Lesson learned: Commit early, commit often
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Antitrust
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· Score: 2
Well, if open/free source programmers learn anything from this movie, it should be to "commit early, commit often." If the murdered programmers did that, they'd still be walking around today!:)
It was like watching a TV slasher movie where you're screaming "Don't open the damn door you stupid bitch." Instead, here it was, UPLOAD YOUR CHANGES YOU STUPID GEEK!
btw, who keeps their backup server array 1 meter away from their primary storage (the day care scene)? Er, they need to contact EMC and set up mirrored storage up to several kilometers away, connected via fiber or fast IP link...
The security manager... oh that's even more ludicrous... Whenever something happens he just takes off out of his monitoring station, leaving everything un-attended? I think in real life he would've dispatched security guards to check things out while he stayed put to watch what's going on.
While what you say is how it SHOULD be, I know a security chief that is just like this guy. Their jobs are boring as hell and they tend to get into the power trips. If an event happens, there is no way they'd miss being right there in the middle of the action.
I don't understand why people don't bitch about this, but it's rampant and growing every day. All those web-based mail sites that will offer to collect your e-mail from your normal POP3 account somewhere else. All you need to do is give them your e-mail address and your password.
Check out webmail.com for one example. Major sites like Hotmail and Yahoo Mail will also offer to collect your mail as well.
My user population (over 10,000) is CONSTANTLY doing this even though we provide our own secure web-based mail page if they want to use it.
Why do I have a problem with this? Think about it. You're entering your id and password into some other site's web page and they go log in on your behalf, usually in cleartext. Even if I tcp_wrapper reject these places, the damage is done. The user has already entered in their ID and password.
So what we do is, we notice a logon from hotmail, yahoo, webmail.com, etc, we immediately lock their account under the part of our AUP that forbids revealing your ID and password to a third party.
Anyone can set up a web-mail page like IMP and change it to STORE the system names, IDs, and passwords that they collect and use them later.
So, when looking for a web-based mail site, don't be tempted to let them collect your other account's e-mail as well. You're trusting them with your ID and password. Not good, IMO....
The original Altavista search engine site was created mainly to 1) provide a useful service to the net and 2) showcase the power of the then-new Alpha processors running on Digital equipment.
Now some chump firm (CMGI CGMI CIGM whatever, who cares, there are too many acronyms in our world already...) bought it and acts like they invented it. I wonder where the real brains and team who created it all and made it happen are now?
Damn I miss the old net, before the bean-counters and lawyers got involved...:-(
Despite the status of MS as a monopoly, people can choose lots of options, (1) dont upgrade, (2) upgrade to linux/be/freebsd/etc, (3) or upgrade and pay market price.
Many businesses and individuals do #1. They don't upgrade, and this hits Microsoft's bottom line pretty bad. That's why they are moving to a subscription based model. You will HAVE to upgrade, or at least keep paying and paying for it whether or not you install the latest version your subscription entitles you to...
Read the articles. I don't know if it's fearmongering, but consider that you now have the means to use a piece of "unapproved" software to view your DVDs and IT IS ILLEGAL.
Will free software become extinct through judicial order soon? Will Linux become an circumvention device?
I would *think* not since it should be easy to prove that Linux's sole reason for being is not to circumvent this protection scheme, but who knows these days...:(
Re:Prosperity: social and economic power is critic
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Eat Less - Live Longer
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· Score: 1
I don't think that is so far off. For example, in the early 80s when I was a cashier, I had to know how to figure out change manually (easy, just count it up to the tendered amount) and even add up the coupons manually.
Now, if cashiers plug in the wrong amount tendered, they are lost and don't have a clue what to do...
Re:Prosperity: social and economic power is critic
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Eat Less - Live Longer
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· Score: 2
I could buy that, but what seems to be happening lately is that the less educated and poorer people are the ones cranking out the babies. Educated and the affluent tend not to have a lot of kids, if any at all...
In other words, while it's anecdotal, it sure seems that it's welfare that causes reproduction rates to go up, and the under-educated tend not to do a very good job ensuring a good education for their children, hence a real negative drain on overall societal productivity gains since society ends up taking care of them as well...
In other words, I really think we've peeked evolution wise, it's all downhill from here unless we muck with it artificially (and you know we will). Today, the ones reproducing and carrying on their traits tend to be the *cough* stupid idiots....:-(
If it was as simple as turning a single gene on or off, I'm sure evolution would already have done it for us...
Nah, not necessarily. Evolution tends to favor situations that lead to the point of reproduction. Once you're past reproductive age, evolution doesn't do much for you. You've served your purpose, now just hurry up and die please!
However, that's less the case for men who can do their part far longer than females, but that's the fault of women in general. If women of child-bearing age would just stop screwing men old enough to be their fathers, that feature would probably die off too!
Come to think of it, that's probably why men are considered to age more gracefully than women. The better looking old fucks tend to still get the young chicks and their "good looking old man" genes tend to carry on because of it.
Points all well taken and I agree. That's why I moved to Intel-based servers which I can always re-format and lay down whatever I want on them. The other big piece is the SAN technology.
Even worse case, they go out of business (EMC is making money hand over fist though), there will always be a resellers market. By the time this might get to a point where it's a concern, they'll be something much better out there...
I can't worry about who goes out of business or gets bought out. Looking back to the mid-80s, who would have ever guessed that some new just-an-IBM-PC-clone company (Compaq) would buy out the world's second largest (at the time) computer company (Digital) (and get their class A block in the process:).
In reality, all of this could be done in-house using spare parts and internal knowledge. But in the real world where each additional employee holds future liabilities to a firm, often contractual money expenditures are preferred while internal staff get diverted to work on the stupid pet projects of someone else internally...
First off, Linux isn't there yet, and neither is Microsoft. Hear me out please...
As one responsible for mission critical systems, I've justified paying a large sum of money to get support for a commercial UNIX system (Data General, now EMC, for DG/UX).
This puppy, whenever it paniced, would send diag packets automatically to DG, they'd start analyzing the problem, create a patch, and ship it out to us. There's a great comfort in that.
We had one case where the box would panic for no good reason on boot. Software support couldn't figure it out, so hardware support came out and just started blindly swapping processors, memory, etc, and it still didn't stop it. Turned out to be a faulty VME slot backplane board. Fixing that fixed the problem.
The point is, I have a ton of problems to worry about already and I took great comfort in knowing that no matter what was the cause, THEY HAD TO FIX IT.
I haven't seen any Linux vendor support get there yet, and I certainly haven't seen that with Microsoft servers. If they fail, you're told to reboot and try again. If that doesn't work, the next "solution" is to re-install it. Will Microsoft custom-fix a patch for me if I'm seeing a problem? I don't think so. Maybe if the fault is being experienced by thousands of sites...
So, bottom line is, it really doesn't matter what the OS is or who makes it, it matters who the support vendor is and how well they support it. There is nothing that says that level of support couldn't be made available for Microsoft or Linux OSes. The advantage vendors like Sun, DG, HP, and IBM have is that they provide the hardware and the OS as well as the service contracts. When something fails miserably, they can tap all their internal units if needed to get it fixed. A Linux support vendor theoretically could do the same since they also have access to the source. A Windows support vendor, I just don't see how it works.
But I will soon enough. We just got a pair of DG Intel boxes and are loading Windows 2000 on them and getting DG service contract on them. I'm going to have first-hand experience comparing their support for Windows versus their own UNIX variant..
Data communications can be compressed up and stored on these, analogue (voice) calls could be parsed through voice recognition systems and also compressed.
I'm sorry but I can't see how that is technically possible. I'm half English, spent a lot of my life in England, and I still can't tell what the hell the people living in Cornwall are saying. I swear it must be English but I just can't parse a bloody word of it. I can't see how a voice recognition program could do any better!
It's not so much that us geeks are against Intel, it's that we're against monopolies because we know if AMD dies and there is no real competition for Intel, they'll start slacking off and charging much more.
I think that's why we mostly hate Microsoft. I also remember having a serious dislike of Lotus, Word Perfect, and Novell in their day (not realizing the Microsoft juggernaught would eventually run them over back then...)
Competition is good for all of us. Variety in the marketplace is also good.
But it's a good point. How many Linux user out there use Linux on non-IA chips? No, don't answer. This is a rhetorical question, not a poll!:)
Digital coverage is important, but more important is coverage period. 100% all digital plans and phones basically mean "no analog" or "if you go on analog, you roam, and that's big bucks."
A large portion (square miles wise) of the country is only reachable on 800 AMPS analog service. If you stick to cities all the time, no problem. But if you're driving between Phoenix and Las Vegas and need to make a call, you'll be real grateful for that analog signal you have.
So when you see an advertisement for "all digital" what they are saying is "no analog" and in my mind, that's a real problem.
Personally, I'm with Verizon Wireless and with their national plan, the tri-band phones update themselves with current roaming tables so they always pick the correct band or if on analog, the correct side (A or B) and there are no extra charges for calls all over the country. You get CDMA digital calls where available and if not, you'll calls will be delivered or sent over an analog network. Analog is better than nothing...
As a resident of Delaware who has been voting for 20 years, I can't BELIEVE that the rest of the country is using paper ballots where you punch holes and then it's read by a card reader.
This technology is from the 70s.
When I first voted in 1980 in Delaware, they had mechanical voting machines. You pulled levers inside a booth and it advanced mechanical dials indicating who was voted for. At the end of the day, those results would be phoned in, the machines locked up, and the results later certified by officials checking the dials.
Now we have computerized voting machines. Loud audible tones are heard when a poll worker sets it up for a vote, the watchers hear this so they can be assured no one gets more than one vote, the voter goes inside a booth and presses buttons to indicate who to vote for. You can change your mind and unselect it, all candidates chosen are lit up by bright red LEDs and those races where you haven't voted have a reminder LED blinking.
The votes are recorded into a cartridge and also into the machine. At the end of the day, the cartridge is somehow uploaded to a central place and the machine itself folds down into a self-carrier that can be sealed for later reverification if needed.
From what I can gather, the system also advances analog counter dials as a backup if the electronic part fails. (I couldn't get near the rear of the machine at my polling place but at a friend's poll I tagged along to, I was actually able to wait for her by sitting behind one of the machines and checking it out visually!)
In a primary election this past September, the two Republican governors were within 44 votes of each other. A recount was quickly done and lo and behold, the result was again 44 votes.
These computerized machines have been in use for about 6 years. When is the rest of the country going to catch up?
Yes, darling, time to depreciate the intellectual capital of the firm again....
What about peronal investments> All those people who spent all that time on getting an MCSE and now it's useless. Time to go through it all again to get re-certified for Windows 2000.
It's stupid. Learn the services and capabilities, not specific OS details. Like, I know what DHCP is and I know Windows NT and 2000 do it. So why would I really need to know how to configure it ahead of time step-by-step and from memory? If the day comes when I need DHCP and if I decide not to run it on a UNIX box, then I'll open up the docs on DHCP on Windows 2000 and figure out how to configure it. Big deal.
After blowing US$270 a few years back on a modem and cable to hook to my nokia 2180 phone, the best I could get was 1200 bps and it'd constantly drop. The problem was that the phone had to be put into analog mode to make a call.
I now have a Motorola 7868W Startac with a
Digital Phone Card with service through Verizon and it works wonderfully. Let me break it down for you....
The phone: Has a built-in "modem." Actually, since it never goes analog, modem is a bad term. But plug a serial cable into this puppy and you can send Hayes AT commands to it! It also has a phone.com mini-browser in it so you can browse WAP sites or even read/send e-mail if you like pecking on a 10-key pad.
The PDA: Casio E-115 Pocket PC. Has a Compact Flash interface. Now that means you can get a serial CF card and connect that to a serial cable for the Motorola (that costs $119 at a Verizon store believe it or not, plus a bit for the CF Serial card and cable too.) Which brings us to...
The Interface: Socket's DPC phone card just combines the two pieces above into one serial CF card with plug on other end to put into specific digital phones. They make different cables for phones so make sure you order the right one. Retails for $120 iirc.
The Service: Verizon has CDMA Data access in many areas (but not all of its digital areas). It runs at 14.4K and you communicate to the phone at 19.2K. With it you can just dial a normal ISP dial-up number or use Verizon's own dial-up at no extra cost by dialing #777 and using a username/pass of qpc/qpc (er, it says this on their web site so I'm hardly revealing anything here). The point is, #777 is available without having to have your own ISP. Now you have to pay/use minutes just like normal airtime rules. I got an unlimited nights/weekend package to help.
The Cost: Via Verizon, it's $6.95/month for "web access" plus air time. You get web access through the phone's browser plus data access from another device. Now I never tried not having the 6.95 web charge and just trying to dial #777 and seeing if it worked however. Of course, they know what your phone # is when you dial into it. Their intent is for you to buy the 6.95/mo service from what I could gather. If thinking along those lines, dial into an ISP and not #777 if you don't have the 6.95/mo service. However, I'm sure the wireless network has to know if your call is being set up for a data call (and even when my call detail comes in the mail, calls to an ISP still show as a data call) so I really really doubt you can get buy without the "web" phone service feature.
Another possible solution is to use a CPCD network. The big problem I had with this one was lack of a CPCD CF card. Well, one just came out (I remember seeing it advertised but can't remember details). With this, you don't need a cable between your phone and PDA, you don't need your phone at all. Get CPCD service and you're really free. Verizon sells this too for $40/month unlimited access in my area and it runs at 19.2K. Never tried it, so I don't know how well it works.
I'm also not a Verizon person. I'm just more familiar with their services since I'm a customer. There could be other combos out there. Also, Socket has the Digital Phone Card (DPC) for use with GSM phones so that must be an option in areas as well...
I've been in this one college for 20 years, first as a student in their CS program, then as support staff, and some 10 years as instructor (including teaching C.
There are multiple issues I see with teaching C (or any language) using Microsoft stuff. My main two beefs are:
Too many instructors fall to the temptation to teach how to code fancy widgets. Students get away from learning the language and instead spend too much time learning all about MFC. Learning programming using C or a real C course should teach C.
Microsoft programming products require students to purchase a C compiler (although Borland or whoever owns them now gives one away for free) *AND* own an Intel product running a Windows OS. Mac users need not apply. C under a timeshared UNIX box allows students from anywhere on any platform to ssh in and work on their code.
When I attended a Computer Science program at our local University, I was excited when we got to a class on 68000 assembly (this was mid 80s). Since I owned a Mac, I wanted to learn how to program a Mac. Instead, we got a programming environment that when loaded, it turned the mac into some text-based machine with minimal I/O support. I was pissed at first, but understood eventually. The class was there to teach how to code assembly, not how to program a Macintosh. The environment guaranteed we'd concentrate on the language.
There are two ways to learn. Learn how to do something, or learn WHY you are doing it. I guess it falls down to the traditional argument of theory versus practical learning. Yeah, practical learning in a specific area can get you a job real fast. But let me tell you, this world moves real fast and because I understand programming as a concept very well as well as OS theories, I can pick up the latest programming tool on whatever platform and pick it up and become well-versed in very short time.
Still not convinced? I am 41. An old fossil in this industry but I can still quickly adapt to any technology that is current. While interviewing job candidates, I've found many of them have very narrow specific skills. This may be good if that particilar skill is still in demand, but once it's considered old (witness Microsoft dismissing Java for C# and.NET), you need expensive and time-consuming retraining.
To be fair, there are a number of advantages for a graphic-rich development environment, many that have already been mentioned. Editors that highlight or check syntax as you type (well, even emacs does this but...). Graphic debuggers can also be very helpful in showing how code gets executed and what can go wrong (although this should come later. People need to know how to manually walk through code too).
Bottom line, good programming skills can be taught in a Microsoft shop. One must simply know how to teach to ensure the student learns the best short and long-term skills. Oh, and run it all on a Windows Term Server for remote access!:)
DelDOT has traffic cameras all over the state of Delaware. Once while checking out the traffic on I-95 I saw the camera zoomed in on an accident scene. I asked a friend in DelDOT if they recorded the video camera images. He said the absolutely DO NOT do this. One can't subpoena something that doesn't exist nor ever existed.
There's a lesson I learned from that.
What are your current backup tape retention policies? Do you just keep a few generations or do you stash long-term archival copies somewhere? If so, for what purpose? Will they come back to haunt you, your users, YOUR COMPANY, later?
The problem here is that seldom are there laws or regs saying stuff must be recorded, backed up, etc. But if they happen to have been, then they are open game for subpoenas and if applicable FOI requests.
Sorry, I haven't listened to a thing the Gartner Group has said when it comes to predictions since the late 80s. You might as well buy the National Enquirer shortly after a New Year and read predictions for the upcoming year.
For example, and I wish I saved it, I remember quite well all those nifty graphs around 1989 showing total installations of OS/2 and how they'd overtake MS/DOS, Macs, and anything else you could think of within a few short years.
So, I've committed a/. crime (and tradition) of commenting on the article without reading it.
Not true. For example, a system that runs on a mainframe is accessed via a tn3270 program running under Windows NT. Hack that and you can install a keyboard sniffer and remote control app and get everything you need to get into that non-Microsoft system that the bank runs...
Every day the spin gets tigher and the compromise becomes less and less of a big deal.
By the end of this week, the story will be that an employee got the flu and was home sick for a few days. While working from home under the influence of prescription drugs, he accidently renamed a user account which set off a few alarms, but everything is well because no product deadlines will slip because of it.
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It was like watching a TV slasher movie where you're screaming "Don't open the damn door you stupid bitch." Instead, here it was, UPLOAD YOUR CHANGES YOU STUPID GEEK!
btw, who keeps their backup server array 1 meter away from their primary storage (the day care scene)? Er, they need to contact EMC and set up mirrored storage up to several kilometers away, connected via fiber or fast IP link...
ps: last post... :(
While what you say is how it SHOULD be, I know a security chief that is just like this guy. Their jobs are boring as hell and they tend to get into the power trips. If an event happens, there is no way they'd miss being right there in the middle of the action.
Check out webmail.com for one example. Major sites like Hotmail and Yahoo Mail will also offer to collect your mail as well.
My user population (over 10,000) is CONSTANTLY doing this even though we provide our own secure web-based mail page if they want to use it.
Why do I have a problem with this? Think about it. You're entering your id and password into some other site's web page and they go log in on your behalf, usually in cleartext. Even if I tcp_wrapper reject these places, the damage is done. The user has already entered in their ID and password.
So what we do is, we notice a logon from hotmail, yahoo, webmail.com, etc, we immediately lock their account under the part of our AUP that forbids revealing your ID and password to a third party.
Anyone can set up a web-mail page like IMP and change it to STORE the system names, IDs, and passwords that they collect and use them later.
So, when looking for a web-based mail site, don't be tempted to let them collect your other account's e-mail as well. You're trusting them with your ID and password. Not good, IMO....
Now some chump firm (CMGI CGMI CIGM whatever, who cares, there are too many acronyms in our world already...) bought it and acts like they invented it. I wonder where the real brains and team who created it all and made it happen are now?
Damn I miss the old net, before the bean-counters and lawyers got involved... :-(
I'm a confused consumer. Imation better sue Apple...
Many businesses and individuals do #1. They don't upgrade, and this hits Microsoft's bottom line pretty bad. That's why they are moving to a subscription based model. You will HAVE to upgrade, or at least keep paying and paying for it whether or not you install the latest version your subscription entitles you to...
Will free software become extinct through judicial order soon? Will Linux become an circumvention device?
I would *think* not since it should be easy to prove that Linux's sole reason for being is not to circumvent this protection scheme, but who knows these days... :(
Now, if cashiers plug in the wrong amount tendered, they are lost and don't have a clue what to do...
In other words, while it's anecdotal, it sure seems that it's welfare that causes reproduction rates to go up, and the under-educated tend not to do a very good job ensuring a good education for their children, hence a real negative drain on overall societal productivity gains since society ends up taking care of them as well...
In other words, I really think we've peeked evolution wise, it's all downhill from here unless we muck with it artificially (and you know we will). Today, the ones reproducing and carrying on their traits tend to be the *cough* stupid idiots.... :-(
Nah, not necessarily. Evolution tends to favor situations that lead to the point of reproduction. Once you're past reproductive age, evolution doesn't do much for you. You've served your purpose, now just hurry up and die please!
However, that's less the case for men who can do their part far longer than females, but that's the fault of women in general. If women of child-bearing age would just stop screwing men old enough to be their fathers, that feature would probably die off too!
Come to think of it, that's probably why men are considered to age more gracefully than women. The better looking old fucks tend to still get the young chicks and their "good looking old man" genes tend to carry on because of it.
Even worse case, they go out of business (EMC is making money hand over fist though), there will always be a resellers market. By the time this might get to a point where it's a concern, they'll be something much better out there...
I can't worry about who goes out of business or gets bought out. Looking back to the mid-80s, who would have ever guessed that some new just-an-IBM-PC-clone company (Compaq) would buy out the world's second largest (at the time) computer company (Digital) (and get their class A block in the process :).
In reality, all of this could be done in-house using spare parts and internal knowledge. But in the real world where each additional employee holds future liabilities to a firm, often contractual money expenditures are preferred while internal staff get diverted to work on the stupid pet projects of someone else internally...
As one responsible for mission critical systems, I've justified paying a large sum of money to get support for a commercial UNIX system (Data General, now EMC, for DG/UX).
This puppy, whenever it paniced, would send diag packets automatically to DG, they'd start analyzing the problem, create a patch, and ship it out to us. There's a great comfort in that.
We had one case where the box would panic for no good reason on boot. Software support couldn't figure it out, so hardware support came out and just started blindly swapping processors, memory, etc, and it still didn't stop it. Turned out to be a faulty VME slot backplane board. Fixing that fixed the problem.
The point is, I have a ton of problems to worry about already and I took great comfort in knowing that no matter what was the cause, THEY HAD TO FIX IT.
I haven't seen any Linux vendor support get there yet, and I certainly haven't seen that with Microsoft servers. If they fail, you're told to reboot and try again. If that doesn't work, the next "solution" is to re-install it. Will Microsoft custom-fix a patch for me if I'm seeing a problem? I don't think so. Maybe if the fault is being experienced by thousands of sites...
So, bottom line is, it really doesn't matter what the OS is or who makes it, it matters who the support vendor is and how well they support it. There is nothing that says that level of support couldn't be made available for Microsoft or Linux OSes. The advantage vendors like Sun, DG, HP, and IBM have is that they provide the hardware and the OS as well as the service contracts. When something fails miserably, they can tap all their internal units if needed to get it fixed. A Linux support vendor theoretically could do the same since they also have access to the source. A Windows support vendor, I just don't see how it works.
But I will soon enough. We just got a pair of DG Intel boxes and are loading Windows 2000 on them and getting DG service contract on them. I'm going to have first-hand experience comparing their support for Windows versus their own UNIX variant..
I'm sorry but I can't see how that is technically possible. I'm half English, spent a lot of my life in England, and I still can't tell what the hell the people living in Cornwall are saying. I swear it must be English but I just can't parse a bloody word of it. I can't see how a voice recognition program could do any better!
I think that's why we mostly hate Microsoft. I also remember having a serious dislike of Lotus, Word Perfect, and Novell in their day (not realizing the Microsoft juggernaught would eventually run them over back then...)
Competition is good for all of us. Variety in the marketplace is also good.
But it's a good point. How many Linux user out there use Linux on non-IA chips? No, don't answer. This is a rhetorical question, not a poll! :)
weave.nom maybe, weave.name -- never....
A large portion (square miles wise) of the country is only reachable on 800 AMPS analog service. If you stick to cities all the time, no problem. But if you're driving between Phoenix and Las Vegas and need to make a call, you'll be real grateful for that analog signal you have.
So when you see an advertisement for "all digital" what they are saying is "no analog" and in my mind, that's a real problem.
Personally, I'm with Verizon Wireless and with their national plan, the tri-band phones update themselves with current roaming tables so they always pick the correct band or if on analog, the correct side (A or B) and there are no extra charges for calls all over the country. You get CDMA digital calls where available and if not, you'll calls will be delivered or sent over an analog network. Analog is better than nothing...
This technology is from the 70s.
When I first voted in 1980 in Delaware, they had mechanical voting machines. You pulled levers inside a booth and it advanced mechanical dials indicating who was voted for. At the end of the day, those results would be phoned in, the machines locked up, and the results later certified by officials checking the dials.
Now we have computerized voting machines. Loud audible tones are heard when a poll worker sets it up for a vote, the watchers hear this so they can be assured no one gets more than one vote, the voter goes inside a booth and presses buttons to indicate who to vote for. You can change your mind and unselect it, all candidates chosen are lit up by bright red LEDs and those races where you haven't voted have a reminder LED blinking.
The votes are recorded into a cartridge and also into the machine. At the end of the day, the cartridge is somehow uploaded to a central place and the machine itself folds down into a self-carrier that can be sealed for later reverification if needed.
From what I can gather, the system also advances analog counter dials as a backup if the electronic part fails. (I couldn't get near the rear of the machine at my polling place but at a friend's poll I tagged along to, I was actually able to wait for her by sitting behind one of the machines and checking it out visually!)
In a primary election this past September, the two Republican governors were within 44 votes of each other. A recount was quickly done and lo and behold, the result was again 44 votes.
These computerized machines have been in use for about 6 years. When is the rest of the country going to catch up?
What about peronal investments> All those people who spent all that time on getting an MCSE and now it's useless. Time to go through it all again to get re-certified for Windows 2000.
It's stupid. Learn the services and capabilities, not specific OS details. Like, I know what DHCP is and I know Windows NT and 2000 do it. So why would I really need to know how to configure it ahead of time step-by-step and from memory? If the day comes when I need DHCP and if I decide not to run it on a UNIX box, then I'll open up the docs on DHCP on Windows 2000 and figure out how to configure it. Big deal.
I now have a Motorola 7868W Startac with a Digital Phone Card with service through Verizon and it works wonderfully. Let me break it down for you....
Another possible solution is to use a CPCD network. The big problem I had with this one was lack of a CPCD CF card. Well, one just came out (I remember seeing it advertised but can't remember details). With this, you don't need a cable between your phone and PDA, you don't need your phone at all. Get CPCD service and you're really free. Verizon sells this too for $40/month unlimited access in my area and it runs at 19.2K. Never tried it, so I don't know how well it works.
I'm also not a Verizon person. I'm just more familiar with their services since I'm a customer. There could be other combos out there. Also, Socket has the Digital Phone Card (DPC) for use with GSM phones so that must be an option in areas as well...
There are multiple issues I see with teaching C (or any language) using Microsoft stuff. My main two beefs are:
When I attended a Computer Science program at our local University, I was excited when we got to a class on 68000 assembly (this was mid 80s). Since I owned a Mac, I wanted to learn how to program a Mac. Instead, we got a programming environment that when loaded, it turned the mac into some text-based machine with minimal I/O support. I was pissed at first, but understood eventually. The class was there to teach how to code assembly, not how to program a Macintosh. The environment guaranteed we'd concentrate on the language.
There are two ways to learn. Learn how to do something, or learn WHY you are doing it. I guess it falls down to the traditional argument of theory versus practical learning. Yeah, practical learning in a specific area can get you a job real fast. But let me tell you, this world moves real fast and because I understand programming as a concept very well as well as OS theories, I can pick up the latest programming tool on whatever platform and pick it up and become well-versed in very short time.
Still not convinced? I am 41. An old fossil in this industry but I can still quickly adapt to any technology that is current. While interviewing job candidates, I've found many of them have very narrow specific skills. This may be good if that particilar skill is still in demand, but once it's considered old (witness Microsoft dismissing Java for C# and .NET), you need expensive and time-consuming retraining.
To be fair, there are a number of advantages for a graphic-rich development environment, many that have already been mentioned. Editors that highlight or check syntax as you type (well, even emacs does this but...). Graphic debuggers can also be very helpful in showing how code gets executed and what can go wrong (although this should come later. People need to know how to manually walk through code too).
Bottom line, good programming skills can be taught in a Microsoft shop. One must simply know how to teach to ensure the student learns the best short and long-term skills. Oh, and run it all on a Windows Term Server for remote access! :)
DelDOT has traffic cameras all over the state of Delaware. Once while checking out the traffic on I-95 I saw the camera zoomed in on an accident scene. I asked a friend in DelDOT if they recorded the video camera images. He said the absolutely DO NOT do this. One can't subpoena something that doesn't exist nor ever existed.
There's a lesson I learned from that.
What are your current backup tape retention policies? Do you just keep a few generations or do you stash long-term archival copies somewhere? If so, for what purpose? Will they come back to haunt you, your users, YOUR COMPANY, later?
The problem here is that seldom are there laws or regs saying stuff must be recorded, backed up, etc. But if they happen to have been, then they are open game for subpoenas and if applicable FOI requests.
What sites aren't handling the load of the election crush...
So far, I can't get into cbsnews.com except for once in the past three hours.
cnn.com -- been humming along without any problems.
msnbc.com -- a real mess. 90% of the time I try, it won't load...
Slashdot .. er, still going! :)
For example, and I wish I saved it, I remember quite well all those nifty graphs around 1989 showing total installations of OS/2 and how they'd overtake MS/DOS, Macs, and anything else you could think of within a few short years.
So, I've committed a /. crime (and tradition) of commenting on the article without reading it.
Not true. For example, a system that runs on a mainframe is accessed via a tn3270 program running under Windows NT. Hack that and you can install a keyboard sniffer and remote control app and get everything you need to get into that non-Microsoft system that the bank runs...
By the end of this week, the story will be that an employee got the flu and was home sick for a few days. While working from home under the influence of prescription drugs, he accidently renamed a user account which set off a few alarms, but everything is well because no product deadlines will slip because of it.