Obviously, you've never had a tape physically fail.
Maybe it's just me, but after the experiences I've had the last year with crappy tapes, I'm surprised the "tape as a backup medium" idea hasn't been seen for the farce that it is.
Here's the thing. Tape is fine as a short term backup medium. It's relatively cheap (and I do emphasize the word "relatively"), which means you can throw it out after a year and get new tapes. But anyone who expects to be able to retrieve data from tapes that are four or five years old is dreaming.
Long term solutions? As you say, it's time for something new. Tape or disks simply aren't viable in the long term, and optical, while more permanent, has not kept pace in terms of speed and capacity.
The heat in the NYC stations is in part a result of air-conditioning the trains and in part a result of the fact that it (duh) gets a whole lot hotter in New York than it does in London.
The air-conditioning in the trains is (a) spotty at best; (b) usually broken; (c) thoroughly ineffective anyway. Really, it's a complete failure. Please don't pretend otherwise.
The system is dangerous neither in the daytime nor at night, and the fact that you'd suggest otherwise makes it pretty clear that if you're from anywhere near NYC, it's Long Island or Jersey.
Perhaps it's a matter of opinion as to what constitutes "dangerous". But, if it makes you feel any better, I'm from even further away -- Pennsylvania -- so now you can be smugly self-satisfied. Mind you, I used to live in Manhattan. For about a year and a half, as a matter of fact, around 45th and Third. I either walked or used the subway.
And if you didn't hear squealing on curves in the London Underground, you didn't ride it very much. What, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Covent Garden, Covent Garden, and Piccadilly?
Yes, I rode it fairly extensively, including Covent Garden. Sure, there's squealing. What do you expect? It's a mechanical system. But it didn't pierce my ear-drums the same way the NYC lines do. Honestly, it's night and day, the noise levels on the two systems.
Very well interconnected? Meaning what exactly?
RTFPPIMOP. (Read the f*^*$% previous paragraph in my original post. You dolt.) For sheer ease of use and convenience, the Tube has the NY Subway beat. NY is just beginning to introduce electronic information signs, and compared to the signs on the London system they're a joke. Interconnections in NY are horrible.
Lemme guess - you went to London for two weeks and came back with a British accent you pretended not to be aware of.
??? What the heck has that got to do with it? No, actually, my New Zealand accent gets me around quite well in the States, and is confused enough with an English accent that I don't need to try to put one on. Probably not entirely surprising, however, given that my entire family comes from England and I've been there a number of times to visit them. And all the friends I have who still live in London or who used to live in London. Who, by the way, have always kept me up to date on how they see the Tube.
By all means, hold your own opinions. And you're quite correct when you compare the lack of 24 hour service on the Tube to the NYC lines. (Although I could point out that certain lines in London have their last stop at anything up to around 1:00 am and start again at 5:15. Oh, and not's let even begin to compare the taxi services in the two cities. Well, perhaps taxi "service" is a bit generous for NYC.) But there are certain assumptions you've made which are quite out of whack. (BTW -- what's your background?)
More often than not, something ends up going wrong that would/could not have occurred had they followed my advice in the first place, and then I hear about it.
Having been there and done that, the most important thing (at least in a professional environment) is to make sure you document your recommendations! You may also wish to document your specific concerns with respect to the course being followed that's against your recommendations.
Not so important with friends (hopefully), but in a professional relationship it can be crucial to be able to whip out the e-mail/printed report you sent six months ago when the client comes back all miffed, especially if you perform regular maintenance on their network (for example) and they're now blaming you for their data loss.
Then go and experience London Transport itself, and wonder to yourself "Did this bunch really run a friggin empire? How the fuck did they make this mess?"
If you're from anywhere seriously hot, then you might want to try traveling on the London Underground at peak times in summer. You know... for the masochist in you.
Seriously -- have you ever travelled on the Tube? If so, have you ever travelled on any other comparable train system, such as the NYC subway (don't get me started on the unbearable heat in the stations, the even more unbearable heat in the trains, the noise as the trains squeal their way around corners, the dangerous nature of travelling on it during the day-time, never mind the night...)?
The Tube is wonderful -- nice trains and stations, easy-to-read electronic signs to advise you when the next train is coming (at the platform), or where the next stop is (on the train), and very well interconnected.
Forget the trains anywhere in the mid-east and north-east of the U.S. (the only area of the U.S. with which I'm really familiar) -- horrible connections, late as anything, frequently breaking down, no stations anywhere, uncomfortable crowded dingy stations and trains... Oh, and no cabs if you live more than a few miles out of the main city in your location.
The London system has suffered a similar plight to the NYC system -- massive population growth (both in terms of residents and of visitors) which has over-burdened the elderly infrastructure. But if you compare the relative ages of both cities and look at how they've each handled the problem, London has done a far better job, in my opinion.
The party was a special occasion -- Bilbo's 111th birthday (or "eleventy-first", as he so eloquently put it), and Frodo's 33rd birthday, which was a hobbit's coming-of-age (after passing his/her "tweens", the hobbit's irresponsible years). Bilbo's age was not without note -- hobbits were not usually that long-lived, and eleventy-one was a special number, quite apart from the fact that he was beginning to approach the Old Took in years.
Together, Bilbo's age and Frodo's age made another remarkable number, 144, or one gross, and so 144 guests were invited to a special insiders' party.
After that, 17 years passed, until Frodo was hitting 50, which (IIRC) was when Bilbo started having his adventures.
All this from memory, without having a reference in front of me. Gosh, I really am an obsessed fan.
If you've ever read the CRN weekly, you'd know that they're forever pushing Linux as the answer to everything. They're almost like/. -- gleefully promoting the latest MS difficulties whilst simultaneously giving reams of coverage to Linux inroads.
Heck, if you'd read them a year ago, you'd have come away convinced that Linux would be on the desktop in a majority of Fortune 500 companies by now.
So you admit you're coming from a position of lack of knowledge. I respect your honesty.
...but I've seen both blue screen while just sitting with no one even using the machine. I've seen Linux die twice in four years of heavy use and one of those was faulty hardware.
Okay, here are my observations. I work at a site with several hundred NT4/W2K servers, and in general we don't have servers crash unless there's a critical hardware fault. We never see our W2K servers crash because of a Windows fault, and hardly ever see our NT4 servers crash. (Although I must admit W2K is much more stable than NT4.)
If we ever see a crash because of software, it's from a third-party vendor, and I can't remember the last time it crashed the OS. Many of our servers have uptimes of over a year. The vast majority (> 99%) of them just run. Period. This is in what is literally a 24x7x365 operation. These servers get hammered, constantly. There's less workload at 2am on Sundays, certainly -- but we don't have convenient windows for downtime, so we have to guarantee our servers will stay up.
Maybe, just maybe, it's because we know how to spend a few minutes making sure the things are set up properly, rather than just rushing in and expecting it to be magically bullet-proof? Do you remember the saying -- "A poor workman blames his tools"? We don't have that luxury -- if it doesn't work, we don't work -- so we just get to grips, accept we need to know what we're doing, and, gosh darn it, somehow manage to achieve the allegedly impossible. Robust Windows servers -- who would imagine?
when their are American Citizens with the skill to do a job out of work, that a non-us citizen should not be taking a job that American citizen could be doing
Well, actually, this is the case. In order to be able to bring someone over on the H1B visa, a company must prove that they have expended due effort to find a qualified U.S. resident for the job first. This means they must show they've placed advertisements -- and in appropriate places, too, not in the back section of the classifieds -- and been searching for what is considered a sufficiently lengthy period before they can go through the H1B process.
Yes, I'm sure there are abuses of the system. However, I came over (not through the H1B system, by the way -- my wife is an American citizen) and walked straight into a job where the company had been desperately searching for a year for someone with my skills. They simply couldn't find anyone in the area (or who was willing to relocate to the area) with the necessary niche skills.
Oh, sorry, no you won't -- you're used to e-mail actually working. Oh well, be prepared for that to get shambolic.
I opened up a complaint to Comcast because my "always on" internet service kept getting disconnected, just like a dial-up. What really irritated me was the constant TV adverts promoting "no disconnects" as a benefit over those poor dial-up people. I told them they should either fix it or cease that advertising ploy because it was false advertising. Their response was that they're not perfect (I'll say) and you can't help but get the occasional disconnect, and, well, that whole false advertising thing...actually, they never did give me an acceptable answer about that.
During one of the many outages, I called customer support and told them there was an outage, and was there a server down, as that's usually what caused my outages. No, I was told, there's nothing showing up. This didn't mean much to me; usually nothing does show up until I call in, when after a few minutes a downed server magically appears on their scope. Not this time. The guy told me they'd have to have someone come out to my house. In two weeks. I asked him if there was any possibility it could be a configuration problem on their end, as I was getting suspicious from what the status lights on the cable modem were telling me.
"How do you know what they mean?", he asked belligerently.
Because that's what the manual says, I replied.
"No, that's wrong, you can't trust the manual." Then why the hell do they send it out, I wondered?
"So you can guarantee me there's nothing wrong with my configuration as recorded in your database?"
"Absolutely. I guarantee it."
I called back the next morning because I couldn't stand dealing with this rude idiot, and surprise, surprise: the serial number of the modem which they use to register whether you've got a valid account or not was wrong. As soon as the tech changed it in their database, my service returned.
Comcast is dreadful. Zero concern for customer service, thoroughly incompetent support center and totally useless server administrators -- if I had as many outages as they have, I'd be unemployable.
Oh, and one other thing -- at one point I started to discuss the agreement and ask about their SLA (service level agreement). They told me they don't have one. No requirement to provide up-time. No requirement to fix problems in a timely manner. The most they'll admit is that you can get a refund if you're out of service for a day or more, and you should count yourself lucky they offer that. If you press them on this, their answer is that if you want consistent service you should get a T1 line from the business unit. Excuse me?
Comcast is truly appalling. And the worst part of it is -- my wife doesn't want to go back to dial-up speeds, but they're the only high-speed game in town. I truly loathe them.
Here goes with some honesty, so I fully expect hostility. Be gentle, okay?
Entrenchment The vast majority of my work is on Windows. The software areas in which I specialize (for example, document management systems) don't do Linux, by and large. I have to know these systems, inside and out, and know the platforms they use, inside and out. For me, that's Windows. I have to know it, and know it well. Linux is strictly a spare time thing, and I really don't have that much spare time. Yeah, I know, if I were a true geek, I'd be staying up until all hours on my Linux system. What can I say? I don't play computer games, either, so it's certainly not that that's keeping me on Windows (unlike every other post I've read in this story so far).
Comfort I know Windows, and I can get it to work. I fully expect the flaming to start about now, but here are some simple facts which represent nothing more than my experience. My Windows servers don't crash. My Windows workstations don't crash. Personally, I'm just as happy to chalk it up to the fact that I know what I'm doing when I set the things up (and, admittedly, W2K is pretty stable). Yes, I have to reboot for patches. But failures and unplanned outages -- forget it, I don't get them.
Linux, on the other hand, has given me some weird experiences, particularly on laptops, and, yes, occasionally I've had to do a hard restart because it was hung. I'm sure it's because I didn't download the latest drivers, or tweak the settings correctly, or rework my configuration script...but guess what, people -- I don't have to do that on Windows. Again, it's a comfort thing.
Disillusionment Boy, I have a horrible feeling about what this might provoke, but here goes. When I first started to look at Linux, everywhere I looked on/. people were proudly proclaiming how fast it was and how tiny its footprint was. Please, point me in the right direction. I looked at SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake, and a couple of others, and everyone specified 64MB of RAM minimum -- that's not a small footprint, that's the same as an NT workstation! And, speedwise, my RedHat installation is the same as my W2K Pro installation on my dual-boot system. No tuning on the Linux system; but, then again, I've not tuned the W2K system, either.
Those, for me, are the main reasons. Windows is just too important for me at work to not know it intimately, and Linux doesn't offer enough compelling reasons to dedicate a lot of time becoming better attuned to it. Remember, I'm just being honest!
This leapt out at me too. Worldcom's response appears to be "Bad spammers. Be nice and happy to the world". One wonders what an "increasingly stern" notice might look like.
"Very bad spammers. Now stop that, before we get miffed."
And honestly, can you blame spammers when they can get away with it like this? Emphasis mine:
We request you take whatever measures you deem appropriate which will ensure no further violation will occur.
So the spammer gets to decide what's appropriate. (Maybe the police will let me decide what's an appropriate amount to pay for a speeding ticket if I get pulled over.) Naturally, the admin flags one name to avoid out of 60 million and the problem is cleared up as far as everyone is concerned. Way to go, WorldCom.
This apparently misleading (albeit well-intentioned) comment gets modded +4 interesting, meaning that almost everyone will see this poor guy's name.
All the replying posts pointing out that it's a phone company/ISP and it's almost certainly nothing to do with this chap are at 2 or below, meaning that many people won't see them and this individual's name is now besmirched.
And, by the way, this happens all the bl**dy time on/. An early poster makes assumptions and gets modded way the hell up, then all the rebuttals pointing out he's talking out of an unreliable orifice wallow in the low point range.
Yeah, I know it's off-topic. Just wanted to rant about something that irritates me. Return to your normally-scheduled bits and pieces.
A professional assasin would've killed his target, got out, and collected his paycheck.
Yes and no. Mostly yes -- a professional assassin is typically hired to kill a specific target. A true mercenary does the job purely for financial gain, not for ideological purposes, and so the motivation to escape is obviously high.
But what if your aim is to instill fear? Suicide bombers don't care about getting out; they want to take as many with them as possible. Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if we discover the motivation for the snipers was to instill as much fear as possible in the American population. To that end, it was a big success -- no apparent link between the targets, which meant anyone could be next, and they just kept on going day after day with no-one having a clue who they were.
So, the lesson is that, while professional is usually taken to mean that one gets paid for the task, that's not the only definition. It can refer to someone who performs a task to high standards and with a certain degree of expertise (look it up on Merriam-Webster).
(Oh, and it's Pyrrhic, not phyrric. Even without the correct spelling, it still refers to Pyrrhus, so you should at least capitalize it as a proper noun. Classical education ain't what it were.)
This means that the best solution is to discourage people from stealing your car. Buy a model that is not too attractive. Don't leave your car in unsafe neighbourhoods.
And buy a steering wheel lock, like the Club. I use one even though I have a car alarm, on the principle it's a fairly visible extra deterrent which will mean more work for the thief. A professional who really wants my car will go for it anyway, but I'm more concerned about discouraging the casual thief.
True. I used to own a white Mazda Familia wagon, fairly anonymous, no extras at all except for air conditioning. I bought it because it was ideal for my needs at the time (low mileage, only a couple of years old, excellent condition, and I needed the luggage capacity of a wagon). It was stolen one night (Christmas Day, actually), and the police found it a couple of weeks later. They told me that from evidence found in the car it was apparent it had been used in a couple of jewellery store burglaries, and that meant they would've picked my car precisely because it was anonymous. So, not the sort of vehicle to rate a second glance from the kids who want a joy-ride, but ideal for thief transit to be dumped later on -- neither flashy nor ratty enough to draw attention.
Absolutely. AND ensure your disaster recovery plans include regular testing. I've seen sites where they assume that because they tested a tape restore of a test 10MB database two years ago when they first installed their SQL server, that means all the subsequently added multi-GB databases are also safe "because they're being backed up using exactly the same procedure". Perform test restores on a regular basis (say, once a month) as part of regular maintenance procedures.
* data structures and algorithms * software engineering process * VAX assembly language implementation * language implementation, including case studies of about five or six different languages * artificial intelligence * operating system theory * business computing solutions (COBOL, spreadsheet theory (!), etc.) * Database theory and implementation * Computer architecture and design, including case studies of perhaps five different CPUs
We started off with basic programming theory, looking at procedural vs. event-driven programming, then moved more into the data structures and algorithms. (Hey, look, that sort algorithm I devised when I was 14 is a shell sort!)
As well as this, my course required a grounding in at least four different sciences (which could be, for example, Computer Science, Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, and Physics). I may be incorrect in saying this, but my understanding is that a typical U.S. degree course would also require several unrelated credits, such as English and History classes. The U.S. degrees (again, in my understanding) emphasise a more general education, perhaps at the expense of teaching the specifics. A NZ or Australian degree, on the other hand, tends to go by the principle that high school is the time to get a general education, and university is more about looking at a specific target (Arts degrees excepted (boy, I know I'm going to get flamed for that)).
I abhorr and loathe the tie. No matter what it stands for
Just out of curiosity, did you also, in common with the vast majority of eight year olds, abhor and loathe school when you were there?
It's not functional for me to wear one, since I crawl under, between, above and behind stuff regularily. Wearing a tie in these conditions is life threatening even. What if your tie snags while you fall off something? You'd have yourself a hanging in the server room... Great.
That's why God invented tie pins. (By the way -- if you're ever walking down a busy street and see a group of suits with their ties blown over their shoulder by the wind, do everyone a favour and point them in the direction of the nearest accessory shop so they can purchase one of these handy little devices too, please.)
Also, I won't hide behind a tie if I f**k up.
Nor will I. Despite the rash of scandals, most of the suits whom you appear to loathe are also quite responsible -- that's how they got to their current position. (And spare me the "but what about...". I'm no naif -- I know there are those who progress by flattery and nepotism.)
Read your post again and listen to the permanent pout that you must have. Don't worry; you're very unlikely to ever get to a position where you're required to wear a tie.
He has gotten on a personal crusade, but one of his main complaints is that he followed eBay's guidelines and still got hammered.
Look at this page. From the screen shot from October 14, it appears to me that he's referencing official eBay guidelines.
"eBay Guideline: If you are the copyright owner of the material you are offering on CD-R or DVD-R, make sure you say so in your listing!
Examples A local band decides to release its latest album on CD-R. The band may list the album on eBay so long as it is clear from the listing that the band is the copyright owner."
He made it explicitly clear in his listing that he was indeed the copyright owner. Now, I don't know where he found the quotes above, but they appear to be from eBay official guidelines. If that is indeed the case, then there shouldn't have been a problem, and eBay could be said to be costing him money by preventing a completely legitimate sale for a reason which is incorrect.
The other point is that eBay originally claimed they had been contacted by the copyright owner who asked them to end the sale. He knows full well he didn't contact them with such a request, and so he asked eBay to tell him who did do this so he could protect his copyright. eBay ignored this request, thus further compounding their possible culpability.
Except they're not, if you had RTFA
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Ebay vs. Musician
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· Score: 5, Informative
The guy's web site clearly states that he complied with all E-Bay rules. He is the copyright owner, which he stated in his listings.
He also gives screen shots of other E-Bay listings which are blatant rip-offs.
He also points out that E-Bay claimed that someone else had supposedly said they were the copyright holder. When he wrote back to them asking to know who was making this false claim so he could protect his copyright, E-Bay responded with a letter which ignored his request.
Good grief. Read the article. Idiot.
Hear (being half of "hear hear")
on
Cool Work Shirts?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I tend to agree with you (and I'm in my early thirties), but...
You have to get a feeling for what the rest of the office will wear and then try to approximate that. (And, of course, take note of any dress codes mentioned in orientation materials.)
Four years ago, as a consultant (not in the U.S.) who was constantly visiting professional clients (banking, industry, etc.), I was required to wear a suit. It made a difference to the clients, too. We sometimes had clients who would mention in conversation to our bosses that they like us more than our competition because we were more knowledgeable, more professional, blah blah, "and at least your guy wears a suit".
Two years ago, as a consultant in Pennsylvania, doing the rounds in New York, D.C., New Jersey, New England, etc., I sometimes wore a suit, but more often I would wear a dress shirt and blazer to dress up, or a long sleeve button down shirt with no tie to dress down one level, or a polo shirt. It all depended on where I was going. Some clients wanted me to dress like them, which meant khakis and polo shirt -- they were intimidated or at least uncomfortable when I wore a suit. Others wanted me to appear professional, and would not have been hapy had I not been wearing at least a long sleeved shirt.
Today, no longer a consultant, I typically wear polo shirts or a long-sleeved shirt and khakis. Very rarely will I wear a tie. I quite like to know I'm well-dressed, but it would make me stand out and, more importantly, would make my co-workers slightly less comfortable. Ultimately, that slight psychological difficulty can have a small but very real adverse effect on your professional relationships.
But what if I know I have a meeting with managers from other departments? I'll dress up a notch -- it's appropriate in that case, and I want them to go away with a good impression.
Look, really, you have two options. You can be a geek and attempt to impress based purely on your technical skills, or you can be a professional (and still a geek) and dress appropriately. There are plenty who will kick and scream and yell that all that matters is that they know their job. And they will never rise very far, because they are in an imaginary world which bears less and less resemblance to the real world. According to the Gartner Group studies on this topic, we're on a timeline where technical skills have gone from a relevance level of 65% down to 35%. Project management skills, interpersonal relationship skills, and other such management skills have become more and more esteemed and important.
All of which, of course, is totally off-topic to the original question, because I have no other suggestions on where to acquire the specific clothing items that the poster asked about. But the fact is that if you are concerned about your career as opposed to just your job then today it is crucial for a geek to grow up out of the immature "I can wear tee-shirts and sandals because I'm a genius" mentality and realise that in the vast majority of workplaces it does make a difference what you wear. If in doubt, start off playing it safe by dressing one notch above what the standard is, and then aim to fit in with the company culture. If you want to declare your geekiness in such a situation, then by all means go for the button-downs with the small and tasteful Tux logo, if that's appropriate. I know the original poster understands this; that's why he asked the question. I also know that many/.ers won't understand this. It's called ego, people. Grow up, be forewarned, and get with the times!
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Obviously, you've never had a tape physically fail.
Maybe it's just me, but after the experiences I've had the last year with crappy tapes, I'm surprised the "tape as a backup medium" idea hasn't been seen for the farce that it is.
Here's the thing. Tape is fine as a short term backup medium. It's relatively cheap (and I do emphasize the word "relatively"), which means you can throw it out after a year and get new tapes. But anyone who expects to be able to retrieve data from tapes that are four or five years old is dreaming.
Long term solutions? As you say, it's time for something new. Tape or disks simply aren't viable in the long term, and optical, while more permanent, has not kept pace in terms of speed and capacity.
All right then.
The heat in the NYC stations is in part a result of air-conditioning the trains and in part a result of the fact that it (duh) gets a whole lot hotter in New York than it does in London.
The air-conditioning in the trains is (a) spotty at best; (b) usually broken; (c) thoroughly ineffective anyway. Really, it's a complete failure. Please don't pretend otherwise.
The system is dangerous neither in the daytime nor at night, and the fact that you'd suggest otherwise makes it pretty clear that if you're from anywhere near NYC, it's Long Island or Jersey.
Perhaps it's a matter of opinion as to what constitutes "dangerous". But, if it makes you feel any better, I'm from even further away -- Pennsylvania -- so now you can be smugly self-satisfied. Mind you, I used to live in Manhattan. For about a year and a half, as a matter of fact, around 45th and Third. I either walked or used the subway.
And if you didn't hear squealing on curves in the London Underground, you didn't ride it very much. What, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Covent Garden, Covent Garden, and Piccadilly?
Yes, I rode it fairly extensively, including Covent Garden. Sure, there's squealing. What do you expect? It's a mechanical system. But it didn't pierce my ear-drums the same way the NYC lines do. Honestly, it's night and day, the noise levels on the two systems.
Very well interconnected? Meaning what exactly?
RTFPPIMOP. (Read the f*^*$% previous paragraph in my original post. You dolt.) For sheer ease of use and convenience, the Tube has the NY Subway beat. NY is just beginning to introduce electronic information signs, and compared to the signs on the London system they're a joke. Interconnections in NY are horrible.
Lemme guess - you went to London for two weeks and came back with a British accent you pretended not to be aware of.
??? What the heck has that got to do with it? No, actually, my New Zealand accent gets me around quite well in the States, and is confused enough with an English accent that I don't need to try to put one on. Probably not entirely surprising, however, given that my entire family comes from England and I've been there a number of times to visit them. And all the friends I have who still live in London or who used to live in London. Who, by the way, have always kept me up to date on how they see the Tube.
By all means, hold your own opinions. And you're quite correct when you compare the lack of 24 hour service on the Tube to the NYC lines. (Although I could point out that certain lines in London have their last stop at anything up to around 1:00 am and start again at 5:15. Oh, and not's let even begin to compare the taxi services in the two cities. Well, perhaps taxi "service" is a bit generous for NYC.) But there are certain assumptions you've made which are quite out of whack. (BTW -- what's your background?)
More often than not, something ends up going wrong that would/could not have occurred had they followed my advice in the first place, and then I hear about it.
Having been there and done that, the most important thing (at least in a professional environment) is to make sure you document your recommendations! You may also wish to document your specific concerns with respect to the course being followed that's against your recommendations.
Not so important with friends (hopefully), but in a professional relationship it can be crucial to be able to whip out the e-mail/printed report you sent six months ago when the client comes back all miffed, especially if you perform regular maintenance on their network (for example) and they're now blaming you for their data loss.
Then go and experience London Transport itself, and wonder to yourself "Did this bunch really run a friggin empire? How the fuck did they make this mess?"
If you're from anywhere seriously hot, then you might want to try traveling on the London Underground at peak times in summer. You know... for the masochist in you.
Seriously -- have you ever travelled on the Tube? If so, have you ever travelled on any other comparable train system, such as the NYC subway (don't get me started on the unbearable heat in the stations, the even more unbearable heat in the trains, the noise as the trains squeal their way around corners, the dangerous nature of travelling on it during the day-time, never mind the night...)?
The Tube is wonderful -- nice trains and stations, easy-to-read electronic signs to advise you when the next train is coming (at the platform), or where the next stop is (on the train), and very well interconnected.
Forget the trains anywhere in the mid-east and north-east of the U.S. (the only area of the U.S. with which I'm really familiar) -- horrible connections, late as anything, frequently breaking down, no stations anywhere, uncomfortable crowded dingy stations and trains... Oh, and no cabs if you live more than a few miles out of the main city in your location.
The London system has suffered a similar plight to the NYC system -- massive population growth (both in terms of residents and of visitors) which has over-burdened the elderly infrastructure. But if you compare the relative ages of both cities and look at how they've each handled the problem, London has done a far better job, in my opinion.
The party was a special occasion -- Bilbo's 111th birthday (or "eleventy-first", as he so eloquently put it), and Frodo's 33rd birthday, which was a hobbit's coming-of-age (after passing his/her "tweens", the hobbit's irresponsible years). Bilbo's age was not without note -- hobbits were not usually that long-lived, and eleventy-one was a special number, quite apart from the fact that he was beginning to approach the Old Took in years.
Together, Bilbo's age and Frodo's age made another remarkable number, 144, or one gross, and so 144 guests were invited to a special insiders' party.
After that, 17 years passed, until Frodo was hitting 50, which (IIRC) was when Bilbo started having his adventures.
All this from memory, without having a reference in front of me. Gosh, I really am an obsessed fan.
If you've ever read the CRN weekly, you'd know that they're forever pushing Linux as the answer to everything. They're almost like /. -- gleefully promoting the latest MS difficulties whilst simultaneously giving reams of coverage to Linux inroads.
Heck, if you'd read them a year ago, you'd have come away convinced that Linux would be on the desktop in a majority of Fortune 500 companies by now.
I don't use W2000/XP...
...but I've seen both blue screen while just sitting with no one even using the machine. I've seen Linux die twice in four years of heavy use and one of those was faulty hardware.
So you admit you're coming from a position of lack of knowledge. I respect your honesty.
Okay, here are my observations. I work at a site with several hundred NT4/W2K servers, and in general we don't have servers crash unless there's a critical hardware fault. We never see our W2K servers crash because of a Windows fault, and hardly ever see our NT4 servers crash. (Although I must admit W2K is much more stable than NT4.)
If we ever see a crash because of software, it's from a third-party vendor, and I can't remember the last time it crashed the OS. Many of our servers have uptimes of over a year. The vast majority (> 99%) of them just run. Period. This is in what is literally a 24x7x365 operation. These servers get hammered, constantly. There's less workload at 2am on Sundays, certainly -- but we don't have convenient windows for downtime, so we have to guarantee our servers will stay up.
Maybe, just maybe, it's because we know how to spend a few minutes making sure the things are set up properly, rather than just rushing in and expecting it to be magically bullet-proof? Do you remember the saying -- "A poor workman blames his tools"? We don't have that luxury -- if it doesn't work, we don't work -- so we just get to grips, accept we need to know what we're doing, and, gosh darn it, somehow manage to achieve the allegedly impossible. Robust Windows servers -- who would imagine?
First paragraph. Third sentence.
Chief minister Digvijay Singh personally conveyed this to Microsoft boss Bill Gates during an interaction last week in New Delhi.
when their are American Citizens with the skill to do a job out of work, that a non-us citizen should not be taking a job that American citizen could be doing
Well, actually, this is the case. In order to be able to bring someone over on the H1B visa, a company must prove that they have expended due effort to find a qualified U.S. resident for the job first. This means they must show they've placed advertisements -- and in appropriate places, too, not in the back section of the classifieds -- and been searching for what is considered a sufficiently lengthy period before they can go through the H1B process.
Yes, I'm sure there are abuses of the system. However, I came over (not through the H1B system, by the way -- my wife is an American citizen) and walked straight into a job where the company had been desperately searching for a year for someone with my skills. They simply couldn't find anyone in the area (or who was willing to relocate to the area) with the necessary niche skills.
Oh, sorry, no you won't -- you're used to e-mail actually working. Oh well, be prepared for that to get shambolic.
I opened up a complaint to Comcast because my "always on" internet service kept getting disconnected, just like a dial-up. What really irritated me was the constant TV adverts promoting "no disconnects" as a benefit over those poor dial-up people. I told them they should either fix it or cease that advertising ploy because it was false advertising. Their response was that they're not perfect (I'll say) and you can't help but get the occasional disconnect, and, well, that whole false advertising thing...actually, they never did give me an acceptable answer about that.
During one of the many outages, I called customer support and told them there was an outage, and was there a server down, as that's usually what caused my outages. No, I was told, there's nothing showing up. This didn't mean much to me; usually nothing does show up until I call in, when after a few minutes a downed server magically appears on their scope. Not this time. The guy told me they'd have to have someone come out to my house. In two weeks. I asked him if there was any possibility it could be a configuration problem on their end, as I was getting suspicious from what the status lights on the cable modem were telling me.
"How do you know what they mean?", he asked belligerently.
Because that's what the manual says, I replied.
"No, that's wrong, you can't trust the manual." Then why the hell do they send it out, I wondered?
"So you can guarantee me there's nothing wrong with my configuration as recorded in your database?"
"Absolutely. I guarantee it."
I called back the next morning because I couldn't stand dealing with this rude idiot, and surprise, surprise: the serial number of the modem which they use to register whether you've got a valid account or not was wrong. As soon as the tech changed it in their database, my service returned.
Comcast is dreadful. Zero concern for customer service, thoroughly incompetent support center and totally useless server administrators -- if I had as many outages as they have, I'd be unemployable.
Oh, and one other thing -- at one point I started to discuss the agreement and ask about their SLA (service level agreement). They told me they don't have one. No requirement to provide up-time. No requirement to fix problems in a timely manner. The most they'll admit is that you can get a refund if you're out of service for a day or more, and you should count yourself lucky they offer that. If you press them on this, their answer is that if you want consistent service you should get a T1 line from the business unit. Excuse me?
Comcast is truly appalling. And the worst part of it is -- my wife doesn't want to go back to dial-up speeds, but they're the only high-speed game in town. I truly loathe them.
Here goes with some honesty, so I fully expect hostility. Be gentle, okay?
/. people were proudly proclaiming how fast it was and how tiny its footprint was. Please, point me in the right direction. I looked at SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake, and a couple of others, and everyone specified 64MB of RAM minimum -- that's not a small footprint, that's the same as an NT workstation! And, speedwise, my RedHat installation is the same as my W2K Pro installation on my dual-boot system. No tuning on the Linux system; but, then again, I've not tuned the W2K system, either.
Entrenchment
The vast majority of my work is on Windows. The software areas in which I specialize (for example, document management systems) don't do Linux, by and large. I have to know these systems, inside and out, and know the platforms they use, inside and out. For me, that's Windows. I have to know it, and know it well. Linux is strictly a spare time thing, and I really don't have that much spare time. Yeah, I know, if I were a true geek, I'd be staying up until all hours on my Linux system. What can I say? I don't play computer games, either, so it's certainly not that that's keeping me on Windows (unlike every other post I've read in this story so far).
Comfort
I know Windows, and I can get it to work. I fully expect the flaming to start about now, but here are some simple facts which represent nothing more than my experience. My Windows servers don't crash. My Windows workstations don't crash. Personally, I'm just as happy to chalk it up to the fact that I know what I'm doing when I set the things up (and, admittedly, W2K is pretty stable). Yes, I have to reboot for patches. But failures and unplanned outages -- forget it, I don't get them.
Linux, on the other hand, has given me some weird experiences, particularly on laptops, and, yes, occasionally I've had to do a hard restart because it was hung. I'm sure it's because I didn't download the latest drivers, or tweak the settings correctly, or rework my configuration script...but guess what, people -- I don't have to do that on Windows. Again, it's a comfort thing.
Disillusionment
Boy, I have a horrible feeling about what this might provoke, but here goes. When I first started to look at Linux, everywhere I looked on
Those, for me, are the main reasons. Windows is just too important for me at work to not know it intimately, and Linux doesn't offer enough compelling reasons to dedicate a lot of time becoming better attuned to it. Remember, I'm just being honest!
It's a joke!
I'm sure she has a legitimate fax number that can accept requests for unsubscribe, being such a fine character.
Who can say why he divorced her, but it doesn't appear to be because he has a visceral loathing of spam.
"A friend in Tampa along with her ex-husband keep the company's computers and servers running."
That is not a nice thing to do, calling someone just to bug them.
Exactly; that's why you should fax her instead. At her home number.
This leapt out at me too. Worldcom's response appears to be "Bad spammers. Be nice and happy to the world". One wonders what an "increasingly stern" notice might look like.
"Very bad spammers. Now stop that, before we get miffed."
And honestly, can you blame spammers when they can get away with it like this? Emphasis mine:
We request you take whatever measures you deem appropriate which will ensure no further violation will occur.
So the spammer gets to decide what's appropriate. (Maybe the police will let me decide what's an appropriate amount to pay for a speeding ticket if I get pulled over.) Naturally, the admin flags one name to avoid out of 60 million and the problem is cleared up as far as everyone is concerned. Way to go, WorldCom.
This apparently misleading (albeit well-intentioned) comment gets modded +4 interesting, meaning that almost everyone will see this poor guy's name.
/. An early poster makes assumptions and gets modded way the hell up, then all the rebuttals pointing out he's talking out of an unreliable orifice wallow in the low point range.
All the replying posts pointing out that it's a phone company/ISP and it's almost certainly nothing to do with this chap are at 2 or below, meaning that many people won't see them and this individual's name is now besmirched.
And, by the way, this happens all the bl**dy time on
Yeah, I know it's off-topic. Just wanted to rant about something that irritates me. Return to your normally-scheduled bits and pieces.
A professional assasin would've killed his target, got out, and collected his paycheck.
Yes and no. Mostly yes -- a professional assassin is typically hired to kill a specific target. A true mercenary does the job purely for financial gain, not for ideological purposes, and so the motivation to escape is obviously high.
But what if your aim is to instill fear? Suicide bombers don't care about getting out; they want to take as many with them as possible. Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if we discover the motivation for the snipers was to instill as much fear as possible in the American population. To that end, it was a big success -- no apparent link between the targets, which meant anyone could be next, and they just kept on going day after day with no-one having a clue who they were.
So, the lesson is that, while professional is usually taken to mean that one gets paid for the task, that's not the only definition. It can refer to someone who performs a task to high standards and with a certain degree of expertise (look it up on Merriam-Webster).
(Oh, and it's Pyrrhic, not phyrric. Even without the correct spelling, it still refers to Pyrrhus, so you should at least capitalize it as a proper noun. Classical education ain't what it were.)
This means that the best solution is to discourage people from stealing your car. Buy a model that is not too attractive. Don't leave your car in unsafe neighbourhoods.
And buy a steering wheel lock, like the Club. I use one even though I have a car alarm, on the principle it's a fairly visible extra deterrent which will mean more work for the thief. A professional who really wants my car will go for it anyway, but I'm more concerned about discouraging the casual thief.
True. I used to own a white Mazda Familia wagon, fairly anonymous, no extras at all except for air conditioning. I bought it because it was ideal for my needs at the time (low mileage, only a couple of years old, excellent condition, and I needed the luggage capacity of a wagon). It was stolen one night (Christmas Day, actually), and the police found it a couple of weeks later. They told me that from evidence found in the car it was apparent it had been used in a couple of jewellery store burglaries, and that meant they would've picked my car precisely because it was anonymous. So, not the sort of vehicle to rate a second glance from the kids who want a joy-ride, but ideal for thief transit to be dumped later on -- neither flashy nor ratty enough to draw attention.
Absolutely. AND ensure your disaster recovery plans include regular testing. I've seen sites where they assume that because they tested a tape restore of a test 10MB database two years ago when they first installed their SQL server, that means all the subsequently added multi-GB databases are also safe "because they're being backed up using exactly the same procedure". Perform test restores on a regular basis (say, once a month) as part of regular maintenance procedures.
During my degree, I studied:
* data structures and algorithms
* software engineering process
* VAX assembly language implementation
* language implementation, including case studies of about five or six different languages
* artificial intelligence
* operating system theory
* business computing solutions (COBOL, spreadsheet theory (!), etc.)
* Database theory and implementation
* Computer architecture and design, including case studies of perhaps five different CPUs
We started off with basic programming theory, looking at procedural vs. event-driven programming, then moved more into the data structures and algorithms. (Hey, look, that sort algorithm I devised when I was 14 is a shell sort!)
As well as this, my course required a grounding in at least four different sciences (which could be, for example, Computer Science, Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, and Physics). I may be incorrect in saying this, but my understanding is that a typical U.S. degree course would also require several unrelated credits, such as English and History classes. The U.S. degrees (again, in my understanding) emphasise a more general education, perhaps at the expense of teaching the specifics. A NZ or Australian degree, on the other hand, tends to go by the principle that high school is the time to get a general education, and university is more about looking at a specific target (Arts degrees excepted (boy, I know I'm going to get flamed for that)).
I abhorr and loathe the tie. No matter what it stands for
Just out of curiosity, did you also, in common with the vast majority of eight year olds, abhor and loathe school when you were there?
It's not functional for me to wear one, since I crawl under, between, above and behind stuff regularily. Wearing a tie in these conditions is life threatening even. What if your tie snags while you fall off something? You'd have yourself a hanging in the server room... Great.
That's why God invented tie pins. (By the way -- if you're ever walking down a busy street and see a group of suits with their ties blown over their shoulder by the wind, do everyone a favour and point them in the direction of the nearest accessory shop so they can purchase one of these handy little devices too, please.)
Also, I won't hide behind a tie if I f**k up.
Nor will I. Despite the rash of scandals, most of the suits whom you appear to loathe are also quite responsible -- that's how they got to their current position. (And spare me the "but what about...". I'm no naif -- I know there are those who progress by flattery and nepotism.)
Read your post again and listen to the permanent pout that you must have. Don't worry; you're very unlikely to ever get to a position where you're required to wear a tie.
He has gotten on a personal crusade, but one of his main complaints is that he followed eBay's guidelines and still got hammered.
Look at this page. From the screen shot from October 14, it appears to me that he's referencing official eBay guidelines.
"eBay Guideline: If you are the copyright owner of the material you are offering on CD-R or DVD-R, make sure you say so in your listing!
Examples
A local band decides to release its latest album on CD-R. The band may list the album on eBay so long as it is clear from the listing that the band is the copyright owner."
He made it explicitly clear in his listing that he was indeed the copyright owner. Now, I don't know where he found the quotes above, but they appear to be from eBay official guidelines. If that is indeed the case, then there shouldn't have been a problem, and eBay could be said to be costing him money by preventing a completely legitimate sale for a reason which is incorrect.
The other point is that eBay originally claimed they had been contacted by the copyright owner who asked them to end the sale. He knows full well he didn't contact them with such a request, and so he asked eBay to tell him who did do this so he could protect his copyright. eBay ignored this request, thus further compounding their possible culpability.
The guy's web site clearly states that he complied with all E-Bay rules. He is the copyright owner, which he stated in his listings.
He also gives screen shots of other E-Bay listings which are blatant rip-offs.
He also points out that E-Bay claimed that someone else had supposedly said they were the copyright holder. When he wrote back to them asking to know who was making this false claim so he could protect his copyright, E-Bay responded with a letter which ignored his request.
Good grief. Read the article. Idiot.
I tend to agree with you (and I'm in my early thirties), but...
/.ers won't understand this. It's called ego, people. Grow up, be forewarned, and get with the times!
You have to get a feeling for what the rest of the office will wear and then try to approximate that. (And, of course, take note of any dress codes mentioned in orientation materials.)
Four years ago, as a consultant (not in the U.S.) who was constantly visiting professional clients (banking, industry, etc.), I was required to wear a suit. It made a difference to the clients, too. We sometimes had clients who would mention in conversation to our bosses that they like us more than our competition because we were more knowledgeable, more professional, blah blah, "and at least your guy wears a suit".
Two years ago, as a consultant in Pennsylvania, doing the rounds in New York, D.C., New Jersey, New England, etc., I sometimes wore a suit, but more often I would wear a dress shirt and blazer to dress up, or a long sleeve button down shirt with no tie to dress down one level, or a polo shirt. It all depended on where I was going. Some clients wanted me to dress like them, which meant khakis and polo shirt -- they were intimidated or at least uncomfortable when I wore a suit. Others wanted me to appear professional, and would not have been hapy had I not been wearing at least a long sleeved shirt.
Today, no longer a consultant, I typically wear polo shirts or a long-sleeved shirt and khakis. Very rarely will I wear a tie. I quite like to know I'm well-dressed, but it would make me stand out and, more importantly, would make my co-workers slightly less comfortable. Ultimately, that slight psychological difficulty can have a small but very real adverse effect on your professional relationships.
But what if I know I have a meeting with managers from other departments? I'll dress up a notch -- it's appropriate in that case, and I want them to go away with a good impression.
Look, really, you have two options. You can be a geek and attempt to impress based purely on your technical skills, or you can be a professional (and still a geek) and dress appropriately. There are plenty who will kick and scream and yell that all that matters is that they know their job. And they will never rise very far, because they are in an imaginary world which bears less and less resemblance to the real world. According to the Gartner Group studies on this topic, we're on a timeline where technical skills have gone from a relevance level of 65% down to 35%. Project management skills, interpersonal relationship skills, and other such management skills have become more and more esteemed and important.
All of which, of course, is totally off-topic to the original question, because I have no other suggestions on where to acquire the specific clothing items that the poster asked about. But the fact is that if you are concerned about your career as opposed to just your job then today it is crucial for a geek to grow up out of the immature "I can wear tee-shirts and sandals because I'm a genius" mentality and realise that in the vast majority of workplaces it does make a difference what you wear. If in doubt, start off playing it safe by dressing one notch above what the standard is, and then aim to fit in with the company culture. If you want to declare your geekiness in such a situation, then by all means go for the button-downs with the small and tasteful Tux logo, if that's appropriate. I know the original poster understands this; that's why he asked the question. I also know that many