Quoth Homer:
"You can see everything from here! There's Big Ben, there's Picadilly Circus, and there's Jimmy Page, the greatest thief of American Black Music who ever lived!"
I modded my car very easily
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I put some speed holes in the hood. They make the car go faster.
I'd hate to think any of my packets being exported to those guys who wouldn't even help us rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction! I think in protest, we should hereby refer to all the USA DNS root servers as "Freedom Hosts" (cue Lee Greenwood music...now).
I'm lazy. And I hate washing dishes. So what do I do with my dishes? I let them soak. You can replace a lot of scrubbing if you just let the dishes sit overnight in water.
I also like to let my brain do the same things with problems. You can sweat and fret over some technical or even personal problem, and hack out a solution that seems like it's the best you have (and yet seems inadequate), or you just let it soak for a day or two or even a week. You never force it completely out of your mind, and occasionally bring it back to mull actively, but not too much more than just running your hands over the surface of it. One of those times, you feel a flash of inspiration, or a depth of understanding that wasn't there before, and that's when you close in for the kill. Your mind gets it.
Anyway, that's the best I can do to use words to describe the proess I use to think and act creatively. I have found that my mind works in similar ways with regard to learning new things, such as juggling or a foreign language. I might practice my juggling for a week, and not see much progress, then take a week or two off. When I pick back up, lo, I've made a significant improvement.
If a new vulnerability were to surface, and MS refuses to provide an update for the millions of Win98 users, and this causes a lot of trouble for them, it just looks bad for MS. Fair or not, given the way they are portrayed, saying, "hey, we told you, we aren't supporting that anymore" isn't going to stick. It's going to be another case of how Microsoft is responsible for another security problem.
That reminds me of the little windows app that made the e-mail rounds a few years back. It was a dialog box that asked "Are you gay?" with a Yes and No. If you tried to move the mouse over the No button, the box moved away from the pointer.
Another thing that it reminds me of is an news investigation into supermarkets scanning incorrect prices at the checkout. It turns out that almost all mis-scans are in the store's favor (i.e., scans a higher price than the actual item).
I think my point is that with the machines, how do you know you completed the transaction? There's no receipt or verification. Maybe I pressed vote, but it didn't register. Maybe there's a bug in the code that says:
if vote != Republican rollback else commit
And how do you know the system isn't rigged or at least tilted a little? Your post, while correct, assumes that nothing ever goes wrong. See Common Sense vs. H. Chad, 2000. Things always go wrong. These systems have no way to deal with that.
Tell me who did real-time time shifting of TV shows (including watching the beginning of a show while the end of that same show is still recording) prior to TiVo
Networks have used a five-second delay for live broadcasts to be able to bleep swearing for years. That's time-shifting. Does it make it suddenly patentable because someone used that idea in a home PVR?
I have noticed this with more than a few sites. They apparently check the referrer, and if it's slashdot, then you get their "we're slashdotted" page. But if you paste the url into the browser so you don't have the referrer link, you see the page properly. I think a lot of sites have realized that they need to defend against the hordes who will only look at their site once because it is on slashdot while keeping it accessible to other visitors.
Try pasting the url http://www.tomsnetworking.com/index.php into your browser and you'll see the site just fine.
No, not of Microsoft's hammerlock on the market. No, not of Office's massive sway over the corporate desktop. Not even of the market-share of IIS on business web servers.
I'm talking about the inauguration of the new troll here on slashdot:
Closed-source: it's about money
Open-source: it's about ego
Companies are often concerned about the long-term market viability of software they purchase. If the company won't be around in a few years, or the software may be abandoned, it is seen as a risk.
In the case of proprietary software, the question boils down to money: will this software be profitable enough that the publisher will continue to develop and support it?
In the case of open-source, the assessment is similar, but the motive is different: do the developers of this software seem committed to its long-term health? It may appear harder to answer that one, because you don't have numbers that management can put in an excel spreadsheet to prove it. Not that those numbers, when applied to predicting the future proprietary software, would be much better, but they give the illusion of hard facts.
Either way (open or closed-source), the risk is the same: will this software suddenly be abandoned, or changed in a way that makes it unsuitable? It's just a question of what the chances are of that happening, and the scenario that would cause it.
It sounds like he is facing situations where there are too many administrators for the size of the project. It is very much a matter of balance. If I am developing a system for a 5-workstation small business, I can be network admin, DBA, help desk, developer, and even trainer. It probably would be unnecessarily complex to bring in separate people for each task (though consulting firms love to load up lots of extra people on projects).
However, there's a real need for administrators, and increasingly so, as the systems get bigger. I'm the lead DBA for a app development staff of 25. Do I get off on holding the keys to the databases? No, but we ran for a long time with developers as sa. The bottom line was that there were a lot more problems than there are now that I locked the dbs down. I also realize that that puts a greater burden on me to not be a bottleneck in the development process.
That said, the problem is not in the fact that you have administrators, it's that you sometimes forget what your role is. Developers forget this all the time, that they are supposed to be responsive to users. Administrators forget that they are supposed to be responsive to users. Customer service forgets that they are supposed to be responsive to customers. I have to occasionally step back and remind myself of the fact that I am there to support the developers. But to think that this is only something administrators are prone to is to try to single them out as being exceptionally sinister. It's just human nature, and we all have our way of sometimes screwing the people we are supposed to be helping. Contact your local congressman for more details.
Every day, I spend time configuring the system and developing policies that give the developers the greatest freedom possible while maintaining stability. And in general, the developers appreciate the effort. Why? Because each one knows that, while he is sometimes hindered by my policies, he benefits greatly by everyone else following them. And therein lies the whine of the selfish developer. He wants everyone else to follow the rules to make his life easier, but he doesn't want to follow them himself.
Is the actual overdose rate for people who self-medicate vs. those who get the same drugs from a doctor. You get a big bottle of pills either way, and nothing stops you from taking too many, regardless of whether you had a prescription. Also, how many of the addicts got that way under doctors' orders? It's easy to blame drug web sites for the problem, but take note that they are marketing to people who already are on Vicodin or whatever.
Perhaps the government should be looking at why it is that we have so many painkiller-addicted people in the first place. We have a $ystem that encourages doctors to pump people full of pills, rather than take more time-intensive solutions such as actually developing a long-term plan to treat the underlying sources of pain and illness.
Incidentally, if Rush Limbaugh knew what he was doing, he could have used these sites instead of having his housekeeper run his drugs.
Here's the list of 50
on
Effective XML
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Syntax:
Include an XML Declaration
Mark Up with ASCII if Possible
Stay with XML 1.0
Use Standard Entity References
Comment DTDs Liberally
Name Elements with Camel Case
Parameterize DTDs
Modularize DTDs
Distinguish Text from Markup
White Space Matters
Structure:
Make Structure Explicit through Markup
Store Metadata in Attributes
Remember Mixed Content
Allow All XML Syntax
Build on Top of Structures, Not Syntax
Prefer URLs to Unparsed Entities and Notations
Use Processing Instructions for Process-Specific Content
Include All Information in the Instance Document
Encode Binary Data Using Quoted Printable and/or Base64
Use Namespaces for Modularity and Extensibility
Rely on Namespace URIs, Not Prefixes
Don't Use Namespace Prefixes in Element Content and Attribute Values
Reuse XHTML for Generic Narrative Content
Choose the Right Schema Language for the Job
Pretend There's No Such Thing as the PSVI
Version Documents, Schemas, and Stylesheets
Mark Up According to Meaning
Semantics:
Use Only What You Need
Always Use a Parser
Layer Functionality
Program to Standard APIs
Choose SAX for Computer Efficiency
Choose DOM for Standards Support
Read the Complete DTD
Navigate with XPath
Serialize XML with XML
Validate Inside Your Program with Schemas
Implementation:
Write in Unicode
Parameterize XSLT Stylesheets
Avoid Vendor Lock-In
Hang On to Your Relational Database
Document Namespaces with RDDL
Preprocess XSLT on the Server Side
Serve XML+CSS to the Client
Pick the Correct MIME Media Type
Tidy Up Your HTML
Catalog Common Resources
Verify Documents with XML Digital Signatures
Hide Confidential Data with XML Encryption
Compress if Space Is a Problem
I understand that it is vogue in many minority "clickish" groups to engage in vitriolic hyperbole in regards to our President. Those that have underestimated our President's intelligence or will have found themselves on the losing side of not only elections but of history. There are many complaints that can be brought up about our President such as his love of big government programs but it is rare to ever hear valid ones from his foes, much to their electoral peril. President Bush main strength is that he is constantly underestimated and overly mocked.
Funny, substitute "President Clinton" in there, and I think it reads the same...
True, but I think that video games could become something that people would watch, if it was done in a game show format. You have to play up the personalities a bit. If you made it something like Survivor and hyped the drama between the players, it might generate some interest, though I doubt that it would be more than a fad in the mainstream.
Q: Stripped of all the jargon and market-speak, can you succinctly define what Adaptive Enterprise is supposed to be about? A: I define AE as a business strategy for customers who want to respond in real time to changes affecting their business.
So what is it? It's a business strategy for customers who want to respond in real time to their businesses. The secret is when you link the business processes together to your IT gear, then you can automatically roll those changes through and respond.
Do you feel the message is unclear or needs rethinking? I disagree that it was unclear. Adaptive Enterprise defines an entity where a company will be able to dynamically readjust to changes that affect its business
Is outsourcing part of AE? Our strategy is to let you become a company that responds in real time to these changes; the secret is linking together the business processes to the resources.
What's required? You have to have the inherent capability to respond quickly to any change that affects your business.
Slashdot Mirror
How prone to damage due to physical shock are the iPod and Zen? I have never heard of anyone breaking an iPod by jogging with it.
Quoth Homer:
"You can see everything from here! There's Big Ben, there's Picadilly Circus, and there's Jimmy Page, the greatest thief of American Black Music who ever lived!"
I put some speed holes in the hood. They make the car go faster.
I'd hate to think any of my packets being exported to those guys who wouldn't even help us rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction! I think in protest, we should hereby refer to all the USA DNS root servers as "Freedom Hosts" (cue Lee Greenwood music...now).
I also like to let my brain do the same things with problems. You can sweat and fret over some technical or even personal problem, and hack out a solution that seems like it's the best you have (and yet seems inadequate), or you just let it soak for a day or two or even a week. You never force it completely out of your mind, and occasionally bring it back to mull actively, but not too much more than just running your hands over the surface of it. One of those times, you feel a flash of inspiration, or a depth of understanding that wasn't there before, and that's when you close in for the kill. Your mind gets it.
Anyway, that's the best I can do to use words to describe the proess I use to think and act creatively. I have found that my mind works in similar ways with regard to learning new things, such as juggling or a foreign language. I might practice my juggling for a week, and not see much progress, then take a week or two off. When I pick back up, lo, I've made a significant improvement.
...it's time for a slashdotting
If a new vulnerability were to surface, and MS refuses to provide an update for the millions of Win98 users, and this causes a lot of trouble for them, it just looks bad for MS. Fair or not, given the way they are portrayed, saying, "hey, we told you, we aren't supporting that anymore" isn't going to stick. It's going to be another case of how Microsoft is responsible for another security problem.
...that SCO cut them a great deal on Linux desktop licenses, and IBM just couldn't refuse!
Another thing that it reminds me of is an news investigation into supermarkets scanning incorrect prices at the checkout. It turns out that almost all mis-scans are in the store's favor (i.e., scans a higher price than the actual item).
I think my point is that with the machines, how do you know you completed the transaction? There's no receipt or verification. Maybe I pressed vote, but it didn't register. Maybe there's a bug in the code that says:
if vote != Republican rollback else commit
And how do you know the system isn't rigged or at least tilted a little? Your post, while correct, assumes that nothing ever goes wrong. See Common Sense vs. H. Chad, 2000. Things always go wrong. These systems have no way to deal with that.
Networks have used a five-second delay for live broadcasts to be able to bleep swearing for years. That's time-shifting. Does it make it suddenly patentable because someone used that idea in a home PVR?
Try pasting the url http://www.tomsnetworking.com/index.php into your browser and you'll see the site just fine.
...why AOL users have such small penises and breasts.
Never mind.
Sadly, they won't even get it right when the dupe is posted...
Unfortunately, that's also Apple's pricing strategy.
I'm talking about the inauguration of the new troll here on slashdot:
Win* is dying!
The way I've heard it said is, "never argue with a fool, because a passerby cannot tell the difference."
...I'm a Democrat
Open-source: it's about ego
Companies are often concerned about the long-term market viability of software they purchase. If the company won't be around in a few years, or the software may be abandoned, it is seen as a risk.
In the case of proprietary software, the question boils down to money: will this software be profitable enough that the publisher will continue to develop and support it?
In the case of open-source, the assessment is similar, but the motive is different: do the developers of this software seem committed to its long-term health? It may appear harder to answer that one, because you don't have numbers that management can put in an excel spreadsheet to prove it. Not that those numbers, when applied to predicting the future proprietary software, would be much better, but they give the illusion of hard facts.
Either way (open or closed-source), the risk is the same: will this software suddenly be abandoned, or changed in a way that makes it unsuitable? It's just a question of what the chances are of that happening, and the scenario that would cause it.
However, there's a real need for administrators, and increasingly so, as the systems get bigger. I'm the lead DBA for a app development staff of 25. Do I get off on holding the keys to the databases? No, but we ran for a long time with developers as sa. The bottom line was that there were a lot more problems than there are now that I locked the dbs down. I also realize that that puts a greater burden on me to not be a bottleneck in the development process.
That said, the problem is not in the fact that you have administrators, it's that you sometimes forget what your role is. Developers forget this all the time, that they are supposed to be responsive to users. Administrators forget that they are supposed to be responsive to users. Customer service forgets that they are supposed to be responsive to customers. I have to occasionally step back and remind myself of the fact that I am there to support the developers. But to think that this is only something administrators are prone to is to try to single them out as being exceptionally sinister. It's just human nature, and we all have our way of sometimes screwing the people we are supposed to be helping. Contact your local congressman for more details.
Every day, I spend time configuring the system and developing policies that give the developers the greatest freedom possible while maintaining stability. And in general, the developers appreciate the effort. Why? Because each one knows that, while he is sometimes hindered by my policies, he benefits greatly by everyone else following them. And therein lies the whine of the selfish developer. He wants everyone else to follow the rules to make his life easier, but he doesn't want to follow them himself.
Perhaps the government should be looking at why it is that we have so many painkiller-addicted people in the first place. We have a $ystem that encourages doctors to pump people full of pills, rather than take more time-intensive solutions such as actually developing a long-term plan to treat the underlying sources of pain and illness.
Incidentally, if Rush Limbaugh knew what he was doing, he could have used these sites instead of having his housekeeper run his drugs.
Include an XML Declaration
Mark Up with ASCII if Possible
Stay with XML 1.0
Use Standard Entity References
Comment DTDs Liberally
Name Elements with Camel Case
Parameterize DTDs
Modularize DTDs
Distinguish Text from Markup
White Space Matters
Structure:
Make Structure Explicit through Markup
Store Metadata in Attributes
Remember Mixed Content
Allow All XML Syntax
Build on Top of Structures, Not Syntax
Prefer URLs to Unparsed Entities and Notations
Use Processing Instructions for Process-Specific Content
Include All Information in the Instance Document
Encode Binary Data Using Quoted Printable and/or Base64
Use Namespaces for Modularity and Extensibility
Rely on Namespace URIs, Not Prefixes
Don't Use Namespace Prefixes in Element Content and Attribute Values
Reuse XHTML for Generic Narrative Content
Choose the Right Schema Language for the Job
Pretend There's No Such Thing as the PSVI
Version Documents, Schemas, and Stylesheets
Mark Up According to Meaning
Semantics:
Use Only What You Need
Always Use a Parser
Layer Functionality
Program to Standard APIs
Choose SAX for Computer Efficiency
Choose DOM for Standards Support
Read the Complete DTD
Navigate with XPath
Serialize XML with XML
Validate Inside Your Program with Schemas
Implementation:
Write in Unicode
Parameterize XSLT Stylesheets
Avoid Vendor Lock-In
Hang On to Your Relational Database
Document Namespaces with RDDL
Preprocess XSLT on the Server Side
Serve XML+CSS to the Client
Pick the Correct MIME Media Type
Tidy Up Your HTML
Catalog Common Resources
Verify Documents with XML Digital Signatures
Hide Confidential Data with XML Encryption
Compress if Space Is a Problem
Funny, substitute "President Clinton" in there, and I think it reads the same...
True, but I think that video games could become something that people would watch, if it was done in a game show format. You have to play up the personalities a bit. If you made it something like Survivor and hyped the drama between the players, it might generate some interest, though I doubt that it would be more than a fad in the mainstream.
I know parrots who could explain things better.
Q: Stripped of all the jargon and market-speak, can you succinctly define what Adaptive Enterprise is supposed to be about?
A: I define AE as a business strategy for customers who want to respond in real time to changes affecting their business.
So what is it?
It's a business strategy for customers who want to respond in real time to their businesses. The secret is when you link the business processes together to your IT gear, then you can automatically roll those changes through and respond.
Do you feel the message is unclear or needs rethinking?
I disagree that it was unclear. Adaptive Enterprise defines an entity where a company will be able to dynamically readjust to changes that affect its business
Is outsourcing part of AE?
Our strategy is to let you become a company that responds in real time to these changes; the secret is linking together the business processes to the resources.
What's required?
You have to have the inherent capability to respond quickly to any change that affects your business.