No, the one I am thinking about is pretty old. None of these fancy computer graphics, and no mention of string theory at all. The best graphics they had were construction paper animation ala South Park style. But it was most certainly Nova. I may have to dig through the piles of tape in the cabinet at my Dad's house now to satisfy myself.
While its obvious the parent is being sarcastic, the theory is the Grand Unification Theory which stipulates that all those cool forces out there are like electricity, magnetism, nuclear decay, gravity, and loads of other cool stuff are related. The point is that the experiment is interesting because it suggests a way to relate gravity to other forces, which if I remember from an episode of Nova I saw on PBS +10 years ago, is something that is very hard to do.
Oh right, If they want a broken design sure, sell them a broken design. But when the badly designed specs say X, is it too much to ask that the implementation matches X?
Given that IBM is a primary contractor for the IRS and that they are usually older machines, I would have to guess that most of these machines are AS/400's running OS/400.
... and let me tell you, they don't have a clue. Did you know that more than half of the 1040's that get electronically filed, get sent to the IRS computers by Z-Modem? I'm serious. Z-modem inside a telnet session pumped through an SSL connection (the system sorta evolved that way from the pre-internet dialup system they used to use.) Now the new thing they are working on, MEF (or Modernized E-File) includes forms 1120 and 1120S which is income taxes for Corporations and S-Corporations. In an 1120 tax return you can actually send scanned PDF files, which I assume some human at the IRS has to then read. What was the point in developing these huge specs for XML based tax returns to allow automatic processing, if you can just send in a bunch of documents that require human intervention? Thats just bad design, but they also have problems with implementation. The acknowlegement files we get for the form 1120 also have broken XML schema locations. (I've been on them for about a week to fix this.) Of course the real interesting bit about MEF is that its basically a glorified file transfer system. They basically designed a whole new file transfer system that runs on SOAP and HTTP. The banks that we deal with in comparison do have a clue. The banks use Secure FTP, Which has worked flawlessly for the last 6 years.
The icing on the cake? The company that has been contracted to build the MEF system? IBM.
Maybe a little late to post to this thread, but hell, why not? One of the things that I use my Wiki for is a living Help file. When a user selects help in our application, it takes them directly to a page in the wiki, that is relevant to what is on their screen right then and there. This makes it easy to keep the help information up to date, since we don't have to distribute it, and it puts discussion of problems adjacent to the help instructions themselves. Its especially usefull when the wiki has some kind of discussion or comments feature enabled.
is this the end for the classic telecoms providers like BT?
No Its not. Even tough Tesco offers broadband, They are just reselling BTs service. Most of the UK is covered by BT DSL service, and there aren't many other options. Cable internet is almost non-existent. There are some alternatives but few have any noteable penetration. Point being, BT isn't going anywhere.
I don't know if anyone else has noticed but this is as good a place as any to throw out the question. I put my site on Google Analytics right after it was post on/. in November. I have also been using AdSense on the site since August or So. Oddly enough, shortly after adding Analytics to the site, AdSense revenue started dropping. Revenues are now less than half of what they were before Analytics.
Anyone else seen that behavior or is my site just a statistical outlier?
VB.Net has an excellent upgrade tool that comes with Visual Studio that parses your VB6 Code and spits out nice new VB.Net code (with a few exceptions.)
It has been my expirience that the code that did not upgrade well, did so because it was written badly. All the things that developers have been told to avoid like global variables. Come back to haunt you here. In short good VB6 code practially upgrades itself, and bad VB6 code is a porting night mare. Any surprise here?
So the people who can't easily port wrote (or maintain) bad code. Do I feel sorry for them? No. They are just being forced to address problems that should have been fixed a long time ago.
As far as MVPS goes, its basically a good old boys club. If you know the right people you get in. Its basically a title that lets consultants charge more. Its not an MCSD who certifiably knows something. If the MCSD's were complaining, I'd be more inclined to listen.
What you are paying for is the cost to terminate the call to POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) lines. You may not realize this, but everytime a call terminates to a POTS line, the long distance carrier must pay a fee to the local carrier that operatates the POTS line. So what you are paying for is the service of integrating the IP network with the POTS network.
by the way 24.95 a month is the target price for USA Datanet's VoIP service. But um, I'm not supposed to know that.
See thats what I am talking about. I can't actually make this change without breaking RFC compliance. I think what everyone is afraid to admit here is that the email system is fundementally flawed. That still leaves the question of how can we fix it, and how to we get the whole web to adopt a new system. Its like the IP6 problem. How do you get people to change when they don't see a problem with what they have got?
That won't really work either. since they will just run their entire list against the DB and validate the 'good' addresses.
However a solution I have been expirementing with is pretty simple to implement and so far is giving me a very high sucess rate. The idea is this: most spam comes from open relays. Spammers use fake MAIL FROMs. So when my mail server gets a connection from an IP, it notes it, then it does an MX lookup on the alleged MAIL FROM. If the connecting IP isn't an MX for the MAIL FROM, my server marks it as spam.
The only real problem I can see with this logic is that some mail servers are valid senders from a domain, and not valid recipiants for the domain. A simple correction would be to add these outbound only servers to the MX records with very low priority (hopefully they would never be used).
It probably breaks some RFC's, and won't catch legit spam (the sender can be contacted and asked to stop) wich is controllable anyway.
What it does do is foreces spammers to use real domain names. This makes it easier to identify open relays and forces spammers to register domain names (which drives up their cost and makes em easier to catch too.)
maybe we can do this more widespread?
Ask and accountant not Slashdot
on
Does IT Matter?
·
· Score: 1
I think slashdot is the wrong crowd to discuss this matter. We have a bad habbit of judging IT on terms of technical merit and cool factor.
On the other hand I have never read a post by a slashdotter about actually calculating TCO and putting that into a cost-benefit analysis. Plus throw in issues like current value, future value. potential savings adjustment for inflation. This is how businesses will continue to measure the needs for IT in their organization.
So all in all, Adam Smiths invisible hand will also guide IT trends as well. See its not so much a matter of who has the best whatever system but a matter of which companies re-invest in IT wisely.
As far as leading and following goes, that is just a risk benefit issue. I bet most companies have been minimizing risk lately by avoiding big capital investments in new systems. So given the recent economic conditions, one would expect a reduction in risky activity. However since the recession is technically over, and we should be moving into economic expansion, now might be the ideal time for more technology leaders to emerge. I think that as more companies realize we are heading towards growth again Nicholas Carr will be proven quite wrong. He probably already is since all this is based on trend analysis which means these predictions are really only observations of the last 6+ months.
I feel compelled to throw in my basic economics training. See, economists devide all spending into three components: Government, Consumer, and Capital Investments by businesses. Add in Net Exports and you have GDP. Anyway, the purchase of equipment by a business would be a Capital Investment since it is something they will use to make more money. Since a home user is not the government nor business and certainly not an export buyer, they are infact a consumer.
NPR'sAll Things Considered dedicates their entire show on fridays to exactly this sort of programming. Granted its only one day a week, but honestly, I don't think I would care to hear more than that. I do like that fact that you can call in and contribute the conversation, but I guess talk radio isn't for everybody.
Yes snail mail is private, to both businesses and private individuals. Now think about the anaology, I do not expect anyone to open my mail at home, but the office is different, When you recieve snail mail at your office, and you leave/quit/get fired/retire/etc and mail arrives at the company addressed to you, you can be sure your sucessor will open that mail, especially if it appears to pertain to company business. Say you recieve an important contract that you have been working on for the company, a secretary may likely open it. No granted their may be the rare incidence where you have something personal sent to you office, but aside from an occasional signature required package, why would you do that?
So to compare, many businesses do open and read snail mail addressed to another person in the company. There is even a word for them, Gatekeepers. It is chapter 1 materical in a business communication class to know that people other than the person you address a letter to are going to read that letter.
I think the real issue is that any snail mail that arrives at a business is property of the business, and that any email that arrives at a business mail server could be considered the same.
Of course if you want to get your personally mail at work, then you could use one of those fabulous web based services, but then that goes back to the issue of surfing/emailing on company time.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the one I am thinking about is pretty old. None of these fancy computer graphics, and no mention of string theory at all. The best graphics they had were construction paper animation ala South Park style. But it was most certainly Nova. I may have to dig through the piles of tape in the cabinet at my Dad's house now to satisfy myself.
While its obvious the parent is being sarcastic, the theory is the Grand Unification Theory which stipulates that all those cool forces out there are like electricity, magnetism, nuclear decay, gravity, and loads of other cool stuff are related. The point is that the experiment is interesting because it suggests a way to relate gravity to other forces, which if I remember from an episode of Nova I saw on PBS +10 years ago, is something that is very hard to do.
Oh right, If they want a broken design sure, sell them a broken design. But when the badly designed specs say X, is it too much to ask that the implementation matches X?
Given that IBM is a primary contractor for the IRS and that they are usually older machines, I would have to guess that most of these machines are AS/400's running OS/400.
Of course I didn't proofread the subject box. Doh!
... and let me tell you, they don't have a clue. Did you know that more than half of the 1040's that get electronically filed, get sent to the IRS computers by Z-Modem? I'm serious. Z-modem inside a telnet session pumped through an SSL connection (the system sorta evolved that way from the pre-internet dialup system they used to use.) Now the new thing they are working on, MEF (or Modernized E-File) includes forms 1120 and 1120S which is income taxes for Corporations and S-Corporations. In an 1120 tax return you can actually send scanned PDF files, which I assume some human at the IRS has to then read. What was the point in developing these huge specs for XML based tax returns to allow automatic processing, if you can just send in a bunch of documents that require human intervention? Thats just bad design, but they also have problems with implementation. The acknowlegement files we get for the form 1120 also have broken XML schema locations. (I've been on them for about a week to fix this.) Of course the real interesting bit about MEF is that its basically a glorified file transfer system. They basically designed a whole new file transfer system that runs on SOAP and HTTP. The banks that we deal with in comparison do have a clue. The banks use Secure FTP, Which has worked flawlessly for the last 6 years.
The icing on the cake? The company that has been contracted to build the MEF system? IBM.
Maybe a little late to post to this thread, but hell, why not? One of the things that I use my Wiki for is a living Help file. When a user selects help in our application, it takes them directly to a page in the wiki, that is relevant to what is on their screen right then and there. This makes it easy to keep the help information up to date, since we don't have to distribute it, and it puts discussion of problems adjacent to the help instructions themselves. Its especially usefull when the wiki has some kind of discussion or comments feature enabled.
No Its not. Even tough Tesco offers broadband, They are just reselling BTs service. Most of the UK is covered by BT DSL service, and there aren't many other options. Cable internet is almost non-existent. There are some alternatives but few have any noteable penetration. Point being, BT isn't going anywhere.
I don't know if anyone else has noticed but this is as good a place as any to throw out the question. I put my site on Google Analytics right after it was post on /. in November. I have also been using AdSense on the site since August or So. Oddly enough, shortly after adding Analytics to the site, AdSense revenue started dropping. Revenues are now less than half of what they were before Analytics.
Anyone else seen that behavior or is my site just a statistical outlier?
VB.Net has an excellent upgrade tool that comes with Visual Studio that parses your VB6 Code and spits out nice new VB.Net code (with a few exceptions.)
It has been my expirience that the code that did not upgrade well, did so because it was written badly. All the things that developers have been told to avoid like global variables. Come back to haunt you here. In short good VB6 code practially upgrades itself, and bad VB6 code is a porting night mare. Any surprise here?
So the people who can't easily port wrote (or maintain) bad code. Do I feel sorry for them? No. They are just being forced to address problems that should have been fixed a long time ago.
As far as MVPS goes, its basically a good old boys club. If you know the right people you get in. Its basically a title that lets consultants charge more. Its not an MCSD who certifiably knows something. If the MCSD's were complaining, I'd be more inclined to listen.
Now that Suprnova is gone where can I get some torrents of this guy?
What no torrents? Bastards.
Just how is this Unlike this HP product? Old news.
What you are paying for is the cost to terminate the call to POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) lines. You may not realize this, but everytime a call terminates to a POTS line, the long distance carrier must pay a fee to the local carrier that operatates the POTS line. So what you are paying for is the service of integrating the IP network with the POTS network. by the way 24.95 a month is the target price for USA Datanet's VoIP service. But um, I'm not supposed to know that.
Go easy on my little server.
i sland.swf
http://freecache.org/http://k2wrpg.org/~leader/th
Setup a mail merge to fill out a real form with random data? then send it to you fax-print device?
Ok Then that will just fill up their hard drive.
See thats what I am talking about. I can't actually make this change without breaking RFC compliance. I think what everyone is afraid to admit here is that the email system is fundementally flawed. That still leaves the question of how can we fix it, and how to we get the whole web to adopt a new system. Its like the IP6 problem. How do you get people to change when they don't see a problem with what they have got?
That won't really work either. since they will just run their entire list against the DB and validate the 'good' addresses.
However a solution I have been expirementing with is pretty simple to implement and so far is giving me a very high sucess rate. The idea is this: most spam comes from open relays. Spammers use fake MAIL FROMs. So when my mail server gets a connection from an IP, it notes it, then it does an MX lookup on the alleged MAIL FROM. If the connecting IP isn't an MX for the MAIL FROM, my server marks it as spam.
The only real problem I can see with this logic is that some mail servers are valid senders from a domain, and not valid recipiants for the domain. A simple correction would be to add these outbound only servers to the MX records with very low priority (hopefully they would never be used).
It probably breaks some RFC's, and won't catch legit spam (the sender can be contacted and asked to stop) wich is controllable anyway.
What it does do is foreces spammers to use real domain names. This makes it easier to identify open relays and forces spammers to register domain names (which drives up their cost and makes em easier to catch too.)
maybe we can do this more widespread?
I think slashdot is the wrong crowd to discuss this matter. We have a bad habbit of judging IT on terms of technical merit and cool factor.
On the other hand I have never read a post by a slashdotter about actually calculating TCO and putting that into a cost-benefit analysis. Plus throw in issues like current value, future value. potential savings adjustment for inflation. This is how businesses will continue to measure the needs for IT in their organization.
So all in all, Adam Smiths invisible hand will also guide IT trends as well. See its not so much a matter of who has the best whatever system but a matter of which companies re-invest in IT wisely.
As far as leading and following goes, that is just a risk benefit issue. I bet most companies have been minimizing risk lately by avoiding big capital investments in new systems. So given the recent economic conditions, one would expect a reduction in risky activity. However since the recession is technically over, and we should be moving into economic expansion, now might be the ideal time for more technology leaders to emerge. I think that as more companies realize we are heading towards growth again Nicholas Carr will be proven quite wrong. He probably already is since all this is based on trend analysis which means these predictions are really only observations of the last 6+ months.
I feel compelled to throw in my basic economics training. See, economists devide all spending into three components: Government, Consumer, and Capital Investments by businesses. Add in Net Exports and you have GDP. Anyway, the purchase of equipment by a business would be a Capital Investment since it is something they will use to make more money. Since a home user is not the government nor business and certainly not an export buyer, they are infact a consumer.
Therefore Home User = Consumer.
Oh man, how embarassing. I always get those two shows mixed up. Oh well.
Recall the PVP Online fun when Scott Kurtz roasted him. Pick up the storyline here.
NPR's All Things Considered dedicates their entire show on fridays to exactly this sort of programming. Granted its only one day a week, but honestly, I don't think I would care to hear more than that. I do like that fact that you can call in and contribute the conversation, but I guess talk radio isn't for everybody.
Get a f'ing hobby people.
....."?
Thats what they are trying to to. Haven't you seen the sig "Alcohol, Helping ugly people get laid since
Yes snail mail is private, to both businesses and private individuals. Now think about the anaology, I do not expect anyone to open my mail at home, but the office is different, When you recieve snail mail at your office, and you leave/quit/get fired/retire/etc and mail arrives at the company addressed to you, you can be sure your sucessor will open that mail, especially if it appears to pertain to company business. Say you recieve an important contract that you have been working on for the company, a secretary may likely open it. No granted their may be the rare incidence where you have something personal sent to you office, but aside from an occasional signature required package, why would you do that?
So to compare, many businesses do open and read snail mail addressed to another person in the company. There is even a word for them, Gatekeepers. It is chapter 1 materical in a business communication class to know that people other than the person you address a letter to are going to read that letter.
I think the real issue is that any snail mail that arrives at a business is property of the business, and that any email that arrives at a business mail server could be considered the same.
Of course if you want to get your personally mail at work, then you could use one of those fabulous web based services, but then that goes back to the issue of surfing/emailing on company time.