Even after an ISP starts making money, it's rare for them to go back and revisit poor design.
Being small and poor as a company is a lame excuse for not knowing what's going on and not doing proper design.
It's not like there's any lack of information out there about how to do things correctly, so any businessperson who starts an ISP who can't afford to do quality work doesn't deserve to have a business doing it anyway.
We're single-sourced on a large number of our components, so they're not getting much value from that theoretical possibility you mention.
Yes, I agree with you it should be easier. But when it's NOT, when do companies ever learn to cut bait and start over? Most don't. They just add more people who are now cheaper than the computers that are supposed to be doing the work (because these large data systems seem to have no upper limit on price tag) to actually sort through the mess the computer created.
Yes, the PeopleSoft app does suck. Got any idea how to convince those in charge of that? That's the problem -- not the app. The lack of clue about how bad it really is in the field because the whole organization washes and pretties up the output (read: more people) to present to the big guys so much that they literally aren't allowed to see how badly it's broken.
And I'm not picking on my employer -- I've seen this same scenario play out many times and many organizations -- organization gets bigger, badly designed computerized processes get "projects" assigned to them by IT managers meaning the best for the organization, huge money follows after bad money into the pit of IT, and the middle-mangement and worker-bees clean messy data via poorly-designed and implemented user interfaces so they can provide the same good-looking smells-sweet reports to the higher-ups they did back when the app was tight, intelligent, and really helped a smaller organization grow.
The big key issue here is probably best summed up in a buzzword that the Xtreme Programming crowd coined or liked a lot: Refactoring.
Sometimes businesses need to refactor whether or not a computer really is the best tool for the job. It's rare to see any company actually do that, though.
Test cases for processes? Could this process cause horrible wastes of man-hours? Could this process be done better with a pen and a notepad?
It's not asked often enough. And good design isn't demanded enough, costs are king. Shareholders today only buy for the quarter, if that. Rental ownership of stocks is very bad for long-term growth of commerce.
Name one computer system you've used that didn't have at least some aspect of it "badly designed". I'm not trying to be a troll, I'm just an older IT worker with a healthy dose of realism injected into my thinking about how we use computers. The vast majority of computing systems are not "well designed".
I've worked in IT quite a long time, and I daily see scenarios where the non-computerized version of whatever task I'm doing was much more efficient and intelligent than the computerized "modern" version.
Case in point - labeling a package for shipping. If you can learn to print letters reasonably, this task takes about 10 seconds.
I currently have to dig ten web pages deep into a PeopleSoft application at my employer to even create a mailing label for an RMA, and the application doesn't even have the correct address for my customer's locations in it. I have to click "Override" and put in the shipping address manually because the customer has separate billing and shipping addresses.
Then since there's been no attempt at integration to our separate trouble ticketing system, I have to enter all that information again into another database.
Ultimately, it takes about 1/2 hour to create an RMA in our computerized systems.
In contrast, it takes about 10 seconds to write a mailing label and another 3 minutes to walk to the inventory cage, check off an inventory sheet by hand when removing product and hand it to the guy who packages stuff... if we could do that.
At some divisions of the company, I'm sure automated database driven ordering for just-in-time arrival of parts and things is helpful, but our division makes things that have to be put together long in advance and kept in stock. There's virtually no benefit to real-time asset tracking - no manager above our division level is looking at real-time numbers anyway. They're lucky if they look at the inventory numbers monthly. Thus, a monthly typed-up report in a spreadsheet would be just as effective as a multi-hundred-thousand dollar real-time system that wastes employees time to the tune of about a 10:1 ratio against a pen and company logo mailing label sticker.
Seriously, the world needs to look more carefully at some of our computerized processes and see if they're really as good as we think they are.
There are cases where a blank piece of paper, a pen, and a filing cabinet with a decent organization scheme would be faster -- but we want "computerized" because it's supposedly better.
Any CEO who thinks they shouldn't take a very large pay cut when their company loses 76% of its value might be considered dangerous -- to their own shareholders.
As the founder of the Vanguard Fund said in Time magazine this month, we've changed the stock market from a buyer's market to a renter's market and shareholders no longer are in it for the long haul, so they don't complain if the upper management of an organization is gouging them on salary.
2000 was the one where if you used Exchange you couldn't use other IMAP servers or POP servers wasn't it?
None of them have ever treated a remote IMAP server properly as the "true" Inbox either -- they're always under the server/connection name in the tree, even if they're your only mail server.
Normally this is no big deal, but when you're working with mail synchronization software, some of it looks in the MAPI "Inbox" and finds... nothing. Since the "IMAP Inbox" is down under the server/connection name.
Computers have equal ability for good or evil, mostly because they're simply tools.
You completely missed my point.
It's like saying "screwdrivers make things safer". Well, perhaps in the hands of a careful technician who knows to tighten the screws that have worked their way loose over time -- but in the hands of an unskilled moron, a screwdriver is far more dangerous.
Computers are just boxes full of really fast switches. They don't make anything safer. The ideas the people that created them put in them make things safer.
The article seems to forget that a huge resupply mission almost two years overdue and a brand new ham radio "satellite" were completed while at ISS.
Saying that the mission was "underwhelming" while the Shuttle went and did what Shuttle was designed to do is catering to the mass media who doesn't find such important missions interesting.
Sorry folks. Logistics and supply are part and parcel of living in space. Whoever thinks that's boring while doing it in Low-Earth Orbit is just a flat out moron, considering the current state of our technology.
What Discovery did was fly a successful resupply mission to ISS while having to deal with the mass-hysteria of the general public by examining every square inch of the orbiter for launch damage while on orbit, and actually going outside and repairing some.
Seems like a lot more than a "underwhelming" job to me. NASA is in fully-reactive mode trying to placate an increasingly uneducated and risk-averse TV-watching couch-potato public.
Living modestly is the KEY to becoming rich if one does it with salary. Only assets that accumulate wealth on their own can make someone rich to the point that they can live extravagantly, and most people that understand this, never would -- they'd reinvest their earnings into more income-producing assets.
The phrase, "You get what you pay for" comes to mind. SOHO devices ARE just barely above "junk" level in most cases. They're just-barely useful/usable enough that people don't ship them back to the manufacturer in droves. And that's exactly where something priced as low as SOHO equipment would also *naturally* be, just going by the economics of such things...
The good-old Saturn V only flew 11 manned missions, 10 if you count the original three stage design including CSM for Apollo. The eleventh was a two-stage mission for Skylab.
One of the original 10 missions included the complete and utter failure of the Command Service Module, putting the crew's lives in great danger (Apollo 13, of course), which since we're talking about the Shuttle system as a whole -- we'll talk about the entire Saturn V stack as a whole and say -- it has no better/worse record than Shuttle. A one in ten failure rate resulting in severe danger to the crew's lives.
Your Shuttle is "inherently less safe" comment isn't backed by facts. It's rhetoric from the news media. Read the real engineering information available.
Yeah, the Type 5 is my second-favorite keyboard... if only it was a littler firmer -- I type too hard and the keys don't rebound quickly enough -- too much squish.
He probably had some insurance company people pay a visit behind closed doors and tell him they'd triple his insurance costs on a building in NYC if it was bigger than the surrounding skyline. Shiny new big buildings do make nice targets.
It's not like businesses as big as his happen in a bubble. The underwriters control his ass, no matter how much money he has. If he can't insure the building, he's sure as hell not going to build it that big. Just business.
As far as wanting a mega-skyscraper to replace WTC, it's emotionally appealing, but insurance people would never let it happen. Lloyds of London wouldn't even touch that -- I'm sure.
Back to the Don... Politically, it makes sense that if he's under a limitation like those, then he must start saying things like "big skyscrapers are bad - they might attract terrorists" to make it look like he doesn't want to build his building that high.
Could you please cite some engineering data showing that ANY system to go to Earth orbit is "inherently safe"?
If that's what you're expecting, you'll always be wishing for it.
When did this country fill up with a bunch of pansies that want everything safe?
Life isn't safe. Get over it. Going to space is less-so.
Your view of the Shuttle being this big dangerous system is both generically true, and in practice, false. Why? Because in practice, it's virtually impossible to build anything safer that can do what the STS does.
The risks with Shuttle are known and studied for years. The risks with something new would be off the charts for many years of test flights. People don't seem to understand that many of the so-called "dangerous" parts of the STS have already been studied and beaten to death and made as safe as humanly possible by the NASA engineers who have (in many cases) spent a lifetime sending people to space and more often than not, returning them home safely.
And those that go, go with the understanding that they're not doing the safest job in the world. The rest of the drooling public never seemed to catch on to this fact.
No one wants to see them hurt, you make it sound like there are people out there who do.
The little tykes who will grow up and take real risks and work hard on spaceflight will do that whether or not another Shuttle comes down in flames. Real explorers, explore.
The huge crowds of people holding their breath for the Shuttle is just a side-effect of media hype. NASA and especially the crews know the risks, have known the risks, and press on, because they are people who wish to do these things.
Proving they're doing it right is just political insurance against a stampede of morons who NEVER understood (and never will) why people like them take risks and push the envelope.
Your post was excellent, and showed insight into what's really going on at NASA.
No one on here even understands the major differences you pointed out between Virgin Galactic's miniscule effort and the STS (designed originally in the 1970's!), because even the so-called technical crowd here at Slashdot doesn't really pay any real attention to the engineering accomplishments of NASA or the excellent people there working on really interesting, difficult real-world problems anymore.
They're more interested in the bullshit the media talks about trying to stir up controversy and ratings. Actually they're completely bought into it, if you read most of the comments around here.
They'd rather be entertained rather than educated, like most Americans these days.
(Like he is during most of his speeches. The only promise he's kept from any speech is the tax cut and that got the majority of the American middle class about $400. Whooop dee doo.)
It's about exploration and doing things as humans that no other humans have done.
And we also have a commitment to a space station to think about.
All you whiners that want to use unmanned toys to go do things ought to think about the job at hand -- that Station's not finished yet, and robots are not going to build it.
It's not about whether or not a manned or unmanned mission can get the job done, it's about doing it with real people who know the risks and go willingly.
Let 'em do their jobs without being part of the populist mentality that they're superfluous.
Slashdot Mirror
Even after an ISP starts making money, it's rare for them to go back and revisit poor design.
Being small and poor as a company is a lame excuse for not knowing what's going on and not doing proper design.
It's not like there's any lack of information out there about how to do things correctly, so any businessperson who starts an ISP who can't afford to do quality work doesn't deserve to have a business doing it anyway.
We're single-sourced on a large number of our components, so they're not getting much value from that theoretical possibility you mention.
Yes, I agree with you it should be easier. But when it's NOT, when do companies ever learn to cut bait and start over? Most don't. They just add more people who are now cheaper than the computers that are supposed to be doing the work (because these large data systems seem to have no upper limit on price tag) to actually sort through the mess the computer created.
Yes, the PeopleSoft app does suck. Got any idea how to convince those in charge of that? That's the problem -- not the app. The lack of clue about how bad it really is in the field because the whole organization washes and pretties up the output (read: more people) to present to the big guys so much that they literally aren't allowed to see how badly it's broken.
And I'm not picking on my employer -- I've seen this same scenario play out many times and many organizations -- organization gets bigger, badly designed computerized processes get "projects" assigned to them by IT managers meaning the best for the organization, huge money follows after bad money into the pit of IT, and the middle-mangement and worker-bees clean messy data via poorly-designed and implemented user interfaces so they can provide the same good-looking smells-sweet reports to the higher-ups they did back when the app was tight, intelligent, and really helped a smaller organization grow.
The big key issue here is probably best summed up in a buzzword that the Xtreme Programming crowd coined or liked a lot: Refactoring.
Sometimes businesses need to refactor whether or not a computer really is the best tool for the job. It's rare to see any company actually do that, though.
Test cases for processes? Could this process cause horrible wastes of man-hours? Could this process be done better with a pen and a notepad?
It's not asked often enough. And good design isn't demanded enough, costs are king. Shareholders today only buy for the quarter, if that. Rental ownership of stocks is very bad for long-term growth of commerce.
Name one computer system you've used that didn't have at least some aspect of it "badly designed". I'm not trying to be a troll, I'm just an older IT worker with a healthy dose of realism injected into my thinking about how we use computers. The vast majority of computing systems are not "well designed".
The parent specifically says he's doing BUILDS which eat up all the CPU...
Then this idiot AC says "Rah rah rah VMWare" and gets modded +1 Informative?!
Sigh...
I've worked in IT quite a long time, and I daily see scenarios where the non-computerized version of whatever task I'm doing was much more efficient and intelligent than the computerized "modern" version.
Case in point - labeling a package for shipping. If you can learn to print letters reasonably, this task takes about 10 seconds.
I currently have to dig ten web pages deep into a PeopleSoft application at my employer to even create a mailing label for an RMA, and the application doesn't even have the correct address for my customer's locations in it. I have to click "Override" and put in the shipping address manually because the customer has separate billing and shipping addresses.
Then since there's been no attempt at integration to our separate trouble ticketing system, I have to enter all that information again into another database.
Ultimately, it takes about 1/2 hour to create an RMA in our computerized systems.
In contrast, it takes about 10 seconds to write a mailing label and another 3 minutes to walk to the inventory cage, check off an inventory sheet by hand when removing product and hand it to the guy who packages stuff... if we could do that.
At some divisions of the company, I'm sure automated database driven ordering for just-in-time arrival of parts and things is helpful, but our division makes things that have to be put together long in advance and kept in stock. There's virtually no benefit to real-time asset tracking - no manager above our division level is looking at real-time numbers anyway. They're lucky if they look at the inventory numbers monthly. Thus, a monthly typed-up report in a spreadsheet would be just as effective as a multi-hundred-thousand dollar real-time system that wastes employees time to the tune of about a 10:1 ratio against a pen and company logo mailing label sticker.
Seriously, the world needs to look more carefully at some of our computerized processes and see if they're really as good as we think they are.
There are cases where a blank piece of paper, a pen, and a filing cabinet with a decent organization scheme would be faster -- but we want "computerized" because it's supposedly better.
Yeah, I work for a company that makes all types of conferencing hardware for everything from audio to video and document/PC and...
Our largest customers? Big companies with large conference rooms at the office.
And our own telecommuting policy: "No."
Laughable, really.
That's to be debated.
He made a list of the top five most outrageously overpaid CEO's over at MSN Money recently. (Of course MSN's article writers might be a little biased...)
Any CEO who thinks they shouldn't take a very large pay cut when their company loses 76% of its value might be considered dangerous -- to their own shareholders.
As the founder of the Vanguard Fund said in Time magazine this month, we've changed the stock market from a buyer's market to a renter's market and shareholders no longer are in it for the long haul, so they don't complain if the upper management of an organization is gouging them on salary.
Nah, they just up the terror level if they see any of their own doing that, and the panic and distraction keep the Press from noticing...
2000 was the one where if you used Exchange you couldn't use other IMAP servers or POP servers wasn't it?
None of them have ever treated a remote IMAP server properly as the "true" Inbox either -- they're always under the server/connection name in the tree, even if they're your only mail server.
Normally this is no big deal, but when you're working with mail synchronization software, some of it looks in the MAPI "Inbox" and finds... nothing. Since the "IMAP Inbox" is down under the server/connection name.
Retarded. Really.
Computers have equal ability for good or evil, mostly because they're simply tools.
You completely missed my point.
It's like saying "screwdrivers make things safer". Well, perhaps in the hands of a careful technician who knows to tighten the screws that have worked their way loose over time -- but in the hands of an unskilled moron, a screwdriver is far more dangerous.
Computers are just boxes full of really fast switches. They don't make anything safer. The ideas the people that created them put in them make things safer.
Bwahahaha.. he thinks computers make things safer!
Oh, my sides hurt...
If by "needs polish" you mean that it needs to work correctly, which the prototype does not... then yes. This stupid multi-door is a huge success.
Slashdot sucks these days...
The article seems to forget that a huge resupply mission almost two years overdue and a brand new ham radio "satellite" were completed while at ISS.
Saying that the mission was "underwhelming" while the Shuttle went and did what Shuttle was designed to do is catering to the mass media who doesn't find such important missions interesting.
Sorry folks. Logistics and supply are part and parcel of living in space. Whoever thinks that's boring while doing it in Low-Earth Orbit is just a flat out moron, considering the current state of our technology.
What Discovery did was fly a successful resupply mission to ISS while having to deal with the mass-hysteria of the general public by examining every square inch of the orbiter for launch damage while on orbit, and actually going outside and repairing some.
Seems like a lot more than a "underwhelming" job to me. NASA is in fully-reactive mode trying to placate an increasingly uneducated and risk-averse TV-watching couch-potato public.
Living modestly is the KEY to becoming rich if one does it with salary. Only assets that accumulate wealth on their own can make someone rich to the point that they can live extravagantly, and most people that understand this, never would -- they'd reinvest their earnings into more income-producing assets.
The phrase, "You get what you pay for" comes to mind. SOHO devices ARE just barely above "junk" level in most cases. They're just-barely useful/usable enough that people don't ship them back to the manufacturer in droves. And that's exactly where something priced as low as SOHO equipment would also *naturally* be, just going by the economics of such things...
Additionally the 11th mission, the launch of Skylab, caused severe damage to the Lab during the launch, permanently crippling the station.
The good-old Saturn V only flew 11 manned missions, 10 if you count the original three stage design including CSM for Apollo. The eleventh was a two-stage mission for Skylab.
One of the original 10 missions included the complete and utter failure of the Command Service Module, putting the crew's lives in great danger (Apollo 13, of course), which since we're talking about the Shuttle system as a whole -- we'll talk about the entire Saturn V stack as a whole and say -- it has no better/worse record than Shuttle. A one in ten failure rate resulting in severe danger to the crew's lives.
Your Shuttle is "inherently less safe" comment isn't backed by facts. It's rhetoric from the news media. Read the real engineering information available.
Yeah, the Type 5 is my second-favorite keyboard... if only it was a littler firmer -- I type too hard and the keys don't rebound quickly enough -- too much squish.
He probably had some insurance company people pay a visit behind closed doors and tell him they'd triple his insurance costs on a building in NYC if it was bigger than the surrounding skyline. Shiny new big buildings do make nice targets.
It's not like businesses as big as his happen in a bubble. The underwriters control his ass, no matter how much money he has. If he can't insure the building, he's sure as hell not going to build it that big. Just business.
As far as wanting a mega-skyscraper to replace WTC, it's emotionally appealing, but insurance people would never let it happen. Lloyds of London wouldn't even touch that -- I'm sure.
Back to the Don... Politically, it makes sense that if he's under a limitation like those, then he must start saying things like "big skyscrapers are bad - they might attract terrorists" to make it look like he doesn't want to build his building that high.
I
Were they ever?
Could you please cite some engineering data showing that ANY system to go to Earth orbit is "inherently safe"?
If that's what you're expecting, you'll always be wishing for it.
When did this country fill up with a bunch of pansies that want everything safe?
Life isn't safe. Get over it. Going to space is less-so.
Your view of the Shuttle being this big dangerous system is both generically true, and in practice, false. Why? Because in practice, it's virtually impossible to build anything safer that can do what the STS does.
The risks with Shuttle are known and studied for years. The risks with something new would be off the charts for many years of test flights. People don't seem to understand that many of the so-called "dangerous" parts of the STS have already been studied and beaten to death and made as safe as humanly possible by the NASA engineers who have (in many cases) spent a lifetime sending people to space and more often than not, returning them home safely.
And those that go, go with the understanding that they're not doing the safest job in the world. The rest of the drooling public never seemed to catch on to this fact.
No one wants to see them hurt, you make it sound like there are people out there who do.
The little tykes who will grow up and take real risks and work hard on spaceflight will do that whether or not another Shuttle comes down in flames. Real explorers, explore.
The huge crowds of people holding their breath for the Shuttle is just a side-effect of media hype. NASA and especially the crews know the risks, have known the risks, and press on, because they are people who wish to do these things.
Proving they're doing it right is just political insurance against a stampede of morons who NEVER understood (and never will) why people like them take risks and push the envelope.
Your post was excellent, and showed insight into what's really going on at NASA.
No one on here even understands the major differences you pointed out between Virgin Galactic's miniscule effort and the STS (designed originally in the 1970's!), because even the so-called technical crowd here at Slashdot doesn't really pay any real attention to the engineering accomplishments of NASA or the excellent people there working on really interesting, difficult real-world problems anymore.
They're more interested in the bullshit the media talks about trying to stir up controversy and ratings. Actually they're completely bought into it, if you read most of the comments around here.
They'd rather be entertained rather than educated, like most Americans these days.
Because GW's full of shit, perhaps?
(Like he is during most of his speeches. The only promise he's kept from any speech is the tax cut and that got the majority of the American middle class about $400. Whooop dee doo.)
Oops. Did I say that out loud?
Bah. Damn Muggles.
It's about exploration and doing things as humans that no other humans have done.
And we also have a commitment to a space station to think about.
All you whiners that want to use unmanned toys to go do things ought to think about the job at hand -- that Station's not finished yet, and robots are not going to build it.
It's not about whether or not a manned or unmanned mission can get the job done, it's about doing it with real people who know the risks and go willingly.
Let 'em do their jobs without being part of the populist mentality that they're superfluous.
Explorers inspire.