Well spoken. I feel the same way about things you said for already a couple of years.
As an IT person one should know his tools, but he should also gather domain knowledge outside IT. I have done IT in a company which made trains, in a transport company and for a bank.
IT'ers should learn that things do not stop at AT.
Furthermore (and as said in a previous post), most people do consider IT a cost. An IT'er who knows his tools and the domain of the people for which he works can really turn a computer infrastructure into an asset. For that, he should learn to communicate with the people who do the real work and help them to their work better
I am setting up a two way, 64-bit server system to test several things and to create a cost comparison between Linux and MS.
I know what I want on the hardware side, it should cost me about $()2000. From this point onwards, we could to the following, this is a draft I am working on, and which should be expanded.
The only thing I am still missing is a relatively cheap broadband connection, which I can use to demonstrate things on remote systems, bootable by a Knoppix CD-ROM.
Here are my thoughts.
Project : Linux 64-bit server
Purpose of the project
A 64-bit, AMD Opteron based server will be built as a fairly performant system for usage in a small to medium business or workgroup environment. Several tasks will be handed to the server:
- Database server, using 64 bit optimised postgreSQL - Intranet server, using 64 bit optimised Apache and PHP, if possible - File server, using 64 bit optimised Samba, if possible - Application server, using 64 bit optimised XFree86 and OpenOffice.org
The project consists of several tasks, which in the end should result in a cost comparison between a Linux and a Windows system which should be able to deliver the same processing power.
The first task is looking for benchmarks to measure the system parameters: - CPU utilisation - Memory utilisation - Mass storage speed under load - Network utilisation under load - CPU load - Response time when more processes are added
The main purpose of these measurements is to extrapolate the number of users that can be supported by this one system, doing several different tasks or using the system for more or less the same task.
The second part is to extrapolate based upon these numbers of users, the corresponding cost of equivalent Microsoft software, being based upon purchasing cost of operating systems, CAL's and application software. In addition to this, the cost of anti-virus software should be taken into account for MS based systems. After that the maintenance of the system comes in the cost factor. This maintenance is separated into several parts: - Patching the system against security problems (scheduled downtime) - Upgrading software based on a three or four year life cycle (scheduled downtime) - Unscheduled downtimes : software and/or hardware failures : what do these cost ?
This is not easy. This needs the discipline of someone who is accustomed to filling in a log book. This means that a log book is necessary, preferably a paper one, or one on another system,, which is very strictly backed up and for which there are off-site backups.
Another factor is deciding when the system is end of life. The system must be purchased, but the life cycle of it mandates the yearly costs. The longer the lifecycle, the lower the costs.
At the other side of the cost spectrum is the question, what income factors does the system bring ? In what way does the system amplify the productivity of the people who use it ? This is inherently bound to the business process. What value someone is in the organisation can only be answered by looking at what losses/gains the company would make if that certain person is not there in the organisation.
Another way to look at this, is to compute the factor real work/overhead for someone. However, this is not really fair on a person by person basis, because some people are in the organisation to do overhead jobs, for someone who does the real work. Thus, in this case the whole group should be taken into account.
Still another way to look at the gains of automating an office, is to look at what it would cost to do the same task using mechanical means (paper, pencil, typewriter, internal/external mail, paper archival, retrieval and processing).
There are tasks which can be enhanced by generic software, and there are tasks that must be done according to strict business rules, which means that someone must spent time and resources to build this software. Once it is up and running, however, further usage is almost free. However, some time maintaining the software must be taken into account.
At least one person who thinks the same thing as I. Do they really have a department which scans the web (uses Google ?) for the names of their employees to see what they might publish personally ?
Pirates vs. buccaneers and corsairs
on
Pirate Hunter
·
· Score: 1
Could it be that the word pirate has undergone some devaluation through the machinations of these people. Everybody speaks of pirates, but to be a pirate you had to get a an official letter from one of the seafaring nations in that time, England, France or Holland. Pirates were a weapon in the many conflicts in the Carribean between those nations.
Buccaneers and corsairs, on the other hand, were the people who fled from society.
I think that, in a sense, Kidd was a pirate, but not in the sense that these days people describe pirates as the boarding, murdering and looting lawless man of the sea.
Jurgen
I too work in organisation which is adopting CMM. We are on level three and count for about 80 people. I have had some training about CMM, and it seems that though there is a strong tendency for every level to manage things more, through procedures, measurement and checks, I do not really notice an increase in the usage of project management tools. That seems to be only necessary for the software project leaders, of which there are three. Teamleaders seem to make do with Excel. Management of problem reports and change requests is done through Continuus, a versioning and change management system.
The goal of CMM is to improve the quality of the software and be able to better predict the scheduling and budgeting of the software. This could then be used by project managers and project leaders to better manage their projects, but that is not necessary. In all of the courses I had about CMM, project management was never mentioned.
Domain knowledge is important, but for a programmer/analyst it is much more important to be able to communicate.
When you work as a programmer on a project, you will learn the necessary things about the domain you work in. This will go much quicker if you can communicate with a competent domain expert.
got to get to market first, even if it's pure crap!
This is common practice in large companies. It is called "window of opprotunity", and is used to grab more marketshare.
The trouble is that sometimes this can cost money due to immaturity of products. Our Software Quality manager gave us an example of BMW, which introduced a new model. When you normally buy a car, then some $200 of the purchase price has something to do with field call rate. Anyway, with that new model, BMW grabbed market share, but due to the immaturity of the product, FCR cost soared to $1000 dollar.
It is probably Pavlov doing his work. The point and click behaviour of people has become that they just automatically click when they see an attachment, just like the dog started to salivate when it heard the bell ringing.
Yep, like in Cobol. I think that's the main reason that financial institutions keep a whole lot of Cobol code and associated hardware around. The closest language that I have found up to now to handle such numbers is Oracle pl/SQL. Ada does have the possibility to specify the precision of a number, but I am not sure that it reverts to BCD based library to do arithmetic with those.
Any one who knows other language with the same capabilities in Cobol ?
Btw., about Intel Coprocessors again, you can use BCD numbers, but they are translated back and forth between 80-bit FP representation.
I have a certain pessimistic feeling (or hope ?) that somehow, somewhere a new like French revolution will break out, in which all coroporate leaders will be beheaded or shot, irrelevant if they where good or bad.
I have done several jobs with and without programming. I have done (somewhat chronologically) :
computer installations
programming with Clipper
programming with FoxPro
programming with C
tested trains electrically and functionally for Bombardier
been unemployed
followed a course in automation (hydr., pneu., PLC)
automated a 400 ton alu press through PLC
learnt and programmed COBOL for 4.5 years
been in software configuration management
My experience teaches me this about myself and programming : I like to program and I am good at programming (people value my work). However, the environment in which you work also plays a role.
I can start programming and solve many things in a very decent time, on my own, but then after some time (months, not weeks) my imagination runs dry. Then it is time to start to work with other people, be it programmers or customers. This interaction keeps my mind refreshed. If I must program a long time alone, then my productivity lowers. This can feel like burnout.
Take carre however in finding a new job. It could be that after a few months of not programming, your mind has taken a rest and then starts craving for the keyboard again.
I found that my interest in computers got sparked by the first electronic games, around 1975, but it was not before 1984 that I was able to buy my first computer (ZX Spectrum 48k).
Hmm, if all e-mail is monitored then maybe terrorists and villains will go back to snail mail, contacts in dark corners, exchanging of notes through papers, and so on...
The current problem in U.S. and European legislations about these things is that these people do not seem to understand that setting up a conspiration does not need any high-tech or computer related technology. This means that once these measures are in effect, conspirators (?) can use all of the above techniques, which means that old tried-and-true police work will be necessary.
That is one of the reasons that the 11 September attack had success : American legislature thinks that for their safety, they should channel money from police forces to the army.
I like to reply on this, being Belgian myself, that most of these exported beers are made by only two or three large breweries. The real small beers aren't exported, we drink them up ourselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Well spoken. I feel the same way about things you said for already a couple of years.
As an IT person one should know his tools, but he should also gather domain knowledge outside IT. I have done IT in a company which made trains, in a transport company and for a bank.
IT'ers should learn that things do not stop at AT.
Furthermore (and as said in a previous post), most people do consider IT a cost. An IT'er who knows his tools and the domain of the people for which he works can really turn a computer infrastructure into an asset. For that, he should learn to communicate with the people who do the real work and help them to their work better
I am setting up a two way, 64-bit server system to test several things and to create a cost comparison between Linux and MS.
:
:
:
I know what I want on the hardware side, it should cost me about $()2000. From this point onwards, we could to the following, this is a draft I am working on, and which should be expanded.
The only thing I am still missing is a relatively cheap broadband connection, which I can use to demonstrate things on remote systems, bootable by a Knoppix CD-ROM.
Here are my thoughts.
Project : Linux 64-bit server
Purpose of the project
A 64-bit, AMD Opteron based server will be built as a fairly performant system for usage in a small to medium business or workgroup environment. Several tasks will be handed to the server
- Database server, using 64 bit optimised postgreSQL
- Intranet server, using 64 bit optimised Apache and PHP, if possible
- File server, using 64 bit optimised Samba, if possible
- Application server, using 64 bit optimised XFree86 and OpenOffice.org
The project consists of several tasks, which in the end should result in a cost comparison between a Linux and a Windows system which should be able to deliver the same processing power.
The first task is looking for benchmarks to measure the system parameters
- CPU utilisation
- Memory utilisation
- Mass storage speed under load
- Network utilisation under load
- CPU load
- Response time when more processes are added
The main purpose of these measurements is to extrapolate the number of users that can be supported by this one system, doing several different tasks or using the system for more or less the same task.
The second part is to extrapolate based upon these numbers of users, the corresponding cost of equivalent Microsoft software, being based upon purchasing cost of operating systems, CAL's and application software. In addition to this, the cost of anti-virus software should be taken into account for MS based systems.
After that the maintenance of the system comes in the cost factor. This maintenance is separated into several parts
- Patching the system against security problems (scheduled downtime)
- Upgrading software based on a three or four year life cycle (scheduled downtime)
- Unscheduled downtimes : software and/or hardware failures : what do these cost ?
This is not easy. This needs the discipline of someone who is accustomed to filling in a log book. This means that a log book is necessary, preferably a paper one, or one on another system,, which is very strictly backed up and for which there are off-site backups.
Another factor is deciding when the system is end of life. The system must be purchased, but the life cycle of it mandates the yearly costs. The longer the lifecycle, the lower the costs.
At the other side of the cost spectrum is the question, what income factors does the system bring ? In what way does the system amplify the productivity of the people who use it ? This is inherently bound to the business process. What value someone is in the organisation can only be answered by looking at what losses/gains the company would make if that certain person is not there in the organisation.
Another way to look at this, is to compute the factor real work/overhead for someone. However, this is not really fair on a person by person basis, because some people are in the organisation to do overhead jobs, for someone who does the real work. Thus, in this case the whole group should be taken into account.
Still another way to look at the gains of automating an office, is to look at what it would cost to do the same task using mechanical means (paper, pencil, typewriter, internal/external mail, paper archival, retrieval and processing).
There are tasks which can be enhanced by generic software, and there are tasks that must be done according to strict business rules, which means that someone must spent time and resources to build this software. Once it is up and running, however, further usage is almost free. However, some time maintaining the software must be taken into account.
At least one person who thinks the same thing as I. Do they really have a department which scans the web (uses Google ?) for the names of their employees to see what they might publish personally ?
Could it be that the word pirate has undergone some devaluation through the machinations of these people. Everybody speaks of pirates, but to be a pirate you had to get a an official letter from one of the seafaring nations in that time, England, France or Holland. Pirates were a weapon in the many conflicts in the Carribean between those nations. Buccaneers and corsairs, on the other hand, were the people who fled from society. I think that, in a sense, Kidd was a pirate, but not in the sense that these days people describe pirates as the boarding, murdering and looting lawless man of the sea. Jurgen
I too work in organisation which is adopting CMM. We are on level three and count for about 80 people. I have had some training about CMM, and it seems that though there is a strong tendency for every level to manage things more, through procedures, measurement and checks, I do not really notice an increase in the usage of project management tools. That seems to be only necessary for the software project leaders, of which there are three. Teamleaders seem to make do with Excel. Management of problem reports and change requests is done through Continuus, a versioning and change management system.
The goal of CMM is to improve the quality of the software and be able to better predict the scheduling and budgeting of the software. This could then be used by project managers and project leaders to better manage their projects, but that is not necessary. In all of the courses I had about CMM, project management was never mentioned.
Jurgen
I'd like to see a job description that calls for someone to talk programming to the geeks and talk business and process to the client.
It's usually called the analyst.
Domain knowledge is important, but for a programmer/analyst it is much more important to be able to communicate.
When you work as a programmer on a project, you will learn the necessary things about the domain you work in. This will go much quicker if you can communicate with a competent domain expert.
got to get to market first, even if it's pure crap!
This is common practice in large companies. It is called "window of opprotunity", and is used to grab more marketshare.
The trouble is that sometimes this can cost money due to immaturity of products. Our Software Quality manager gave us an example of BMW, which introduced a new model. When you normally buy a car, then some $200 of the purchase price has something to do with field call rate. Anyway, with that new model, BMW grabbed market share, but due to the immaturity of the product, FCR cost soared to $1000 dollar.
In the Civilization games corruption causes waste...
I think you are confusing Civilisation with Master of Magic here...
Sachertorte und Bier
There is also Debian/BSD
It is probably Pavlov doing his work. The point and click behaviour of people has become that they just automatically click when they see an attachment, just like the dog started to salivate when it heard the bell ringing.
+5 Funny
Yep, like in Cobol. I think that's the main reason that financial institutions keep a whole lot of Cobol code and associated hardware around. The closest language that I have found up to now to handle such numbers is Oracle pl/SQL. Ada does have the possibility to specify the precision of a number, but I am not sure that it reverts to BCD based library to do arithmetic with those.
Any one who knows other language with the same capabilities in Cobol ?
Btw., about Intel Coprocessors again, you can use BCD numbers, but they are translated back and forth between 80-bit FP representation.
FWIW, but the Intel Numeric Coprocessors have always done their math in 80-bit floats since their introduction, what was it about 20 years ago ?
Wind River has more embedded customers...
I thought that this fact had more to with a series of acquisitions in the past than with providing a good product.
I have a certain pessimistic feeling (or hope ?) that somehow, somewhere a new like French revolution will break out, in which all coroporate leaders will be beheaded or shot, irrelevant if they where good or bad.
floppyfw is also still alive...
I have done several jobs with and without programming. I have done (somewhat chronologically) :
My experience teaches me this about myself and programming : I like to program and I am good at programming (people value my work). However, the environment in which you work also plays a role.
I can start programming and solve many things in a very decent time, on my own, but then after some time (months, not weeks) my imagination runs dry. Then it is time to start to work with other people, be it programmers or customers. This interaction keeps my mind refreshed. If I must program a long time alone, then my productivity lowers. This can feel like burnout. Take carre however in finding a new job. It could be that after a few months of not programming, your mind has taken a rest and then starts craving for the keyboard again.
Jurgen
I found that my interest in computers got sparked by the first electronic games, around 1975, but it was not before 1984 that I was able to buy my first computer (ZX Spectrum 48k).
if it ain't broke, don't fix it
Yes, that is probably the reason that MS wants you to upgrade every few years.
To run a democracy well, the first job to do is make sure that the educational system works well.
Isn't there already enough noise to signal by spam ?
Hmm, if all e-mail is monitored then maybe terrorists and villains will go back to snail mail, contacts in dark corners, exchanging of notes through papers, and so on...
The current problem in U.S. and European legislations about these things is that these people do not seem to understand that setting up a conspiration does not need any high-tech or computer related technology. This means that once these measures are in effect, conspirators (?) can use all of the above techniques, which means that old tried-and-true police work will be necessary.
That is one of the reasons that the 11 September attack had success : American legislature thinks that for their safety, they should channel money from police forces to the army.
I like to reply on this, being Belgian myself, that most of these exported beers are made by only two or three large breweries. The real small beers aren't exported, we drink them up ourselves.
Jurgen