It's not just a typo. There are several mistakes like that. Generally, people who are accurate with technical details take the time to be accurate with their use of language, I've found.
Also, I reviewed the previous article, and found it misleading. Remember that a Slashdot comment is not a complete record of what someone thinks, it is only an indication.
Also, farewell is correct: Farewell: Interjection used to say good-bye.
It's obvious that Brian Hook is very intelligent, good at analysis, and a good
writer. However, it seems he has made a common mistake. It appears to me he
didn't give enough attention to the sociology of what he was doing.
He said, "Our (up until now) successful business plan went from looking
perfect -- I mean perfect, with near flawless execution on our part, clear
skies ahead, and nothing but open road as far as we could see -- to looking
disastrous in the span of about six months total. During that time I also made
the decision to relocate to Atlanta, Georgia from San Diego."
It's very common, I've found, that people mention the really big issue
quickly, and then continue talking about things of less importance. This looks
to me like one of those times. I find it surprising that he would move to
another state while in the middle of trying to establish his company. Why?
What were the real sociological and psychological factors that pushed him to
move then, when he could have waited?
Was his wife jealous? Did she fear she would have less control over him if he
became successful? I'm guessing something powerful was at work, and that had
much more influence than was discussed.
Certainly his move would have caused his business partner, Rosie, to feel less
confident in his commitment. He, arbitrarily, as far as we are told, chose to
absent himself from the personal interaction of being physically present.
Now he alone owns the business. Maybe that is something he wanted.
Gibson has been very helpful to the Windows and novice computing community. All the magazines have been taken over by the do-anything-for-money people; they cannot be trusted. Where does a Windows novice get information?
When you are new to computing it is difficult to believe that Windows is as vulnerable as it is. A novice keeps saying, "Microsoft is a big, successful company, why would they be so self-destructive?"
It's true that Gibson is amazingly overblown at times.
We are using power supplies that seem like the best (KingWin), although not expensive.
We have tested these units by putting a re-boot program in the Win XP startup folder. This causes continous reboots. We have run several computers more than 12 hours continously rebooting. This should show problems with the power supplies.
We do NOT see problems, usually, with the Promise Tx2000 controllers when continously rebooting. The problems come after the units are delivered to the customer, a terrible situation.
All that is changing in Iraq is who is doing the brutality, and who is getting the oil profits. There is not less brutality, and it doesn't appear there will be less brutality in the next several years.
The U.S. government has declared that Iraqis should be happy to be killed by such a fine nation as the United States. Unfortunately, not all Iraqis agree with that.
Be careful. Several times in the past publicity agents have placed stories like this in national magazines just before big price drops.
Everything in the magazines now is for sale. No magazine of which I am aware has any integrity.
Here's a quote from the Reuters article on ZDNet:
"We believe the tight supply situation will continue for the time being on delays by rivals in a move to shrink circuitry" to 110 nanometers, said a semiconductor trader at Samsung.
Notice the 100% conflict of interest.
After the Taiwan earthquake the rise in prices was very fleeting, due to the hype by publicity agents, and not any real lack of supply. The did the same scam concerning VCR heads, saying the lack of supply would make VCRs go up in price. Instead, the price dropped sharply.
Microsoft's solution is that everyone should buy Windows 2003 server and use software RAID, available only on that Windows OS.
That's all we need is software RAID mirroring, but it doesn't make sense, for this application, to support a much more complex system and much more expensive system to get it.
What you said is what I would expect. However, I called and talked to someone in 3Ware technical support, and he said it would not boot with only one drive; it would be necessary to rebuild the array to boot the computer. Maybe you are using a different controller.
In addition, here are questions and answers from a session on the 3Ware chat system:
Request:- 10th January 2004 at 8:23
[Irrelevant questions removed here.]
We've been using Promise RAID controllers with our cash register software, and experiencing excessive failures. We are considering moving to 3Ware 7006-2 mirroring controllers.
Can we rebuild the mirror using only the 7006-2 firmware, without booting? Can we clone hard drives with the firmware?
Can we boot from one hard drive of the mirror, when that hard drive is temporarily attached to the motherboard IDE controller?
Does the mirroring controller store anything on the hard drive that would interfere with other devices or software?
Response:- 12th January 2004 at 11:31
Michael,
You can build/rebuild a mirror in the bios before booting to the OS.
You cannot attach the drive to the motherboard controller and boot from it.
The controller allocates a small space in the hard drive less than 1MB to store the raid information
The Promise FastTrak Tx100 cards always worked for us, too. The only Promise cards that fail for us are the Tx2000 cards. Since we have been unable to get help from Promise for this problem, I presume they know there is a problem, and are unable to fix it.
If Mylex cards are failing, that's important! If RAID cards fail, then the company, and all its employees, are out of business. And that's what apparently happened to Mylex. It's now owned by LSI Logic.
At the low end of the scale, we seem to be having the same kind of problem. We are having a high failure rate with Promise Technology FastTrak Tx2000 controllers. Promise Technology seems to have lost the will, or maybe ability, to deal with problems.
When I read through the comments to this story, there are a lot of situations where RAID cards are failing. But why?
The problem seems to be industry-wide. I talked to someone in technical support at HighPoint and he said the mirroring controllers sold by HighPoint have random mirror breakage failures, also.
This is a new problem. Did Microsoft do something to break mirroring controllers so that customers will buy Microsoft's far more expensive solution? Is there some problem with modern hardware no one has discovered?
One thing I can say is that, in the past, these cards worked reliably, or the companies could not have stayed in business. Promise Technology mirroring controllers were reliable for us for many years. Now they often cannot even be installed without failing during installation.
The performance we get with Promise controllers (when they work) has been satisfactory. The application is a cash register; the computer is always faster than the operator. We only need a mirror copy of our data.
3Ware told me they cannot boot from one drive, after one fails. A 3ware formatted drive cannot boot from the IDE controller on the motherboard. Promise can do both. We need features, not performance, in this case.
Do you have a link to an Adaptec IDE mirroring RAID controller you would recommend?
The Adaptec ATA RAID 1200A is about $55, about $30 less than the price of the Promise controllers. We have no experience with them; I found the info by Googling and Froogling.
What Promise FastTrak RAID controllers are you using? As I said in the comment just above yours, we are having major problems with FastTrak Tx2000 mirroring controllers.
This is on a lower level than the RAID you are using, but we are having major problems with 10 Promise Technology TX2000 mirroring RAID controllers that we bought. The mirrors go critical for no detectable reason. Promise Technology technical support is unable to find the problem, and the company is unwilling to escalate the issue. The Promise Technology technicians escalate the issue, but 2nd level technical support never calls back.
Promise mirroring controllers on ECS (EliteGroup) L7VTA v 1.0 motherboards have the same problem. When we call ECS tech support, there is a recorded message saying they are busy and to call back later.
We've been supplying computers with Promise mirroring RAID controllers since the company began doing business, and we've had very few problems until now.
Possibly the problems are associated with newer, faster motherboards, or with AMD VIA chipset motherboards. We've never had problems with RAID controllers on Intel chipset motherboards.
Another possibility is that the RAID controllers are incompatible with DVD burner drivers that are installed with Roxio or Nero DVD burning software.
I was at a party talking to a Hindu software development manager. I mentioned the incredible disorganization of the Hindu culture. The host thought that the Hindu would be offended, but he heartily agreed, and told some really chilling stories.
In the Hindu culture, you must do what your elders tell you. That means that, if you are coding and discover that the project specifications are wrong, you just keep silent and keep coding even if you know it won't work well. Yes, it is not always this way, but enough that it is a SERIOUS drawback. It's especially serious when you realize that it is rare that project specifications are free of error.
Fred Langa, the writer of the letter, is not sophisticated about marketing and is not completely honest about
advertising. It's possible that the article is a paid advertisement from
Microsoft about the superiority of Microsoft Windows. Or, it's possible that the article is just due to
ignorance.
Langa produces a newsletter called the LangaList. Both the free and paid versions are
mostly about Microsoft Windows. There is a paid version that supposedly
doesn't have advertising. However, it does have considerable advertising for
Langa himself.
Langa's newsletter is for people who know little about computers. People send
him information by email, and he publishes it, often with apparently little
checking. Often the little articles start with something like, "You are so
wonderful. I am happy to pay for the paid version of your newsletter." The
LangaList sometimes reads like a badly written informercial.
In the most
recent issue of the LangaList, he says "The system was based on an
utterly mainstream Intel motherboard with an on-board Intel sound system. This
is not some weird, off-brand system using unknown components: It's about as
mainstream as it gets."
He could easily have named the motherboard. It seems possible that it isn't
named because he doesn't want people to know the truth. I remember that we
supplied "utterly mainstream" Intel 815EEA motherboard systems with sound
systems that NEVER worked perfectly in Windows 98 because they were so
proprietary. That was back when Intel was first integrating sound into their
motherboards. Intel had bought the sound system from some other company, and they had not yet found all the bugs.
Remember that Intel shut down its consumer division because it was not able to
produce products that were successful in the marketplace! Before the shutdown
I bought two Intel video camera cards from Fry's for $20 each. I took them back
because they were of such poor quality. They weren't even worth $20.
In any case, Fred Langa often writes about problems in Microsoft Windows that
are far, far bigger than problems with sound cards. In the most recent version
of the LangaList, linked above, one of the articles in the paid version is
"Icon Problems In XP, Win98". I know long time Linux users will have a
difficult time believing this, but Microsoft Windows sometimes trashes its own
desktop icons!!! The article in the LangaList is about how to fix this.
This most recent paid version of the LangaList, which supposedly does not have advertising,
has two sections of 13 that are completely advertising, 6) Don't Make Me Beg!:-),
and 8) They Just Keep Coming And Coming....
He's right. MASM didn't produce the correct binary sometimes. Amazing. Amazingly abusive. Borland had no problem producing an assembler that worked well.
Definitely another possibility. Should be, of course, "He doesn't believe the difference between 10 years and 2 years of experience is worth the difference in salary." And, if the 10 years is a serious extra 8 years of growthful experience, he is wrong. The moral of the story is, Don't believe what people in authority say without independent justification. Sometimes what they say is random nonsense.
You said "He believes that people with 10 years experience in C++ have
nothing significant to offer over people with 2 years experience."
Everyone comment I've read treats this as a question of fact. I'm guessing it
isn't. It's a sociological phenomenon. There are several possible theories.
More than one of them could be true simultaneously. Not all of them are
mentioned below.
1) He doesn't believe that and is only saying it to you because he wants to
act out anger.
2) He believes that. Intimidation is important to him, and he would rather
hire someone he is likely to be able to intimidate rather than someone
he would be required to respect somewhat.
3) He doesn't believe it, but is saying it because he is trying to hide his
jealousy about not knowing very much about technical things. This is common.
The logical people, as programmers are required to be, don't get respect from
the people who are not able to be logical. To give the logical people respect
would mean that he should study how to be logical, and he is trying to hide
that from himself, since he has three kids, a wife, a house, a mortgage, other
debts, and doesn't have the freedom to improve himself.
4) It doesn't matter what he thinks. He is really, really ignorant. He knows
nothing about code quality. In actuality, it is common during programming to
discover some serious flaw in the original specifcation for the project. It
may take someone with even more experience than 10 years to recognize this and
know what to do.
5) His mind is so disorganized that it is impossible to determine what he
really thinks, even for him.
6) It doesn't matter what he thinks because you have made a mistake, and it
appears to you that he has "considerable hiring power", but that is not true.
7) He realizes that he will be forced to outsource your job soon, and his
statement is only symbolic of the true disrespect coming from the company.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just a typo. There are several mistakes like that. Generally, people who are accurate with technical details take the time to be accurate with their use of language, I've found.
Also, I reviewed the previous article, and found it misleading. Remember that a Slashdot comment is not a complete record of what someone thinks, it is only an indication.
Also, farewell is correct: Farewell: Interjection used to say good-bye.
It's obvious that Brian Hook is very intelligent, good at analysis, and a good writer. However, it seems he has made a common mistake. It appears to me he didn't give enough attention to the sociology of what he was doing.
He said, "Our (up until now) successful business plan went from looking perfect -- I mean perfect, with near flawless execution on our part, clear skies ahead, and nothing but open road as far as we could see -- to looking disastrous in the span of about six months total. During that time I also made the decision to relocate to Atlanta, Georgia from San Diego."
It's very common, I've found, that people mention the really big issue quickly, and then continue talking about things of less importance. This looks to me like one of those times. I find it surprising that he would move to another state while in the middle of trying to establish his company. Why? What were the real sociological and psychological factors that pushed him to move then, when he could have waited?
Was his wife jealous? Did she fear she would have less control over him if he became successful? I'm guessing something powerful was at work, and that had much more influence than was discussed.
Certainly his move would have caused his business partner, Rosie, to feel less confident in his commitment. He, arbitrarily, as far as we are told, chose to absent himself from the personal interaction of being physically present.
Now he alone owns the business. Maybe that is something he wanted.
From the Flexbeta review, "Zone Alarm 4 did not fair well..."
First, maybe we should not be accepting advice from journalists who don't know their own language well.
Second, I read the ZoneAlarm 4 review and it didn't seem to uncover anything that would cause someone to stop using ZoneAlarm.
I suppose a fair well is a deep hole filled with water at a fair.
Fare: To progress or perform adequately, especially in difficult circumstances.
Farewell to Flexbeta.
Gibson has been very helpful to the Windows and novice computing community. All the magazines have been taken over by the do-anything-for-money people; they cannot be trusted. Where does a Windows novice get information?
When you are new to computing it is difficult to believe that Windows is as vulnerable as it is. A novice keeps saying, "Microsoft is a big, successful company, why would they be so self-destructive?"
It's true that Gibson is amazingly overblown at times.
We are using power supplies that seem like the best (KingWin), although not expensive.
We have tested these units by putting a re-boot program in the Win XP startup folder. This causes continous reboots. We have run several computers more than 12 hours continously rebooting. This should show problems with the power supplies.
We do NOT see problems, usually, with the Promise Tx2000 controllers when continously rebooting. The problems come after the units are delivered to the customer, a terrible situation.
All that is changing in Iraq is who is doing the brutality, and who is getting the oil profits. There is not less brutality, and it doesn't appear there will be less brutality in the next several years.
The U.S. government has declared that Iraqis should be happy to be killed by such a fine nation as the United States. Unfortunately, not all Iraqis agree with that.
There's no doubt something is making the prices rise. But what is the whole story? Hype in a case like this is enormously profitable.
Be careful. Several times in the past publicity agents have placed stories like this in national magazines just before big price drops.
Everything in the magazines now is for sale. No magazine of which I am aware has any integrity.
Here's a quote from the Reuters article on ZDNet:
"We believe the tight supply situation will continue for the time being on delays by rivals in a move to shrink circuitry" to 110 nanometers, said a semiconductor trader at Samsung.
Notice the 100% conflict of interest.
After the Taiwan earthquake the rise in prices was very fleeting, due to the hype by publicity agents, and not any real lack of supply. The did the same scam concerning VCR heads, saying the lack of supply would make VCRs go up in price. Instead, the price dropped sharply.
Microsoft's solution is that everyone should buy Windows 2003 server and use software RAID, available only on that Windows OS.
That's all we need is software RAID mirroring, but it doesn't make sense, for this application, to support a much more complex system and much more expensive system to get it.
What you said is what I would expect. However, I called and talked to someone in 3Ware technical support, and he said it would not boot with only one drive; it would be necessary to rebuild the array to boot the computer. Maybe you are using a different controller.
In addition, here are questions and answers from a session on the 3Ware chat system:
Request:- 10th January 2004 at 8:23
[Irrelevant questions removed here.]
We've been using Promise RAID controllers with our cash register software, and experiencing excessive failures. We are considering moving to 3Ware 7006-2 mirroring controllers.
Can we rebuild the mirror using only the 7006-2 firmware, without booting? Can we clone hard drives with the firmware?
Can we boot from one hard drive of the mirror, when that hard drive is temporarily attached to the motherboard IDE controller?
Does the mirroring controller store anything on the hard drive that would interfere with other devices or software?
Response:- 12th January 2004 at 11:31
Michael,
You can build/rebuild a mirror in the bios before booting to the OS.
You cannot attach the drive to the motherboard controller and boot from it.
The controller allocates a small space in the hard drive less than 1MB to store the raid information
Sincerely,
3ware Customer Support.
The Promise FastTrak Tx100 cards always worked for us, too. The only Promise cards that fail for us are the Tx2000 cards. Since we have been unable to get help from Promise for this problem, I presume they know there is a problem, and are unable to fix it.
If Mylex cards are failing, that's important! If RAID cards fail, then the company, and all its employees, are out of business. And that's what apparently happened to Mylex. It's now owned by LSI Logic.
At the low end of the scale, we seem to be having the same kind of problem. We are having a high failure rate with Promise Technology FastTrak Tx2000 controllers. Promise Technology seems to have lost the will, or maybe ability, to deal with problems.
When I read through the comments to this story, there are a lot of situations where RAID cards are failing. But why?
The problem seems to be industry-wide. I talked to someone in technical support at HighPoint and he said the mirroring controllers sold by HighPoint have random mirror breakage failures, also.
This is a new problem. Did Microsoft do something to break mirroring controllers so that customers will buy Microsoft's far more expensive solution? Is there some problem with modern hardware no one has discovered?
One thing I can say is that, in the past, these cards worked reliably, or the companies could not have stayed in business. Promise Technology mirroring controllers were reliable for us for many years. Now they often cannot even be installed without failing during installation.
Question: Are Adaptec ATA RAID 1200A cards the same as HighPoint RocketRaid 133 cards? I notice the BIOS setup screens look identical.
The performance we get with Promise controllers (when they work) has been satisfactory. The application is a cash register; the computer is always faster than the operator. We only need a mirror copy of our data.
3Ware told me they cannot boot from one drive, after one fails. A 3ware formatted drive cannot boot from the IDE controller on the motherboard. Promise can do both. We need features, not performance, in this case.
Do you have a link to an Adaptec IDE mirroring RAID controller you would recommend?
The Adaptec ATA RAID 1200A is about $55, about $30 less than the price of the Promise controllers. We have no experience with them; I found the info by Googling and Froogling.
PC Chips motherboards? How so?
What do you recommend?
What RAID controllers would you recommend?
What hardware is "quality"?
What Promise FastTrak RAID controllers are you using? As I said in the comment just above yours, we are having major problems with FastTrak Tx2000 mirroring controllers.
This is on a lower level than the RAID you are using, but we are having major problems with 10 Promise Technology TX2000 mirroring RAID controllers that we bought. The mirrors go critical for no detectable reason. Promise Technology technical support is unable to find the problem, and the company is unwilling to escalate the issue. The Promise Technology technicians escalate the issue, but 2nd level technical support never calls back.
Promise mirroring controllers on ECS (EliteGroup) L7VTA v 1.0 motherboards have the same problem. When we call ECS tech support, there is a recorded message saying they are busy and to call back later.
We've been supplying computers with Promise mirroring RAID controllers since the company began doing business, and we've had very few problems until now.
Possibly the problems are associated with newer, faster motherboards, or with AMD VIA chipset motherboards. We've never had problems with RAID controllers on Intel chipset motherboards.
Another possibility is that the RAID controllers are incompatible with DVD burner drivers that are installed with Roxio or Nero DVD burning software.
Skin color? No.
I was at a party talking to a Hindu software development manager. I mentioned the incredible disorganization of the Hindu culture. The host thought that the Hindu would be offended, but he heartily agreed, and told some really chilling stories.
In the Hindu culture, you must do what your elders tell you. That means that, if you are coding and discover that the project specifications are wrong, you just keep silent and keep coding even if you know it won't work well. Yes, it is not always this way, but enough that it is a SERIOUS drawback. It's especially serious when you realize that it is rare that project specifications are free of error.
Fred Langa, the writer of the letter, is not sophisticated about marketing and is not completely honest about advertising. It's possible that the article is a paid advertisement from Microsoft about the superiority of Microsoft Windows. Or, it's possible that the article is just due to ignorance.
Langa produces a newsletter called the LangaList. Both the free and paid versions are mostly about Microsoft Windows. There is a paid version that supposedly doesn't have advertising. However, it does have considerable advertising for Langa himself.
Langa's newsletter is for people who know little about computers. People send him information by email, and he publishes it, often with apparently little checking. Often the little articles start with something like, "You are so wonderful. I am happy to pay for the paid version of your newsletter." The LangaList sometimes reads like a badly written informercial.
In the most recent issue of the LangaList, he says "The system was based on an utterly mainstream Intel motherboard with an on-board Intel sound system. This is not some weird, off-brand system using unknown components: It's about as mainstream as it gets."
He could easily have named the motherboard. It seems possible that it isn't named because he doesn't want people to know the truth. I remember that we supplied "utterly mainstream" Intel 815EEA motherboard systems with sound systems that NEVER worked perfectly in Windows 98 because they were so proprietary. That was back when Intel was first integrating sound into their motherboards. Intel had bought the sound system from some other company, and they had not yet found all the bugs.
Remember that Intel shut down its consumer division because it was not able to produce products that were successful in the marketplace! Before the shutdown I bought two Intel video camera cards from Fry's for $20 each. I took them back because they were of such poor quality. They weren't even worth $20.
In any case, Fred Langa often writes about problems in Microsoft Windows that are far, far bigger than problems with sound cards. In the most recent version of the LangaList, linked above, one of the articles in the paid version is "Icon Problems In XP, Win98". I know long time Linux users will have a difficult time believing this, but Microsoft Windows sometimes trashes its own desktop icons!!! The article in the LangaList is about how to fix this.
This most recent paid version of the LangaList, which supposedly does not have advertising, has two sections of 13 that are completely advertising, 6) Don't Make Me Beg!
He's right. MASM didn't produce the correct binary sometimes. Amazing. Amazingly abusive. Borland had no problem producing an assembler that worked well.
Definitely another possibility. Should be, of course, "He doesn't believe the difference between 10 years and 2 years of experience is worth the difference in salary." And, if the 10 years is a serious extra 8 years of growthful experience, he is wrong. The moral of the story is, Don't believe what people in authority say without independent justification. Sometimes what they say is random nonsense.
I received a message like this more than once. I think the sender is mentally disturbed, and not looking to make money.
Or, maybe the sender is a scam artist looking for mentally disturbed people.
You said "He believes that people with 10 years experience in C++ have nothing significant to offer over people with 2 years experience."
Everyone comment I've read treats this as a question of fact. I'm guessing it isn't. It's a sociological phenomenon. There are several possible theories. More than one of them could be true simultaneously. Not all of them are mentioned below.
1) He doesn't believe that and is only saying it to you because he wants to act out anger.
2) He believes that. Intimidation is important to him, and he would rather hire someone he is likely to be able to intimidate rather than someone he would be required to respect somewhat.
3) He doesn't believe it, but is saying it because he is trying to hide his jealousy about not knowing very much about technical things. This is common. The logical people, as programmers are required to be, don't get respect from the people who are not able to be logical. To give the logical people respect would mean that he should study how to be logical, and he is trying to hide that from himself, since he has three kids, a wife, a house, a mortgage, other debts, and doesn't have the freedom to improve himself.
4) It doesn't matter what he thinks. He is really, really ignorant. He knows nothing about code quality. In actuality, it is common during programming to discover some serious flaw in the original specifcation for the project. It may take someone with even more experience than 10 years to recognize this and know what to do.
5) His mind is so disorganized that it is impossible to determine what he really thinks, even for him.
6) It doesn't matter what he thinks because you have made a mistake, and it appears to you that he has "considerable hiring power", but that is not true.
7) He realizes that he will be forced to outsource your job soon, and his statement is only symbolic of the true disrespect coming from the company.