Last year, one of my coworkers told me the same story.
He also said he knew a place that was virtually unreachable unless you took a left turn. It was not uncommon to see a UPS truck circle around the place a few times before they arrived.
When I was working on my Master's thesis, I had to splice optical fiber a few times. Believe me, it's not easy.
Glass fiber is very flexible. You can bend it in any way you want, it won't break. You can cut it, but that takes considerable force. If you break the fiber, you'll break the copper wires as well.
Personally, I think the weakest point in such a cable will be the connectors. Getting the light from one fiber to another requires careful alignment. Any deviation might causes loss of signal. Getting dirt into the connector is probably fatal.
I still remember my number, and it still seems to exist on the server.
However, I have no idea what the password for the account might be or the email address I used back then. (Not that it would help: I no longer have access to those emails.)
Non-competes are mostly valid in Belgium, how ever they are in favour of the emplyee all the time and that is what most companies forget.
True. I had a non-compete in my contract until August last year. When I resigned, the company sent me a letter stating that they would not enforce the non-compete clause. I did go to work for a competing firm, so they could have made things difficult for me if they hadn't waived the non-compete.
Then again, if they hadn't, I would have taken the money and looked for a job at a company that wouldn't count as their competitor.
I went through this procedure a while ago when I reinstalled XP in VMware. Automatic activation failed: I had previously used the key in QEMU and the activation server considered this as a new PC.
Called the number, got an automated system, answered a few questions about the product I wanted to activate.
Punched in the numbers from the activation screen. The system told me there was a problem and transfered me to a human.
The lady told me there was a problem with their system and I'd have to call back later. (I got the impression she was not a native Dutch speaker. Could be Indian.)
About one hour later, I called again. The system accepted my activation code and asked a few more questions. (On how many computers is this copy of XP installed? Press 1 for "more than one", press 2 for "one")
The automated system dictated the reply. I typed in the numbers and I had activated my Windows XP.
Somewhat annoying, but it's not something you'd need to do daily. I'm worried more about what will happen in the future. If MS wants to, they could just deny all activation requests for older versions.
Do calculators in Europe have a comma key instead of a decimal key?
Do european keyboard have a numpad with a comma?
European keyboards have a period on the numeric keypad. Windows has 2 versions of each keymap, so you can choose whether it gives you a period or a comma. Under Linux, you can specify an option in xorg.conf.
Calculators tend to have a period key and most of the time they would display a dot as the decimal separator. I have seen LCD calculators that could display periods and commas though.
they say cinq point cinq, yet they write it as 5,5.
Must be a Quebec thing. In France they say "cinq virgulle cinq". In every country I know they use the word for "comma".
Didn't MS just buy FoxPro, to steal the 'jet' engine from it to stick into access?
A few years ago, I ran into a couple of FoxPro-based applications and I learned a little about the history of the product.
FoxPro was rather popular with application writers and there are still a lot of small business applications based on it. Apart from the technical merits, it had one big advantage over MS Access: you could bundle FoxPro with your application for free, while Access required an Office license for each PC.
Microsoft bought the company mainly to destroy a competitor. They ended up supporting the product for a long time, probably due to support contracts.
If PJ doesn't show up in court, SCO can go on claiming she doesn't exists. If she does show up, she's in for a very nasty examination. SCO will probably want to go into details about PJ's private life, connections to IBM and Novell.
Most likely, they won't find anything. But they might succeed in cracking PJ by forcing her out in the open.
Last year, I worked for an organization that was looking into a thin-client solution.
This organization (unemployment agency) has a large number of offices around the country, connected to the central servers by ISDN lines (or ADSL at best).
Their current workstations are running Windows XP. Each time a user logs in, the machine checks for updates with the central servers. Any significant update makes the machine unusable for a long time while it downloads the new software over a slow link.
The servers are Solaris. If they decide to roll out a thin-client solution, they will probably use Sun Rays.
Worst Access "database" I've ever seen: the person who created it believed that changing a table structure would delete the data inside. So she made copies of each table. The schema looked like a mess, containing tables like USER_1, USER_2 and so on. I took one lok at it and decided I didn't want to have anything to do with it.
On the bright side, Access seems to be on the way out.
Windows puts a lot of things in the registry. This includes software installs (should be rare - especially if you can install from an image file) and user settings (everything you would fill out in the configuration dialogs) are stored there as well (again, this shouldn't change very often).
On top of that, the registry also contains a lot of rather volatile data, like MRU lists, window positions and so on. These would change every time you start or close an application.
I have used GNUCash for a long time to manage my personal finances. For this purpose, it is quite good. I love the 2.0 interface.
I don't care about the lack of on line banking support (my bank doesn't offer this service anyway). For the rest, I only have a few issues:
Year closing. Creating a new empty file every year is annoying. (Should be fixed in the next release.)
Loan entry is rather difficult. (Considering that I need to redo this every year, this is an issue.)
When it comes to small business use, GNUCash does not provide enough. It does allow you to manage invoices and clients, but a company needs some specific things for legal and fiscal reports.
I really don't see how that works as a cheap file/print server.
Compared to a Windows server license, a workstation (XP Pro) is cheaper. Also, the "server" can be used as a workstation as well That way, your file/print server costs you next to nothing: you would have bought the PC (with Windows) anyway. You just add a bigger disk and maybe a little more RAM.
Of course, if you are using Linux/BSD on the desktop, this doesn't come up, but most companies aren't there yet.
Why do companies hire consultants? Most of the time, it's because they don't have the skills in house to develop a project. Getting a consultancy firm in is often easier and quicker than trying to hire all the developers you need. Also, it's easier to adapt the number of consultants than to manage your own IT staff when the team size varies.
On the other hand, as long as the consultants are there, the company does not acquire the skills needed to take over the project. Shuffling around consultants is still easier than building up your own staff.
On the third hand, when a consultant stays with the same client for a long time, their market value deteriorates. Their prime asset becomes "knowing the customer". That makes it harder for the consultant to go away.
How can a company deal with this?
The most obvious way is to reduce the number of consultants from the start, and hire IT staff for yourself. All teams must have one or more internal IT staff in order to learn the application.
Insist that the consulting firm produces documentation. Specify the type of documentation you need in the contract. Perform an audit on the documentation before accepting (and paying) the project.
Manage the development process yourself. Don't let the consultants handle the project governance but set the rules yourself.
Ask some of the consultants to become employees. This should be done with caution: consultancy contracts typically include clauses to prevent a client from stealing the best developers.
I have a wireless mouse with a chargerat home. Basically, it stays in the charger all the time. The mouse lasts less than an hour before the battery dies.
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Last year, one of my coworkers told me the same story.
He also said he knew a place that was virtually unreachable unless you took a left turn. It was not uncommon to see a UPS truck circle around the place a few times before they arrived.
The Zune was never released in Europe. If you had seen one, it would have been someone who bought one in the US.
Personally, I have'nt seen a Zune (in Belgium), but I have seen an iPhone before its official release here.
My 3 year old daughter wanted one the first time she saw it. Sadly, I can't get one here in Europe...
When I was working on my Master's thesis, I had to splice optical fiber a few times. Believe me, it's not easy.
Glass fiber is very flexible. You can bend it in any way you want, it won't break. You can cut it, but that takes considerable force. If you break the fiber, you'll break the copper wires as well.
Personally, I think the weakest point in such a cable will be the connectors. Getting the light from one fiber to another requires careful alignment. Any deviation might causes loss of signal. Getting dirt into the connector is probably fatal.
I still remember my number, and it still seems to exist on the server.
However, I have no idea what the password for the account might be or the email address I used back then. (Not that it would help: I no longer have access to those emails.)
Non-competes are mostly valid in Belgium, how ever they are in favour of the emplyee all the time and that is what most companies forget.
True. I had a non-compete in my contract until August last year. When I resigned, the company sent me a letter stating that they would not enforce the non-compete clause. I did go to work for a competing firm, so they could have made things difficult for me if they hadn't waived the non-compete.
Then again, if they hadn't, I would have taken the money and looked for a job at a company that wouldn't count as their competitor.
I went through this procedure a while ago when I reinstalled XP in VMware. Automatic activation failed: I had previously used the key in QEMU and the activation server considered this as a new PC.
Somewhat annoying, but it's not something you'd need to do daily. I'm worried more about what will happen in the future. If MS wants to, they could just deny all activation requests for older versions.
European keyboards have a period on the numeric keypad. Windows has 2 versions of each keymap, so you can choose whether it gives you a period or a comma. Under Linux, you can specify an option in xorg.conf.
Calculators tend to have a period key and most of the time they would display a dot as the decimal separator. I have seen LCD calculators that could display periods and commas though.
they say cinq point cinq, yet they write it as 5,5.Must be a Quebec thing. In France they say "cinq virgulle cinq". In every country I know they use the word for "comma".
The most likely scenario:
A few years ago, I ran into a couple of FoxPro-based applications and I learned a little about the history of the product.
FoxPro was rather popular with application writers and there are still a lot of small business applications based on it. Apart from the technical merits, it had one big advantage over MS Access: you could bundle FoxPro with your application for free, while Access required an Office license for each PC.
Microsoft bought the company mainly to destroy a competitor. They ended up supporting the product for a long time, probably due to support contracts.
I have a Commodore PC at home. It's just a standard 486 beige box[1] with a Commodore label on. I bought it second hand and used it as a firewall.
When one of my friends saw the label, he assumed it was some kind of joke. I had to explain that Commodore sold PCs before they went down.
[1] I think it was a Cyrix CPU.
SCO wants to discredit Groklaw. That's all.
If PJ doesn't show up in court, SCO can go on claiming she doesn't exists. If she does show up, she's in for a very nasty examination. SCO will probably want to go into details about PJ's private life, connections to IBM and Novell.
Most likely, they won't find anything. But they might succeed in cracking PJ by forcing her out in the open.
If we're going to rehash quotes, here's another one:
Trying to keep a honest user honest is like keeping a tall user tall.
Also by Bruce Schneier IIRC.
Last year, I worked for an organization that was looking into a thin-client solution.
This organization (unemployment agency) has a large number of offices around the country, connected to the central servers by ISDN lines (or ADSL at best).
Their current workstations are running Windows XP. Each time a user logs in, the machine checks for updates with the central servers. Any significant update makes the machine unusable for a long time while it downloads the new software over a slow link.
The servers are Solaris. If they decide to roll out a thin-client solution, they will probably use Sun Rays.
MySQL's mascot is a dolphin.
And it seems like this guy worked on databases.
Worst Access "database" I've ever seen: the person who created it believed that changing a table structure would delete the data inside. So she made copies of each table. The schema looked like a mess, containing tables like USER_1, USER_2 and so on. I took one lok at it and decided I didn't want to have anything to do with it.
On the bright side, Access seems to be on the way out.
Windows puts a lot of things in the registry. This includes software installs (should be rare - especially if you can install from an image file) and user settings (everything you would fill out in the configuration dialogs) are stored there as well (again, this shouldn't change very often).
On top of that, the registry also contains a lot of rather volatile data, like MRU lists, window positions and so on. These would change every time you start or close an application.
I don't know where you would have heard that, but it's not true. The core OS is not written in .NET. It just contains the IL runtime.
There might be a few .NET applications bundled with Vista, but the rest is still native code.
I have used GNUCash for a long time to manage my personal finances. For this purpose, it is quite good. I love the 2.0 interface.
I don't care about the lack of on line banking support (my bank doesn't offer this service anyway). For the rest, I only have a few issues:
When it comes to small business use, GNUCash does not provide enough. It does allow you to manage invoices and clients, but a company needs some specific things for legal and fiscal reports.
Compared to a Windows server license, a workstation (XP Pro) is cheaper. Also, the "server" can be used as a workstation as well That way, your file/print server costs you next to nothing: you would have bought the PC (with Windows) anyway. You just add a bigger disk and maybe a little more RAM.
Of course, if you are using Linux/BSD on the desktop, this doesn't come up, but most companies aren't there yet.
Where I live, that would invalidate your vote. Your ballot would be thrown out by the counting officials.
Or whatever it's called.
If you try to delete a system file under Windows XP, it is simply restored from a backup copy. I suppose Vista will do this as well.
In Windows 95/98, there was a file for the bootup screen. If you deleted that, Windows would find the standard bootup screen from somewhere.
Why do companies hire consultants? Most of the time, it's because they don't have the skills in house to develop a project. Getting a consultancy firm in is often easier and quicker than trying to hire all the developers you need. Also, it's easier to adapt the number of consultants than to manage your own IT staff when the team size varies.
On the other hand, as long as the consultants are there, the company does not acquire the skills needed to take over the project. Shuffling around consultants is still easier than building up your own staff.
On the third hand, when a consultant stays with the same client for a long time, their market value deteriorates. Their prime asset becomes "knowing the customer". That makes it harder for the consultant to go away.
How can a company deal with this?
What about the conversion from 380 VDC to 5-24 V? How efficient would that be?
I have a wireless mouse with a chargerat home. Basically, it stays in the charger all the time. The mouse lasts less than an hour before the battery dies.
And it causes interference with the baby monitor.