There was this job with a telco where one data source for a project management system was an Access database that contained critical financial and contract data - one of the many problems was that the Access mdb was nearing 500 MB (with Access 2.0 that was a bad thing), took hours to back up, had as many as 20 concurrent users (frequent deadlocks) - pulling the data out across the network (GA to NJ) took 6 hours plus. And they should have known better - among other things, they had Oracle and Teradata available... But that wasn't the worst part, the worst part was assuming responsibility for a non-programmer coworker's code that extracted data from a PC based scheduling system (which used Btrieve) using MS Access and loaded it into another scheduling system, this one Unix based (using Oracle). The Btrieve data was not documented in any official way, we were "reverse engineering with permission". While trying to debug, among other things, ODBC issues I learned that Microsoft had hold music DJ's and why ("the Visual Basic hold queue has 49 people holding with an average wait time of 45 minutes"). Oracle, by the way, did not have DJ's while their technicians were just as unhelpful ("that's clearly a MS issue")
Before that there was the job where we dealt with an individual who held the keys to the budgeting kingdom and insisted on assembling everything for a multibillion dollar M&O contract for the DOE in a massive macro laden Lotus 123 spreadsheet. His love of Lotus led him to write his own monster macro to serve as a word processor because he hated Word Perfect. The worst part about that job was the intense feeling of dread I felt for the two weeks where I thought I was going to be taking over his duties... No, wait, the worst part was that every day there was the chance that you would walk through a puddle contaminated with radioactive materials and have to leave your shoes on your way out.
As bad as those were, they were soooo much better than washing dishes at Shoney's !
Here goes - recumbent bicycle electric generators to power our office machines. Help the environment, cut costs, and get in shape all at the same time. This would also provide excuses to avoid meetings, phone calls, etc - "Sorry can't talk now, huff huff, if I stop pedalling, huff huff, the lights go out and , huff huff, the server goes down..."
Is there any venture capital still out there?
Go in and conquer the place, if that's even possible, and then rebuild it. Like we did Germany and Japan - now they are very friendly and economically viable. I wonder if that would work, how that would be received by other Arab/Muslim states...
The Iraquis had something to lose, ie cities, infrastructure, a standard of living. What do the Afghanis have to lose?
The Iraqui army was organized and dug in - we could *find* them. The Afghani army? In the rocks and caves. The Russian experience *is* relevant.
Maybe the long term solution in Afghanistan is to help the opposition to the Taleban - they know how to fight there. They can't be left looking like Western puppets either.
I think the solution to cracking the terrorist organizations needs to be non-military - at least not in the planes and tanks sense - that would be like using a hammer to deal with a termite infestation. Instead, infiltration, assasination, and exposure - dirty, slow, ugly work.
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I think that only works if it excludes a certain percentage of your income - 2% I think.
There was this job with a telco where one data source for a project management system was an Access database that contained critical financial and contract data - one of the many problems was that the Access mdb was nearing 500 MB (with Access 2.0 that was a bad thing), took hours to back up, had as many as 20 concurrent users (frequent deadlocks) - pulling the data out across the network (GA to NJ) took 6 hours plus. And they should have known better - among other things, they had Oracle and Teradata available... But that wasn't the worst part, the worst part was assuming responsibility for a non-programmer coworker's code that extracted data from a PC based scheduling system (which used Btrieve) using MS Access and loaded it into another scheduling system, this one Unix based (using Oracle). The Btrieve data was not documented in any official way, we were "reverse engineering with permission". While trying to debug, among other things, ODBC issues I learned that Microsoft had hold music DJ's and why ("the Visual Basic hold queue has 49 people holding with an average wait time of 45 minutes"). Oracle, by the way, did not have DJ's while their technicians were just as unhelpful ("that's clearly a MS issue") Before that there was the job where we dealt with an individual who held the keys to the budgeting kingdom and insisted on assembling everything for a multibillion dollar M&O contract for the DOE in a massive macro laden Lotus 123 spreadsheet. His love of Lotus led him to write his own monster macro to serve as a word processor because he hated Word Perfect. The worst part about that job was the intense feeling of dread I felt for the two weeks where I thought I was going to be taking over his duties... No, wait, the worst part was that every day there was the chance that you would walk through a puddle contaminated with radioactive materials and have to leave your shoes on your way out. As bad as those were, they were soooo much better than washing dishes at Shoney's !
Here goes - recumbent bicycle electric generators to power our office machines. Help the environment, cut costs, and get in shape all at the same time. This would also provide excuses to avoid meetings, phone calls, etc - "Sorry can't talk now, huff huff, if I stop pedalling, huff huff, the lights go out and , huff huff, the server goes down..." Is there any venture capital still out there?
Go in and conquer the place, if that's even possible, and then rebuild it. Like we did Germany and Japan - now they are very friendly and economically viable. I wonder if that would work, how that would be received by other Arab/Muslim states...
The Iraquis had something to lose, ie cities, infrastructure, a standard of living. What do the Afghanis have to lose?
The Iraqui army was organized and dug in - we could *find* them. The Afghani army? In the rocks and caves. The Russian experience *is* relevant.
Maybe the long term solution in Afghanistan is to help the opposition to the Taleban - they know how to fight there. They can't be left looking like Western puppets either.
I think the solution to cracking the terrorist organizations needs to be non-military - at least not in the planes and tanks sense - that would be like using a hammer to deal with a termite infestation. Instead, infiltration, assasination, and exposure - dirty, slow, ugly work.
The Cold War was so much simpler...