Two points to Westley for proper use of the word conflate. Seriously, nice work my man.
I appreciate all of the discussion that my post has generated, but I'd like to take a second to add a bit of perspective. I've done consulting for the last 4 or 5 years now and worked at several different companies. If the security and performance concerns/solutions I've heard addressed in this thread address the worst problems of your applications, you guys are working on projects that seriously have their stuff together.
As for my part, I'll worry about enhancing security through the prevention of SQL injection once I work on a project that doesn't send customers' credit card information over the wire in cleartext.:-)
This is indisputably true. That's why, because I don't happen to own a bike, I have a 220dB air horn installed on the roof of my 1986 Escort. I had to have special glass and insulation installed in the car, and I still need earplugs when I drive it (because I leave it blaring constantly whenever the car is running), but there's no danger of running over a kid!
This "You can hear 'em coming" argument is the most arrogant, self-centered, thoughtless, and logically inconsistent argument I've ever heard. As if it's my responsibility as a pedestrian to dodge motorized vehicles, and not theirs to make sure they conduct themselves in a way that leaves me unharmed and with comfortably non-ringing ears.
Amen. I don't think I've heard anyone complain that they can't flush their own coolant anymore since cars went to 100k mile closed coolant systems. I used to be able to do it...and I used to HAVE to do it. Now I don't keep cars long enough to ever have to do it. That's alright by me.
I would point out, though, that intelligent fasteners are not likely to make anything that is currently operable last longer...imagine if this were applied to the oil pan plug and oil filter. Do I have to take my car to the dealer and pay $80 for a $5 filter and 4 quarts of oil? That would totally piss me off, but I trust the free market to fix it...or the government.
Stored procedures aren't good or bad...they just are. Passing a value judgment on whether they're good or bad is completely dependent on the situation.
I would argue that the three main points you made in favor of stored procedures are not points that apply to every case (I don't think they were intended to, either, but hear me out):
Centralized code. There are lots of ways to divide code up. I would argue that good n-tiered designs for web apps already use methods of organizing code into deployable/organizational units (layers, design patterns, component object models, etc) that render irrelevant the contribution that stored procedures are able to make in this regard.
Compiled SQL is faster. This is purely a performance enhancement. Performance enhancements like this belong at the back of the development cycle once you can measure the performance of the app; maybe it's perfectly acceptable. If it's not, then you look for bottlenecks and focus the energy where you get the biggest bang for the buck. If the biggest bottleneck is compilation of SQL, then stored procedures is your answer. Until the performance analysis is in, though, I think implementing performance enhancements maximizes investment of time and resources and minimizes return. Besides, much of the time a good, scalable design makes performance considerations irrelevant...you can have the cleanest code and just scale it up over hardware (within known constraints, of course) until performance meets requirements.
Enhanced security. Depending on stored procedures as a key element of security is obviously not desirable. Having said that, in your particular case, though suboptimal, you have to look at the big picture to see if the business justification is there to leave it in for this reason. Having said that, I would try to design the app, security-wise, as though stored procedures don't exist to whatever extend possible. Just as with the business rules, you should be free to change DB vendors from a security standpoint as well.
I would argue that business rules and business logic should be implemented in a vendor-independent way. Also, I would implement the business functionality of the app so that it can support a web front end, but also someday a desktop UI, a programmatic web services front end, etc. That's the soul of n-tiered architectures, they're supposed to bring that kind of flexibility along with the use of tiers...this kind of flexibility is the point.
If an app is not flexible in this way but claims to be an "n-tiered architecture", I'd argue that it is only nominally so. Looking like an n-tiered app without providing any of the benefits is a Pyrrhic victory for the architects and designers. That would be inconsequential except for the (usually large) investment of company resources.
Not cuz they're dropping rates for people that have them, man. Cuz they have a justification now to raise rates for people that don't.
In other words, once airbags came along your rate is only affected (negatively) if you don't have 'em...otherwise, no change. I asked my insurance company about this when I got my first airbagged car, and they said, "We spend about as much replacing deployed airbags as we used to on repackaging the brains of accident victims." (I'm paraphrasing.) You'd think repacking people's brains would cost more, but apparently the brains didn't use to deploy as often as airbags now do.
Wow, it seems I really hit on something with that ol' keyboard. I had no idea people still used those things...
You know, since I moved on to quiet touch keyboards, I really have upped my typing speed. Yes, it took a long while to get used to, but you don't really realize how much extra force is required to make those clackies work. Why roll out the red carpet for Mr. Carpal-Tunnel?
Keep in mind, you two, I didn't say that the 2-stranded model is wrong. I simply said that it's possible.
There's other stuff, too (not that I'm trying to be a subversive, here:-) ). Take two threads, one black, one white, about a foot long. Tie the ends of each together to form two loops. Lay one on top of the other, and twist them around each other. That's an approximation of a double helix.
Now take two more foot-length threads, one black, one white. Tie them into loops, but this time make sure they're linked. One lays on top of the other, twist around each other...that's model 2 of a double helix.
It's my understanding that the second model is generally accepted based on W&C's work. But then there happens to be an enzyme out there that is supposedly responsible for, once the two strands have been unrolled, unlinking the two strands by cutting one and relinking it on the other side. Only problem is, according to all research on this "magic enzyme" (as many call it), it is 100% efficient, a thermodynamic impossibility.
Obviously something's amiss here...either the magic enzyme isn't really doing what we think, and the two strands are not linked, or the enzyme is getting energy from somewhere else, or something.
Again, I'm not saying anything definite...it's impossible to know at this point. But then, shouldn't we admit we don't know instead of pretending we do? (I'll bet lots of people thought Newton had the final word on gravity and the nature of space-time before Einstein.)
I think that the famous double helix result should not be taught as fact and so readily accepted by everyone. I'm not saying it's untrue, I'm just saying we ought to maintain a healthy scientific skepticism toward things that don't have an irrefutably strong case based on empirical evidence backing them, and this one doesn't.
When you try reverse an x-ray diffraction pattern back into the 3D structure of the thing that caused it, at some point you have to solve a Bessel function. There are many solutions to that Bessel function, each of which could have produced that pattern. The best solution is the one that dictates a 3D structure that fits other observations outside of the diffraction pattern. For this particular experiment (if you read the paper they published), the first solution to the Bessel function they used implies two strands wound around each other. The second solution implies four, the third implies six strands, etc.
Watson and Crick, in that paper, assumed the first solution was the best one, even though the second one is possible too. (The third and higher solutions are not possible because in the 3D space-filling model there's physically no room for 6 or more strands within that volume of space.) As it happens, the second solution, which suggests a four-stranded helical model, seems to fit the rest of the data in that paper and its references better than the two-stranded one.
There's other evidence out there to suggest the double-stranded model is not necessarily correct, too...above I'm only talking about what's in the original paper itself. I'm not saying the conclusion is wrong, I'm only saying that I think that biologists have accepted this model as fact too readily, based on mathematics that most biologists can't follow (how many bio Ph.D.s can solve Bessel functions?). I'm suggesting there's not enough empirical evidence to characterize this double-stranded helical model as fact, though. We all ought to be more skeptical...there is no good explanation I know of for why they picked the first solution over the second, and until it's addressed the question should remain open. That's just good science.
I wonder how much this matters anyway, though. Ok, so DNA coils up into a helix in a crystal under certain experimental conditions. Does that mean it maintains the same structure in other situations, such as in vivo? Anyone who's studied molecular bio knows that molecular biological structures adopt lots of different forms that are highly dependent on the environment in which they find themselves.
Still, this is more a comment on the scientific community's shortcomings than Watson or Crick specifically. Does anyone out there know of any significant discoveries based on Watson and Crick's famous advance? What technologies/medicines/whatever has been developed as a result? This seems like a good way to honor their contribution.
The V chip makes me mad. This is a minor example of what's happened to cars over the last fifteen years or so. My dad bought a brand new 1989 Dodge Omni for $5900 off the showroom floor. The exact same car, in the year they stopped making that particular model, went for about $10,500.
What happened? Did inflation nearly halve the value of money in the 90s? Nope...it was nuts like Nader running around proclaiming that every single car has to have child seat anchors and inside-the-truck latch releases and driver and passengar airbags and side curtain airbags and knee baffling for front seat occupants and big, giant foam bumpers that spring out of every car surface if you get within 10 feet of another automobile and floatation devices and an outboard motor in case you run off of a bridge into water (silent trolling motor and bass tank extra).
Ok, so how many people's lives did we save? And how many inner city breadwinners are now limited to working on bus routes because there's no such thing as a cheap, reliable car anymore? And if people in general are safer with airbags, how come my insurance premiums didn't go down when I got a car with airbags? Wouldn't I have seen that extra insurance savings if the government hadn't interfered and, given the choice, I selected a car with airbags?
In college I had one of those old IBM XT clackety-clack keyboards. One time I dumped an entire can of Dr. Pepper into it (yes, it was a remarkable accident).
I drained as much as I could out of it, after unplugging it of course, ran it under cold water for a minute or two to flush out all the caramel coloring, and hung it by the cord over the shower curtain rod in my dorm. Once it air-dried, I plugged it back in and it worked fine.
A few months later a buddy was showing me how he could pop the keys off of his plastic keyboard and rearrange the keys for Dvorak-style key assignments. On this old clackety-clack, each key is held on by a set of like 12 interlocking springs (no, it's not, but you get the idea). I stuck a nail file in there and jimmied one of the springs loose under one key........and the popping sounds, spring after spring, propagated all the way to each corner of the device.
After that it was only clackety...no -clack the other way. And it didn't work too well neither.
The inventors also say their idea, which was awarded patent No. 6,575,593, is not just for cars but could also be used on motorcycles, ships or aircraft.
(emphasis mine)
Not sure what article you were reading, but I pulled that quote from the/. linked story.
The patent number referred to is 6,575,593, but a quick search for that patent number at the US Patent Office yields a patent entitled: IEEE 1394 or USB powered computer light.
Seriously, people. I think this might just be a hoax.
People are particularly sensitive to IT guys because: (1) they have to deal with them when they need an IT problem solved, (2) there is a huge knowledge gap between the parties involved wrt the problem, and (3) most IT guys relish playing up point 2 so their value is noted in triplicate with each incident.
Doctors tend not to make comments like, "Man, you would be so dead if I hadn't hacked that cancer. Why'd you go and get cancer anyway? Don't you know smoking does that? I should've handed you a copy of Gray's Anatomy and a scalpel and told ya to RTFM!"
sev
Re:Even if it's user error...
on
Are You Annoying?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I used to work with an IT guy that was apparently on the path to BOFH-dom. Whenever people used him as a crutch to get a little work slowdown, he'd actually find a problem. And that problem almost always required them to do extra work...maybe they'd lose that report they've been working on for a week, maybe all their personal configuration would get deleted. Maybe he discovered they weren't doing something frequently enough, such as updating virus definitions or backing up their data.
Sometimes he'd even go to management and have a team-wide policy put in place that required extra work of everyone on that team. While frequently using that person, by name, as an example, he'd give a nice, boring lecture on what that person did or didn't do that caused the problem, and how the problem was bad enough, in that person's own words, to cause a big productivity hit.
One thing I learned is that management loves IT guys that spotlight productivity problems and suggests lots of solutions.
Ah...well, then, why not employ a passive-aggressive approach? Next time he's clipping away, ask him if you can borrow his clippers cuz you've got a bad infected hangnail on your big toe. Everytime you hear clipping...very soon he'll do his best to keep you from noticing whenever he hauls out the ol' hedge trimmers. This will make you feel better while keeping you in your comfort zone, get back at your boss, and make you look innocent all at the same time.
I hate when people misuse frequently used words too. I'm ok if someone misuses a word that's not part of common human discourse, but "irony", but the concept and the word, ought to be well understood by everyone who, say, graduated high school. I give people points for getting kinda close, though, like if they use it when they mean sarcastic or sardonic. That's kinda close. I once heard someone use it when they just meant "funny" (as in, "Did you see America's Funnient Home Videos last night? This guy got hit in the nuts! It was so ironic I shot Big Gulp through my nose!"). That was really annoying, especially considering that person was college educated. I felt like having him savor the iron-y taste in his mouth after I busted open his lip.
Part of the problem with irony is that it sometimes lurks just below the surface. The poor maligned soul that inadvertantly started this thread-bash may have actually detected irony in this situation and been referencing it, leaving us readers to discover it.
SO: Say my purpose is to reduce the overall amount of annoyance in the world. I write an article, the aim of which is to do that. But my intended purpose is at odds with what actually happens; the article itself is annoying, everyone who reads it gets annoyed, and the article actually increases the amount of annoyance in the world as a direct result of my own inability to practice what I'm preaching in the article itself.
Isn't it ironic? Doncha think? A little tooOOOoo ironic?
(I can't believe I'm actually inviting mod-downs by going back to Alanis Morrissette. I really thought I was better than that.)
I'm going to have to stick up for mcelrath here, because you, sir, are missing the point.
The point: extra-scientific, political balance-striking is fine. That, in fact, is what we hire politicians to do. However, they must do this in a particular way. First, all the facts must be made available to the public, then all the political arguments put forth. Everyone gets a say, everyone is respected, everyone is polite, and everyone is involved. We come to a decision. That's the ideal.
This is what we did with driving. The government, far from hiding the driving-related fatalities, goes out of their way to browbeat Americans over the head with these figures until we're sick of hearing it. We have decided that we are willing to take the small risk of dying for the everyday freedom allowed us by driving.
mcelrath is saying, I think, that it is not valid political process for government to suppress factual information, such as new scientifically based understanding of the effects of lead on children, for the purpose of moving the discussion one way or another.
To crystallize the difference, consider this. The government receives the numbers on driving-related fatalities, but instead of making them available, they suppress this information or try to discredit it even though they know the numbers are accurate. The government decides to push the numbers one way or another not based upon fact, but rather upon how much money they're receiving from safety advocates vs. big car manufacturers. Whoever ponies up more slides the scale in their favor. Only after this do they release the new, adjusted numbers and start doing the political balancing act thing.
See the problem? Let the people hear the facts. Then, if the politicians come to the conclusion that it's too costly to maintain low lead levels and we remove all lead limits, fine. They've done it in public and if the populace disagrees, these politicians will be crucified for it.
This is a blatant and frivolous anti-MS story./. should try to be fair...
There's nothing wrong with schools teaching kids how to use Windows, given that it's going to be the OS most of them will need to know how to use later in life (OS revolutions aside...all in all, not predictably likely). They're doing what's in the best interests of the kids.
If this teacher is more concerned with teaching kids than hammering MS on/., he'd get a few boxes provisioned from the school and set up a few different distros of linux and yes, get them to purchase a mac. Let the kids primarily use MS, expose them to the alternatives, that's all we can ask.
I'm not really sure how this thread got to be about P2P music sharing, but now that it's here...why does everything have to be about right and wrong? Let's make this discussion about what is, and what isn't.
They can't stop music sharing. It is. They have to deal with it. We all have to deal with it whether we like it or not.
They can and will stop violations of the GPL. It is, for the moment. It soon won't be.
I'm a strong believer that useless people tend to make themselves irrelevant by doing things like pushing, passing, and then trying to enforce unenforcable laws. It's entertaining to watch once you come to the private realization that right and wrong has nothing to do with the actual future that's bound to come.
When did Republican become a dirty word around these parts? I thought/.ers were supposed to be smart enough to know that labels like "Democrat", "Republican," and "Independent" are about as useful as your average code comments.
It's like Chris Rock says: "Anyone who makes up their mind before they hear the issue is a f*c|
I can't believe you've pushed this one up to the next level. All right, then...I guess I have no choice. I'm going to my garage to start working on a cell phone detector detector and a cell phone jammer detector detector. But please, people, no mas! This is getting out of control!
Most people talk a bit to a lot louder on the cell phone than they would if their conversation partner were right next to them. Most people don't *want* others to hear their conversations, and as it happens, most people don't want to hear others' conversations either.
This is a problem that can be solved by technology. Cell phones ought to have a quiet-talk mode that allows one to speak very, very softly yet be clearly and loudly heard on the other end. Of course, it would also have to employ some kind of limiting technology so that sounds do not exceed a certain maximum.
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Two points to Westley for proper use of the word conflate. Seriously, nice work my man.
I appreciate all of the discussion that my post has generated, but I'd like to take a second to add a bit of perspective. I've done consulting for the last 4 or 5 years now and worked at several different companies. If the security and performance concerns/solutions I've heard addressed in this thread address the worst problems of your applications, you guys are working on projects that seriously have their stuff together.
As for my part, I'll worry about enhancing security through the prevention of SQL injection once I work on a project that doesn't send customers' credit card information over the wire in cleartext. :-)
This "You can hear 'em coming" argument is the most arrogant, self-centered, thoughtless, and logically inconsistent argument I've ever heard. As if it's my responsibility as a pedestrian to dodge motorized vehicles, and not theirs to make sure they conduct themselves in a way that leaves me unharmed and with comfortably non-ringing ears.
Amen. I don't think I've heard anyone complain that they can't flush their own coolant anymore since cars went to 100k mile closed coolant systems. I used to be able to do it...and I used to HAVE to do it. Now I don't keep cars long enough to ever have to do it. That's alright by me.
I would point out, though, that intelligent fasteners are not likely to make anything that is currently operable last longer...imagine if this were applied to the oil pan plug and oil filter. Do I have to take my car to the dealer and pay $80 for a $5 filter and 4 quarts of oil? That would totally piss me off, but I trust the free market to fix it...or the government.
(Just kidding about that last one.)
Stored procedures aren't good or bad...they just are. Passing a value judgment on whether they're good or bad is completely dependent on the situation.
I would argue that the three main points you made in favor of stored procedures are not points that apply to every case (I don't think they were intended to, either, but hear me out):
I would argue that business rules and business logic should be implemented in a vendor-independent way. Also, I would implement the business functionality of the app so that it can support a web front end, but also someday a desktop UI, a programmatic web services front end, etc. That's the soul of n-tiered architectures, they're supposed to bring that kind of flexibility along with the use of tiers...this kind of flexibility is the point.
If an app is not flexible in this way but claims to be an "n-tiered architecture", I'd argue that it is only nominally so. Looking like an n-tiered app without providing any of the benefits is a Pyrrhic victory for the architects and designers. That would be inconsequential except for the (usually large) investment of company resources.
Not cuz they're dropping rates for people that have them, man. Cuz they have a justification now to raise rates for people that don't.
In other words, once airbags came along your rate is only affected (negatively) if you don't have 'em...otherwise, no change. I asked my insurance company about this when I got my first airbagged car, and they said, "We spend about as much replacing deployed airbags as we used to on repackaging the brains of accident victims." (I'm paraphrasing.) You'd think repacking people's brains would cost more, but apparently the brains didn't use to deploy as often as airbags now do.
sev
Wow, it seems I really hit on something with that ol' keyboard. I had no idea people still used those things...
You know, since I moved on to quiet touch keyboards, I really have upped my typing speed. Yes, it took a long while to get used to, but you don't really realize how much extra force is required to make those clackies work. Why roll out the red carpet for Mr. Carpal-Tunnel?
sev
Keep in mind, you two, I didn't say that the 2-stranded model is wrong. I simply said that it's possible.
There's other stuff, too (not that I'm trying to be a subversive, here :-) ). Take two threads, one black, one white, about a foot long. Tie the ends of each together to form two loops. Lay one on top of the other, and twist them around each other. That's an approximation of a double helix.
Now take two more foot-length threads, one black, one white. Tie them into loops, but this time make sure they're linked. One lays on top of the other, twist around each other...that's model 2 of a double helix.
It's my understanding that the second model is generally accepted based on W&C's work. But then there happens to be an enzyme out there that is supposedly responsible for, once the two strands have been unrolled, unlinking the two strands by cutting one and relinking it on the other side. Only problem is, according to all research on this "magic enzyme" (as many call it), it is 100% efficient, a thermodynamic impossibility.
Obviously something's amiss here...either the magic enzyme isn't really doing what we think, and the two strands are not linked, or the enzyme is getting energy from somewhere else, or something.
Again, I'm not saying anything definite...it's impossible to know at this point. But then, shouldn't we admit we don't know instead of pretending we do? (I'll bet lots of people thought Newton had the final word on gravity and the nature of space-time before Einstein.)
sev
I think that the famous double helix result should not be taught as fact and so readily accepted by everyone. I'm not saying it's untrue, I'm just saying we ought to maintain a healthy scientific skepticism toward things that don't have an irrefutably strong case based on empirical evidence backing them, and this one doesn't.
When you try reverse an x-ray diffraction pattern back into the 3D structure of the thing that caused it, at some point you have to solve a Bessel function. There are many solutions to that Bessel function, each of which could have produced that pattern. The best solution is the one that dictates a 3D structure that fits other observations outside of the diffraction pattern. For this particular experiment (if you read the paper they published), the first solution to the Bessel function they used implies two strands wound around each other. The second solution implies four, the third implies six strands, etc.
Watson and Crick, in that paper, assumed the first solution was the best one, even though the second one is possible too. (The third and higher solutions are not possible because in the 3D space-filling model there's physically no room for 6 or more strands within that volume of space.) As it happens, the second solution, which suggests a four-stranded helical model, seems to fit the rest of the data in that paper and its references better than the two-stranded one.
There's other evidence out there to suggest the double-stranded model is not necessarily correct, too...above I'm only talking about what's in the original paper itself. I'm not saying the conclusion is wrong, I'm only saying that I think that biologists have accepted this model as fact too readily, based on mathematics that most biologists can't follow (how many bio Ph.D.s can solve Bessel functions?). I'm suggesting there's not enough empirical evidence to characterize this double-stranded helical model as fact, though. We all ought to be more skeptical...there is no good explanation I know of for why they picked the first solution over the second, and until it's addressed the question should remain open. That's just good science.
I wonder how much this matters anyway, though. Ok, so DNA coils up into a helix in a crystal under certain experimental conditions. Does that mean it maintains the same structure in other situations, such as in vivo? Anyone who's studied molecular bio knows that molecular biological structures adopt lots of different forms that are highly dependent on the environment in which they find themselves.
Still, this is more a comment on the scientific community's shortcomings than Watson or Crick specifically. Does anyone out there know of any significant discoveries based on Watson and Crick's famous advance? What technologies/medicines/whatever has been developed as a result? This seems like a good way to honor their contribution.
sev
So this is where all those futuristic, gyro-balanced sports that I keep seeing in sci-fi movies come from! Are we on the path to the Segway Sport(TM)?
sev
Hear, hear!
The V chip makes me mad. This is a minor example of what's happened to cars over the last fifteen years or so. My dad bought a brand new 1989 Dodge Omni for $5900 off the showroom floor. The exact same car, in the year they stopped making that particular model, went for about $10,500.
What happened? Did inflation nearly halve the value of money in the 90s? Nope...it was nuts like Nader running around proclaiming that every single car has to have child seat anchors and inside-the-truck latch releases and driver and passengar airbags and side curtain airbags and knee baffling for front seat occupants and big, giant foam bumpers that spring out of every car surface if you get within 10 feet of another automobile and floatation devices and an outboard motor in case you run off of a bridge into water (silent trolling motor and bass tank extra).
Ok, so how many people's lives did we save? And how many inner city breadwinners are now limited to working on bus routes because there's no such thing as a cheap, reliable car anymore? And if people in general are safer with airbags, how come my insurance premiums didn't go down when I got a car with airbags? Wouldn't I have seen that extra insurance savings if the government hadn't interfered and, given the choice, I selected a car with airbags?
sev
In college I had one of those old IBM XT clackety-clack keyboards. One time I dumped an entire can of Dr. Pepper into it (yes, it was a remarkable accident).
I drained as much as I could out of it, after unplugging it of course, ran it under cold water for a minute or two to flush out all the caramel coloring, and hung it by the cord over the shower curtain rod in my dorm. Once it air-dried, I plugged it back in and it worked fine.
A few months later a buddy was showing me how he could pop the keys off of his plastic keyboard and rearrange the keys for Dvorak-style key assignments. On this old clackety-clack, each key is held on by a set of like 12 interlocking springs (no, it's not, but you get the idea). I stuck a nail file in there and jimmied one of the springs loose under one key........and the popping sounds, spring after spring, propagated all the way to each corner of the device.
After that it was only clackety...no -clack the other way. And it didn't work too well neither.
sev
Oh my god! It could be! Except...it isn't.
The article just got the patent number wrong, as the post after yours pointed out. Don't worry, though, I actually like that you're a smart ass. :-)
sev
Actually, no it doesn't:
Not sure what article you were reading, but I pulled that quote from thesev
Is this a hoax???
The patent number referred to is 6,575,593, but a quick search for that patent number at the US Patent Office yields a patent entitled: IEEE 1394 or USB powered computer light.
Seriously, people. I think this might just be a hoax.
sev
People are particularly sensitive to IT guys because: (1) they have to deal with them when they need an IT problem solved, (2) there is a huge knowledge gap between the parties involved wrt the problem, and (3) most IT guys relish playing up point 2 so their value is noted in triplicate with each incident.
Doctors tend not to make comments like, "Man, you would be so dead if I hadn't hacked that cancer. Why'd you go and get cancer anyway? Don't you know smoking does that? I should've handed you a copy of Gray's Anatomy and a scalpel and told ya to RTFM!"
sev
I used to work with an IT guy that was apparently on the path to BOFH-dom. Whenever people used him as a crutch to get a little work slowdown, he'd actually find a problem. And that problem almost always required them to do extra work...maybe they'd lose that report they've been working on for a week, maybe all their personal configuration would get deleted. Maybe he discovered they weren't doing something frequently enough, such as updating virus definitions or backing up their data.
Sometimes he'd even go to management and have a team-wide policy put in place that required extra work of everyone on that team. While frequently using that person, by name, as an example, he'd give a nice, boring lecture on what that person did or didn't do that caused the problem, and how the problem was bad enough, in that person's own words, to cause a big productivity hit.
One thing I learned is that management loves IT guys that spotlight productivity problems and suggests lots of solutions.
sev
Ah...well, then, why not employ a passive-aggressive approach? Next time he's clipping away, ask him if you can borrow his clippers cuz you've got a bad infected hangnail on your big toe. Everytime you hear clipping...very soon he'll do his best to keep you from noticing whenever he hauls out the ol' hedge trimmers. This will make you feel better while keeping you in your comfort zone, get back at your boss, and make you look innocent all at the same time.
sev
I hate when people misuse frequently used words too. I'm ok if someone misuses a word that's not part of common human discourse, but "irony", but the concept and the word, ought to be well understood by everyone who, say, graduated high school. I give people points for getting kinda close, though, like if they use it when they mean sarcastic or sardonic. That's kinda close. I once heard someone use it when they just meant "funny" (as in, "Did you see America's Funnient Home Videos last night? This guy got hit in the nuts! It was so ironic I shot Big Gulp through my nose!"). That was really annoying, especially considering that person was college educated. I felt like having him savor the iron-y taste in his mouth after I busted open his lip.
Part of the problem with irony is that it sometimes lurks just below the surface. The poor maligned soul that inadvertantly started this thread-bash may have actually detected irony in this situation and been referencing it, leaving us readers to discover it.
SO: Say my purpose is to reduce the overall amount of annoyance in the world. I write an article, the aim of which is to do that. But my intended purpose is at odds with what actually happens; the article itself is annoying, everyone who reads it gets annoyed, and the article actually increases the amount of annoyance in the world as a direct result of my own inability to practice what I'm preaching in the article itself.
Isn't it ironic? Doncha think? A little tooOOOoo ironic?
(I can't believe I'm actually inviting mod-downs by going back to Alanis Morrissette. I really thought I was better than that.)
sev
I'm going to have to stick up for mcelrath here, because you, sir, are missing the point.
The point: extra-scientific, political balance-striking is fine. That, in fact, is what we hire politicians to do. However, they must do this in a particular way. First, all the facts must be made available to the public, then all the political arguments put forth. Everyone gets a say, everyone is respected, everyone is polite, and everyone is involved. We come to a decision. That's the ideal.
This is what we did with driving. The government, far from hiding the driving-related fatalities, goes out of their way to browbeat Americans over the head with these figures until we're sick of hearing it. We have decided that we are willing to take the small risk of dying for the everyday freedom allowed us by driving.
mcelrath is saying, I think, that it is not valid political process for government to suppress factual information, such as new scientifically based understanding of the effects of lead on children, for the purpose of moving the discussion one way or another.
To crystallize the difference, consider this. The government receives the numbers on driving-related fatalities, but instead of making them available, they suppress this information or try to discredit it even though they know the numbers are accurate. The government decides to push the numbers one way or another not based upon fact, but rather upon how much money they're receiving from safety advocates vs. big car manufacturers. Whoever ponies up more slides the scale in their favor. Only after this do they release the new, adjusted numbers and start doing the political balancing act thing.
See the problem? Let the people hear the facts. Then, if the politicians come to the conclusion that it's too costly to maintain low lead levels and we remove all lead limits, fine. They've done it in public and if the populace disagrees, these politicians will be crucified for it.
sev
This is a blatant and frivolous anti-MS story. /. should try to be fair...
There's nothing wrong with schools teaching kids how to use Windows, given that it's going to be the OS most of them will need to know how to use later in life (OS revolutions aside...all in all, not predictably likely). They're doing what's in the best interests of the kids.
If this teacher is more concerned with teaching kids than hammering MS on /., he'd get a few boxes provisioned from the school and set up a few different distros of linux and yes, get them to purchase a mac. Let the kids primarily use MS, expose them to the alternatives, that's all we can ask.
sev
I'm not really sure how this thread got to be about P2P music sharing, but now that it's here...why does everything have to be about right and wrong? Let's make this discussion about what is, and what isn't.
They can't stop music sharing. It is. They have to deal with it. We all have to deal with it whether we like it or not.
They can and will stop violations of the GPL. It is, for the moment. It soon won't be.
I'm a strong believer that useless people tend to make themselves irrelevant by doing things like pushing, passing, and then trying to enforce unenforcable laws. It's entertaining to watch once you come to the private realization that right and wrong has nothing to do with the actual future that's bound to come.
sev
When did Republican become a dirty word around these parts? I thought /.ers were supposed to be smart enough to know that labels like "Democrat", "Republican," and "Independent" are about as useful as your average code comments.
It's like Chris Rock says: "Anyone who makes up their mind before they hear the issue is a f*c|
sev
I can't believe you've pushed this one up to the next level. All right, then...I guess I have no choice. I'm going to my garage to start working on a cell phone detector detector and a cell phone jammer detector detector. But please, people, no mas! This is getting out of control!
sev
Most people talk a bit to a lot louder on the cell phone than they would if their conversation partner were right next to them. Most people don't *want* others to hear their conversations, and as it happens, most people don't want to hear others' conversations either.
This is a problem that can be solved by technology. Cell phones ought to have a quiet-talk mode that allows one to speak very, very softly yet be clearly and loudly heard on the other end. Of course, it would also have to employ some kind of limiting technology so that sounds do not exceed a certain maximum.
Well, technology? Do your thing!
sev
I would upgrade my hard drive to something with this kind of density if it weren't for the smell!
sev