I don't know what the application is for, but Oracle -> MySQL is a step backwards.
Not necessarily. There are lots of projects that use Oracle by dictatorial decree rather than choice of the engineers. These projects often use 0.01% of Oracle's absolutely tremendous capabilities, which makes the absolutely tremendous Oracle licensing fees appear silly.
For a website that has a database of 50 tables or so that sees relatively few transactions, MySQL or PostgreSQL might be a perfect fit. For a multi-terabyte behemoth with hundreds or thousands of tables, replication, fail-over, distributed transactions, etc., perhaps Oracle fits better.
Regardless, I would at least advocate prototyping with an Open Source database. There's always the chance that it will end up meeting the project's requirements like a glove and, at least, postpone the cost of Oracle as long as possible.
People bought solutions because it sounded good while bragging on the golf course...
I hope one thing to die along with the extravagant spending will be the non-English marketing gibberish spouted by the ignorant and insecure people speaking it. "This distributed enterprise web-enabled e-commerce solution will improve your corporate bottom line through leveraging technological investment (in my bank account) and dramatically improves (my bank account) the customer experience blah blah blah..."
Debt is at record levels (not seen since the depression)...
I would bet (figuratively, don't ask for money!) that, depresson or no depression, there will eventually be massive regulation of credit cards and small-time loans. There are enormous numbers of people who naively live beyond their means by using several credit cards and "no payments till 2020" financing to create a mythical lifestyle of entertainment centers and used luxury cars. If there is another "great depression", then the real losers will probably be the poor, who will literally have everything they own repossessed by banks.
The programmers are already employed. they cost nothing as their salary is already part of the operating expenses...
I agree with what you said and wonder if modern accounting methods are simply broken with respect to technology. It shouldn't be against management's interests to invest in infrastructure, because it definitely would be a win for the corporate bottom-line. Pissing away tens of thousands of dollars on labor is simply the company shooting itself in the foot (imagine how many widgets or doodads they have to sell to make up for this blatant inefficiency).
One other part of the problem seems to be that it is much easier, bureaucratically speaking, to reassign human resources than go through the paperwork-and-signature nightmare often required for aquiring new hardware. I've seen cases where avoiding the paperwork was a primary motivating factor in technology-related decisions. For example, people already working on a project see getting money for new software as completely implausible, so they use their labor hours to find and use Open Source software that has a business-friendly license. I would bet that Open Source is the unspoken hero of many corporate/government projects.
Re:There always needs to be a balance
on
Gates and Security
·
· Score: 1
Of course, this back door is secured by the fact that you have to identify yourself as a paying AAA member before the driver is even dispatched, which leaves a nice clear paper trail that can be traced back if this service is ever abused by car thieves.
Ha. Guess you never heard of the "cash transaction". $75. No receipt. No questions asked.
If we had access to a plethora of medical information, perhaps we could do some data mining and identify some patterns that would benifit us more than we can imagine.
Access to aggregate information can accomplish nearly the same thing without identifying individual people in the process.
I'm trying to remember WHY I want all this privacy...
Okay, citing recent news, what if you were an "evil" sodomizer in Texas, who happened to get "evil sodomizer" stamped on his permanent criminal record, potentially harming him for life in the midst of a bigoted and unfair society?
Everyone has different reasons for desiring privacy. Most of those reasons are very subjective in light of religion, culture, and politics. Is there any logical reason why sodomy should be illegal? Absolutely not. What about if you are a Southern Baptist? Or a member of the KKK? What if a person with access to a national database finds you immoral, based on their own bias, and injects incriminating data into your profile? What if you are among the millions of people whose lifestyle doesn't match assumptions built into an arbitrary database schema?
Databases, by themselves, are benign. Databases in the context of human administration and consumption are terribly dangerous.
I guess if I was a politcian I wouldn't want people to know some things, but I'm just a pretty average citizen, I don't need someone else protecting my privacy.
This really answers your own question. There should be no barriers for average citizens to become politicians, if they choose. Representation by the people for the people, or something like that. Simply, privacy is necessary for democracy.
Excel still has the same row limitations now that it did in 95.
It's unfortunate that Microsoft put such a trivial limitation into Excel. That's the fault of their software engineers for being myopic and naive. Unfortunately, there are few practical alternitives to Excel, thanks to Microsoft's office software monopoly.
Software vendors have rarely impressed me with better versions of software.
I'm glad you are mostly immune to their flashy and expensive marketing campaigns. Microsoft are sociological masters; I bet they could even get an Amish man to buy a new computer with Windows 2003 after a few minutes with their sales pitch.
Rather, contrast that with companies like Sun and IBM who support customers as long as they are willing to maintain the support contract. Sometimes, for some companies, the pain or cost of upgrading justifies the support contract.
I consider it an anomoly, that Microsoft can ram a glowing iron shaft into their customers' rear-end, and the customers look up all teary-eyed and say "Thank you, kind master, may I have another?" Why are people such pushovers when it comes to software, yet they will negotiate a car or house purchase with every ounce of strength they have?
Contrast that with Red Hat...
Also, don't forget that true third-party support is available for Red Hat's products forever, even if Red Hat vaporizes tomorrow. I believe something called the GPL has something to do with it...
We had a System 36 that operated our finance department from 1982 to 1999. That was replaced by an AS/400 that we are probably going to get another 10-15 years out of.
These concepts are foriegn to Microsoft's customers. Microsoft wants to ensure that its customers are addicted to new XYZ gazillihertz computers and new Microsoft Windows Server version We-Promise-It's-Better-This-Time-Scout's-Honor.
IT technology that turns over every three years and keeps IT staff totally confused and insecure leaves Microsoft wide open for massive profit.
Seriously and honestly, just how much better is Windows 2003 than Windows 3.1 or OS/2 for day-to-day desktop work? How about the latest release of Office relative to Word 95 or Ami Pro? People, essentially, are doing the same damn things today that they did ten and fifteen years ago. Granted, faster computers allow bigger spreadsheets and longer documents, but the functional requirements for the software itself simply haven't changed.
Why businesses choose to reinvent the wheel everytime Microsoft releases their newer and flashier software baffles me completely.
If it's sinking there, too, then it looks like Microsoft will have to settle for second place in North America.
I would bet that Microsoft, culturally, goes against the grain of most countries in the world. Their super-aggressive business tactics are largely a U.S. tradition that, I suspect, would unsettle many foriegn businesspeople and government officials. Suprisingly, Microsoft has managed to get whole countries addicted to its PC software, but it seems some countries are looking to go into rehab full-force as soon as possible (e.g., whole national and municipal governments are adopting or severely considering Linux)
Perhaps, one day, the U.S. will be alone in the world with its government, military, and civilian populace branded "Designed for Windows".
Turned out we had a set of images in the enrolment system that totalled about 150k when they should have totalled 10k.
This is why users should harbor some forgiveness in their hearts for a new system. It is basically impossible for humans to track every aspect of a complex system, such as computer software.
However, when an ill-concieved website never gets fixed and, even after one full year, it still breaks and is slow and unpredictable, then heads should roll. (I'm speaking from my experience of having to use rediculous--and embarrasing, if public--"money saving" intranet websites each week)
Oh, one more (off-topic) thing: it seems to be trendy, now, for companies to put pay stubs on-line without mailing the official documents. Print the damn things out! I fear what would happen to employees who suspect a pay-related issue and have no documentation to back up their claim. Complacently not printing out pay stubs just leaves open the probability of missed problems and corporate abuse of electronic data.
The Scary part is, I've found Win2000 to be the most stable and reliable Windows ever released. 63,000 defects? I wouldn't doubt it. The part that worries me with how well 2000 works, how many defects do the 9x, XP, and NT versions contain?
It's 63,000 known defects. The real number of defects is probably ten times that.
This is what you get when you have several tens of millions of lines of code on your hands. Windows is too big for its own good (mission critical...yeah, right).
It is because Bill Gates, a salesman, is much smarter than the U.S. Government. A good salesman always distracts the customer from logical alternatives.
Remember the cartoon about a salesperson selling refrigerators to Eskimos? Well, there you go.
A FAQ I found at www.navy.mil says there are 480,000 active-duty soldiers in the U.S. Army.
I know there is a bureaucracy beyond just the soldiers, but one of sufficient size to require more computers than there are solidiers??? Also, this deal appears to be just for the Army--not other DoD agencies that do a lot of stuff for the Army.
From the Yahoo! article: Keith Hodson, a Microsoft spokesman, said the contract could help the Army reduce its costs and "validates the Army's belief in our security model."
This isn't exactly something to validate a citizen's belief in the Army's security model!
Additionally: "We look at the Army deal as incremental evidence that Microsoft continues to outperform as a business and that the longer-term, subscription style business model is indeed gaining significant traction," Di Bona wrote in his report.
As final proof of its global power, Microsoft is now taxing the U.S. Government!
If so, didn't they violate the DMCA - no matter what their intent?
Hopefully they will find that there was no security to bybass.
What is potentially so bad is that the DMCA could shoot the messenger, here. The newspaper wasn't some black-hat cracker, who would have never revealed his/her new precious bounty. The school now knows about the vulnerability, which puts them in a much better position than before.
A 486 is perfectly fine and as long as the computer works then it can bring money in.
However, it is frustratingly slow and or unable to function with modern software, so 1) productivity goes up with a faster computer and 2) a newer computer would make for lower employee turnover (that 486 might have a new face in front of it every two months). Low productivity and high turnover kill businesses, but these costs are abstracted on the balance sheet (why is HR so expensive this year?) making management slow to recognize them (we need to cut HR's budget somehow...).
If new pc's are needed then as a CIO I would take it out of your salary and let you go. Its that or make you work for free.
This works only if the employees are contractors and can count the computer as their own tax deduction. It is always in the interest of a contractor to have modern equipment.
If a new user needs a pc then that department should pay for it.
This isnt' a bad idea, but it depends highly on how that department is funded. If the department is autonomous and has to earn its own money from other departments, then this model might work well. If the department is at the mercy of a budget committee and corporate politics, then things would probably fall apart quickly.
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I don't know what the application is for, but Oracle -> MySQL is a step backwards.
Not necessarily. There are lots of projects that use Oracle by dictatorial decree rather than choice of the engineers. These projects often use 0.01% of Oracle's absolutely tremendous capabilities, which makes the absolutely tremendous Oracle licensing fees appear silly.
For a website that has a database of 50 tables or so that sees relatively few transactions, MySQL or PostgreSQL might be a perfect fit. For a multi-terabyte behemoth with hundreds or thousands of tables, replication, fail-over, distributed transactions, etc., perhaps Oracle fits better.
Regardless, I would at least advocate prototyping with an Open Source database. There's always the chance that it will end up meeting the project's requirements like a glove and, at least, postpone the cost of Oracle as long as possible.
People bought solutions because it sounded good while bragging on the golf course...
I hope one thing to die along with the extravagant spending will be the non-English marketing gibberish spouted by the ignorant and insecure people speaking it. "This distributed enterprise web-enabled e-commerce solution will improve your corporate bottom line through leveraging technological investment (in my bank account) and dramatically improves (my bank account) the customer experience blah blah blah..."
Debt is at record levels (not seen since the depression)...
I would bet (figuratively, don't ask for money!) that, depresson or no depression, there will eventually be massive regulation of credit cards and small-time loans. There are enormous numbers of people who naively live beyond their means by using several credit cards and "no payments till 2020" financing to create a mythical lifestyle of entertainment centers and used luxury cars. If there is another "great depression", then the real losers will probably be the poor, who will literally have everything they own repossessed by banks.
The programmers are already employed. they cost nothing as their salary is already part of the operating expenses...
I agree with what you said and wonder if modern accounting methods are simply broken with respect to technology. It shouldn't be against management's interests to invest in infrastructure, because it definitely would be a win for the corporate bottom-line. Pissing away tens of thousands of dollars on labor is simply the company shooting itself in the foot (imagine how many widgets or doodads they have to sell to make up for this blatant inefficiency).
One other part of the problem seems to be that it is much easier, bureaucratically speaking, to reassign human resources than go through the paperwork-and-signature nightmare often required for aquiring new hardware. I've seen cases where avoiding the paperwork was a primary motivating factor in technology-related decisions. For example, people already working on a project see getting money for new software as completely implausible, so they use their labor hours to find and use Open Source software that has a business-friendly license. I would bet that Open Source is the unspoken hero of many corporate/government projects.
Of course, this back door is secured by the fact that you have to identify yourself as a paying AAA member before the driver is even dispatched, which leaves a nice clear paper trail that can be traced back if this service is ever abused by car thieves.
Ha. Guess you never heard of the "cash transaction". $75. No receipt. No questions asked.
Databases have transaction logs, paper doesn't.
This is irrelevant. The transaction logs are in the possession of the party who has the most interest in seeing it "cleansed."
This is like asking a drug dealer for reciepts at an IRS audit. Good luck.
If we had access to a plethora of medical information, perhaps we could do some data mining and identify some patterns that would benifit us more than we can imagine.
Access to aggregate information can accomplish nearly the same thing without identifying individual people in the process.
I'm trying to remember WHY I want all this privacy...
Okay, citing recent news, what if you were an "evil" sodomizer in Texas, who happened to get "evil sodomizer" stamped on his permanent criminal record, potentially harming him for life in the midst of a bigoted and unfair society?
Everyone has different reasons for desiring privacy. Most of those reasons are very subjective in light of religion, culture, and politics. Is there any logical reason why sodomy should be illegal? Absolutely not. What about if you are a Southern Baptist? Or a member of the KKK? What if a person with access to a national database finds you immoral, based on their own bias, and injects incriminating data into your profile? What if you are among the millions of people whose lifestyle doesn't match assumptions built into an arbitrary database schema?
Databases, by themselves, are benign. Databases in the context of human administration and consumption are terribly dangerous.
I guess if I was a politcian I wouldn't want people to know some things, but I'm just a pretty average citizen, I don't need someone else protecting my privacy.
This really answers your own question. There should be no barriers for average citizens to become politicians, if they choose. Representation by the people for the people, or something like that. Simply, privacy is necessary for democracy.
So are you saying that jack-booted thugs are forcing you to install and use Windows?
Peer-pressure, despite its subtlty, is much more dangerous than any "jack-booted thug" will ever be.
it does sometimes seem that the future is trying its hardest to copy Orwells imagination..
If 1984 was a fictional account of real history, then it would be more accurate to say that we may see history repeat itself, again.
Excel still has the same row limitations now that it did in 95.
It's unfortunate that Microsoft put such a trivial limitation into Excel. That's the fault of their software engineers for being myopic and naive. Unfortunately, there are few practical alternitives to Excel, thanks to Microsoft's office software monopoly.
Software vendors have rarely impressed me with better versions of software.
I'm glad you are mostly immune to their flashy and expensive marketing campaigns. Microsoft are sociological masters; I bet they could even get an Amish man to buy a new computer with Windows 2003 after a few minutes with their sales pitch.
Can you?
No. That was part of my point.
Contrast that with Red Hat...
Rather, contrast that with companies like Sun and IBM who support customers as long as they are willing to maintain the support contract. Sometimes, for some companies, the pain or cost of upgrading justifies the support contract.
I consider it an anomoly, that Microsoft can ram a glowing iron shaft into their customers' rear-end, and the customers look up all teary-eyed and say "Thank you, kind master, may I have another?" Why are people such pushovers when it comes to software, yet they will negotiate a car or house purchase with every ounce of strength they have?
Contrast that with Red Hat...
Also, don't forget that true third-party support is available for Red Hat's products forever, even if Red Hat vaporizes tomorrow. I believe something called the GPL has something to do with it...
We had a System 36 that operated our finance department from 1982 to 1999. That was replaced by an AS/400 that we are probably going to get another 10-15 years out of.
These concepts are foriegn to Microsoft's customers. Microsoft wants to ensure that its customers are addicted to new XYZ gazillihertz computers and new Microsoft Windows Server version We-Promise-It's-Better-This-Time-Scout's-Honor.
IT technology that turns over every three years and keeps IT staff totally confused and insecure leaves Microsoft wide open for massive profit.
Seriously and honestly, just how much better is Windows 2003 than Windows 3.1 or OS/2 for day-to-day desktop work? How about the latest release of Office relative to Word 95 or Ami Pro? People, essentially, are doing the same damn things today that they did ten and fifteen years ago. Granted, faster computers allow bigger spreadsheets and longer documents, but the functional requirements for the software itself simply haven't changed.
Why businesses choose to reinvent the wheel everytime Microsoft releases their newer and flashier software baffles me completely.
Do something that is CUTE and it will sell.
What about a fun cross between Frogger and Hello Kitty?
The possibilities are endless.
If it's sinking there, too, then it looks like Microsoft will have to settle for second place in North America.
I would bet that Microsoft, culturally, goes against the grain of most countries in the world. Their super-aggressive business tactics are largely a U.S. tradition that, I suspect, would unsettle many foriegn businesspeople and government officials. Suprisingly, Microsoft has managed to get whole countries addicted to its PC software, but it seems some countries are looking to go into rehab full-force as soon as possible (e.g., whole national and municipal governments are adopting or severely considering Linux)
Perhaps, one day, the U.S. will be alone in the world with its government, military, and civilian populace branded "Designed for Windows".
Turned out we had a set of images in the enrolment system that totalled about 150k when they should have totalled 10k.
This is why users should harbor some forgiveness in their hearts for a new system. It is basically impossible for humans to track every aspect of a complex system, such as computer software.
However, when an ill-concieved website never gets fixed and, even after one full year, it still breaks and is slow and unpredictable, then heads should roll. (I'm speaking from my experience of having to use rediculous--and embarrasing, if public--"money saving" intranet websites each week)
Oh, one more (off-topic) thing: it seems to be trendy, now, for companies to put pay stubs on-line without mailing the official documents. Print the damn things out! I fear what would happen to employees who suspect a pay-related issue and have no documentation to back up their claim. Complacently not printing out pay stubs just leaves open the probability of missed problems and corporate abuse of electronic data.
The Scary part is, I've found Win2000 to be the most stable and reliable Windows ever released. 63,000 defects? I wouldn't doubt it. The part that worries me with how well 2000 works, how many defects do the 9x, XP, and NT versions contain?
It's 63,000 known defects. The real number of defects is probably ten times that.
This is what you get when you have several tens of millions of lines of code on your hands. Windows is too big for its own good (mission critical...yeah, right).
One possible reason why Microsoft has a bad reputation (from the IWILL website):
"The Microsoft Jet database engine stopped the process because you and another user are attempting to change the same data at the same time."
I'm glad Jet is at least honest about why it isn't a real database.
Why does the Army need MS Office?
It is because Bill Gates, a salesman, is much smarter than the U.S. Government. A good salesman always distracts the customer from logical alternatives.
Remember the cartoon about a salesperson selling refrigerators to Eskimos? Well, there you go.
...$471,000,000...494,000 Army computers...
A FAQ I found at www.navy.mil says there are 480,000 active-duty soldiers in the U.S. Army.
I know there is a bureaucracy beyond just the soldiers, but one of sufficient size to require more computers than there are solidiers??? Also, this deal appears to be just for the Army--not other DoD agencies that do a lot of stuff for the Army.
From the Yahoo! article: Keith Hodson, a Microsoft spokesman, said the contract could help the Army reduce its costs and "validates the Army's belief in our security model."
This isn't exactly something to validate a citizen's belief in the Army's security model!
Additionally: "We look at the Army deal as incremental evidence that Microsoft continues to outperform as a business and that the longer-term, subscription style business model is indeed gaining significant traction," Di Bona wrote in his report.
As final proof of its global power, Microsoft is now taxing the U.S. Government!
If so, didn't they violate the DMCA - no matter what their intent?
Hopefully they will find that there was no security to bybass.
What is potentially so bad is that the DMCA could shoot the messenger, here. The newspaper wasn't some black-hat cracker, who would have never revealed his/her new precious bounty. The school now knows about the vulnerability, which puts them in a much better position than before.
are like a child with a gun.
A 486 is perfectly fine and as long as the computer works then it can bring money in.
However, it is frustratingly slow and or unable to function with modern software, so 1) productivity goes up with a faster computer and 2) a newer computer would make for lower employee turnover (that 486 might have a new face in front of it every two months). Low productivity and high turnover kill businesses, but these costs are abstracted on the balance sheet (why is HR so expensive this year?) making management slow to recognize them (we need to cut HR's budget somehow...).
If new pc's are needed then as a CIO I would take it out of your salary and let you go. Its that or make you work for free.
This works only if the employees are contractors and can count the computer as their own tax deduction. It is always in the interest of a contractor to have modern equipment.
If a new user needs a pc then that department should pay for it.
This isnt' a bad idea, but it depends highly on how that department is funded. If the department is autonomous and has to earn its own money from other departments, then this model might work well. If the department is at the mercy of a budget committee and corporate politics, then things would probably fall apart quickly.
Throw two of them in a shoebox, and you've got a perfect fault-tolerant high-availability DNS and LDAP information infrastructure solution!
Put an Oracle RAC cluster in the top drawer of your desk!
Imagine a beowulf of these in your pants!
Seriously, though, Pentium 233 MMX-equivalent performance is great for my first option above (with or without the shoebox).
Why doesn't the RIAA distribute MP3s that sing "You are so sued! (Copyright 2003 RIAA)" when played? This would save them a lot of paperwork.
... in a way that damages the long term outlook for the company.
If they cured the problem, they couldn't sell you another book in three years, could they?
Revolutionary books about revolutionizing business are their own self-perpetuating business model.