I think your biggest problem is that most/. readers are either old farts or desperately wish they were (naturally, I include myself in that). Most people here seem to adhere to fairly conservative (whatever that means) technical views, i.e. Microsoft is evil, JavaScript programmers are script kiddies, the 'real world' should just go away and leave the Internet alone etc.
Unfortunately for you, that means you have a readership that has no interest in video or other 'modern' formats (just look at the arguments over ASCII art) and prides itself on holding somewhat contrarian views. On top of that,/. culture was born when everything on the internet was free; now it isn't any more, but you're scrambling to monetize a website based on the idea that a bunch of curmudgeons are entitled to bitch about whatever they like for nothing. Hence the endless debates over advertising, in its various forms. Good luck with that.
I'm not saying I have a solution (it's not clear if there's even a problem) but I think you have to accept that/. is now Fox News for Nerds. Like most news sources, it's used primarily by those who conform to its culture, and by those who want to be part of it. This is not a dynamic, cool site any more (if it ever was); it's for people who are tech conservatives and want to stay that way and regrettably for you, that position includes a rejection of 'commercial' culture.
Atheism certainly is a religion, in the (very broad) sense that it's a belief system based on scientifically unproven or unprovable claims. Atheism is unprovable because atheists believe that there are no supernatural deities; you can't prove a negative therefore it's purely a question of belief, not of logic or science. Religion on the other hand is provable, but in thousands of years of human history, not one person has succeeded in proving the existence of any deity. Or in hundreds of years of the scientific method, if you prefer, since apparently proving the existence of God/gods to other people was a lot easier until the scientific method came along: no major world religion has been founded in the scientific age.
There is nothing rational about being an atheist, so if you want to talk about a sceptical view of religion (and atheism) you would be better off describing yourself or others as agnostics.
So apparently you want to be taken more seriously, but you decide to drop "windoze" into your question? Do you really think that the people who hand out jobs - and titles - care about your personal prejudices? As a professional, if the best solution for your company is "Microsoft`s platform" then you deliver it, you don't spend time complaining about how no one respects you because your proposal to migrate Visual Studio to vi isn't taken seriously. If it makes sense, make a business case for it and argue for it, but if the guys upstairs decide against it then either shut up or get out. This is what happens every day in Sales, Marketing, Production, Finance etc., but you seem to believe that IT is different.
If you're so obsessed about a job title then insist on it your contract. As some people say, that may make sense if you're concerned about your next job, but how bad is this job if you're already thinking about the next one?
In the computer room at my college, many years ago, there was the following sign:
Rule 1: Always make a backup. Rule 2: Always make a backup. (This is a backup of Rule 1)
Just because things are now on Web 2.0 services over the internet doesn't change the fundamental dictum. If you care about the data, it is you who needs backups. If you don't make backups, obviously you don't care (enough)...
What about Rule 0:
Rule 0: the following rules apply only to techies, who are the only people capable of understanding even the basic issues involved
Seriously, if you provide a consumer service of any kind, and you expect the consumers to do anything more than just use the service, you are seriously deluded. People - including, I suspect, many techies - will never do anything more than chat/download/email/surf/whatever.
My bank doesn't tell me to back up my account details in case their internet service goes down, why should anything else be different? Yes, that's a rhetorical question, and of course you and I understand the difference, but why should anyone else?
Anyway, the point is that this is not even a technical issue: it's a business one. How do you persuade people to start paying not only for "free" services (Facebook) but "worthless" invisible ones (a backup of your Facebook data)?
If you can solve that, let us know. Until then, going on about backups is only preaching to the choir. Most of whom have probably had a nasty experience with things going wrong already...:-)
This is a young industry, and it's changing all the time. What you need to know changes all the time.
As someone who got into IT from (natural) languages, I agree with most of your comments, except that one. From what I can determine, based on reading a lot of books about software development as an activity (not about specific languages, or platforms, or tools, or whatever), very little has changed in the last 30 years. A lot of what people really need to know in IT are softer skills like time estimation, requirements management, change management, customer communication, effective documentation, issue resolution and so on. As much as some people would love to believe it, cranking out code for a solid 8 hours a day rarely happens and when it does the results often aren't pretty.
Realistically, standards in IT are terrible, precisely because we focus on the things that change all the time and deliberately disregard the lessons of the past. We tell ourselves that the IT world is so different from just a few years ago that we can't learn anything useful from what's gone before. And of course that's all part of the 'romance' of IT; every coder wants to feel that he's breaking new ground and doing something totally new. In reality, most people are writing code for fairly mundane purposes and doing it rather badly: just look at the Daily WTF, Coding Horror, or ask a 'senior' developer for a few stories about interview candidates - or worse, colleagues - who couldn't write even a basic function.
Computer Science is exactly that, science, but in most fields the world needs a lot more engineers who can build working solutions out of what the scientists invent, not more scientists. Out of every 1000 CS graduates, how many end up writing compilers, hacking kernels, or doing other 'deep magic'? And how many more end up writing web-based data-processing applications with some simple business logic behind that still somehow never quite work correctly? Yes, there will always be a Google pushing the boundaries and they will always need PhD types to do it, but an awful lot more people just need developers who understand their needs and can build simple, reliable business applications.
My personal opinion is that IT has a higher opinion of itself than it deserves. In the end, we're still a young profession (as you said), but yet we flatter ourselves with job titles like 'engineer' when any real engineer (mechanical, electrical, whatever) would be horrified at the amount of guesswork and imprecision we seem to be happy working with every day.
If we really want to get to the next level as an industry, then we have to stop fixating on the details of languages and technologies and look at the processes and practices. Unfortunately, that's precisely what many techies least want to do, because it's knocking on the door of PHB territory. A professional association would have some problems, because the whole IT industry is so diverse, but it could do a couple of useful things. First, persuade universities to cut back on CS and ramp up "Computer Engineering"; think of CS as "Materials Science" and CE as "Construction Engineering" to see the difference. Make sure the CE course covers effective source control, issue tracking and change management, basic economics and project management, cost calculations, oral and written communication etc., all of which are skills that CS graduates just don't seem to have, but which are clearly needed in the real world.
Second, persuade insurance companies to underwrite large IT projects, just as they do for large construction projects, and use that as a more or less neutral/independent means of raising the industry's performance. They could also offer professional liability insurance for individuals and companies. If large projects could be underwritten against failure, companies would jump on it a risk mitigation measure: the project fails, at least they get some money back. In turn, the insurance companies would push developers to improve standar
It sounds like you need to look into a reporting tool: Business Objects, MS Reporting Services, whatever. Copy/replicate the data to a separate server to keep the users away from production, and then let them do what they like on there.
There are good reporting tools that be web-based, write the SQL for them, detect and prevent cross joins, handle logical security (client X can't see client's Y data etc.), use intelligent caching, export to Excel/CSV/PDF etc.
It may not be the easiest or cheapest thing to set up, but on the other hand it will probably be a lot more reliable and smarter than anything you can hack together yourself. And since you're providing an additional service to your customers, you can bill them for it.
Probably the main reason for this is simply that whatever bureaucrats (DHS? TSA?) are behind this, they're worried that another attack (however small) will happen, and the attackers' names will not be on the list. In that case, someone will lose their job, so if you are one of the bureaucrats, the rational thing to do is to put as many names on the list as possible, even if there's only trivial evidence or suspicion about them; that way, when the blame game starts, at least it won't be you who ends up as the scapegoat.
You're talking only about visibility, but clouds do more than just block your line of sight - they're often associated with air turbulence and various (possibly nasty) forms of precipitation, including icing.
Bearing in mind that the Shuttle glides in to land, and has no way to go around (ie abort the landing and go around for a second attempt), that means you only have one chance to get it right. So things like cloud cover, wind direction etc will affect the Shuttle much more than they would an aircraft, which can fly around bad weather, land at any number of alternate sites etc.
Hmm, so "GNU enterprise + postgresql/ingres/whatever + other open web technologies" is better than Peoplesoft?
Come on, "bunch of meaningless buzzwords" is better than "established product" will not impress anyone (or it shouldn't). Regardless of the rights or wrongs of your argument, saying that "whatever" is the best opotion will not convince anyone...
Honestly, forget "easy to install" - hopefully you install once and spend months/years/decades running the software. Ongoing admin costs are much more important...
Hmm, I think the smallest project I've worked on had 6 developers, and the largest had 200+ (it failed) - 12 is definitely at the very low end.
Given a larger scale, you really have to apply an organizational solution - a technical one has no chance of working. Divide your developers into task-oriented teams (which you may well have done anyway), and make the team leaders personally responsible for coordinating coding tasks, including code check-ins.
Regarding planning, bstrahm is correct - if you only see problems when you try to compile and execute your app/architecture as a whole, then you've screwed up royally on general planning, specification and implementation tasks.
Although many coders would like to be shut in a room and allowed to do things at their own pace and using their own way of doing things, as long as someone else is paying your salary you've got to produce something that works in a timeframe that works and within a budget that works. If that's too restrictive for you, then it's time to look for another job...
"We were all on Exchange Servers so email retention went like this"
The use of the word "so" implies a causal relationship - "because we used Exchange, our email retention policy was necessarily like this..."
Since the rest of your post was along the lines of "these guys were nuts; I'm disgusted with it all; I occupy the moral high ground by virtue of bailing out", the implication is that Exchange caused this situation.
In reality, as many others have pointed out, document retention has nothing to do with either technology or personal preference. So please don't badmouth a perfectly good product (-1, Troll, for referring to a Microsoft product without slamming it), by trying to pin your bad experience on it.
One thing nor mentioned so far is that even if Dubya were to succeed in specifying, developing and implementing a new US ID card (ie. succeed in managing a major IT project without cost overrun or failure to provide required functionality...), what happens to the numerous foreigners in the USA?
I'm sure that the rest of the world would probably fail to come up to the US 'standards' - would an Afghan passport be accepted as readily as a US ID card? Or a Britsh/French/Japanese passport, for that matter? (Or insert your chosen US-friendly/US-client state in that sentence).
So even if the US cards were miraculuously foolproof and unforgeable, the baddies would just start getting fake IDs from ither countries, which the US couldn't refuse without significant political and legal problems.
For example, I hold a British passport, a Swiss driving licence, and a Spanish student ID - which of these would be accepted in the Brave New World as allowing me to fly from New York to Boston?
Several points here... First, why all this pleading that Java should be considered a vital part of the OS? Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the question, and even given the prevalence of Java on the Internet, this does rather come across as a bunch of Java guys whining about why their favourite language is really important and everyone should have it whether they want it or not. Why not also plead for the installation of Perl, Python etc. on all new PCs? It would make just as much sense...
Second,/.ers habitually slam Microsoft for including components in the OS that aren't a core function, and yet aren't optional (ie IE). Yet here is Microsoft removing the JRE from the OS ('unbundling', if you will), leaving you free to install any version from any vendor, and everyone is complaining about it. You can't have it both ways, guys...
Finally, isn't this how Microsoft's much-hyped new OEM licensing should work? While I admit it's a bit of a sop to the antitrust lobby rather than a serious concession, surely removing Java is completely in line with this? By removing Java, OEMs who believe there is a market for a PC with Windows 2000/XP and Java are free to include the JRE.
All in all, this is something that's more in line with the philosophy that/.ers support - you only have to install what _you_ want, not what the OS vendor wants - but everyone here is complaining about it. It seems to me that the consistency of arguments on/., such as it is, goes out the window when a chance to bash Microsoft appears...
Here we go with the tired old myth again... The real story (check "Inside Windows 2000" or http://www.sysinternals.com if you don't believe me), is that there are indeed 2 sets of APIs, but not for the paranoia-fuelled reasons that/.ers like to present.
Programmers call the Win32 API, which is fully documented (http://msdn.microsoft.com), and is the interface to Windows that everyone should use for development. Meanwhile, there is an internal kernel API, which is undocumented and should not be called directly. This allows Microsoft to modify kernel functions without breaking application code - it's a simple abstraction layer.
Now, OK, you might well argue that Microsoft should document their kernel API too, for the masochists in the crowd. However, how many people really want to mess with low-level IO calls which may change in the next servicepack, when Win32 exposes a consistent set of filesystem calls for file creation, deletion etc.?
This sort of thing may be anathema to die-hard/.ers, who want to play with the kernel for reasons varying from genuine interest and curiosity through to full-on intellectual masturbation, but in reality most people want to get on and use the OS. And if you think you can't mess with NT internals, check the references above...
Come on Taco, do we really need childish comments like this: "(Well, I guess if you run windows you gotta get your service packs every few minutes;)" Compare this: "Well, I guess if you run Linux you gotta get your kernel and package updates every few minutes..."
Why is frequently downloading patches and updates only a virtue when *NIX people do it? When NT people do it (I don't count Windows 9x/ME as a serious OS), it apparently proves that the OS is flaky and insecure, whereas when Linux guys do it, it proves how great their freedom of choice to upgrade is. Or, it proves that the Linux guys are all conscientious sysadmins maintaining secure systems, whereas obviously every NT patch is a blue screen fix.
I don't care if/. readers flaunt their ill-informed OS religious beliefs, but when the editors start doing it, it's bad news. (And putting a smiley at the end doesn't make it tongue-in-cheek...)
"Can you help me come up with opinions/facts/experiences why exchange sucks as an enterprise e-mail solution versus a nice solid Unix solution to present to management"
This is a rather strange question -
1. If this guy is so convinced that Exchange "sucks", he should have solid reasons to present to management already. If he doesn't, then he's just as bad as the "politically forceful faction" blindly pushing Exchange.
2. Opinions without facts to back them up are not really convincing to PHBs in terms of a big decision like this. Better stick with the "facts and experiences", I think.
Of course, the question should really be "Someone has proposed that we move to Outlook/Exchange in our organization. I know nothing about it, but I do know that I'm comfortable with our current solution, and given our mixed-platform user base, I don't see Exchange as a viable alternative. How do I communicate that to management effectively?"
Or, to rephrase that in/. terms: "Help! I'm under attack from the evil forces of M$! Any unsubstantiated rumours and scare stories I can pass off as gospel truth are deperately needed. I have to resist NT at all costs, whatever the real pros and cons are. Any Windows NT uptime stats and security information which are really based on casual use of Windows 95 on dodgy hardware would be particularly useful."
Fact is, Exchange is a damn good solution, but only if it's a damn good fit for your environment...
"The one thing I do ask is that you not judge people based on the information that is shared here, as all that is bound to do is cause problems"
Phew - thank goodness for that. For a second, I thought a rational discussion might break out here... We could see all sorts of 'radical' statements, like "Microsoft isn't so bad after all," or "RMS is a little out of touch with the real world," or even "en masse, we/.ers don't know what we're talking about on any subject, but we still have enough frustrated emotion to float a battleship." Still, as long as we're banned from judging each other's shared information (opinions, anyone?) in general or tendencies towards ridiculous cults in particular, we can be sure that our discussions will be A-OK with Lawyer Central. God Bless America!
I agree completely with you, but please don't go round making statements about 'NT admins' vs. 'real admins'. NT is a serious OS, and it requires serious admin skills. Unfortunately, there are millions of NT installations, and only thousands of BSD ones. Since the supply of good sysdamins is limited, NT acquires the reputation for poor admin. This isn't the fault of the product.
On passwords, how many people do you think look at the root password dialogue box on a Unix install and say 'I can't think of a good one, I'll just make it "password" for now, and change it later'? I'd guess it's a hell of a lot. That's why the whole MSSQL thing was blown out of proportion - a weak password is just as bad as not having one at all, and perhaps worse.
Finally, the next time/.ers are tempted to casually condemn what they view as MCSE incompetence, they should perhaps imagine a world where Linux has millions of seats and NT has thousands. Linux would be viewed as dangerously fragmented, difficult to find good admin people for, and frequently badly configured. Meanwhile, NT would be a slick, powerful operating system, with generally savvy and competent users. In other words, perceptions would be pretty much the reverse of now. I won't get into the reality of those perceptions just now - I left my asbestos suit at home today...
So, in the interests of preserving the balance of this discussion, and./'s journalistic integrity (such as it is), who is going to scream at Oracle for shipping a product with 3 default passwords?
I'm no Oracle guru, but the default SYS, SYSTEM and SCOTT accounts all have well-documented passwords ('changeoninstall', 'manager' and 'tiger', if I remember rightly). I'm sure someone will flame me for getting them wrong, but what the hell.
Would anyone like to bet on the percentage of Oracle installations where all 3 passwords have been changed, or the SCOTT account dropped and the 2 remaining ones changed? This is a question of bad administration, not a bad product.
Why on earth are you not complaining about that huge Oracle security hole? As many posters have pointed out, the MSSQL installation allows you to leave the sa password blank, but all documentation (and, hopefully, common sense) says you should be fired for incompetence if you do that.
In fact, Msoft's recommendation is to not use passwords at all, but rather NT integrated security, where no MSSQL passwords are involved. Set a very strong sa password, lock it in the safe, then forget about it. Whatever your view of NT password security, it's a lot stronger than simple MSSQL passwords with no quality checking or expirations.
This story is simply Msoft-bashing, which obviously is an occupational hazard round here, but it doesn't help./ers look like the mature, open, sensible, non-judgmental people they so constantly claim to be.
Finally, MSSQL 2000 closes this 'hole' - you are prompted for an sa password, and can only leave it blank by acknowledging a dialogue box warning you of the dangers. If that's not good enough, you have no business being anywhere near a production box. (And anyone who leaves any production account password blank, or weak, should be shot, full stop).
Disclaimer: I'm an MCSE+I and MCDBA, which obviously ranks me somewhere below genital herpes in most./ers' desirability stakes...
For someone who's set up WAS (WebSphere Advanced Server) on both *NIX (Solaris) and NT, this is interesting. WAS on *NIX is a royal pain in the arse - impossible to administer, difficult to configure, and generally a black art.
On NT, on the other hand, it works. And it works well. You may be interested to know that IBM internally build WAS on NT first ('because it's cheaper'), then port to AIX, Linux, and Solaris. The NT SCM (Service Control Manager) controls the WAS services properly, unlike the rather dodgy shell scripts shipped with the *NIX version.
Still, if they go open source, then nothing will make them wrong in./'s collective eyes, even if it is a nightmare from the coding pits of hell.
OK, asbestos jacket on... Almost every post I've seen on this appears to assume that Windows=Win9x. While this may be true from a home user, gaming perspective, it's simply not at all true in the bigger picture. Yes, Win9x are horrible operating systems, but they do perform acceptably for most end users. If you try to use Win9x for more demanding tasks (read: anywhere in a business environment) then you deserve everything you get.
If you look at WinNT or Win2K instead, then you start making a lot less sense. Win2K does not assume that it's smarter than you - I think you're probably complaining that the GUI tools are too limiting. The GUI tools are very useful when you have a limited number of servers to administer, but yes, they can become a pain when you have to repeat a task over 5+ boxes. Win2K exposes consistent interfaces which make almost any task programmatically possible. Look at COM/DCOM for full-blown apps, and the various scripting possibilities for sysadmin work - WMI and WSH, for example (and Perl's Win32 module, if you go outside the OS).
As for an OS that cannot be separated from its UI, why would you want to? After all, any OS is useless without a shell of some sort. You're complaining that you can't change the shell (in fact, you can, but it's not for the faint-hearted), which is a different and much more reasonable argument.
Security - WinNT has always had a security model, based on the idea that everything is an object (compare UNIX: everything is a file). In fact, compared to UNIX file permissions and groups, the Windows model is a hell of a lot better. Commerical *NIX vendors have introduced ACL-style permissions on files, just like the Windows ones, because they allow far more flexibility and control. The 'owner-group-world' approach is very simplistic.
I won't argue with you re. FAT, which is a very poor choice of file system - NTFS would be much better. You get security, journalling and more advanced features like write-through calls (important for databases and other transaction-protected processes), and encryption (Win2K only).
As for the hoax idea, you could just be right. Trying to re-write Windows is just too big a task - Microsoft have integrated elements of the operating system so tightly that you have to code a very large chunk of the OS before it's usable. *NIX, being much more modular, is easier to reproduce. This is not necessarily a bad thing - for example, in a Windows NT environment, handling web app security by having IE pass your access token direct to IIS is a great idea. A full Windows environment (NT, IIS, MSSQL, Exchange, etc.) gives you genuine single sign-on, which is something that people devote huge amounts of time, money and energy to trying to achieve in mixed environments.
So, bottom line, Windows!=Win9x. I wish/.ers wouldn't post so many attacks on something they don't have a decent understanding of. Or base criticism of Windows in general on Win9x in particular. (Which I'm sure will get thrown straight back at me as people attack my lack of *NIX knowledge...)
Hmm, good point... I want a car that gives me better mpg than the one I have now, and it musn't come from Ford, because I think they're evil.
So, naturally, I will build my own car from blueprints released by Saab. Ooops, hang on, I know nothing about cars. But according to you, my options are either build it myself, or teach myself how to build it. And if I can't do either, I shouldn't have a driving license!
I just want to drive a damn car that works, you idiot! Why on earth should I have to be a C/C++/whatever programmer in order to surf the web?
OK, now I've got that off my chest, I have to say that as many other people have pointed out, Netscape haven't released a product worth a damn in 2 years. By most people's standards, that is appalling development practice.
If you want to develop software as an intellectual exercise, for self-fulfillment, then go for it - just don't expect anyone else to rave about your application. On the other hand, if you want people to use what you've coded, then give them what they want. This ivory tower mentality - "I know what's best, and if the little people don't like it, they should learn to be a really clever programmer like me" - is a lot of crap.
Absolutely right, but don't forget that IT is a very young industry - about 20 yrs in the case of PCs. The standards and mechanisms for enforcing those standards that exist in industries such as architecture or (mechanical) engineering just don't exist yet in IT. Some day they will, and we will see incompetent sysadmins, DBAs and developers being struck off their respective registers. However, until the rate of change in the IT industry slows down to something that society and government can actually deal with, we won't have any of that. This helps explain the many phenomena such as paper certifications, cowboy consultants etc. that we're all familiar with.
On the subject of this Compaq certification, Compaq guys tend to be very good at installation, optimization etc. on their own hardware. If you happen to have hundreds of their servers, and tens of thousands of their desktops (as we do), then that specific knowledge is not just nice to have, it's essential. Someone else commented that a Compaq server is just a "big Intel box" - right, but that's like saying that a Ferrari is "just a fast car". I wouldn't want Joe from the local fix-anything garage tinkering with my Ferrari, and if you're serious about servers, you don't let just anyone play with them either. Compaq are heavily into custom hardware and management extensions, which work extremely well, but do have to be learnt. The day you can run SmartStart (Compaq's guided server setup routine) for Linux will be a big step forward for corporate acceptance.
Actually, for a techie user in Windows (yes, we do exist...), those buttons are genuinely useful. I use my mouse as little as possible, and having a button to right-click is part of that (as are all the other keys you mentioned - try not using your mouse in Windows for a bit and see what I mean). I agree with you on the Windows logo buttons, though - I've never found them to be worth the space. And BTW, there are 2 buttons for left-click: Enter to run (double-click), and Space to put focus on the selected icon (single-click).
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I think your biggest problem is that most /. readers are either old farts or desperately wish they were (naturally, I include myself in that). Most people here seem to adhere to fairly conservative (whatever that means) technical views, i.e. Microsoft is evil, JavaScript programmers are script kiddies, the 'real world' should just go away and leave the Internet alone etc.
Unfortunately for you, that means you have a readership that has no interest in video or other 'modern' formats (just look at the arguments over ASCII art) and prides itself on holding somewhat contrarian views. On top of that, /. culture was born when everything on the internet was free; now it isn't any more, but you're scrambling to monetize a website based on the idea that a bunch of curmudgeons are entitled to bitch about whatever they like for nothing. Hence the endless debates over advertising, in its various forms. Good luck with that.
I'm not saying I have a solution (it's not clear if there's even a problem) but I think you have to accept that /. is now Fox News for Nerds. Like most news sources, it's used primarily by those who conform to its culture, and by those who want to be part of it. This is not a dynamic, cool site any more (if it ever was); it's for people who are tech conservatives and want to stay that way and regrettably for you, that position includes a rejection of 'commercial' culture.
Atheism certainly is a religion, in the (very broad) sense that it's a belief system based on scientifically unproven or unprovable claims. Atheism is unprovable because atheists believe that there are no supernatural deities; you can't prove a negative therefore it's purely a question of belief, not of logic or science. Religion on the other hand is provable, but in thousands of years of human history, not one person has succeeded in proving the existence of any deity. Or in hundreds of years of the scientific method, if you prefer, since apparently proving the existence of God/gods to other people was a lot easier until the scientific method came along: no major world religion has been founded in the scientific age.
There is nothing rational about being an atheist, so if you want to talk about a sceptical view of religion (and atheism) you would be better off describing yourself or others as agnostics.
So apparently you want to be taken more seriously, but you decide to drop "windoze" into your question? Do you really think that the people who hand out jobs - and titles - care about your personal prejudices? As a professional, if the best solution for your company is "Microsoft`s platform" then you deliver it, you don't spend time complaining about how no one respects you because your proposal to migrate Visual Studio to vi isn't taken seriously. If it makes sense, make a business case for it and argue for it, but if the guys upstairs decide against it then either shut up or get out. This is what happens every day in Sales, Marketing, Production, Finance etc., but you seem to believe that IT is different.
If you're so obsessed about a job title then insist on it your contract. As some people say, that may make sense if you're concerned about your next job, but how bad is this job if you're already thinking about the next one?
In the computer room at my college, many years ago, there was the following sign:
Rule 1: Always make a backup.
Rule 2: Always make a backup. (This is a backup of Rule 1)
Just because things are now on Web 2.0 services over the internet doesn't change the fundamental dictum. If you care about the data, it is you who needs backups. If you don't make backups, obviously you don't care (enough)...
What about Rule 0:
Rule 0: the following rules apply only to techies, who are the only people capable of understanding even the basic issues involved
Seriously, if you provide a consumer service of any kind, and you expect the consumers to do anything more than just use the service, you are seriously deluded. People - including, I suspect, many techies - will never do anything more than chat/download/email/surf/whatever.
My bank doesn't tell me to back up my account details in case their internet service goes down, why should anything else be different? Yes, that's a rhetorical question, and of course you and I understand the difference, but why should anyone else?
Anyway, the point is that this is not even a technical issue: it's a business one. How do you persuade people to start paying not only for "free" services (Facebook) but "worthless" invisible ones (a backup of your Facebook data)?
If you can solve that, let us know. Until then, going on about backups is only preaching to the choir. Most of whom have probably had a nasty experience with things going wrong already... :-)
This is a young industry, and it's changing all the time. What you need to know changes all the time.
As someone who got into IT from (natural) languages, I agree with most of your comments, except that one. From what I can determine, based on reading a lot of books about software development as an activity (not about specific languages, or platforms, or tools, or whatever), very little has changed in the last 30 years. A lot of what people really need to know in IT are softer skills like time estimation, requirements management, change management, customer communication, effective documentation, issue resolution and so on. As much as some people would love to believe it, cranking out code for a solid 8 hours a day rarely happens and when it does the results often aren't pretty.
Realistically, standards in IT are terrible, precisely because we focus on the things that change all the time and deliberately disregard the lessons of the past. We tell ourselves that the IT world is so different from just a few years ago that we can't learn anything useful from what's gone before. And of course that's all part of the 'romance' of IT; every coder wants to feel that he's breaking new ground and doing something totally new. In reality, most people are writing code for fairly mundane purposes and doing it rather badly: just look at the Daily WTF, Coding Horror, or ask a 'senior' developer for a few stories about interview candidates - or worse, colleagues - who couldn't write even a basic function.
Computer Science is exactly that, science, but in most fields the world needs a lot more engineers who can build working solutions out of what the scientists invent, not more scientists. Out of every 1000 CS graduates, how many end up writing compilers, hacking kernels, or doing other 'deep magic'? And how many more end up writing web-based data-processing applications with some simple business logic behind that still somehow never quite work correctly? Yes, there will always be a Google pushing the boundaries and they will always need PhD types to do it, but an awful lot more people just need developers who understand their needs and can build simple, reliable business applications.
My personal opinion is that IT has a higher opinion of itself than it deserves. In the end, we're still a young profession (as you said), but yet we flatter ourselves with job titles like 'engineer' when any real engineer (mechanical, electrical, whatever) would be horrified at the amount of guesswork and imprecision we seem to be happy working with every day.
If we really want to get to the next level as an industry, then we have to stop fixating on the details of languages and technologies and look at the processes and practices. Unfortunately, that's precisely what many techies least want to do, because it's knocking on the door of PHB territory. A professional association would have some problems, because the whole IT industry is so diverse, but it could do a couple of useful things. First, persuade universities to cut back on CS and ramp up "Computer Engineering"; think of CS as "Materials Science" and CE as "Construction Engineering" to see the difference. Make sure the CE course covers effective source control, issue tracking and change management, basic economics and project management, cost calculations, oral and written communication etc., all of which are skills that CS graduates just don't seem to have, but which are clearly needed in the real world.
Second, persuade insurance companies to underwrite large IT projects, just as they do for large construction projects, and use that as a more or less neutral/independent means of raising the industry's performance. They could also offer professional liability insurance for individuals and companies. If large projects could be underwritten against failure, companies would jump on it a risk mitigation measure: the project fails, at least they get some money back. In turn, the insurance companies would push developers to improve standar
It sounds like you need to look into a reporting tool: Business Objects, MS Reporting Services, whatever. Copy/replicate the data to a separate server to keep the users away from production, and then let them do what they like on there.
There are good reporting tools that be web-based, write the SQL for them, detect and prevent cross joins, handle logical security (client X can't see client's Y data etc.), use intelligent caching, export to Excel/CSV/PDF etc.
It may not be the easiest or cheapest thing to set up, but on the other hand it will probably be a lot more reliable and smarter than anything you can hack together yourself. And since you're providing an additional service to your customers, you can bill them for it.
--pondlife
Probably the main reason for this is simply that whatever bureaucrats (DHS? TSA?) are behind this, they're worried that another attack (however small) will happen, and the attackers' names will not be on the list. In that case, someone will lose their job, so if you are one of the bureaucrats, the rational thing to do is to put as many names on the list as possible, even if there's only trivial evidence or suspicion about them; that way, when the blame game starts, at least it won't be you who ends up as the scapegoat.
You're talking only about visibility, but clouds do more than just block your line of sight - they're often associated with air turbulence and various (possibly nasty) forms of precipitation, including icing.
Bearing in mind that the Shuttle glides in to land, and has no way to go around (ie abort the landing and go around for a second attempt), that means you only have one chance to get it right. So things like cloud cover, wind direction etc will affect the Shuttle much more than they would an aircraft, which can fly around bad weather, land at any number of alternate sites etc.
p.
Hmm, so "GNU enterprise + postgresql/ingres/whatever + other open web technologies" is better than Peoplesoft?
Come on, "bunch of meaningless buzzwords" is better than "established product" will not impress anyone (or it shouldn't). Regardless of the rights or wrongs of your argument, saying that "whatever" is the best opotion will not convince anyone...
Honestly, forget "easy to install" - hopefully you install once and spend months/years/decades running the software. Ongoing admin costs are much more important...
Hmm, I think the smallest project I've worked on had 6 developers, and the largest had 200+ (it failed) - 12 is definitely at the very low end.
Given a larger scale, you really have to apply an organizational solution - a technical one has no chance of working. Divide your developers into task-oriented teams (which you may well have done anyway), and make the team leaders personally responsible for coordinating coding tasks, including code check-ins.
Regarding planning, bstrahm is correct - if you only see problems when you try to compile and execute your app/architecture as a whole, then you've screwed up royally on general planning, specification and implementation tasks.
Although many coders would like to be shut in a room and allowed to do things at their own pace and using their own way of doing things, as long as someone else is paying your salary you've got to produce something that works in a timeframe that works and within a budget that works. If that's too restrictive for you, then it's time to look for another job...
OK, a very anal reply here, but...
"We were all on Exchange Servers so email retention went like this"
The use of the word "so" implies a causal relationship - "because we used Exchange, our email retention policy was necessarily like this..."
Since the rest of your post was along the lines of "these guys were nuts; I'm disgusted with it all; I occupy the moral high ground by virtue of bailing out", the implication is that Exchange caused this situation.
In reality, as many others have pointed out, document retention has nothing to do with either technology or personal preference. So please don't badmouth a perfectly good product (-1, Troll, for referring to a Microsoft product without slamming it), by trying to pin your bad experience on it.
One thing nor mentioned so far is that even if Dubya were to succeed in specifying, developing and implementing a new US ID card (ie. succeed in managing a major IT project without cost overrun or failure to provide required functionality...), what happens to the numerous foreigners in the USA?
I'm sure that the rest of the world would probably fail to come up to the US 'standards' - would an Afghan passport be accepted as readily as a US ID card? Or a Britsh/French/Japanese passport, for that matter? (Or insert your chosen US-friendly/US-client state in that sentence).
So even if the US cards were miraculuously foolproof and unforgeable, the baddies would just start getting fake IDs from ither countries, which the US couldn't refuse without significant political and legal problems.
For example, I hold a British passport, a Swiss driving licence, and a Spanish student ID - which of these would be accepted in the Brave New World as allowing me to fly from New York to Boston?
Several points here... First, why all this pleading that Java should be considered a vital part of the OS? Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the question, and even given the prevalence of Java on the Internet, this does rather come across as a bunch of Java guys whining about why their favourite language is really important and everyone should have it whether they want it or not. Why not also plead for the installation of Perl, Python etc. on all new PCs? It would make just as much sense...
/.ers habitually slam Microsoft for including components in the OS that aren't a core function, and yet aren't optional (ie IE). Yet here is Microsoft removing the JRE from the OS ('unbundling', if you will), leaving you free to install any version from any vendor, and everyone is complaining about it. You can't have it both ways, guys...
/.ers support - you only have to install what _you_ want, not what the OS vendor wants - but everyone here is complaining about it. It seems to me that the consistency of arguments on /., such as it is, goes out the window when a chance to bash Microsoft appears...
Second,
Finally, isn't this how Microsoft's much-hyped new OEM licensing should work? While I admit it's a bit of a sop to the antitrust lobby rather than a serious concession, surely removing Java is completely in line with this? By removing Java, OEMs who believe there is a market for a PC with Windows 2000/XP and Java are free to include the JRE.
All in all, this is something that's more in line with the philosophy that
Here we go with the tired old myth again... The real story (check "Inside Windows 2000" or http://www.sysinternals.com if you don't believe me), is that there are indeed 2 sets of APIs, but not for the paranoia-fuelled reasons that /.ers like to present.
/.ers, who want to play with the kernel for reasons varying from genuine interest and curiosity through to full-on intellectual masturbation, but in reality most people want to get on and use the OS. And if you think you can't mess with NT internals, check the references above...
Programmers call the Win32 API, which is fully documented (http://msdn.microsoft.com), and is the interface to Windows that everyone should use for development. Meanwhile, there is an internal kernel API, which is undocumented and should not be called directly. This allows Microsoft to modify kernel functions without breaking application code - it's a simple abstraction layer.
Now, OK, you might well argue that Microsoft should document their kernel API too, for the masochists in the crowd. However, how many people really want to mess with low-level IO calls which may change in the next servicepack, when Win32 exposes a consistent set of filesystem calls for file creation, deletion etc.?
This sort of thing may be anathema to die-hard
Come on Taco, do we really need childish comments like this: "(Well, I guess if you run windows you gotta get your service packs every few minutes ;)" Compare this: "Well, I guess if you run Linux you gotta get your kernel and package updates every few minutes..."
/. readers flaunt their ill-informed OS religious beliefs, but when the editors start doing it, it's bad news. (And putting a smiley at the end doesn't make it tongue-in-cheek...)
Why is frequently downloading patches and updates only a virtue when *NIX people do it? When NT people do it (I don't count Windows 9x/ME as a serious OS), it apparently proves that the OS is flaky and insecure, whereas when Linux guys do it, it proves how great their freedom of choice to upgrade is. Or, it proves that the Linux guys are all conscientious sysadmins maintaining secure systems, whereas obviously every NT patch is a blue screen fix.
I don't care if
"Can you help me come up with opinions/facts/experiences why exchange sucks as an enterprise e-mail solution versus a nice solid Unix solution to present to management"
/. terms: "Help! I'm under attack from the evil forces of M$! Any unsubstantiated rumours and scare stories I can pass off as gospel truth are deperately needed. I have to resist NT at all costs, whatever the real pros and cons are. Any Windows NT uptime stats and security information which are really based on casual use of Windows 95 on dodgy hardware would be particularly useful."
This is a rather strange question -
1. If this guy is so convinced that Exchange "sucks", he should have solid reasons to present to management already. If he doesn't, then he's just as bad as the "politically forceful faction" blindly pushing Exchange.
2. Opinions without facts to back them up are not really convincing to PHBs in terms of a big decision like this. Better stick with the "facts and experiences", I think.
Of course, the question should really be "Someone has proposed that we move to Outlook/Exchange in our organization. I know nothing about it, but I do know that I'm comfortable with our current solution, and given our mixed-platform user base, I don't see Exchange as a viable alternative. How do I communicate that to management effectively?"
Or, to rephrase that in
Fact is, Exchange is a damn good solution, but only if it's a damn good fit for your environment...
"The one thing I do ask is that you not judge people based on the information that is shared here, as all that is bound to do is cause problems"
/.ers don't know what we're talking about on any subject, but we still have enough frustrated emotion to float a battleship." Still, as long as we're banned from judging each other's shared information (opinions, anyone?) in general or tendencies towards ridiculous cults in particular, we can be sure that our discussions will be A-OK with Lawyer Central. God Bless America!
Phew - thank goodness for that. For a second, I thought a rational discussion might break out here... We could see all sorts of 'radical' statements, like "Microsoft isn't so bad after all," or "RMS is a little out of touch with the real world," or even "en masse, we
I agree completely with you, but please don't go round making statements about 'NT admins' vs. 'real admins'. NT is a serious OS, and it requires serious admin skills. Unfortunately, there are millions of NT installations, and only thousands of BSD ones. Since the supply of good sysdamins is limited, NT acquires the reputation for poor admin. This isn't the fault of the product.
/.ers are tempted to casually condemn what they view as MCSE incompetence, they should perhaps imagine a world where Linux has millions of seats and NT has thousands. Linux would be viewed as dangerously fragmented, difficult to find good admin people for, and frequently badly configured. Meanwhile, NT would be a slick, powerful operating system, with generally savvy and competent users. In other words, perceptions would be pretty much the reverse of now. I won't get into the reality of those perceptions just now - I left my asbestos suit at home today...
On passwords, how many people do you think look at the root password dialogue box on a Unix install and say 'I can't think of a good one, I'll just make it "password" for now, and change it later'? I'd guess it's a hell of a lot. That's why the whole MSSQL thing was blown out of proportion - a weak password is just as bad as not having one at all, and perhaps worse.
Finally, the next time
So, in the interests of preserving the balance of this discussion, and ./'s journalistic integrity (such as it is), who is going to scream at Oracle for shipping a product with 3 default passwords?
./ers look like the mature, open, sensible, non-judgmental people they so constantly claim to be.
./ers' desirability stakes...
I'm no Oracle guru, but the default SYS, SYSTEM and SCOTT accounts all have well-documented passwords ('changeoninstall', 'manager' and 'tiger', if I remember rightly). I'm sure someone will flame me for getting them wrong, but what the hell.
Would anyone like to bet on the percentage of Oracle installations where all 3 passwords have been changed, or the SCOTT account dropped and the 2 remaining ones changed? This is a question of bad administration, not a bad product.
Why on earth are you not complaining about that huge Oracle security hole? As many posters have pointed out, the MSSQL installation allows you to leave the sa password blank, but all documentation (and, hopefully, common sense) says you should be fired for incompetence if you do that.
In fact, Msoft's recommendation is to not use passwords at all, but rather NT integrated security, where no MSSQL passwords are involved. Set a very strong sa password, lock it in the safe, then forget about it. Whatever your view of NT password security, it's a lot stronger than simple MSSQL passwords with no quality checking or expirations.
This story is simply Msoft-bashing, which obviously is an occupational hazard round here, but it doesn't help
Finally, MSSQL 2000 closes this 'hole' - you are prompted for an sa password, and can only leave it blank by acknowledging a dialogue box warning you of the dangers. If that's not good enough, you have no business being anywhere near a production box. (And anyone who leaves any production account password blank, or weak, should be shot, full stop).
Disclaimer: I'm an MCSE+I and MCDBA, which obviously ranks me somewhere below genital herpes in most
For someone who's set up WAS (WebSphere Advanced Server) on both *NIX (Solaris) and NT, this is interesting. WAS on *NIX is a royal pain in the arse - impossible to administer, difficult to configure, and generally a black art.
./'s collective eyes, even if it is a nightmare from the coding pits of hell.
On NT, on the other hand, it works. And it works well. You may be interested to know that IBM internally build WAS on NT first ('because it's cheaper'), then port to AIX, Linux, and Solaris. The NT SCM (Service Control Manager) controls the WAS services properly, unlike the rather dodgy shell scripts shipped with the *NIX version.
Still, if they go open source, then nothing will make them wrong in
OK, asbestos jacket on... Almost every post I've seen on this appears to assume that Windows=Win9x. While this may be true from a home user, gaming perspective, it's simply not at all true in the bigger picture. Yes, Win9x are horrible operating systems, but they do perform acceptably for most end users. If you try to use Win9x for more demanding tasks (read: anywhere in a business environment) then you deserve everything you get.
/.ers wouldn't post so many attacks on something they don't have a decent understanding of. Or base criticism of Windows in general on Win9x in particular. (Which I'm sure will get thrown straight back at me as people attack my lack of *NIX knowledge...)
If you look at WinNT or Win2K instead, then you start making a lot less sense. Win2K does not assume that it's smarter than you - I think you're probably complaining that the GUI tools are too limiting. The GUI tools are very useful when you have a limited number of servers to administer, but yes, they can become a pain when you have to repeat a task over 5+ boxes. Win2K exposes consistent interfaces which make almost any task programmatically possible. Look at COM/DCOM for full-blown apps, and the various scripting possibilities for sysadmin work - WMI and WSH, for example (and Perl's Win32 module, if you go outside the OS).
As for an OS that cannot be separated from its UI, why would you want to? After all, any OS is useless without a shell of some sort. You're complaining that you can't change the shell (in fact, you can, but it's not for the faint-hearted), which is a different and much more reasonable argument.
Security - WinNT has always had a security model, based on the idea that everything is an object (compare UNIX: everything is a file). In fact, compared to UNIX file permissions and groups, the Windows model is a hell of a lot better. Commerical *NIX vendors have introduced ACL-style permissions on files, just like the Windows ones, because they allow far more flexibility and control. The 'owner-group-world' approach is very simplistic.
I won't argue with you re. FAT, which is a very poor choice of file system - NTFS would be much better. You get security, journalling and more advanced features like write-through calls (important for databases and other transaction-protected processes), and encryption (Win2K only).
As for the hoax idea, you could just be right. Trying to re-write Windows is just too big a task - Microsoft have integrated elements of the operating system so tightly that you have to code a very large chunk of the OS before it's usable. *NIX, being much more modular, is easier to reproduce. This is not necessarily a bad thing - for example, in a Windows NT environment, handling web app security by having IE pass your access token direct to IIS is a great idea. A full Windows environment (NT, IIS, MSSQL, Exchange, etc.) gives you genuine single sign-on, which is something that people devote huge amounts of time, money and energy to trying to achieve in mixed environments.
So, bottom line, Windows!=Win9x. I wish
Hmm, good point... I want a car that gives me better mpg than the one I have now, and it musn't come from Ford, because I think they're evil.
So, naturally, I will build my own car from blueprints released by Saab. Ooops, hang on, I know nothing about cars. But according to you, my options are either build it myself, or teach myself how to build it. And if I can't do either, I shouldn't have a driving license!
I just want to drive a damn car that works, you idiot! Why on earth should I have to be a C/C++/whatever programmer in order to surf the web?
OK, now I've got that off my chest, I have to say that as many other people have pointed out, Netscape haven't released a product worth a damn in 2 years. By most people's standards, that is appalling development practice.
If you want to develop software as an intellectual exercise, for self-fulfillment, then go for it - just don't expect anyone else to rave about your application. On the other hand, if you want people to use what you've coded, then give them what they want. This ivory tower mentality - "I know what's best, and if the little people don't like it, they should learn to be a really clever programmer like me" - is a lot of crap.
Absolutely right, but don't forget that IT is a very young industry - about 20 yrs in the case of PCs. The standards and mechanisms for enforcing those standards that exist in industries such as architecture or (mechanical) engineering just don't exist yet in IT. Some day they will, and we will see incompetent sysadmins, DBAs and developers being struck off their respective registers. However, until the rate of change in the IT industry slows down to something that society and government can actually deal with, we won't have any of that. This helps explain the many phenomena such as paper certifications, cowboy consultants etc. that we're all familiar with.
On the subject of this Compaq certification, Compaq guys tend to be very good at installation, optimization etc. on their own hardware. If you happen to have hundreds of their servers, and tens of thousands of their desktops (as we do), then that specific knowledge is not just nice to have, it's essential. Someone else commented that a Compaq server is just a "big Intel box" - right, but that's like saying that a Ferrari is "just a fast car". I wouldn't want Joe from the local fix-anything garage tinkering with my Ferrari, and if you're serious about servers, you don't let just anyone play with them either. Compaq are heavily into custom hardware and management extensions, which work extremely well, but do have to be learnt. The day you can run SmartStart (Compaq's guided server setup routine) for Linux will be a big step forward for corporate acceptance.
Actually, for a techie user in Windows (yes, we do exist...), those buttons are genuinely useful. I use my mouse as little as possible, and having a button to right-click is part of that (as are all the other keys you mentioned - try not using your mouse in Windows for a bit and see what I mean). I agree with you on the Windows logo buttons, though - I've never found them to be worth the space. And BTW, there are 2 buttons for left-click: Enter to run (double-click), and Space to put focus on the selected icon (single-click).