A system like this has a greater degree of redundancy built-in at the cell level than you could possibly hope to achieve with a centralised database; each cell is already checking the status of its neighbours, so for a square grid you have four way redundancy (the grid needn't even be regular, as long as individual cells know how many neighbours it should have). Also, a central controller needs a direct link to each cell, which would probably mean a complex and heavy wiring loom (introducing another point of failure); 5mm^2 of silicon weighs a lot less than (say) 5 meters of copper wire, multiply the difference by the number of cells and you're looking at a substantial weight saving for an active sensor system*.
There's also the interesting possibility that any spare computing cycles could be put to other uses: add the ability for cells to transfer data to other cells arbitrarily instead of by physical proximity and you're looking at the basis of a hardware neural net (I can't think of an immediate use for this, since I wouldn't advocate putting a mission-critical computer on the outside of a spacecraft, but then I am not a rocket scientist).
*Aerospace is the only field where "nothing" has a tangible dollar value: the more "nothing" you can put in a spacecraft, the cheaper it is to launch.
(Side note: I'm not logged in as I type this, and the script-filter word is "meteors". Coincidence? Perhaps...)
Have to concur with the parent - 4 eMacs, an iBook and an iMac all on OS X, and haven't seen a kernal panic since 10.3.0. The hard drive failed in one eMac and the iBook had the logic board fault, but no problems with the OS...
Actually, no it isn't. A "strawman" is deliberately misrepresenting your opponents view in order to ridicule their argument on your own terms. I don't believe I did any such thing, and I resent the implied lack of intellectual rigour associated with that particular debating tactic.
And I didn't say micromanagement is practiced by technically knowlegable managers exclusively, I was citing it as a reason in direct response to your own example. Another reason is that a technically inclined manager might become personally involved in a project to the detriment of other projects, but that wasn't relevant to the example you provided. There are a host of other reasons that also aren't relevant to your example; my apologies for not being comprehensive enough and assuming you'd fill in the blanks, as you left everyone else to do.
No, you can't use magic "performance-based system"s to find out if someone is doing their job well.
The fact that you describe this very basic, proven management technique (time and motion analysis) as "magic" suggests that you have no idea how to implement such a system correctly, which would also explain why you don't believe its possible. But let me ask: how did you judge whether someone was a good employee, by the jargon they could rattle off while standing by the water cooler, or how effective they were in executing their job? If the answer is the latter, then you're dealing with statistics that can be analysed; your failure to do so represents you failing in a primary managerial task (instigating a method of recording and evaluating your subordinates' performance).
If you can't tell what a good firewall ruleset looks like, then you can't check it when they are done implimenting it...
Feeling the need to check your subordinates work yourself, rather than delegate the task, is a very good example of micromanagement: you're sending a clear message that you don't trust them to succeed without your direct supervision and intervention. Is it possible that nobody complained (AFAYK) only because you do posess indisputably superior technical knowledge and/or you have a winning personality? Maybe it was easier to do a half-assed job and let you fix it; do you know for sure? I'd also like to know how many people you were managing, because your approach is impossibly time consuming when you're handling more than around 10 people, which many IT managers do without difficulty.
Look, if you're not prepared to take my word for it, fine. I'd be happy to put you in touch with the ex-manager of IT for Telstra; he was responsible for creating Australia's largest ISP/upstream provider, but lacks any of the technical ability you maintain is so necessary, which means either Telstra doesn't exist as a profitable ISP, or you're demonstrably wrong.
All of you bashing the GIMP should try to using Photoshop which will set you back about $500.
If you look carefully, I think you'll find that most of the comparisons are with Photoshop; in other words, they have tried it, and apparently it is worth $500 (or $1200 here in.au) to have a program thats been laid out with some regard to years of user feedback.
Obviously there are these artistic types that went through years of conditioning who claim the contrary.
Again, considering the fact that Adobe have used user feedback to refine their product, is it a question of the "artistic types" being conditioned to Photoshop, or Photoshop being conditioned to the "artistic types"? If I was designing a graphic manipulation program the first people I'd ask about UI layout is graphic artists, and I'd take their comments seriously because they set the (de-facto) standard that everyone else follows.
And bearing in mind that graphic design is a specialized discipline with a technical language of its own, how intuitive do you expect a user interface to be for "hacker types"? Do you also expect to be able to use Blender without understanding coordinate geometry? Neither GIMP or Photoshop promises a novice complete usability from the start, that's the price of a comprehensive feature set. But the fact that anyone is still prepared to pay hundreds of dollars for one, when they can both do (almost) the same job according to the specifications should be a bit of a clue stick: apparently it is possible to make a UI suck so badly you can't give it away, regardless of the underlying features.
Frankly, I recommend GIMP to everyone I know who thinks they need a pirated copy of Photoshop. I've handed out over thirty copies for various platforms on CD; the only person who persisted for any length of time was my 71 year old father, and he gave up using it when he found Graphic Converter had a clone stamp tool. Think about it: "does everything you'd need from Photoshop, its free, has no license issues", yet not a single taker, even from those who have never used Photoshop. Care to explain that?
Just because I know how to do your job, doesn't mean I am going to.
Admirable self-restraint on your part. However, your attitude is far from universal; if it were, we wouldn't see so many posts about micromanagement in this thread.
If you are not capable of doing your minions' jobs, then you are not capable of telling if they are doing their jobs adequately, incompetantly, or exceptionally.
More properly, you could use a performance-based system that analyzes tasks, their complexity, projected time versus actual time to completion, failure or repetition, etcetera, and creates a verifiable, quantified record based on a standard (to avoid accusations of personal bias); establishing such a set of performance criteria requires surprisingly little deep technical expertise. Looking at it this way, its very easy to identify who is or isn't working well, and you're equally immune to bullshit excuses. And since this is how your superiors measure your performance as a manager, it gives you a clear idea of your own effectiveness from their perspective. And again, understanding a firewall ruleset (or any given technical point) isn't important; the ability to coordinate a group to work at its most efficient is (ie knowing who of your underlings is best for a task, which is the whole point of performance evaluations). Any other attributes may or may not be a plus, depending on the individual, but if they detract from the key role of handling people then they aren't desirable in a manager.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating total technical ignorance, I'm just saying that technical expertise can be detrimental to the managerial role, so it isn't reasonable to expect your manager to have greater knowledge than you. Its nice when it happens, but don't count on it.
But you should understand what a firewall does and why, and what a good firewall ruleset would look like.
I'd say you're half right. A good IT manager should know what firewalls are and why they're important (well enough to justify the expense to upper managment), but understanding a ruleset is clearly a job for a subordinate who can be assigned the time to do it right; its a good example of exactly the kind of knowledge a manager shouldn't have if you want to avoid micromanagement or other interference in day-to-day tasks. The point I'm making here is that a manager should have a good overview of what they're managing, and leave the technical details to people who have been hired specifically to handle the technical details.
Still, from the article:
Even when his own computer is acting up, he doesn't know what to do with it and has us fix it while he sits and watches.
So this guy expects his boss' computer to fail (even though his department of experts "fixes" it), and then complains that his boss doesn't learn about it...seems like they were made for each other. To paraphrase Marx, it sounds like he doesn't want to work for a company that hires people like him.
... it would be great to see infinitely sharp and durable cheese cutters...
I hear you. As it stands you have to buy a new one every three or four garottings, and for some reason you get funny looks when you ask to buy in bulk...
Even ignoring the mesh problem I doubt they would be practical. I don't know precisely how elastic these nanotube sheets are, but if they exhibit a shape-memory effect I'd guess they'd be relatively inelastic compared to latex.
A bit like having a massage in a bullet-proof vest.
I think it finally died in '97 with well over 400K miles on it.
There are flyable aircraft well over 50 years old and functioning steam engines more than a century old, which is partially good engineering, but probably more due to the fact that none of them have ever been operated and maintained by 16-year olds.
OSX is indeed based on FreeBSD, however some parts of the package are not open source (Quartz and Cocoa, for example); Apple has complete control over these. Other parts (Darwin) are open source, but are being developed and maintained by Apple, so again (barring someone forking these projects), Apple has control. And since OSS can be freely modified by anyone, Apple aren't locked into using whatever is available, either legally or technically; they can fork, they can substitute, they can develop from scratch.
So to directly answer your question, Apple is only subject to the whims it agrees to be subject to. That's the whole point of OSS.
And look what happened to him: he had a lobotomy and ended up being the dumb colonel in charge of a bunch of scientists. Hmm, SG-1 isn't entirely inaccurate then...
Slashdot Mirror
"OW! Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot!"
A system like this has a greater degree of redundancy built-in at the cell level than you could possibly hope to achieve with a centralised database; each cell is already checking the status of its neighbours, so for a square grid you have four way redundancy (the grid needn't even be regular, as long as individual cells know how many neighbours it should have). Also, a central controller needs a direct link to each cell, which would probably mean a complex and heavy wiring loom (introducing another point of failure); 5mm^2 of silicon weighs a lot less than (say) 5 meters of copper wire, multiply the difference by the number of cells and you're looking at a substantial weight saving for an active sensor system*.
There's also the interesting possibility that any spare computing cycles could be put to other uses: add the ability for cells to transfer data to other cells arbitrarily instead of by physical proximity and you're looking at the basis of a hardware neural net (I can't think of an immediate use for this, since I wouldn't advocate putting a mission-critical computer on the outside of a spacecraft, but then I am not a rocket scientist).
*Aerospace is the only field where "nothing" has a tangible dollar value: the more "nothing" you can put in a spacecraft, the cheaper it is to launch.
(Side note: I'm not logged in as I type this, and the script-filter word is "meteors". Coincidence? Perhaps...)
Have to concur with the parent - 4 eMacs, an iBook and an iMac all on OS X, and haven't seen a kernal panic since 10.3.0. The hard drive failed in one eMac and the iBook had the logic board fault, but no problems with the OS...
But would "Gross" be a negative or positive modifier?
That's a total strawman though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawman
Actually, no it isn't. A "strawman" is deliberately misrepresenting your opponents view in order to ridicule their argument on your own terms. I don't believe I did any such thing, and I resent the implied lack of intellectual rigour associated with that particular debating tactic.
And I didn't say micromanagement is practiced by technically knowlegable managers exclusively, I was citing it as a reason in direct response to your own example. Another reason is that a technically inclined manager might become personally involved in a project to the detriment of other projects, but that wasn't relevant to the example you provided. There are a host of other reasons that also aren't relevant to your example; my apologies for not being comprehensive enough and assuming you'd fill in the blanks, as you left everyone else to do.
No, you can't use magic "performance-based system"s to find out if someone is doing their job well.
The fact that you describe this very basic, proven management technique (time and motion analysis) as "magic" suggests that you have no idea how to implement such a system correctly, which would also explain why you don't believe its possible. But let me ask: how did you judge whether someone was a good employee, by the jargon they could rattle off while standing by the water cooler, or how effective they were in executing their job? If the answer is the latter, then you're dealing with statistics that can be analysed; your failure to do so represents you failing in a primary managerial task (instigating a method of recording and evaluating your subordinates' performance).
If you can't tell what a good firewall ruleset looks like, then you can't check it when they are done implimenting it...
Feeling the need to check your subordinates work yourself, rather than delegate the task, is a very good example of micromanagement: you're sending a clear message that you don't trust them to succeed without your direct supervision and intervention. Is it possible that nobody complained (AFAYK) only because you do posess indisputably superior technical knowledge and/or you have a winning personality? Maybe it was easier to do a half-assed job and let you fix it; do you know for sure? I'd also like to know how many people you were managing, because your approach is impossibly time consuming when you're handling more than around 10 people, which many IT managers do without difficulty.
Look, if you're not prepared to take my word for it, fine. I'd be happy to put you in touch with the ex-manager of IT for Telstra; he was responsible for creating Australia's largest ISP/upstream provider, but lacks any of the technical ability you maintain is so necessary, which means either Telstra doesn't exist as a profitable ISP, or you're demonstrably wrong.
All of you bashing the GIMP should try to using Photoshop which will set you back about $500.
.au) to have a program thats been laid out with some regard to years of user feedback.
If you look carefully, I think you'll find that most of the comparisons are with Photoshop; in other words, they have tried it, and apparently it is worth $500 (or $1200 here in
Obviously there are these artistic types that went through years of conditioning who claim the contrary.
Again, considering the fact that Adobe have used user feedback to refine their product, is it a question of the "artistic types" being conditioned to Photoshop, or Photoshop being conditioned to the "artistic types"? If I was designing a graphic manipulation program the first people I'd ask about UI layout is graphic artists, and I'd take their comments seriously because they set the (de-facto) standard that everyone else follows.
And bearing in mind that graphic design is a specialized discipline with a technical language of its own, how intuitive do you expect a user interface to be for "hacker types"? Do you also expect to be able to use Blender without understanding coordinate geometry? Neither GIMP or Photoshop promises a novice complete usability from the start, that's the price of a comprehensive feature set. But the fact that anyone is still prepared to pay hundreds of dollars for one, when they can both do (almost) the same job according to the specifications should be a bit of a clue stick: apparently it is possible to make a UI suck so badly you can't give it away, regardless of the underlying features.
Frankly, I recommend GIMP to everyone I know who thinks they need a pirated copy of Photoshop. I've handed out over thirty copies for various platforms on CD; the only person who persisted for any length of time was my 71 year old father, and he gave up using it when he found Graphic Converter had a clone stamp tool. Think about it: "does everything you'd need from Photoshop, its free, has no license issues", yet not a single taker, even from those who have never used Photoshop. Care to explain that?
The idea is that anyone can use paper and will be comfortable with it.
Proof positive that GIMP's interface is too awkward for most.
(Its 8 degrees C here, the flames will be very pleasant)
Just because I know how to do your job, doesn't mean I am going to.
Admirable self-restraint on your part. However, your attitude is far from universal; if it were, we wouldn't see so many posts about micromanagement in this thread.
If you are not capable of doing your minions' jobs, then you are not capable of telling if they are doing their jobs adequately, incompetantly, or exceptionally.
More properly, you could use a performance-based system that analyzes tasks, their complexity, projected time versus actual time to completion, failure or repetition, etcetera, and creates a verifiable, quantified record based on a standard (to avoid accusations of personal bias); establishing such a set of performance criteria requires surprisingly little deep technical expertise. Looking at it this way, its very easy to identify who is or isn't working well, and you're equally immune to bullshit excuses. And since this is how your superiors measure your performance as a manager, it gives you a clear idea of your own effectiveness from their perspective. And again, understanding a firewall ruleset (or any given technical point) isn't important; the ability to coordinate a group to work at its most efficient is (ie knowing who of your underlings is best for a task, which is the whole point of performance evaluations). Any other attributes may or may not be a plus, depending on the individual, but if they detract from the key role of handling people then they aren't desirable in a manager.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating total technical ignorance, I'm just saying that technical expertise can be detrimental to the managerial role, so it isn't reasonable to expect your manager to have greater knowledge than you. Its nice when it happens, but don't count on it.
Therefore smarter people should be by the nature of their intelligence more popular and more socially accepted. Yet they are not.
Put simply: nobody likes a smart-ass.
While I completely agree with points 1, 2, 4, and 5, I disagree completely with #3. [snip] I am thrilled that Peter Jackson did Lord of the Rings.
Yes, I'd agree Tolkein was one of last century's greatest comic book artists, though I think 3 Books is a little long for a single speech balloon.
Of course with the quality of the movies now, I might as well pee ON the movie.
I wouldn't, even if it was on fire!
But you should understand what a firewall does and why, and what a good firewall ruleset would look like.
I'd say you're half right. A good IT manager should know what firewalls are and why they're important (well enough to justify the expense to upper managment), but understanding a ruleset is clearly a job for a subordinate who can be assigned the time to do it right; its a good example of exactly the kind of knowledge a manager shouldn't have if you want to avoid micromanagement or other interference in day-to-day tasks. The point I'm making here is that a manager should have a good overview of what they're managing, and leave the technical details to people who have been hired specifically to handle the technical details.
Still, from the article:
Even when his own computer is acting up, he doesn't know what to do with it and has us fix it while he sits and watches.
So this guy expects his boss' computer to fail (even though his department of experts "fixes" it), and then complains that his boss doesn't learn about it...seems like they were made for each other. To paraphrase Marx, it sounds like he doesn't want to work for a company that hires people like him.
... it would be great to see infinitely sharp and durable cheese cutters...
I hear you. As it stands you have to buy a new one every three or four garottings, and for some reason you get funny looks when you ask to buy in bulk...
Even ignoring the mesh problem I doubt they would be practical. I don't know precisely how elastic these nanotube sheets are, but if they exhibit a shape-memory effect I'd guess they'd be relatively inelastic compared to latex.
A bit like having a massage in a bullet-proof vest.
Show me a man who can joke about small penises and link to his wife's blog in the same post and I'll show you a man who knows no fear.
Why make nanotube condoms? So they can survive re-entry?
Not that church is a requirement for morality, but at least it should be a standard we can claim a measure against.
[Insert catholic priest joke here]
What if someone solves complex differential equations in their head to help design grizzly, macabre ways of murdering people?
Who here hasn't? Doomsday devices don't design themselves...
I think it finally died in '97 with well over 400K miles on it.
There are flyable aircraft well over 50 years old and functioning steam engines more than a century old, which is partially good engineering, but probably more due to the fact that none of them have ever been operated and maintained by 16-year olds.
After another [years] 20, private teleporters will be available to install in your own house.
Oh great, another avenue for spam.
Which is interesting: I could see people being killed in filter accidents. "I'm sorry, ma'am, your husband was a false positive".
...he can't murder every third customer...
... and he can't lock everyone in at closing time and use them for slave labor.
So I shouldn't consider a career in retail, then?
No, only Electronic Arts is allowed to do that.
OSX is indeed based on FreeBSD, however some parts of the package are not open source (Quartz and Cocoa, for example); Apple has complete control over these. Other parts (Darwin) are open source, but are being developed and maintained by Apple, so again (barring someone forking these projects), Apple has control. And since OSS can be freely modified by anyone, Apple aren't locked into using whatever is available, either legally or technically; they can fork, they can substitute, they can develop from scratch.
So to directly answer your question, Apple is only subject to the whims it agrees to be subject to. That's the whole point of OSS.
...and I can always just walk along the street and whistle
But don't whistle anything you heard on a CD, or your lips may be impounded under the DMCA.
And look what happened to him: he had a lobotomy and ended up being the dumb colonel in charge of a bunch of scientists. Hmm, SG-1 isn't entirely inaccurate then...
...he jumps two galaxies and hides under the molten sulfur volcano, on a planet near Sirius.
With astronomy knowledge like that, its clear you're a Hollywood sci-fi screenplay writer.