Then the person who produced it leaves the company, and a few months later the IT helpdesk gets a call about it.
That's the point at which the stupidity should stop. Rather than invest the time working out WTF the mega-macro does, and trying to maintain it, they should work out what it's supposed to do and write something they can maintain that does that. No prejudging what platform, language; but I think it unlikely that Excel macro would be high on the list.
hundreds of Access/VBA macros that make up Stone Edge Order Manager? A lot more time.
In that case, run it on Wine, or a real Windows box. They'll probably have a few for such cases. Seems a pretty insane idea to me to create a whole application from Excel macros.
? Go explain the bean counters why their ages old excel macro's don't work anymore.
These bean counters don't use Excel. From TFA:
"core software used by the company is LAS, a Java-based claims-processing application of its own design, backed by Lotus Notes, Adobe's Reader and the OpenOffice suite"
Anyway, FFS, how hard can it be to recode an Excel macro? Or run the damn thing in Wine if you really can't be bothered..
The real question is, will it be worthwhile if some/all the employees have to learn to use a different OS all over again?
Why is that the "real" question?
Most users spend almost all their time using a small number of applications, not the OS per se. And all modern GUIs work pretty much the same.
And if you'd read TFA, youd; know their applications are already Java based, so they should work the same regardless.
"The core software used by the company is LAS, a Java-based claims-processing application of its own design, backed by Lotus Notes, Adobe's Reader and the OpenOffice suite."
I wouldn't call it SF, but fantasy. Can't recall how I first heard of it, probably 40 years ago. Maybe in something like Brian Aldiss' Billion Year Spree.
My experience has been that those Win98/Win 2000/ Win XP applications that fail on Vista/7 fail due to bad or outdated design. Why are they using HKLM or %systemroot%? Allowing that design was part of what made XP and earlier weak.
And if my work is dependent on that application, which is now not being updated, I don't give a shit as long as the damn thing runs. If it doesn't, I will downgrade my OS if necessary.
The access points were secured, but with WEP, which is easily cracked. I've got an old access point myself that only does WEP, but as I'm in a rural village the risk is minimal. In a city however, it'd be foolish.
But again that also is a given. Even if they use a public private key system you do not keep the only copy of the keys. Dropbox has a recover lost password feature.
Whatever. I don't use it. Obviously if they do have lost password recovery, then the rest follows.
The fact is than they were implying they had a service (complete privacy) they didn't really have. Whether they were busted because of the TOS that prompted TFA, or the password argument doesn't really matter.
doctors.....almost as bad as lawyers in their arrogance.
I can believe a doctor might do exactly as the OP said. But such an arrogant prick would never come to a tech site like Slashdot and ask advice.(He might go to some site frequented by other doctors, if he thought about doing that at all.) Anyone who knows this site, who knows what "Ask Slashdot" is would know the result he would get. So I'm pretty confident there is no doctor at all, it's just pure fiction -- and as it has racked up 1200 comments to date, achieved its purpose.
I think almost all "Ask Slashdot" questions posted are fake; obviously the editors choose the ones mostly likely to press our buttons and get lots of heated responses. And the submitters write posts that do exactly that. Since they're always anonymised there is no way to verify any of the "facts".
He's a doctor, a faculty member (professor), and a division head (administration/management). I promise you he's not a moron.
And I promise you that he's not a doctor, not a professor, not a division head. He;s just some twat who crafted an inflammatory situation out of his imagnation. and posted it here where it would draw the most fire.
Like about 95% of "Ask Slashdots". They're about as credible as "Letters to Penthouse".
The post is so stupid and bound to generate comments to that effect that I suspect that like many of the "Ask Slashdots" it's entirely fictional. Any hospital admin who is aware of Slashdot would know the reaction he would get here. It's just some twat trolling us. Or possibly the editor spicing up a slow news day.
I find it very odd that this article (also TFA) starts "The White House releases... "and goes on "according to a plan released by President Barack Obama's administration".
I mean, this isn't; Al Gore's White House. Did Obama sweat out this scheme? Was it planned in the White House? Reading on a few paragraphs one sees "Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said at an NSTIC release event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce". So it was actually the Dept of Commerce. Sure, they announced it at the White House, but so what? That's hardly the most important thing, why put it in the headline?
This tendency of Americans to characterise every act of the Federal Government as "Barack Obama" is quite weird, almost medieval. And misleading, I think. It's pretty likely most policies are created and executed by career bureaucrats, the Commence Secretary who announced it and the President (who is probably barely aware of it) have basically nothing to do with it.
Maybe you should respond to the post I actually made instead of lying that I "demanded" anything or "pretended outrage".
You're either a moron who can't read, an asshole who doesn't care what post he attaches his rants to or a troll who misrepresents people to wind them up..
In Australia, all of their functions could theoretically be fulfilled by a giant rubber stamp that hates change and is uncomfortable around dark people.
Except in 1975. "Well may we say God save the Queen, because nothing will save the governor-general!"
Aside from that glitch, the usual functions of the GG are to fulfil the ceremonial aspects of the head of state, leaving the day to day running of the country to the prime minister.
The submitter, Mark Whittington, is also the person who wrote the "Yahoo! Contributor Network" story he links to (i.e., a blog). And at the articler, he links to an Amazon page to buy a book that Mark Whittington wrote and self published.
StarTrek Original is from 1966, ST TNG 1987, ST DSN 1993, ST V 2001. I see no moral obligation to pay for 10 years, 17 years, 24 years and 45 years old series, that were countless times on TV already. In my opinion they should all be in the public domain already, because they paid them self more than enough. The actors have their pay, the producers have their profits, why should I have any moral obligation to pay them again to watch the same episodes just in a different format?
The remastered TOS is beautiful on a big screen. I saw it originally in b/w on a 20" tv in the 60s, and I must say the remastered version is rather more than "the same episodes just in a different format".
The other shows, probably there is little or no difference though... anyway, TOS is the only one I'm interested in.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me know when there's a transcript. I can read at at least 4 times the speed he can speak.
Then the person who produced it leaves the company, and a few months later the IT helpdesk gets a call about it.
That's the point at which the stupidity should stop. Rather than invest the time working out WTF the mega-macro does, and trying to maintain it, they should work out what it's supposed to do and write something they can maintain that does that. No prejudging what platform, language; but I think it unlikely that Excel macro would be high on the list.
hundreds of Access/VBA macros that make up Stone Edge Order Manager? A lot more time.
In that case, run it on Wine, or a real Windows box. They'll probably have a few for such cases. Seems a pretty insane idea to me to create a whole application from Excel macros.
Adobe Reader X's comment feature
No idea. PDF was originally a read and print medium. If you want to edit it or add later, it's a bit if a hack really.
? Go explain the bean counters why their ages old excel macro's don't work anymore.
These bean counters don't use Excel. From TFA:
"core software used by the company is LAS, a Java-based claims-processing application of its own design, backed by Lotus Notes, Adobe's Reader and the OpenOffice suite"
Anyway, FFS, how hard can it be to recode an Excel macro? Or run the damn thing in Wine if you really can't be bothered..
The real question is, will it be worthwhile if some/all the employees have to learn to use a different OS all over again?
Why is that the "real" question?
Most users spend almost all their time using a small number of applications, not the OS per se. And all modern GUIs work pretty much the same.
And if you'd read TFA, youd; know their applications are already Java based, so they should work the same regardless.
"The core software used by the company is LAS, a Java-based claims-processing application of its own design, backed by Lotus Notes, Adobe's Reader and the OpenOffice suite."
I wouldn't call it SF, but fantasy. Can't recall how I first heard of it, probably 40 years ago. Maybe in something like Brian Aldiss' Billion Year Spree.
Several of those at least sound like they could be Sci-fi, or at least scientific:
They are. But (reportedly) none of these were featured on the TV show as broadcast. That's what's sticking ni the authors' (and readers') throats.
why is Kafka's Metamorphosis never considered to be a science fiction (or "horror" or "fantasy"
Who says it isn't? That's the whole reason I found and read it, the only Kafka story I have read.
I knew what you're getting it though; the litterateurs would never call it fantasy. Or that 1984 is SF.
My experience has been that those Win98/Win 2000/ Win XP applications that fail on Vista/7 fail due to bad or outdated design. Why are they using HKLM or %systemroot%? Allowing that design was part of what made XP and earlier weak.
And if my work is dependent on that application, which is now not being updated, I don't give a shit as long as the damn thing runs. If it doesn't, I will downgrade my OS if necessary.
Applications are important to users, not OSes.
The access points were secured, but with WEP, which is easily cracked. I've got an old access point myself that only does WEP, but as I'm in a rural village the risk is minimal. In a city however, it'd be foolish.
But again that also is a given. Even if they use a public private key system you do not keep the only copy of the keys. Dropbox has a recover lost password feature.
Whatever. I don't use it. Obviously if they do have lost password recovery, then the rest follows.
The fact is than they were implying they had a service (complete privacy) they didn't really have. Whether they were busted because of the TOS that prompted TFA, or the password argument doesn't really matter.
News Flash Dropbox will comply not break the law to protect your data.
The news flash was actually: Despite implying that its staff CAN'T decrypt your data, actually they are just TOLD not to.
unable to self-asses honestly
An apposite typo.
Apparently my initial point wasn't expressed clearly for you
And it wasn't your "initial point" I was responding to or complaining of, but your assertion that I was "pretending to be outraged".
doctors.....almost as bad as lawyers in their arrogance.
I can believe a doctor might do exactly as the OP said. But such an arrogant prick would never come to a tech site like Slashdot and ask advice.(He might go to some site frequented by other doctors, if he thought about doing that at all.) Anyone who knows this site, who knows what "Ask Slashdot" is would know the result he would get. So I'm pretty confident there is no doctor at all, it's just pure fiction -- and as it has racked up 1200 comments to date, achieved its purpose.
I think almost all "Ask Slashdot" questions posted are fake; obviously the editors choose the ones mostly likely to press our buttons and get lots of heated responses. And the submitters write posts that do exactly that. Since they're always anonymised there is no way to verify any of the "facts".
He's a doctor, a faculty member (professor), and a division head (administration/management). I promise you he's not a moron.
And I promise you that he's not a doctor, not a professor, not a division head. He;s just some twat who crafted an inflammatory situation out of his imagnation. and posted it here where it would draw the most fire. Like about 95% of "Ask Slashdots". They're about as credible as "Letters to Penthouse".
The post is so stupid and bound to generate comments to that effect that I suspect that like many of the "Ask Slashdots" it's entirely fictional. Any hospital admin who is aware of Slashdot would know the reaction he would get here. It's just some twat trolling us. Or possibly the editor spicing up a slow news day.
I mean, this isn't; Al Gore's White House. Did Obama sweat out this scheme? Was it planned in the White House? Reading on a few paragraphs one sees "Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said at an NSTIC release event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce". So it was actually the Dept of Commerce. Sure, they announced it at the White House, but so what? That's hardly the most important thing, why put it in the headline?
This tendency of Americans to characterise every act of the Federal Government as "Barack Obama" is quite weird, almost medieval. And misleading, I think. It's pretty likely most policies are created and executed by career bureaucrats, the Commence Secretary who announced it and the President (who is probably barely aware of it) have basically nothing to do with it.
Note that about 10 years prior I also had alt.sex created. This took all the porn off the rest of Usenet and put it in one place
You're joking, right?
alt.binaries.pictures.* has untold gigabytes of porn every day. And it turns up in random other groups when someone is trying to evade a block.
You're either a moron who can't read, an asshole who doesn't care what post he attaches his rants to or a troll who misrepresents people to wind them up..
In Australia, all of their functions could theoretically be fulfilled by a giant rubber stamp that hates change and is uncomfortable around dark people.
Except in 1975. "Well may we say God save the Queen, because nothing will save the governor-general!"
Aside from that glitch, the usual functions of the GG are to fulfil the ceremonial aspects of the head of state, leaving the day to day running of the country to the prime minister.
Or is taking real-world responsibility for the actual content of your speech something you're trying to avoid?
You bet it is, when that might mean being killed/fired/beaten up/expelled/etc.
The submitter, Mark Whittington, is also the person who wrote the "Yahoo! Contributor Network" story he links to (i.e., a blog). And at the articler, he links to an Amazon page to buy a book that Mark Whittington wrote and self published.
StarTrek Original is from 1966, ST TNG 1987, ST DSN 1993, ST V 2001. I see no moral obligation to pay for 10 years, 17 years, 24 years and 45 years old series, that were countless times on TV already. In my opinion they should all be in the public domain already, because they paid them self more than enough. The actors have their pay, the producers have their profits, why should I have any moral obligation to pay them again to watch the same episodes just in a different format?
The remastered TOS is beautiful on a big screen. I saw it originally in b/w on a 20" tv in the 60s, and I must say the remastered version is rather more than "the same episodes just in a different format".
The other shows, probably there is little or no difference though... anyway, TOS is the only one I'm interested in.