Seriously, Amazon screwed up in a fairly major way with this.
What more upsetting is this: If Amazon doesn't have working disaster recovery, what do other websites/companies have?
Answer: Nothing. You'd be surprised how may US small-to-medium sized business are one fire/tornado/earthquake/hurricane away from bankruptcy. I'd bet it's over 80% of them.
Because creating a *complete* font that looks good is a lot of work. Basically, every character has to be hand-tweaked to look good at different point sizes. It's tedious work, and not many people know how to do it.
So, fonts are expensive because it's VERY hard to make good ones. And there isn't much of a market for them (relatively speaking), so the price never drops.
"...while it is easy for an outsider to say "Just upgrade it to a newer application", replicating all the business logic and surrounding process would be costly and disruptive."
So what? I have ZERO sympathy for business that don't want to keep up with technology. Yes, it's a pain in the ass. Yes, it's expensive. But that's THE GAME. You either keep up, or you live to regret it. EVERYONE knows this. Keeping *completely* obsolete systems running is just asking for trouble.
An updated Workplace Shell would be great
on
Is OS/2 Coming Back?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Gnome and KDE are fine, but if IBM really wanted to, they could make them both obsolete pretty quickly with an update WPS interface. Plus, let's face it, at this stage in the "Linux on the desktop" battle, Linux *needs* an official, fully-funded commercial desktop environment. The Gnome vs. KDE battle is retarded, and both DEs are starting to get kind of nutty. IBM could restore sanity.
I'm all for it, personally. But I also think it's obvious that this is just a rumor.
Uh, the console makers DO know that they are selling software, not hardware. The whole POINT of making a console (from a money-making perspective) is the software licensing fees charged to 3rd party software publishers/developers. Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo get a few dollars of EVERY game made/sold for their system.
That's why consoles will never die. The money to be made is too good, if you can get your console into a few million homes.
Helping someone try and fix their computer is an exercise in futility, even if you are getting paid for it. Are you getting paid? And if not, why not? And if so, why are you trying to do this over the phone?
Tell the person that they need to pay you to fix their computer (even if they need to ship it to you). Anything else is a waste of your time.
The Lynch version, as a movie, isn't that great. Though it's definitely worth watching once.
But the LOOK of it is fucking awesome. It's absolutely perfect. It's going to be hard to beat, purely from a design standpoint. Lynch's vision of decaying/dirty semi-clockwork technology and culture was absolutely spot-on. "Dune" is dirty and creepy and weird (no pun intended). It has to be.
You're right, but IT still needs to cover their own asses. That's where the "control freak" attitude stems from.
IT knows what kinds of things are going to cause problems, and they want to prevent them. If management doesn't want to do those things, that's fine, but management then needs to sign off on it. They need to KNOW that IT is not going to take responsibility when the shit hits the fan. Of course, that doesn't mean they won't blame IT, and likely fire some of the IT team. Someone has to take the fall, and it sure isn't going to be management.
The real problem is that at most companies, the "higher-ups" don't really care if the company is sued into oblivion. They're still going to be rich, and they'll just start another company or get an equally high-paying job somewhere else. Management fails upward. It's everyone else that is out of a job.
These new boxer shorts have a special coating that makes them immune to "treadmarks". They come in a variety of fashionable colors. Another great feature is that they slowly dissolve your balls, which gives a "roomier" fit.
Why don't these programmers just QUIT? I can't imagine that those guys would have a problem getting essentially ANY programming job they wanted. "Member of Grand Theft Auto programming team" looks pretty good on a resume.
They should quit and get into creating applications instead of games. Yeah, it's not nearly as sexy, but the pressure is MUCH lower. And the pay is probably better, too.
I understand what you are saying, and even agree for the most part, but:
Technology changes constantly. One of the important jobs of the IT department, and one that tends to annoy the people that pay the bills, is to keep the IT infrastructure from becoming so obsolete that it becomes unmaintainable.
Trust me, the IT department doesn't like upgrading stuff any more than you do. But you HAVE to keep things modernized. Would the company rather save $40k now, or have to spend $150k in 10 years to have all of their discontinued/unsupported/proprietary software and data migrated to new products? Not everything needs to be upgraded all the time, but there is a lot to be said for staying no more than 2 versions behind on anything.
That's the biggest issue in IT, I think. Keeping yourself from getting trapped by old equipment/software. It's a treadmill, yeah, but you are either running or falling off.
That's it, basically. For IT people, finding information is *easy*. Why would I go to your conference, when everything you have to say is available for free from some website (and I *guarantee* it is).
I have yet to attend a conference that told me anything I didn't already know. The whole idea of a "conference" is pretty flawed. I want a *class*, with highly-qualified instructors that can answer my questions. I also want the class to only be attended by people that know why they are attending. Too many of the classes I've taken are filled with people that simply aren't ready for the class, and all the instructor's time is wasted answering their very basic questions.
What I'm saying is, you're doing it wrong. Nobody cares about a conference except as an excuse to take a day off and drink and meet women. If you aren't even offering THAT, then why are you bothering with it?
Driving a car in a videogame and driving a car in real life are very different, but the actual *racing* part is pretty similar. Controlling the car is important, but it's not what wins races. Racing is all about knowing the lines and racing techniques, and a video game can definitely teach you that.
They almost remind me of Commodore, during the Amiga days. They have this really cool technology, but it doesn't work as well as you want it to and has some glaring deficiencies, and their marketing department is absolutely clueless.
First of all, the idea that science-fiction is about predicting advances in technology is retarded.
Secondly, at this stage in human's technological development, we kind of know what the next step is, and that step is artificial intelligence. And the step after that is unknowable. Vernor Vinge has lots to say about this.
Practically speaking, the public has only become aware of the Android-based phones with the introduction of the Motorola Droid phone. And haven't they only been advertising that for a month or so?
Android has only *barely* entered the market. Nobody has the phones, so nobody can buy apps.
Well, there is a theory of spacetime that everything that has or will or is happening exists simultaneously. So time paradoxes are impossible.
So, we may have discovered the Higgs boson, and then "nature" undid the discovery afterwards, by stopping it from being discovered in the first place. We'd never "know" that the Higgs boson had been discovered, but it WAS discovered. We just don't have access to that event in spacetime.
Seriously. It's overly complex, and doesn't really make anything easier for the vast majority of users. It's a nice IDEA, but in practice, it just gets in the way. It's one of those things that big companies buy and use thinking that it will solve their communication problems, when in fact all it does is create different and worse problems.
You didn't give us enough info, but it sounds like you want to aggregate multiple connections from *multiple ISPs*. Which isn't really possible. Not like you want. You can achieve *failover*, but not aggregation.
Basically, you need to read a fucking book on how routing works.
Seriously. How in the WORLD was a keylogger installed on a bank machine?
This isn't rocket science. Securing Windows workstations is a problem that has been solved. Where are the IDS/IPS systems? Why are the users allowed to install ANYTHING? Why aren't they filtering the download of *any* executables from non-trusted sources?
The problem isn't Windows, the problem is the VAST majority of businesses that are running Windows aren't concerned about security. At least, not enough to pay for it (as in, paying competent admins and paying for the hardware/software necessary to secure the network).
In fact, in my experience, your average banks have some of the most insecure, cobbled-together, waiting-to-be-hacked systems around.
The problem with the truly advanced technologies that science-fiction stories like to use is that their REAL effects on the world would be so transformative, that the characters in the story would be so different us that the reader wouldn't be able to relate to them at all.
An "accurate" Star Trek story would have people lying in bed all day, being fed through a tube, while they lived out their fantasies in the holodeck. Robotic mining ships would troll the galaxy for dilithium to power everything. Gee, that's interesting.
Seriously. This is the kind of thing that, if allowed to continue, will lead to an enormous civil war. Pervasive law enforcement, with cash rewards? Are they fucking INSANE?
I *hope* that they don't let this happen, or if they do, the public outcry is enough to make them end it.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, Amazon screwed up in a fairly major way with this.
What more upsetting is this: If Amazon doesn't have working disaster recovery, what do other websites/companies have?
Answer: Nothing. You'd be surprised how may US small-to-medium sized business are one fire/tornado/earthquake/hurricane away from bankruptcy. I'd bet it's over 80% of them.
What is their deal? Their motto seems to be "The consumer is always a criminal". It's weird.
Because creating a *complete* font that looks good is a lot of work. Basically, every character has to be hand-tweaked to look good at different point sizes. It's tedious work, and not many people know how to do it.
So, fonts are expensive because it's VERY hard to make good ones. And there isn't much of a market for them (relatively speaking), so the price never drops.
"...while it is easy for an outsider to say "Just upgrade it to a newer application", replicating all the business logic and surrounding process would be costly and disruptive."
So what? I have ZERO sympathy for business that don't want to keep up with technology. Yes, it's a pain in the ass. Yes, it's expensive. But that's THE GAME. You either keep up, or you live to regret it. EVERYONE knows this. Keeping *completely* obsolete systems running is just asking for trouble.
Gnome and KDE are fine, but if IBM really wanted to, they could make them both obsolete pretty quickly with an update WPS interface. Plus, let's face it, at this stage in the "Linux on the desktop" battle, Linux *needs* an official, fully-funded commercial desktop environment. The Gnome vs. KDE battle is retarded, and both DEs are starting to get kind of nutty. IBM could restore sanity.
I'm all for it, personally. But I also think it's obvious that this is just a rumor.
Uh, the console makers DO know that they are selling software, not hardware. The whole POINT of making a console (from a money-making perspective) is the software licensing fees charged to 3rd party software publishers/developers. Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo get a few dollars of EVERY game made/sold for their system.
That's why consoles will never die. The money to be made is too good, if you can get your console into a few million homes.
His daddy died in a wreck about a month ago, and now he guesses that cell phone belongs to him and his mom.
Helping someone try and fix their computer is an exercise in futility, even if you are getting paid for it. Are you getting paid? And if not, why not? And if so, why are you trying to do this over the phone?
Tell the person that they need to pay you to fix their computer (even if they need to ship it to you). Anything else is a waste of your time.
The Lynch version, as a movie, isn't that great. Though it's definitely worth watching once.
But the LOOK of it is fucking awesome. It's absolutely perfect. It's going to be hard to beat, purely from a design standpoint. Lynch's vision of decaying/dirty semi-clockwork technology and culture was absolutely spot-on. "Dune" is dirty and creepy and weird (no pun intended). It has to be.
You're right, but IT still needs to cover their own asses. That's where the "control freak" attitude stems from.
IT knows what kinds of things are going to cause problems, and they want to prevent them. If management doesn't want to do those things, that's fine, but management then needs to sign off on it. They need to KNOW that IT is not going to take responsibility when the shit hits the fan. Of course, that doesn't mean they won't blame IT, and likely fire some of the IT team. Someone has to take the fall, and it sure isn't going to be management.
The real problem is that at most companies, the "higher-ups" don't really care if the company is sued into oblivion. They're still going to be rich, and they'll just start another company or get an equally high-paying job somewhere else. Management fails upward. It's everyone else that is out of a job.
These new boxer shorts have a special coating that makes them immune to "treadmarks". They come in a variety of fashionable colors. Another great feature is that they slowly dissolve your balls, which gives a "roomier" fit.
Why don't these programmers just QUIT? I can't imagine that those guys would have a problem getting essentially ANY programming job they wanted. "Member of Grand Theft Auto programming team" looks pretty good on a resume.
They should quit and get into creating applications instead of games. Yeah, it's not nearly as sexy, but the pressure is MUCH lower. And the pay is probably better, too.
I understand what you are saying, and even agree for the most part, but:
Technology changes constantly. One of the important jobs of the IT department, and one that tends to annoy the people that pay the bills, is to keep the IT infrastructure from becoming so obsolete that it becomes unmaintainable.
Trust me, the IT department doesn't like upgrading stuff any more than you do. But you HAVE to keep things modernized. Would the company rather save $40k now, or have to spend $150k in 10 years to have all of their discontinued/unsupported/proprietary software and data migrated to new products? Not everything needs to be upgraded all the time, but there is a lot to be said for staying no more than 2 versions behind on anything.
That's the biggest issue in IT, I think. Keeping yourself from getting trapped by old equipment/software. It's a treadmill, yeah, but you are either running or falling off.
And that, folks, is why so many open-source projects never get finished, or improved.
He *should* just start working on WINE. Just because he can do whatever he wants, doesn't meant that his choices are good.
That's it, basically. For IT people, finding information is *easy*. Why would I go to your conference, when everything you have to say is available for free from some website (and I *guarantee* it is).
I have yet to attend a conference that told me anything I didn't already know. The whole idea of a "conference" is pretty flawed. I want a *class*, with highly-qualified instructors that can answer my questions. I also want the class to only be attended by people that know why they are attending. Too many of the classes I've taken are filled with people that simply aren't ready for the class, and all the instructor's time is wasted answering their very basic questions.
What I'm saying is, you're doing it wrong. Nobody cares about a conference except as an excuse to take a day off and drink and meet women. If you aren't even offering THAT, then why are you bothering with it?
Driving a car in a videogame and driving a car in real life are very different, but the actual *racing* part is pretty similar. Controlling the car is important, but it's not what wins races. Racing is all about knowing the lines and racing techniques, and a video game can definitely teach you that.
You know, the KDE guys just don't get it.
They almost remind me of Commodore, during the Amiga days. They have this really cool technology, but it doesn't work as well as you want it to and has some glaring deficiencies, and their marketing department is absolutely clueless.
First of all, the idea that science-fiction is about predicting advances in technology is retarded.
Secondly, at this stage in human's technological development, we kind of know what the next step is, and that step is artificial intelligence. And the step after that is unknowable. Vernor Vinge has lots to say about this.
Practically speaking, the public has only become aware of the Android-based phones with the introduction of the Motorola Droid phone. And haven't they only been advertising that for a month or so?
Android has only *barely* entered the market. Nobody has the phones, so nobody can buy apps.
Well, there is a theory of spacetime that everything that has or will or is happening exists simultaneously. So time paradoxes are impossible.
So, we may have discovered the Higgs boson, and then "nature" undid the discovery afterwards, by stopping it from being discovered in the first place. We'd never "know" that the Higgs boson had been discovered, but it WAS discovered. We just don't have access to that event in spacetime.
Yeah, it's nutty. But the physics all work out.
Seriously. It's overly complex, and doesn't really make anything easier for the vast majority of users. It's a nice IDEA, but in practice, it just gets in the way. It's one of those things that big companies buy and use thinking that it will solve their communication problems, when in fact all it does is create different and worse problems.
You didn't give us enough info, but it sounds like you want to aggregate multiple connections from *multiple ISPs*. Which isn't really possible. Not like you want. You can achieve *failover*, but not aggregation.
Basically, you need to read a fucking book on how routing works.
Seriously. How in the WORLD was a keylogger installed on a bank machine?
This isn't rocket science. Securing Windows workstations is a problem that has been solved. Where are the IDS/IPS systems? Why are the users allowed to install ANYTHING? Why aren't they filtering the download of *any* executables from non-trusted sources?
The problem isn't Windows, the problem is the VAST majority of businesses that are running Windows aren't concerned about security. At least, not enough to pay for it (as in, paying competent admins and paying for the hardware/software necessary to secure the network).
In fact, in my experience, your average banks have some of the most insecure, cobbled-together, waiting-to-be-hacked systems around.
The problem with the truly advanced technologies that science-fiction stories like to use is that their REAL effects on the world would be so transformative, that the characters in the story would be so different us that the reader wouldn't be able to relate to them at all.
An "accurate" Star Trek story would have people lying in bed all day, being fed through a tube, while they lived out their fantasies in the holodeck. Robotic mining ships would troll the galaxy for dilithium to power everything. Gee, that's interesting.
Seriously. This is the kind of thing that, if allowed to continue, will lead to an enormous civil war. Pervasive law enforcement, with cash rewards? Are they fucking INSANE?
I *hope* that they don't let this happen, or if they do, the public outcry is enough to make them end it.