As long as it doesn't break the fundamentals...
on
Does launchd Beat cron?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Apple is doing a good thing here is shaking up the administrative and setup side of the UNIX world. Most of their work was actually NeXT's, but their "Application as directory" concept is wonderful in a lot of ways, and their reorganizing of the filesystem so that it makes more sense to users is probably a good move in the long run.
What makes UNIX superior for management and power-users is the ability to do everything you need to from command-line tools and options, and the fact that the storage for configuration is in understandable, alterable files. If those are still there...if I can still run my Apple from the shell--I'm a happy man.
The only exception to this would be cases where a vendor deliberately makes a deviation simply to introduce incompatibilities. I don't see that as the case here.
The big problem is that the standard Java look and feel is terrible. However, the Windows Look and Feel as well as some of the other alternative ones (particularly the Aqua Look and Feel of the Mac JVM) is just as good. You don't need SWT for that.
When I was on a corporate Linux migration project and we had shirts made with Tux and the company name on them. We had _hundreds_ of people from janitorial staff to the president asking if they could have one of the shirts. We could have sold them for big bucks and people would have bought them.
My son likes his Tux stuffed animal and my mom likes him too. The woman at the 7-11 where I buy my morning Diet Vanilla Coke likes Tux.
Why? Tux is cool, and Tux is cute. You can't _not_ like him. IBM and SGI and Microsoft have their simple logos that let you know who owns what. Tux just wants to offer you a bit of his fish.
You know, I read this, and it just doesn't sounds like enough information to really give the original question-asker an answer. My answer would range from "quit now" to "don't even think about quitting" depending on the mitigating circumstances.
I was in a situation where people were asked to work 12/7 for several weeks--I was working for a telecomm when the CWA went on strike, and all managers had to not only work 12/7, some had to do it from 7PM to 7AM and they were working a job they weren't trained for. I think they ended up getting a small additional bonus...but it was less than minimum wage for the additional hours worked. On the other hand, the company had to continue to provide service...without 70% of their workforce. What else could they do?
So, the questions I have for the poster are:
A)Is this a habitual thing for this company to do? Have they put you in similar situations before? Do you normally work a nice 40-45 hour weekday, with plenty of time spent browsing slashdot and the like? Do you believe they're likely to repeat this death march? (Previous posters have asserted that they will certainly, but that's not always the case).
B)What does this really mean for the company? Are you talking a small firm kept alive by one or two main customers? If the management took a hike on the deadline...would jobs or the solvency of the company be at risk? If so...recognize that your short-term welfare is that of the company...
C)What is the work environment like? Are your immediate managers going to bat to make sure you get food provided, your plate cleared of superfluous work? Are you being asked to not only work those hours, but forego other important events? (For instance, could you still leave for a kid's special event and come in later that night? Could you work partly from home? Is the dress code loosened, particularly for those hours you wouldn't normally be working?
D) Historically, what experience have you had working for the company? Have they provided for you in other ways? Training, conferences, good benefits, etc?
E) Is there an external factor influencing the deadline, or is it something purely political on the part of the two companies? For instance, does the project need to be done by a specific date in compliance with a regulation or an event?
I think some of these questions really influence what should be done...
Of course, it would help if Oracle could get around to creating a Linux release that actually installed without a hitch on _any_ (note any != all) version of Linux. Redhat 2.1AS still requires certain modifications to the system and Oracle that are a far cry from being able to install both with default settings.
Vendor support is still the best reason to choose a stable Linux. 6 months between releases is simply too short a time for anything...much less something like an enterprise RDBMS.
Yes, I've looked at object-oriented databases. I worked on a project that used Objectstore for a year or two before we gave up and went to Oracle.
Here is why:
1. We realized that like _most_ projects there really wasn't anything that object-oriented about the data. The code, yes. But the data was just as easily represented with typical RDBMS relationships and it was much faster to do basic operations. We saw a several thousand time increase in performance when trying to query the database for a particular object and its associated data. A join or ten wasn't nearly as expensive as getting data out of what was essentially just a dump.
2. Objectstore, at the time, had no concept of administration. It was up to the developer to handle things like when files got too big, or creating the OODBMS concept of indexes, or what have you. The "DBA" could stop and start it, and that's about it. So if we grew, or got new hardware, or changed platforms, it was time to dump the old data (because migrating it was an programming project in itself) and start over.
3. People would ask us questions about the data we were storing that would have been absolutely trivial to find in a RDBMS (like "how many of these events occured last month when this device was in this state) that we'd have to write long slow-performing pieces of code to retrieve.
4. Other people wanted to write applications that used our data. That wasn't too easy, because they wanted slightly different objects. We would have had to agree on a object for everything we shared, or store things twice. With an RDBMS we used could use views, or generate the objects differently from the same tables.
5. There was no way to get a read-consistent hot backup across a couple of hundred files. Maybe there is now. This was just foolish.
The first book of Feynman's "lectures" on physics isn't bad at all. The big question you need to ask is whether or not you just want a conceptual understanding of physics, or one that enables you to do the required mathematics involved. Unfortunately they tend to be a different audience...most layman's books have no math, and most college books concentrate on the math...which isn't bad, it's just that sometimes things are introduced differently because of the required mathematics.
"Instead, the company will focus on alternative ad formats, including variably sized standard ad units and pop-under ads, as well as ad placements in newsletters and member mailings."
So instead they're sending you physical junk-mail or having pop-unders. That's a big improvement.
Databases, extreme programming, and a classic.
on
General IT Books?
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· Score: 1
Joe Celko's trilogy of database books is pretty good, as is the "Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit." so that you can understand what the heck a Data Warehouse is. SQL for Mere Mortals is a decent start if you're completely ignorant of the what SQL is all about.
Extreme programming by Kent Beck is where you should look so that you don't fall into the Rational Unified Process trap.
Last, get "Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder. It's an all time classic.
Jer
PS. Forgot about Aho's "Dragon Book" on compilers. Probably a little technical for most "IT" folks, but part of the canon, for sure.
In my opinion, the only good thing to come out of the Caldera/Lineo/Noorda bunch is OpenDOS, which was quite cool for when you needed to run some old DOS software without worrying about all sorts of silly licensing laws. I see Lineo doesn't have that available for download any longer--is it still around somewhere?
In the early part of 1998, I installed 660 desktop Linux boxes into various places in the Interprise division of Qwest. Some of them have been replaced.
At that time, I believe that was _close_ to the largest installation; I could find no larger.
If you've ever worked at a business that purchased a commercial product to do a basic task, and found yourself in a situation where the company no longer supported it but also was unwilling to release the source code so that you could make minor modifications to "keep it alive" until you could find a suitable replacement, the idea of a company open sourcing a product instead of abandoning it makes you feel all giddy inside.
I've found myself hex editing code or writing complicated wrappers in order to support extremely minor environment changes (upgrading patchlevels of another product) that could have been changed in seconds had I the source code to rework. I can't count how many abandoned but perfectly good packages were thrown out due for Y2K because the company was unwilling to test it and we had no facilities too.
I've advised that companies who buy expensive software contracts or packaages build in an option to purchase that software source should the developer choose to abandon it.
As far as I know, in every state, records of children are sealed when the reach adulthood and those records are not accessible except under the most extreme circumstances. Nowhere on the entire waveamerica site do you inform potential callers about how long you will retain information, about who specifically that information will be limited to. More profoundly, no promise is made that you will not use that information for profit: selling it to potential employers, colleges, psychiatric counselors, etc.
Second: It is not enough to limit descriptions of symptom to known psychiatric symptoms. The first thing in the DSM-IV is a warning against amateurs making diagnosis based on those symptoms.
Third: Imagine a scenario where a teacher or counselor _was_ informed about a potential problem via your WAVE line and that student then committed a crime against another student. If the administrator in their better judgement had decided against evaluations, therapy, or whatever, they would be in for a political thrashing. For fear of this, a call from your WAVE line is essentially a mandate from a one student to subject another intense scrutiny by counselors, administrators, and parents. Think about this.
and the Aprilly Fool jokedy writing wit des lang-a-goony sylable and truncaonotomotpeoin boot the tekky gossip and filly spitz a like poesy for the tekky on the only day the tekky can be poesy maker. Heorshee writes about the sea and the brew or what you find in the OY-ster moat days, but some daze he does a muse himself with hue more
Slashdot Mirror
Apple is doing a good thing here is shaking up the administrative and setup side of the UNIX world. Most of their work was actually NeXT's, but their "Application as directory" concept is wonderful in a lot of ways, and their reorganizing of the filesystem so that it makes more sense to users is probably a good move in the long run.
What makes UNIX superior for management and power-users is the ability to do everything you need to from command-line tools and options, and the fact that the storage for configuration is in understandable, alterable files. If those are still there...if I can still run my Apple from the shell--I'm a happy man.
The only exception to this would be cases where a vendor deliberately makes a deviation simply to introduce incompatibilities. I don't see that as the case here.
The big problem is that the standard Java look and feel is terrible. However, the Windows Look and Feel as well as some of the other alternative ones (particularly the Aqua Look and Feel of the Mac JVM) is just as good. You don't need SWT for that.
When I was on a corporate Linux migration project and we had shirts made with Tux and the company name on them. We had _hundreds_ of people from janitorial staff to the president asking if they could have one of the shirts. We could have sold them for big bucks and people would have bought them.
My son likes his Tux stuffed animal and my mom likes him too. The woman at the 7-11 where I buy my morning Diet Vanilla Coke likes Tux.
Why? Tux is cool, and Tux is cute. You can't _not_ like him. IBM and SGI and Microsoft have their simple logos that let you know who owns what. Tux just wants to offer you a bit of his fish.
You know, I read this, and it just doesn't sounds like enough information to really give the original question-asker an answer. My answer would range from "quit now" to "don't even think about quitting" depending on the mitigating circumstances.
I was in a situation where people were asked to work 12/7 for several weeks--I was working for a telecomm when the CWA went on strike, and all managers had to not only work 12/7, some had to do it from 7PM to 7AM and they were working a job they weren't trained for. I think they ended up getting a small additional bonus...but it was less than minimum wage for the additional hours worked. On the other hand, the company had to continue to provide service...without 70% of their workforce. What else could they do?
So, the questions I have for the poster are:
A)Is this a habitual thing for this company to do? Have they put you in similar situations before? Do you normally work a nice 40-45 hour weekday, with plenty of time spent browsing slashdot and the like? Do you believe they're likely to repeat this death march? (Previous posters have asserted that they will certainly, but that's not always the case).
B)What does this really mean for the company? Are you talking a small firm kept alive by one or two main customers? If the management took a hike on the deadline...would jobs or the solvency of the company be at risk? If so...recognize that your short-term welfare is that of the company...
C)What is the work environment like? Are your immediate managers going to bat to make sure you get food provided, your plate cleared of superfluous work? Are you being asked to not only work those hours, but forego other important events? (For instance, could you still leave for a kid's special event and come in later that night? Could you work partly from home? Is the dress code loosened, particularly for those hours you wouldn't normally be working?
D) Historically, what experience have you had working for the company? Have they provided for you in other ways? Training, conferences, good benefits, etc?
E) Is there an external factor influencing the deadline, or is it something purely political on the part of the two companies? For instance, does the project need to be done by a specific date in compliance with a regulation or an event?
I think some of these questions really influence what should be done...
Of course, it would help if Oracle could get around to creating a Linux release that actually installed without a hitch on _any_ (note any != all) version of Linux. Redhat 2.1AS still requires certain modifications to the system and Oracle that are a far cry from being able to install both with default settings.
Vendor support is still the best reason to choose a stable Linux. 6 months between releases is simply too short a time for anything...much less something like an enterprise RDBMS.
Yes, I've looked at object-oriented databases. I worked on a project that used Objectstore for a year or two before we gave up and went to Oracle.
Here is why:
1. We realized that like _most_ projects there really wasn't anything that object-oriented about the data. The code, yes. But the data was just as easily represented with typical RDBMS relationships and it was much faster to do basic operations. We saw a several thousand time increase in performance when trying to query the database for a particular object and its associated data. A join or ten wasn't nearly as expensive as getting data out of what was essentially just a dump.
2. Objectstore, at the time, had no concept of administration. It was up to the developer to handle things like when files got too big, or creating the OODBMS concept of indexes, or what have you. The "DBA" could stop and start it, and that's about it. So if we grew, or got new hardware, or changed platforms, it was time to dump the old data (because migrating it was an programming project in itself) and start over.
3. People would ask us questions about the data we were storing that would have been absolutely trivial to find in a RDBMS (like "how many of these events occured last month when this device was in this state) that we'd have to write long slow-performing pieces of code to retrieve.
4. Other people wanted to write applications that used our data. That wasn't too easy, because they wanted slightly different objects. We would have had to agree on a object for everything we shared, or store things twice. With an RDBMS we used could use views, or generate the objects differently from the same tables.
5. There was no way to get a read-consistent hot backup across a couple of hundred files. Maybe there is now. This was just foolish.
The first book of Feynman's "lectures" on physics isn't bad at all. The big question you need to ask is whether or not you just want a conceptual understanding of physics, or one that enables you to do the required mathematics involved. Unfortunately they tend to be a different audience...most layman's books have no math, and most college books concentrate on the math...which isn't bad, it's just that sometimes things are introduced differently because of the required mathematics.
From the article:
"Instead, the company will focus on alternative ad formats, including variably sized standard ad units and pop-under ads, as well as ad placements in newsletters and member mailings."
So instead they're sending you physical junk-mail or having pop-unders. That's a big improvement.
Joe Celko's trilogy of database books is pretty good, as is the "Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit." so that you can understand what the heck a Data Warehouse is. SQL for Mere Mortals is a decent start if you're completely ignorant of the what SQL is all about.
Extreme programming by Kent Beck is where you should look so that you don't fall into the Rational Unified Process trap.
Last, get "Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder. It's an all time classic.
Jer
PS. Forgot about Aho's "Dragon Book" on compilers. Probably a little technical for most "IT" folks, but part of the canon, for sure.
In my opinion, the only good thing to come out of the Caldera/Lineo/Noorda bunch is OpenDOS, which was quite cool for when you needed to run some old DOS software without worrying about all sorts of silly licensing laws. I see Lineo doesn't have that available for download any longer--is it still around somewhere?
In the early part of 1998, I installed 660 desktop Linux boxes into various places in the Interprise division of Qwest. Some of them have been replaced.
At that time, I believe that was _close_ to the largest installation; I could find no larger.
I'm pouring a 40 of eight-ball on the couch for my dead homie right now.
If you've ever worked at a business that purchased a commercial product to do a basic task, and found yourself in a situation where the company no longer supported it but also was unwilling to release the source code so that you could make minor modifications to "keep it alive" until you could find a suitable replacement, the idea of a company open sourcing a product instead of abandoning it makes you feel all giddy inside.
I've found myself hex editing code or writing complicated wrappers in order to support extremely minor environment changes (upgrading patchlevels of another product) that could have been changed in seconds had I the source code to rework. I can't count how many abandoned but perfectly good packages were thrown out due for Y2K because the company was unwilling to test it and we had no facilities too.
I've advised that companies who buy expensive software contracts or packaages build in an option to purchase that software source should the developer choose to abandon it.
As far as I know, in every state, records of children are sealed when the reach adulthood and those records are not accessible except under the most extreme circumstances. Nowhere on the entire waveamerica site do you inform potential callers about how long you will retain information, about who specifically that information will be limited to. More profoundly, no promise is made that you will not use that information for profit: selling it to potential employers, colleges, psychiatric counselors, etc.
Second: It is not enough to limit descriptions of symptom to known psychiatric symptoms. The first thing in the DSM-IV is a warning against amateurs making diagnosis based on those symptoms.
Third: Imagine a scenario where a teacher or counselor _was_ informed about a potential problem via your WAVE line and that student then committed a crime against another student. If the administrator in their better judgement had decided against evaluations, therapy, or whatever, they would be in for a political thrashing. For fear of this, a call from your WAVE line is essentially a mandate from a one student to subject another intense scrutiny by counselors, administrators, and parents. Think about this.
and the Aprilly Fool jokedy writing wit des lang-a-goony sylable and truncaonotomotpeoin boot the tekky gossip and filly spitz a like poesy for the tekky on the only day the tekky can be poesy maker. Heorshee writes about the sea and the brew or what you find in the OY-ster moat days, but some daze he does a muse himself with hue more
That's how I expect my kid to be. Just like I'd give him a measles shot or teach him how to read.