Unless you want "government" (or anything else) to be:
- Always in last place. - Have a questionable commitment to who it's serving versus the workers. - Low in overall quality. - Vague and often difficult to understand. - Controlled by a small cabal paid by corporations (yep, I said it... here's looking at you, kernel dev team!).
(Oh I could come up with more... but I'm sure the "true believers" of Slashdot will mod me "Flamebait" anyway.)
You must be a pretty poor Windows user then, since most of the interesting things on Windows are also done with multi-keystroke "commands".
First thing to do with any OS... sit down and figure out how NOT to take your hands off the keyboard... if you're going for maximum efficiency and getting shit done.
No, you're sane. Glad to see there's another REAL Conservative still hiding out there, getting more and more frustrated at the ass-hats who are spending billions on credit cards to buy shit they can't afford... ruining the country.
Enjoy the fruits of your labor -- with your new MacBooks. I'm working on saving up for something else myself, but have the budget to buy if the wife's old iBook or my Black MacBook (original model) croak... they're not showing any signs of doing so, but it's almost "time" for a new MacBook for one of us...
Keep up the good fight telling people that no... they DO NOT *DESERVE* loans. They *DESERVE* to learn to save for things and buy them WHEN THEY CAN AFFORD THEM. Great job, sir.
Let 'em call it whatever version number they want... here's why...
It'll be replaced by the bug-fix version of whatever crap your engineers wrote, within 6 months.
That's the overall state of the software "industry" these days.
Don't sweat it.
The only people that don't appreciate it too much are your support engineers and techs that have to talk to your customers. And they understand if your engineers ever figure out how to release bug-free code, that they don't have jobs.
Additionally, the engineers know that their only incentive is in continually releasing new software, bugs and new features included. If they don't they're out of jobs.
The whole industry is set up to churn and burn. Software has no real quality anymore unless the engineers know it's embedded and HARD to change in the field. Then they work harder on it... and it still has bugs.
Well, actually the problem was the thread was talking about Fossett and you changed to Astronauts, a completely different topic -- which made it look like you were attacking Fossett's abilities.
That's the only reason I jumped in with "What did Fossett do?" as my basis of my question.
It really doesn't matter now. The point is... the phrase is dumb, because it's a platitude and a cliche'. Real-world piloting (by Fossett or Astronauts) is complex stuff and can't be described by a glib one-sentence statement.
Anyone who's really flown, gets this. Anyone who hasn't won't.
Kinda like "We Need Fundamental Change" in a certain political campaign. Great, nice platitude... who cares?
Real FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE would be not supporting Democrats or Republicans... but we work with the real world in politics, just like flying, too.
Pilots are usually pretty damn pragmatic, if nothing else!:-)
Well, generically I agree with you that the phrase is stupid. I just thought it was odd you would use an example of Fossett as a way to prove the point.
Many bold pilots live to ripe old years, but they're the best trained and know their limitations (even if their limitations are higher than most people's) very well.
(Heck, U.S. Naval Aviators do things daily that most pilots would lock up out of sheer terror and end up dead trying to do them in their first attempt.)
Personally, when Avgas hit over $5/gal, I grounded myself because I know I need a certain amount of regular flight time to stay sharp.
At high fuel prices (coming down now, but for how long -- who knows) and my current salary, savings/investment, and bills -- I knew I couldn't be a "safe" pilot on as little flight time as I was going to realistically get.
I could lower expenses and change lifestyle to afford to be safe, but I wasn't willing to right now. Perhaps in the future.
So I hung up the wings. A sign that I know my limitations as a pilot. Fossett was that kind of pilot, too -- from everything I've read.
(As is Harrison Ford, although he'll push a bit and has crashed a helicopter, which puts his personal judgement into a tiny bit of question, without knowing the details.)
The insinuation was there in your statement that Fossett did something wrong, or rushed to go flying that day.
I just haven't seen any indication of that in any press, even aviation-specific press, that would indicate that there was any sign of that at all.
He was a calculating pilot, more than capable of handling a lot more inherent risk because he thought about the risks and did whatever he could to mitigate them.
Charging a car through a standard NEMA 5-15 wall socket is moronic. You need high-current and high voltage lowers that requirement, of course. (Basic Ohm's Law here.)
220V sockets or more likely, 220V inductive couplings on heavy-duty cabling in a garage will probably be the more likely scenario for charging cars at suburban houses with a garage.
Those in urban environments without indoor parking will have to have something "safer" designed for outdoor use.
Maybe you're out of touch with what your users want, then.
Seriously -- I'm not an Exchange fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm "forced" to use it at work, and managed and run correctly -- it does everything everyone in the corporation needs or wants.
If there were something better that did integrated group calendaring, etc... without having to access four different hacked-together systems or use web interfaces to do what the Outlook client does natively... I'm sure they might try it.
He's not lying. The online "service" versions of Exchange do seem to do quite a bit for web-based services. A little bit cleaner (and with a UI that the end-users are already familiar with) than the open or closed alternatives out there.
MS may be the big bad "Evil"(TM) here on Slashdot, but in the real world, their stuff does actually tend to work when managed and operated correctly. There's a reason the other "solutions" haven't displaced them.
"Due to its extensibility and ease of use, no device or situation has yet been found that cannot be monitored using Nagios and a pre-made or custom script, plug-in or enhancement."
It's so true! We put an air-actuated sensor on his pants, and now we get e-mail and SMS whenever grandpa farts. Thank you Nagios!
Just buy Informix which has worked solidly since the 1980's, and forget about the idiots at both Sun and Oracle.
It's owned by IBM now, and they have been dedicated to keeping it going, including major releases, for years since they bought it.
Works great, used by tons of government and large telco shops, and you spend a whole lot less worrying about whether or not someone's dicking around with it just to keep it half-alive.
Yeah, that little gem comes up every five years or so. And then companies "converge" things that don't make sense together and it takes a LONG time for them to come out with one that not only is "converged" but also works right.
Meanwhile your phone-toothbrush-ass wiper-windshield washer-ice scaper-laser pointer just crashed again, and you're annoyed at having bought into "convergence".
Sometimes cheap, simple one-trick-pony devices really are the smarter way to go.
Convergence of the music-player and phone is even still stupid to me... until that phone can hold the measly 40 GB of stuff on my now-ancient original iPod Color... who cares about convergence?
Throw the cell phone in the bag, along with the laptop, and the iPod, and tether the laptop to IP through the phone whenever you like... that model still works and if one device craps out, you're still using the others.
Because this is news for NERDS, not news for sysadmins. While I have run my own mail server for over ten years, I'm tired of it.
Pay a pro and get something else done with my limited lifespan, I'm starting to think.
Wouldn't mind if they also did Blackberry BES service, but that means Exchange, and... well, yuck. Maybe a nice hosted Lotus Notes system? Bwahaha... double yuck.
Oh well, one big-ass IMAP server that works right and has some way to train it's spam filters that someone ELSE has to deal with backing up, would be fine with me at this point...
Once you learn how to make money in the market, you have enough money to buy whatever best in breed software is out there to make more. FOSS gets lost in that shuffle, real quick.
Unless you know any coders who spend about 12 hours a day making money in financials, and another 12 hours a day coding up software to show you how they do it (not likely), just use whatever works to make you money.
The best money managers out there often use a pencil and paper and just use the computer screen as a way to get real-time data for their analysis. The rest is just a waste of valuable research time.
If you haven't noticed, the reliability of those systems has been in question lately.
Case in point: Telephony... what industry can advertise their own FAILURE as something funny to draw in customers? "Can you hear me now? Good."
The bottom line is this. The bottom line.
INDIVIDUALS in this country are less and less responsible for themselves. They don't have a financial plan, they don't even try. And this spills over into whole generations of management who've been to business classes, or even an MBA who can't get a grip on their OWN finances... so they can't run a BUSINESS.
Healthcare is a good example. Those that have "coverage" have NO IDEA how much it actually costs. They pay their portion of insurance payments (usually FAR lower than the company portion) and their $25 co-pay, and they think that's what a doctor's visit costs.
Now after a couple of generations of that, the idealists in the crowd want a knight in shining armor to ride in and offer "Universal Healthcare" for all.
It must be possible, because I only pay $25 to go to the Doc, and $50 to take Junior to the Emergency Room every two months with sniffles, right?
Seriously -- until INDIVIDUALS get a grip on what things REALLY cost... calculate them, and have a real plan for their lives financially -- businesspeople who do will continue to thumb their noses at most other people in any organization.
IT is the WORST about knowing what the investment in their technology is going to save or cost the company. CIO's continually ask for more, and can't PROVE they made or saved the company a dime.
Would that group of three college-aged kids who used to file old documents in the filing cabinet be cheaper and just as effective at retrieving them and faxing them to those who need them, as the super whiz-bang online file sharing system, complete with SAN and an electric bill larger than a city block? Seriously... could people WAIT an hour for a document? THINK about it.
Hey, maybe that's a bad example, but here's the bottom line:
If you're not able to put 20% of your take home pay aside and not use it. YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH.
If you're not able to buy things with cash. YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH.
If you're over your head in a mortgage that's more than 33% of your take-home pay. YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH.
If you're swimming in credit card debt. YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH.
If you think "Universal Healthcare" is the answer. YOU'RE GOING TO BE SPENDING TOO MUCH.
Now just imagine if you could reach just a few co-workers or closest friends, pull yourselves back from the credit-card abyss and then teach people at your office how to budget. How powerful would that be for your company?
Imagine if you could then also carefully consider as a team the true costs of what releasing on-time with bugs is going to REALLY cost you in support costs, versus a delay of a week.
Etc. It snowballs. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
Get control of YOUR life and finances first, then come tell me you're enamored with any particular political party's "financial plan".
How the hell can anyone without a financial plan that spans years, know ANYTHING about a government plan that spans decades? Seriously.
It's not just "IT People" that businesspeople can't relate to. It's MOST people. Anyone who can't get a grip on what things cost, or what they're worth -- including THEMSELVES.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you want "government" (or anything else) to be:
- Always in last place.
- Have a questionable commitment to who it's serving versus the workers.
- Low in overall quality.
- Vague and often difficult to understand.
- Controlled by a small cabal paid by corporations (yep, I said it... here's looking at you, kernel dev team!).
(Oh I could come up with more... but I'm sure the "true believers" of Slashdot will mod me "Flamebait" anyway.)
You don't want to be modeling it after "Linux".
Welcome to out-sourcing, ass-hat.
You knew the risks of trusting someone else to run your mail system, going in.
And if you didn't... you're a moron.
Ask him if he's been enjoying not having to pay for servers, power, admins, etc.
Nah, all this stuff is available through menus on the Mac, just like Windows... it's just easier to type (and teach) the keyboard shortcut.
You must be a pretty poor Windows user then, since most of the interesting things on Windows are also done with multi-keystroke "commands".
First thing to do with any OS... sit down and figure out how NOT to take your hands off the keyboard... if you're going for maximum efficiency and getting shit done.
No, you're sane. Glad to see there's another REAL Conservative still hiding out there, getting more and more frustrated at the ass-hats who are spending billions on credit cards to buy shit they can't afford... ruining the country.
Enjoy the fruits of your labor -- with your new MacBooks. I'm working on saving up for something else myself, but have the budget to buy if the wife's old iBook or my Black MacBook (original model) croak... they're not showing any signs of doing so, but it's almost "time" for a new MacBook for one of us...
Keep up the good fight telling people that no... they DO NOT *DESERVE* loans. They *DESERVE* to learn to save for things and buy them WHEN THEY CAN AFFORD THEM. Great job, sir.
All the best (that you can afford...!)...
Let 'em call it whatever version number they want... here's why...
It'll be replaced by the bug-fix version of whatever crap your engineers wrote, within 6 months.
That's the overall state of the software "industry" these days.
Don't sweat it.
The only people that don't appreciate it too much are your support engineers and techs that have to talk to your customers. And they understand if your engineers ever figure out how to release bug-free code, that they don't have jobs.
Additionally, the engineers know that their only incentive is in continually releasing new software, bugs and new features included. If they don't they're out of jobs.
The whole industry is set up to churn and burn. Software has no real quality anymore unless the engineers know it's embedded and HARD to change in the field. Then they work harder on it... and it still has bugs.
Have fun!
Well, actually the problem was the thread was talking about Fossett and you changed to Astronauts, a completely different topic -- which made it look like you were attacking Fossett's abilities.
That's the only reason I jumped in with "What did Fossett do?" as my basis of my question.
It really doesn't matter now. The point is... the phrase is dumb, because it's a platitude and a cliche'. Real-world piloting (by Fossett or Astronauts) is complex stuff and can't be described by a glib one-sentence statement.
Anyone who's really flown, gets this. Anyone who hasn't won't.
Kinda like "We Need Fundamental Change" in a certain political campaign. Great, nice platitude... who cares?
Real FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE would be not supporting Democrats or Republicans... but we work with the real world in politics, just like flying, too.
Pilots are usually pretty damn pragmatic, if nothing else! :-)
Well, generically I agree with you that the phrase is stupid. I just thought it was odd you would use an example of Fossett as a way to prove the point.
Many bold pilots live to ripe old years, but they're the best trained and know their limitations (even if their limitations are higher than most people's) very well.
(Heck, U.S. Naval Aviators do things daily that most pilots would lock up out of sheer terror and end up dead trying to do them in their first attempt.)
Personally, when Avgas hit over $5/gal, I grounded myself because I know I need a certain amount of regular flight time to stay sharp.
At high fuel prices (coming down now, but for how long -- who knows) and my current salary, savings/investment, and bills -- I knew I couldn't be a "safe" pilot on as little flight time as I was going to realistically get.
I could lower expenses and change lifestyle to afford to be safe, but I wasn't willing to right now. Perhaps in the future.
So I hung up the wings. A sign that I know my limitations as a pilot. Fossett was that kind of pilot, too -- from everything I've read.
(As is Harrison Ford, although he'll push a bit and has crashed a helicopter, which puts his personal judgement into a tiny bit of question, without knowing the details.)
The insinuation was there in your statement that Fossett did something wrong, or rushed to go flying that day.
I just haven't seen any indication of that in any press, even aviation-specific press, that would indicate that there was any sign of that at all.
He was a calculating pilot, more than capable of handling a lot more inherent risk because he thought about the risks and did whatever he could to mitigate them.
Charging a car through a standard NEMA 5-15 wall socket is moronic. You need high-current and high voltage lowers that requirement, of course. (Basic Ohm's Law here.)
220V sockets or more likely, 220V inductive couplings on heavy-duty cabling in a garage will probably be the more likely scenario for charging cars at suburban houses with a garage.
Those in urban environments without indoor parking will have to have something "safer" designed for outdoor use.
So where exactly did Fossett rush?
Maybe you're out of touch with what your users want, then.
Seriously -- I'm not an Exchange fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm "forced" to use it at work, and managed and run correctly -- it does everything everyone in the corporation needs or wants.
If there were something better that did integrated group calendaring, etc... without having to access four different hacked-together systems or use web interfaces to do what the Outlook client does natively... I'm sure they might try it.
He's not lying. The online "service" versions of Exchange do seem to do quite a bit for web-based services. A little bit cleaner (and with a UI that the end-users are already familiar with) than the open or closed alternatives out there.
MS may be the big bad "Evil"(TM) here on Slashdot, but in the real world, their stuff does actually tend to work when managed and operated correctly. There's a reason the other "solutions" haven't displaced them.
THEY. ARE. NOT. OFFERING. ANYTHING. BETTER.
"Due to its extensibility and ease of use, no device or situation has yet been found that cannot be monitored using Nagios and a pre-made or custom script, plug-in or enhancement."
It's so true! We put an air-actuated sensor on his pants, and now we get e-mail and SMS whenever grandpa farts. Thank you Nagios!
Oh. You want Informix.
Well, I think the reason people "dicksize" about such things is that MySQL's um... size... is continually smaller than all of it's competitors.
As a long-time Informix fan, MySQL's been a joke to me for as long as it's been in existence, and Oracle has been over-priced bloatware.
Informix.
Ahh, who cares?
Just buy Informix which has worked solidly since the 1980's, and forget about the idiots at both Sun and Oracle.
It's owned by IBM now, and they have been dedicated to keeping it going, including major releases, for years since they bought it.
Works great, used by tons of government and large telco shops, and you spend a whole lot less worrying about whether or not someone's dicking around with it just to keep it half-alive.
Targeting the business world with Android?
(Doubling over with laughter...)
Call us back when you've got a Blackberry.
Your daughter sees the difference, and it's a difference many of us don't "get".
iPod isn't a technology play. That ended around the time the first iPod Mini came out.
iPod is a FASHION show play.
Your daughter wants to SHOW OFF her iPod, not listen to music.
Just wait, soon she'll be asking to buy all sorts of pairs of shoes. :-)
Yeah, that little gem comes up every five years or so. And then companies "converge" things that don't make sense together and it takes a LONG time for them to come out with one that not only is "converged" but also works right.
Meanwhile your phone-toothbrush-ass wiper-windshield washer-ice scaper-laser pointer just crashed again, and you're annoyed at having bought into "convergence".
Sometimes cheap, simple one-trick-pony devices really are the smarter way to go.
Convergence of the music-player and phone is even still stupid to me... until that phone can hold the measly 40 GB of stuff on my now-ancient original iPod Color... who cares about convergence?
Throw the cell phone in the bag, along with the laptop, and the iPod, and tether the laptop to IP through the phone whenever you like... that model still works and if one device craps out, you're still using the others.
Gee, I see a professional who doesn't have time to screw with geek things like domain names because they focus on their BUSINESS.
Call them on the phone. Who gives a damn what e-mail provider they're using?
The average plumber isn't carrying a CrackBerry. You call them on the phone and say you need your toilet fixed. You don't e-mail them.
I bet a LOT of really good quality, inexpensive rate, trades-people have no time for stupid technology crap.
They're probably not reading Slashdot and/or giving a damn, either... about "losing" your business.
You actually LIKE that crap where they map IMAP folders to Tags? And multiple tags doesn't mean multiple folders?
That implementation sucks, to be frank. How can you call that the "best" IMAP implementation?
Because this is news for NERDS, not news for sysadmins. While I have run my own mail server for over ten years, I'm tired of it.
Pay a pro and get something else done with my limited lifespan, I'm starting to think.
Wouldn't mind if they also did Blackberry BES service, but that means Exchange, and ... well, yuck. Maybe a nice hosted Lotus Notes system? Bwahaha... double yuck.
Oh well, one big-ass IMAP server that works right and has some way to train it's spam filters that someone ELSE has to deal with backing up, would be fine with me at this point...
Fastmail.fm has been focused professionally on providing e-mail only services for years.
Once you learn how to make money in the market, you have enough money to buy whatever best in breed software is out there to make more. FOSS gets lost in that shuffle, real quick.
Unless you know any coders who spend about 12 hours a day making money in financials, and another 12 hours a day coding up software to show you how they do it (not likely), just use whatever works to make you money.
The best money managers out there often use a pencil and paper and just use the computer screen as a way to get real-time data for their analysis. The rest is just a waste of valuable research time.
If you haven't noticed, the reliability of those systems has been in question lately.
Case in point: Telephony... what industry can advertise their own FAILURE as something funny to draw in customers? "Can you hear me now? Good."
The bottom line is this. The bottom line.
INDIVIDUALS in this country are less and less responsible for themselves. They don't have a financial plan, they don't even try. And this spills over into whole generations of management who've been to business classes, or even an MBA who can't get a grip on their OWN finances... so they can't run a BUSINESS.
Healthcare is a good example. Those that have "coverage" have NO IDEA how much it actually costs. They pay their portion of insurance payments (usually FAR lower than the company portion) and their $25 co-pay, and they think that's what a doctor's visit costs.
Now after a couple of generations of that, the idealists in the crowd want a knight in shining armor to ride in and offer "Universal Healthcare" for all.
It must be possible, because I only pay $25 to go to the Doc, and $50 to take Junior to the Emergency Room every two months with sniffles, right?
Seriously -- until INDIVIDUALS get a grip on what things REALLY cost... calculate them, and have a real plan for their lives financially -- businesspeople who do will continue to thumb their noses at most other people in any organization.
IT is the WORST about knowing what the investment in their technology is going to save or cost the company. CIO's continually ask for more, and can't PROVE they made or saved the company a dime.
Would that group of three college-aged kids who used to file old documents in the filing cabinet be cheaper and just as effective at retrieving them and faxing them to those who need them, as the super whiz-bang online file sharing system, complete with SAN and an electric bill larger than a city block? Seriously... could people WAIT an hour for a document? THINK about it.
Hey, maybe that's a bad example, but here's the bottom line:
If you're not able to put 20% of your take home pay aside and not use it. YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH.
If you're not able to buy things with cash. YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH.
If you're over your head in a mortgage that's more than 33% of your take-home pay. YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH.
If you're swimming in credit card debt. YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH.
If you think "Universal Healthcare" is the answer. YOU'RE GOING TO BE SPENDING TOO MUCH.
[And I have a blog posting up about that one... The power of words: Universal Healthcare]
Now just imagine if you could reach just a few co-workers or closest friends, pull yourselves back from the credit-card abyss and then teach people at your office how to budget. How powerful would that be for your company?
Imagine if you could then also carefully consider as a team the true costs of what releasing on-time with bugs is going to REALLY cost you in support costs, versus a delay of a week.
Etc. It snowballs. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
Get control of YOUR life and finances first, then come tell me you're enamored with any particular political party's "financial plan".
How the hell can anyone without a financial plan that spans years, know ANYTHING about a government plan that spans decades? Seriously.
It's not just "IT People" that businesspeople can't relate to. It's MOST people. Anyone who can't get a grip on what things cost, or what they're worth -- including THEMSELVES.