interviewer will have enough understanding of the job at hand to be able to ask and understand answers to the question at hand.
- Don't ask leading, "I know the correct answer and you have to figure out what I'm thinking," questions. I've seen this happen as well; an interviewer asks a leading question, the candidate gives a reasonable (but perhaps incorrect) answer, or at least exposes some interesting and appropriate thoughts on the matter, and the interviewer says, "Wrong!"
- Don't assume that there is a piece of knowledge that is an absolute marker of proficiency or understanding of a topic. Sure, any experienced network admin would probably know about tcpdump, but there are certainly sysadmins who don't have extensive networking experience.
- Prepare for the interview process by assessing what knowledge you require of a candidate, and what you can teach. For example, you shouldn't expect candidates to have knowledge of the specific oddball hw/sw that you are using (e.g. eGate, Citrix, f5). Sure you might some who do, but don't assume that because they have experience with this one area that they are the ideal candidates.
- Others have mentioned it, but it bears repeating; ask _open-ended_ questions to get a sense of the candidate's thought process and problem-solving skills. It is impossible to know "everything there is to know" about any tech/IT job, so you must have someone who can think and solve problems.
Don't Think Job-Oriented
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CS vs CIS
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If your question is "Can I make decent money at a decent job with a CIS degreee?", the answer is yes.
But why are you in college? What do you want long-term? CS is a much better theoretical background in computers. Some people believe that CIS/MSI/IN degrees are better for working professionals. Do either of these statements make you feel one way or another?
I did NOT choose my major on the basis of a career. I majored, in fact, in English and History. I now have a good senior software engineering job, and I got into grad school without any hassle. Even if I had found myself careerless, I don't think I'd regret the choice I made.
If you just want to get a decent job, CS is probably a ludicrous choice. And don't discount CIS/MIS as moron domains. I know some really bright people who find academic CS distasteful and/or dated, and went CIS; I've also known horseshit programmers who love to talk about how great they are for going CS (CS majors have a tendency towards an ever-so-slight bias). Good companies typically hire people, not degrees.
So what to do? Do what you love. Find something, anything, that makes your heart go thump, and grab on with both hands. Don't waste your precious time in college plotting to make money, unless money is something you love (if so, get an MBA in finance or go entrepreneur). You'll know you are there when you find yourself taking tougher courses with tougher profs, ignoring grades, and talking excitedly to people about your subject, despite their glazed eyes.
You might want to consider the field of software engineering. I did my undergrad in English and History, and fairly easily got into a good SE program. I went through a similar process, and found that it was well nigh impossible to get an actual CS degree without taking a large number of fairly easy classes (data structures!).
Basically, the coursework focuses on working in the software world, and is not as theory-driven as an MSCS, but in practice you get to do a lot of fun stuff. I just finished a class in distributed databases (as in building them), and next semester I have a course in info retrieval. If you want to eventually be an academic, then this probably wouldn't be the program for you (although there are PhD's in this). There are AI classes and all that, too.
Check out the nearest big state university (I'm sorry, gonna assume you are in the US) and see if they have either an MS in software engineering, a Master of Software Engineering, or a Master of Software Systems. The admission requirements aren't lax, but if you did well in undergrad, have good references, decent GRE scores, and you work in the field, you'll probably get into the program.
One warning - they will run you through a few courses (survey of software engineering, project management, SQA, and maybe even a programming course) that can be very boring but incredibly useful if you are going into business software development.
If you are interested in more detail, feel free to contact me.
Sorry, I had to do this. Puns are way too much fun.
On a more serious note, this bodes well for network engineers who want to get into the satcom industry. The differences between the computer industry and the communications industry are rapidly disappearing.
I've been rather impressed with paymybills. Good site, good UI, and prompt service.
In particular, two things about PMB are very appealing: - they will help you expedite a bill quickly with a simple phone call - they have third-pary insurance (from Traveler's) to cover up to $100,000 of inappropriate use of your checking account
What role do you think pre-existing non-Linux-driven companies, such as Corel and IBM, will play in the Linux community? What do you think large, successful, profitable companies can offer to Linux and the community? How do you think that the influence of these companies will change Linux and the community?
I'll probably get flamed for this, but I guess I'd rather not see the death of Winmodems. What I'd like to see is a central framework for all software-driven modems under multiple OSes.
I know the problems with winmodems, and I know that it is pointless to say that "things should be this way." However, IBM was, last I heard, working on getting the i1400 series to run Linux OOB, and that they were therefore working on a Linux driver to run the modem - maybe they'll call it a Linmodem, then, but I doubt it. Clearly this move by these companies shows that there is a need for hw companies to provide interoperability to continue to compete in the market.
Sure, hardware-only modems have real advantages, but increasingly both laptops and desktops are shipping with Winmodems. I'm something of a laptop evangelist, and I'd like to see Linux take a bigger chunk of that market.
Perhaps, if IBM does get a softmodem working under Linux, that will start a ball rolling, as has happened with other things, and we can tick off another of the ever-shortening list of "Linux/*BSD can't do that."
I think you missed the point of my statement. I don't believe that using a proprietary OS is untenable because people do it ever day . My friends say that my car is impossible to drive a car like mine, but it gets me to work everyday, so they are at least guily of hyperbole. Alan Cox used a logical (and good) argument to prove that proprietary OSes aren't usable, but the fact that they are used indicates that his conclusion is flawed. Certainly, people have had bad experiences with proprietary OSes, but I certainly believe that similar experiences occur every day with OSS. Many companies have survived and thrived DESPITE using proprietary software, in some cases nearly exclusively.
Exactly my point. Companies like support contracts, for a number of reasons. Often, companies like them simply because of the fact that talented people are hard to get/keep, and they don't want to rely on having competent employees (sad, I know). When the professional OSS support channel becomes more seasoned, as I point out, OSS will have another bullet aimed directly at the arguments companies use to justify proprietary software.
Know, I'm not prevented from arguing in favor of OSS, I'm against criticizing people who have used proprietary software successfully for years/decades. I'm all in favor of a change, but there are definitely products where no decent OSS alternative exists, and there certainly are some first-rate proprietary software packages out there. When it can be proven that a business cannot succeed unless it uses OSS exclusively, then I can comfortably tell people that they are wrong, but I have to defer to successful experience for now. Also, while I'm no fan of MS, I wouldn't want to be the one responsible for force-training a large group of casual users to use Linux or *BSD, much as I love using them myself. The right product for the right purpose, eh? -Josh
Sorry, Ted, I can't agree with you. The internet is a good thing, on the whole, and parents who prevents their children from accessing it, if the parents can provide that access, are denying their children something which is quickly becoming essential to education. ('course, when I was a kid and I had to research something, we used these old-fashioned book-type things)
I do think that parents need to monitor their children's viewing/surfing/reading/listening habits, and that parents should then interfere when those habits are in conflict with their family's beliefs/practices. Getting gov't involved in censorship like that is pointless. However, we do have access control laws, for better or for worse. Some call it censorship, some don't.
This law is not about preventing children from accessing X. This law is a response to those who would take advantage of children directly. For example, a law which prevented a person from having explicit material which is accessible to children could be called a censorship law, while a law preventing people from exposing themselves to children is certainly NOT a censorship law.
This was NOT a random regulation implemented by the government. This is a reasonable response to the way that corporations have acted.
AN ANALOGY: Let's say I run a toy company, and so I need demographic information for children. Now, let's say that, in order to get the information, I got to a playground and start asking kids their names, their address, and all other kinds of personal information. In order to get kids to give me this info, I gave them candy. How long do you think it would be before somebody's creep-dar went off, and someone called the police (or just kicked my...)? Even if I explained my legitimate reason for wanting this info, I doubt I would be allowed to continue.
What many companies did was equivalent to this, except they used the web. They put forms on web sites geared towards kids, and they often gave kids incentive for providing info. The only real difference is that kid's web activity isn't so closely supervised that a parent would notice a kid filling out a form. Few parents would not notice a stranger talking to their child at a park.
This is, in my opinion, good legislation. It doesn't prevent companies from doing anything, it just makes them responsible for their actions, and it prevents them from using kids' trusting nature to violate the kids' (and their families) privacy.
Generally, I agree with Alan Cox. The advantages of proprietary, closed-source software (e.g., having a corporate entity to call or sue) are dubious at best, and the advantages of open-source software (e.g. community and multi-vendor support) are typically not understood by corporations.
However, I can't agree with his conclusion. He argues that running a proprietary OS is untenable. This isn't really realistic. At my last company, we had problems when we had to bounce important machines because they had been up so long (~2 years), that no-one had been around or could remember what to do when they came down (this was a problem of poor planning). The point is that, despite the fact that we were running a proprietary, closed-source OS (Solaris) on proprietary hardware (from the same company as the OS, no less!) we had as much stability as anyone has the right to expect.
The advantages of open-source are both obvious and important. There is a great support mechanism (the community itself). However, that mechanism, while typically very responsive, isn't truly "responsible", in that no-one is required to support anything. The formalized, "responsible" support mechanism for open-source software, of which Alan writes, is new, and I have yet to see a comprehensive review of the OSS support companies. When these companies reach a level of maturity (both experience + time) comparable to that of very good proprietary software company, they will be able to add much more to the community than simply saying, "Hey, we exist."
The best thing we can do is, of course, OSS advocacy. I selected my most recent job in part because it leans to OSS instead of the proprietary. But closed-source is, for now, the way some organizations and individuals will go, and I have trouble saying to them, "You're wrong."
I know many will disagree with me, so if you must, flame on.
Don't waste your time with the Illuminati trilogy; it's all a very long joke, and by the time you get to the punch line, you'll have wasted a great amount of time.
Asimov - doesn't have the style of Gibson, but wrote a number of great books. I'd recommend the Robot Trilogy and the Foundation Trilogy (and the 4 or 5 other related books), but I read this stuff when I was twelve - it may be too puerile for your taste (don't know your age).
Clarke - wow, spent many found hours with good ol' (Sir) Arthur C. He's more cerebral than Asimov, but sometimes there isn't much story or plot. Definitely read 2001 and 2010 , and Rendezvous with Rama and the second Rama book. Don't bother finishing any of his book series, they end horribly. For example, 2061 was mediocre, but 3001 was just monstrously bad.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, try Stanislaw Lem. He's a bit hard to find, and he is weird. Try The Cyberiad and The Futurological Congress . Lem should get more props - he's really important, but people tend to shy away from translated work.
Kurt Vonnegut. Anything. Start with Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five , but I don't think he's written anything second-rate. NOTE: Not all of his work (and arguably none of his work) is scifi. Also, avoid Slapstick till you've read some of his other work.
Philip K. Dick. Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep has a delicious cyberpunk feel to it, but it predates the genre. Very influential.
Jorge Luis Borges. Possibly one of the greatest writers of all time, and ertainly one of my favorites. Borges wrote in a genre called magic realism; it'll make you think of Twilight Zone. Try Ficciones. One favorite story is "The Garden of the Forking Paths".
That's hardly all of them - I've left out everyone from Jules Verne to Douglas Adams. However, this is probably a good start.
I realize that the story was skeptical, but IBM doesn't make decisions lightly. They make mistakes, sure, but carefully thought-out mistakes, and historically, they have made a lot of very good decisions.
Selling computers through the internet has a couple of advantages: 1. lower overhead (at least in theory) 2. presentation control The first is obvious, but the second is, in my opinion, more crucial. The computer market has grown in complexity, and retail stores have not kept up. Sure, their are some bright people out there working at Best Buy and Circuit City, but for the most part these people, in my experience, are sorely in need of information.
Differentiation is vital to a company like IBM. They charge more for the "same" machine as some competitors, and therefore, they have to make the consumer aware of the IBM added value. With web sales, they can control and monitor the information made available to the consumer, and that is a real boon.
I don't know that this will really bring about the end of the (indirect) retail channel, but it wouldn't surprise me to see others follow suit. Look how well Dell and Gateway do, despite their products' premiums - they have primarily direct (that is, more controlled)-channel sales.
Let's look at the various distributed computing projects:
SETI@home : a neat, geek-friendly, worthy cause, but hardly practical, and they have plenty of CPU - they don't need mine. This project is currently running, and while they had growing pains a while ago, they have been solved. One problem remains (as far as I know); they client still slows to 1/3 speed if you have the visuals turned on.
distributed.net encryption cracks : for a long time, the most practical distributed computing projects around, and certainly the most advanced, but I think that they (and others) have clearly proven the point re: encryption (i.e. that we need access to stronger encryption), and while we don't have perfect regulations, one more crack ain't gonna do it. These are also running, and have been for years now. They had some problems with stats a while ago, but they haven't had a problem of not sending out new work in a long time (if ever).
d.net's OGR project : good scientific research, certainly, but really, just giving some grad student thesis fodder. You're not gonna solve world hunger or anything. Also, it isn't running yet.
Casino-21 Project : wow, some practical application. Also very different from other projects, because it is devoted not to "solving a riddle", but to predicting a complex system. Of course, it's not running yet, either.
I'm sure there are others, but that should cover the big ones, and all of the major categories. For now, it's d.net rc5-64 for me, but as soon as Casino-21 starts, I'm going to switch. I hate to sound like a whiny earth-tone, but I have to say I think the environment is important, and certainly is much more proximate to me than aliens (I think) (I hope, too). This project may not solve global warming, but as GI Joe says, "Knowing is half the battle."
-Yoshi
Re:Gee, why bother with cats?
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The Cat Cam
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Why did you name your cat after Dan Quayle? I think that is much crueler to an animal than this experiment.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, c'mon, that is a patently ridiculous assertion. Just a couple of examples:
- US Revolutionary War - started to secure freedoms denied by the British crown - that's unjustifiable?
- French Revolutionary War - much the same, but if the cause of revolt against tyranny is justifiable, then was all of the bloodshed and infighting justified?
- US Civil War - fought against secession and slavery - again, by your reckoning, the Confederacy should have been left alone.
There is no hard and fast rule about justifiable war; aggression, "he started it," defense of this, opposition to that, it doesn't matter. History will ALWAYS make assessments of justifiability after the dust has settled; that's the way of it.Regardless of justifiability (and no, the point of this is not to defend this or any other particular military action), the critical thing is how the war is conducted. In fact, views of justifiability are always going to be informed by actions like rape/torture/murder vs. active effort to keep civilians out of harm's way. The US military is far from perfect, but I don't believe that there is another army out there with a better record of accountability in recent years. Unfortunately, this became policy because of the horrific atrocities in Vietnam.
Let's face it; every war has atrocities, and every country has been at various times responsible for horrible and aggressive action that has resulted in massive deaths. This includes the US, France, the UK, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Turkey, Germany, Russia, India, Pakistan, China, Japan, Nigeria, Australia, the Vatican, Spain, et. al. There are no "peace-loving" peoples; everyone wants peace. There are no "war-mongering" peoples, everyone gets involved in wars. Everyone and no-one is innocent.
If your goal is peace, fighting wars rarely makes sense; however, if your goal is better world relations, neither does demonizing 280 million people.
-Yoshi
Neither of them mine:
TWAIN - Toolkit Without an Important Name
cat.schroedinger - sometimes it would cat your file, other times it wouldn't
-Josh
Oh, c'mon, you can't blame Keynes for not fixing the problems in Japan. The notion that an influx of cash into an economy would spark increased economic output assumed a few things:
1. Population is growing (not so in Japan)
2. The savings rate isn't too high
3. Starting from a sound economic/fiscal base
The Japanese economy is in the tanks because the banks are, at best, shaky, the Japanese federal gov't debt is monstrous (far worse than the US, at least for the time being), and the Japanese people have no confidence in the economic system or leadership.
Keynesian pump-priming doesn't work, my ass.
-Josh
OK, you make a few good points:
>> 2. Objectstore, at the time, had no concept of administration:
OODB's are lacking in administrative sophistication. That's improving rapidly, but the point is still taken.
>> 5. There was no way to get a read-consistent hot backup
Again, when you're fighting products with 20 years and $billions behind them, some features aren't going to be there. Since your project needed this, OS wasn't a valid option. However, you could have found that out in 15 minutes.
However, all of your programming-related arguments show some real misunderstanding of OO, and I suspect you know it.
The data could easily be modeled in an RDBMS because most programmers think of objects in terms of function, not in terms of data.
The arbitrary queries that you spoke about are a bit more difficult to do in an OODB, because typically the relationships are defined without input from the domain model, and therefore the levels of indirection rack up.
If other people wanted to use data, it's easy to give them views in the form of interfaces or aggregating indirection objects; no more complex than creating a view, but can enforce integrity and semantics.
In a nutshell, what happens is this: programmers here all of the glory stuff (no joins/CP, no conversion, no impedance mismatch), jump on the bandwagon, and get frustrated when they can't use the tool in the same way. They think that because they know dbs (almost always exclusively RDBMS) and oop (usually not very well) that they can jump in to a new technology without any time to familiarize themselves.
And don't give me that song and dance about how great these guys are; the issue isn't one of skill, it's a willingness to step out of one's comfort area.
I still think that OODB's (as this technology essentially is) represent the wave of the future. Who sells and RDBMS anymore? Last time I checked, they can all store object data, and call themselves ORDBMS.
-Josh
First, let me start by saying that for specific applications, Citrix is great. It can do a lot of neat things. However, like many software packages, it is sold to meet whatever needs you have.
I worked for a while for a company that was setting up Citrix and selling the service to K-12. We had Citrix experience in-house, and the ability to put together enough hardware to render a movie. However, it just proved cost-ineffective when compared with other options. Citrix has very high costs that are not always obvious. It has never been called "easy to administer", and companies often have to hire Citrix consultants at least to do the initial setup.
I assume that you are running Windows, and that it isn't an option to switch to Linux. If I'm wrong, well, look at the LTSP posts. However, if I'm right, you can save a ton of money. The only thing preventing many schools from doing this is the stupidity of the IT managers.
0. Hire students, train them to replace hardware.
1. Dump Dell, Gateway, etc. PC hardware is a commodity, so why pay a premium? The usual reason is that "that's how a business is run." Businesses are typically run poorly.
2. Schedule everything around rotation and disposal. Don't throw out machines, cannibalize parts when you can. Have your student employees scavenge everything. When you do buy new, buy not-quite-state-of-the-art (not old, mind you, but do a price/performance graph of, say, processors, and you'll see a leveling of the curve; buy what's at the bend of the curve; this should take 2 minutes in a spreadsheet, yet it isn't done very much).
3. Don't replace monitors. This is such a boneheard maneuver. Typically, the reason given is that "they're so cheap now." Ugh. Your current monitor is free. Same goes for peripherals, keyboards, mice, etc.
4. Dump the expensive shared drives. They're nice, but no student ever said, "I'm not going there because I have to drag a disk around." Stick a zip drive and a CDROM burner in each PC, and stick a vending machine with zips and cdrw's in the lab. Hardware-wise, this might be more expensive (although it usually isn't), but hardware isn't the big cost for shared-drive servers. Software and maintenance and support contracts, etc., will be the expensive part. Local drives are virtually maintenance-free.
5. Don't buy a maintenance contract on anything! This is important; it's where companies make their profits, because the margin is so high. So what if you know some parts will fail? Chance are they'll fail under mfg. warranty, so you won't have to buy a new one. The usual response is, "it's only $200" or "but we need a contract for our $80,000 whozits". The first is silly, $200 is more than any single part in the whole machine. It also typically buys you service that doesn't exist; no one ever comes to your home or business within 24 hours, if ever; they don't make money doing that. As for the second, what are you doing with an $80,000 whozits? $80,000 is for supercomputers (beowulf Linux, of course). Get rid of it.
Most computer labs have a "burdened cost" per PC of over $4000/yr, including support. This is patently ridiculous. Before buying/buying into any system, including mine, figure out what your burdened cost is, then ask if your grandma could do better without any help. If the answer is yes, well, look for other options.
One of my favorite profs once said that all you need for a university is a room, some chairs, faculty, students, and a photocopier.
Right on, right on.
-Josh
Why is it relevant that this is an Israeli company? I've done a search, and the country of origin is almost never mentioned, and yet here it's the third word of the blurb. It's given higher priority than any other piece of information. Why is that?
I'm not saying that I know why the author chose this contruction, but when labels are used like this, especially in the context of a critical (indeed, ridiculing) comment, it's hard not to wonder about the motivation.
Most of the hijackers were legally in the US, but the people who were going to blow up LAX on New Years 2000 came in through Canada. The border with Canada is, frankly, wide open. Remember, this isn't about fixing 9/11; that happened in the past, this is about the future. We may not be able to stop all terrorist attacks, but there is ample evidence that we can stop at least some.
>>The more pissed off judges get the better.
I agree. Anyone who says that judges aren't an important part of the legal process need only look to Bush v. Gore. Judicial activism is one of the few signs that our democracy is alive and well, and even if I don't agree with every instance of it, it is creating a fair bit of churn.
As for judges not having leeway, well, I don't know about that. They may be limited to interpreting the law, but interpretation is a powerful tool, and the precedent of using the Constitution as a rule to defend civil liberties is as old as the federal court system itself.
-Josh
A couple of thoughts:
1. Aerons, for office chairs, are inexpensive. A quick look online shows that my Haworth Improv (a fairly standard office chair) retails in the $850-900 range. In fact, very few people really have $100 office max cheapies because they break - remember, an office chair has someone's butt in it ~2000 hours a year. Most other chairs (including home-office specials and La-Z-Boys) have to go through a lot less wear and tear. Even a cheap office chair is $400 (you'd be surprise how little that gets you).
2. Aerons, for these companies, were good investments. I would be willing to bet that nothing that any of these companies put money into, from software to hardware to development to video games was cashed out for more than 50 cents on the dollar. Think about that; a $1500 computer goes for $150 a year later (10 cents on the dollar), but a 3-year-old Aeron is still $350 (50 cents on the dollar).
-Josh
I'm pretty sure that I used a Mozilla 0.93 beta a few years back. It was back in '95, 'afore the turn of the century. Yep, I remember it like yesterday. It was a fancy new browser, much better'n Mosaic. And it still fit on a floppy disk, too. Y'know, the old 3.5-inchers, like you see in museums today. Had good jpeg support, that browser did, and a funny-lookin' dragon-thing in the corner.
Seriously, though, from the release of the _original_ 0.93 beta, they release Netscape 1.0 (was it called Navigator originally, or did that come later?) within 4 months (if'n I remember correctly). I wonder if it would be worthwhile starting a pool on when Moz will go gold. I wish them all the luck in the world (I'm really tired of other browsers).
-Josh
A few thoughts on interviewing in general:
- Try to ask the same questions to all candidates, but feel free to customize your follow-ups when warranted. The single biggest mistake I've seen is a scenario where candidates are asked very different questions, and no real comparison can be made.
- Ask questions that relate to the job at hand. Don't get theoretical unless the job involves heavy theory. A good interviewer will have enough understanding of the job at hand to be able to ask and understand answers to the question at hand.
- Don't ask leading, "I know the correct answer and you have to figure out what I'm thinking," questions. I've seen this happen as well; an interviewer asks a leading question, the candidate gives a reasonable (but perhaps incorrect) answer, or at least exposes some interesting and appropriate thoughts on the matter, and the interviewer says, "Wrong!"
- Don't assume that there is a piece of knowledge that is an absolute marker of proficiency or understanding of a topic. Sure, any experienced network admin would probably know about tcpdump, but there are certainly sysadmins who don't have extensive networking experience.
- Prepare for the interview process by assessing what knowledge you require of a candidate, and what you can teach. For example, you shouldn't expect candidates to have knowledge of the specific oddball hw/sw that you are using (e.g. eGate, Citrix, f5). Sure you might some who do, but don't assume that because they have experience with this one area that they are the ideal candidates.
- Others have mentioned it, but it bears repeating; ask _open-ended_ questions to get a sense of the candidate's thought process and problem-solving skills. It is impossible to know "everything there is to know" about any tech/IT job, so you must have someone who can think and solve problems.
If your question is "Can I make decent money at a decent job with a CIS degreee?", the answer is yes.
But why are you in college? What do you want long-term? CS is a much better theoretical background in computers. Some people believe that CIS/MSI/IN degrees are better for working professionals. Do either of these statements make you feel one way or another?
I did NOT choose my major on the basis of a career. I majored, in fact, in English and History. I now have a good senior software engineering job, and I got into grad school without any hassle. Even if I had found myself careerless, I don't think I'd regret the choice I made.
If you just want to get a decent job, CS is probably a ludicrous choice. And don't discount CIS/MIS as moron domains. I know some really bright people who find academic CS distasteful and/or dated, and went CIS; I've also known horseshit programmers who love to talk about how great they are for going CS (CS majors have a tendency towards an ever-so-slight bias). Good companies typically hire people, not degrees.
So what to do? Do what you love. Find something, anything, that makes your heart go thump, and grab on with both hands. Don't waste your precious time in college plotting to make money, unless money is something you love (if so, get an MBA in finance or go entrepreneur). You'll know you are there when you find yourself taking tougher courses with tougher profs, ignoring grades, and talking excitedly to people about your subject, despite their glazed eyes.
You might want to consider the field of software engineering. I did my undergrad in English and History, and fairly easily got into a good SE program. I went through a similar process, and found that it was well nigh impossible to get an actual CS degree without taking a large number of fairly easy classes (data structures!).
Basically, the coursework focuses on working in the software world, and is not as theory-driven as an MSCS, but in practice you get to do a lot of fun stuff. I just finished a class in distributed databases (as in building them), and next semester I have a course in info retrieval. If you want to eventually be an academic, then this probably wouldn't be the program for you (although there are PhD's in this). There are AI classes and all that, too.
Check out the nearest big state university (I'm sorry, gonna assume you are in the US) and see if they have either an MS in software engineering, a Master of Software Engineering, or a Master of Software Systems. The admission requirements aren't lax, but if you did well in undergrad, have good references, decent GRE scores, and you work in the field, you'll probably get into the program.
One warning - they will run you through a few courses (survey of software engineering, project management, SQA, and maybe even a programming course) that can be very boring but incredibly useful if you are going into business software development.
If you are interested in more detail, feel free to contact me.
Sorry, I had to do this. Puns are way too much fun.
On a more serious note, this bodes well for network engineers who want to get into the satcom industry. The differences between the computer industry and the communications industry are rapidly disappearing.
-Josh
I've been rather impressed with paymybills. Good site, good UI, and prompt service.
In particular, two things about PMB are very appealing:
- they will help you expedite a bill quickly with a simple phone call
- they have third-pary insurance (from Traveler's) to cover up to $100,000 of inappropriate use of your checking account
-Jos
What role do you think pre-existing non-Linux-driven companies, such as Corel and IBM, will play in the Linux community? What do you think large, successful, profitable companies can offer to Linux and the community? How do you think that the influence of these companies will change Linux and the community?
-Joshua
I'll probably get flamed for this, but I guess I'd rather not see the death of Winmodems. What I'd like to see is a central framework for all software-driven modems under multiple OSes.
I know the problems with winmodems, and I know that it is pointless to say that "things should be this way." However, IBM was, last I heard, working on getting the i1400 series to run Linux OOB, and that they were therefore working on a Linux driver to run the modem - maybe they'll call it a Linmodem, then, but I doubt it. Clearly this move by these companies shows that there is a need for hw companies to provide interoperability to continue to compete in the market.
Sure, hardware-only modems have real advantages, but increasingly both laptops and desktops are shipping with Winmodems. I'm something of a laptop evangelist, and I'd like to see Linux take a bigger chunk of that market.
Perhaps, if IBM does get a softmodem working under Linux, that will start a ball rolling, as has happened with other things, and we can tick off another of the ever-shortening list of "Linux/*BSD can't do that."
-Josk
Certainly, people have had bad experiences with proprietary OSes, but I certainly believe that similar experiences occur every day with OSS. Many companies have survived and thrived DESPITE using proprietary software, in some cases nearly exclusively.
Sorry, Ted, I can't agree with you. The internet is a good thing, on the whole, and parents who prevents their children from accessing it, if the parents can provide that access, are denying their children something which is quickly becoming essential to education. ('course, when I was a kid and I had to research something, we used these old-fashioned book-type things)
I do think that parents need to monitor their children's viewing/surfing/reading/listening habits, and that parents should then interfere when those habits are in conflict with their family's beliefs/practices. Getting gov't involved in censorship like that is pointless. However, we do have access control laws, for better or for worse. Some call it censorship, some don't.
This law is not about preventing children from accessing X. This law is a response to those who would take advantage of children directly. For example, a law which prevented a person from having explicit material which is accessible to children could be called a censorship law, while a law preventing people from exposing themselves to children is certainly NOT a censorship law.
-Josh
This was NOT a random regulation implemented by the government. This is a reasonable response to the way that corporations have acted.
AN ANALOGY:
Let's say I run a toy company, and so I need demographic information for children. Now, let's say that, in order to get the information, I got to a playground and start asking kids their names, their address, and all other kinds of personal information. In order to get kids to give me this info, I gave them candy. How long do you think it would be before somebody's creep-dar went off, and someone called the police (or just kicked my...)? Even if I explained my legitimate reason for wanting this info, I doubt I would be allowed to continue.
What many companies did was equivalent to this, except they used the web. They put forms on web sites geared towards kids, and they often gave kids incentive for providing info. The only real difference is that kid's web activity isn't so closely supervised that a parent would notice a kid filling out a form. Few parents would not notice a stranger talking to their child at a park.
This is, in my opinion, good legislation. It doesn't prevent companies from doing anything, it just makes them responsible for their actions, and it prevents them from using kids' trusting nature to violate the kids' (and their families) privacy.
-Josh
Generally, I agree with Alan Cox. The advantages of proprietary, closed-source software (e.g., having a corporate entity to call or sue) are dubious at best, and the advantages of open-source software (e.g. community and multi-vendor support) are typically not understood by corporations.
However, I can't agree with his conclusion. He argues that running a proprietary OS is untenable. This isn't really realistic. At my last company, we had problems when we had to bounce important machines because they had been up so long (~2 years), that no-one had been around or could remember what to do when they came down (this was a problem of poor planning). The point is that, despite the fact that we were running a proprietary, closed-source OS (Solaris) on proprietary hardware (from the same company as the OS, no less!) we had as much stability as anyone has the right to expect.
The advantages of open-source are both obvious and important. There is a great support mechanism (the community itself). However, that mechanism, while typically very responsive, isn't truly "responsible", in that no-one is required to support anything. The formalized, "responsible" support mechanism for open-source software, of which Alan writes, is new, and I have yet to see a comprehensive review of the OSS support companies. When these companies reach a level of maturity (both experience + time) comparable to that of very good proprietary software company, they will be able to add much more to the community than simply saying, "Hey, we exist."
The best thing we can do is, of course, OSS advocacy. I selected my most recent job in part because it leans to OSS instead of the proprietary. But closed-source is, for now, the way some organizations and individuals will go, and I have trouble saying to them, "You're wrong."
I know many will disagree with me, so if you must, flame on.
-Josh
- Don't waste your time with the Illuminati trilogy; it's all a very long joke, and by the time you get to the punch line, you'll have wasted a great amount of time.
- Asimov - doesn't have the style of Gibson, but wrote a number of great books. I'd recommend the Robot Trilogy and the Foundation Trilogy (and the 4 or 5 other related books), but I read this stuff when I was twelve - it may be too puerile for your taste (don't know your age).
- Clarke - wow, spent many found hours with good ol' (Sir) Arthur C. He's more cerebral than Asimov, but sometimes there isn't much story or plot. Definitely read 2001 and 2010 , and Rendezvous with Rama and the second Rama book. Don't bother finishing any of his book series, they end horribly. For example, 2061 was mediocre, but 3001 was just monstrously bad.
- On the opposite end of the spectrum, try Stanislaw Lem. He's a bit hard to find, and he is weird. Try The Cyberiad and The Futurological Congress . Lem should get more props - he's really important, but people tend to shy away from translated work.
- Kurt Vonnegut. Anything. Start with Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five , but I don't think he's written anything second-rate. NOTE: Not all of his work (and arguably none of his work) is scifi. Also, avoid Slapstick till you've read some of his other work.
- Philip K. Dick. Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep has a delicious cyberpunk feel to it, but it predates the genre. Very influential.
- Jorge Luis Borges. Possibly one of the greatest writers of all time, and ertainly one of my favorites. Borges wrote in a genre called magic realism; it'll make you think of Twilight Zone. Try Ficciones. One favorite story is "The Garden of the Forking Paths".
That's hardly all of them - I've left out everyone from Jules Verne to Douglas Adams. However, this is probably a good start.-Josh
I realize that the story was skeptical, but IBM doesn't make decisions lightly. They make mistakes, sure, but carefully thought-out mistakes, and historically, they have made a lot of very good decisions.
Selling computers through the internet has a couple of advantages:
1. lower overhead (at least in theory)
2. presentation control
The first is obvious, but the second is, in my opinion, more crucial. The computer market has grown in complexity, and retail stores have not kept up. Sure, their are some bright people out there working at Best Buy and Circuit City, but for the most part these people, in my experience, are sorely in need of information.
Differentiation is vital to a company like IBM. They charge more for the "same" machine as some competitors, and therefore, they have to make the consumer aware of the IBM added value. With web sales, they can control and monitor the information made available to the consumer, and that is a real boon.
I don't know that this will really bring about the end of the (indirect) retail channel, but it wouldn't surprise me to see others follow suit. Look how well Dell and Gateway do, despite their products' premiums - they have primarily direct (that is, more controlled)-channel sales.
-Yoshi
- SETI@home : a neat, geek-friendly, worthy cause, but hardly practical, and they have plenty of CPU - they don't need mine. This project is currently running, and while they had growing pains a while ago, they have been solved. One problem remains (as far as I know); they client still slows to 1/3 speed if you have the visuals turned on.
- distributed.net encryption cracks : for a long time, the most practical distributed computing projects around, and certainly the most advanced, but I think that they (and others) have clearly proven the point re: encryption (i.e. that we need access to stronger encryption), and while we don't have perfect regulations, one more crack ain't gonna do it. These are also running, and have been for years now. They had some problems with stats a while ago, but they haven't had a problem of not sending out new work in a long time (if ever).
- d.net's OGR project : good scientific research, certainly, but really, just giving some grad student thesis fodder. You're not gonna solve world hunger or anything. Also, it isn't running yet.
- Casino-21 Project : wow, some practical application. Also very different from other projects, because it is devoted not to "solving a riddle", but to predicting a complex system. Of course, it's not running yet, either.
I'm sure there are others, but that should cover the big ones, and all of the major categories. For now, it's d.net rc5-64 for me, but as soon as Casino-21 starts, I'm going to switch. I hate to sound like a whiny earth-tone, but I have to say I think the environment is important, and certainly is much more proximate to me than aliens (I think) (I hope, too). This project may not solve global warming, but as GI Joe says, "Knowing is half the battle."-Yoshi
Why did you name your cat after Dan Quayle? I think that is much crueler to an animal than this experiment.
Wasn't there a White House pet named Millie?
-Josh