...And, said the organisation, one blogger who contacted the Shanghai police to register was told there was no point in registering as independent blogs would not be granted permission to continue.
The Shanghai police may believe this, or they might be just trying to avoid the burden of accepting registrations. Even if it is true, if every person who lives in China tries to register his web site, the authorities will be so overwhelmed with paperwork that they won't be able to tell which registrations are for real.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
We do both Coke and Pepsi in both the upstairs and downstairs machines, even though one machine is supposed to contain only Coke and the other only Pepsi.
In a small office like ours, I am the facilities department. Similarly, the Human Resources department is one person, who also serves as secretary for the Finance Director and Welfare Officer. The Water Department is a single clerk, who does all the billing and hand-holding of customers who's water supply fails. (We contract out installation, repairs and meter reading to a regional company that has been doing these things for 100 years.) One person does Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Payroll. Working in a small office can be very broadening!
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
(neither OpenVMS nor Tandem/HP-Nonstop systems crash; at least, I have never seen it happen, and I've worked on such systems that have uptimes of decades), though admittedly both are rather proprietary and dated.
As a former DEC software engineer I feel obligated to come to the defense of OpenVMS. Keep in mind that any system with an uptime in decades is necessarily going to be dated.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
IT/Programmer is very common today. you change printer toner, install a new PC and add a feature to that Billing application, or squash a bug in the shipping application.
I am seeing this today in the small New Hampshire town where I work. There are two of us in the Computer Services department, so we can cover for vacations, etc. We
Change printer toner (and ink), and order more when the stock runs short.
Add features to the financial (and other) applications.
Fix bugs in these same applications.
Help users when they entered wrong data or performed the wrong procedure and don't know how to fix it.
Install PCs. The first thing I do to a new PC is wipe its hard disk. If I can't install its software from the provided disks, I call the manufacturer and get the missing data replaced. When the PC works, the disks and my notes go into a folder so I can rebuild it later if its hard disk fails or gets trashed.
Help users with complex applications. For example, when the Town Engineer has trouble with AutoCAD, I look over his shoulder and we go through the procedure together, with him doing the typing.
Keep the communications links working, either by fixing local links or by calling vendors when long-distance links fail.
Troubleshoot the voicemail system built into our little PBX. Usually when it hangs the only solution is to reboot it.
Send public data to people who request it.
Keep the soda machines filled, and order more soda when we get short.
It is an interesting job.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
The origin of computer-based word processing goes back further than vi. I used TVEDIT in the mid-1960s to write a paper for my anthropology class at Stanford. TVEDIT ran on a PDP-1, though printing was done by sending the data to an IBM 7090 which wrote it to tape for an IBM 1401. This was my first experience with word processing and networking.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
2) Their 'feedback' loops, once you sign up, forwards to you the email that one of their users reported as SPAM. (never mind this is an opt-in w/ confirmation list). AOL strips the 'To' address so you do not know who to contact. It makes the feedback look useless for a mailing list.
Could you deal with this by placing a unique ID in each e-mail you send, perhaps as a header? If AOL returns the headers intact you could translate the SPAM report into an Unsubscribe request.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
I am in the perhaps unusual position of having the confidence of my management. If something new comes in the door, I will try to get it to work within our data processing environment. If I cannot, I say that it is defective, and, so far at least, nobody has second-guessed me.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
...Some programs literally won't work right without for example administrator rights on Windows. In the corporate environment, at least the Windows corporate environment, there are too many programs that need administrator privileges. Without Administrator rights, Citrix Client will open, try to initiate a session, fail and then close without error.
In my shop, administrative rights are strictly limited, and so I see this effect also. There is some Kodak camera-handling software that complains if you run it without administrative rights (though it seems to work just fine) and a weather display application that fails like Citrix Client unless it is run as an administrator. I am sure there are other examples.
My answer to this class of problems is to declare the software not working, and suggest that the user ask the vendor for a version that will run without administrator privileges. I have yet to see a software vendor respond positively to this request, but in the long run I think it is the only solution. I am not willing to give my users administrator privileges so they can run some poorly-written application!
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
I can second that. I have been using popfile for months, and it is currently doing an excellent job of putting my spam in a separate folder from my other correspondence.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
quality means conforming to specifications
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QA != Testing
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
I would expect the head of process quality at Ford to know that quality means that the product does what it is supposed to do; that is, it conforms to specifications. In addition, I would expect the head of process quality at Ford to know that the World Wide Web is not limited to Microsoft software, but in fact has a set of specifications of its own. Whenever I write or update a web site, I run each page through the W3C markup validation service. I recommend that site to your (and his) attention; it is a good starting point for learning how to write good HTML, and thus quality web sites.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Re:Capability Maturity Model
on
QA != Testing
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
I mentioned it in another post, but my dad has a good web site that deals with quality issues (IE only, unfortunately). And, if you're looking to improve the quality of your software, his current contract is going to expire soon.
With all due respect to your father (my son is also in the computer field), it is hard to take someone's claim to be a product quality expert seriously when his resume is posted to the Web in Microsoft Word format, and his web site only works with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Pick a well-known distribution, such as Red Hat or SuSE/Novell, and make all of its bundled packages available. Be sure the students can edit and rebuild the kernel; that is a great draw for future open source coders. John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
It's hard to tell, but I suspect that Microsoft's license is not compatible with the GPL. Consider the following question and answer:
Q. Can I distribute a licensed program under an open source software license?
A. Yes. There are many open source licenses available in the developer community. One useful place to review the various licenses that have been approved by the open source community is at Open Source Initiative.
The terms and conditions of these licenses differ in material respects. We believe you can distribute your program under many open source software licenses so long as you include the notices described in the licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. On the other hand, some open source licenses may include specific constraints or restrictions that might preclude development under the Office 2003 XML Reference Schema licenses. You should check with your legal counsel if you have questions about a particular open source software license.
Does anybody have any insight on whether or not I could include Microsoft's XML schemas into an existing program which is licensed to me under the GPL, and redistribute the result under the GPL?
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
...if there is a big red button that says stop engines and the pilot mistakenly presses that and the plane crashes that is a crash caused by the pilot, intentionally or not.
The proximate cause is the pilot pushing the button, but that isn't enough analysis. We need to ask why the pilot pushed the button. Did he feel a need to stop the engines? If so, why? Might there have been a false indication that the engines were on fire? Or, did he push the button because it was right next to a button he intended to push? Should there be another button that restarts the engines in case the big red button is pushed accidently?
To put this in the context of project management, the project manager needs to have accurate, trustworthy information about the condition of the project and the consequences of whatever changes he might make in the project's procedures. In addition, he needs a way to tell his management that he is no longer able to bring the project in on time and under budget.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
...how do you compare this in an automated fashion in real-time like they claim to be able to do?
The important word is "claim." I can avoid all false positives by simply never reporting any copyright infringers. Who knows, maybe these guys are running the same scam that I am proposing. More likely, they will err on the side of caution and only report copyright infringement when the distributed file exactly matches the copy they got from the studio. After all, anything else is a derived work, and would require intelligence to decide if it is infringing.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
I am not a lawyer, but I believe the word you are looking for is "maintaining an attractive nuisance." The standard example is putting a very visible stack of gold bricks in an open field, with a fence around it labeled "no trespassing." I then prosecute everyone who jumps the fence in the hope of snagging a gold brick.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
That won't work with this (At least not according to TFA). It looks like their servers make the content (at least partially) available online for people to search for and download...
That's not how I read the article. I suspect they have a private copy of the copyrighted file which they do not offer for download, but simply compare against the file offered for distribution.
I would be happy to offer such a service in competition with them, for a lower price, if the studios would all send me their most popular copyrighted works for comparison. I make no guarantees as to how many copyright violators I will discover.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.net)
Every project, whether it's a development project, implementation or business process engineering, that has failed for us has been because of poor project management. Period.
Blaming the project manager is a cop-out. It's like saying a plane crashed because of "pilot error." Yes, probably the pilot made an error, but he certainly didn't intend to crash the plane (terrorists excepted). To understand the problem well enough to fix it, you need to go deeper. What is there about the system that caused the project manager to make poor decisions?
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
...I can't remove IE, some services they need to use (other colleges in the area) have web pages that only work in IE.
This is your real problem. Instead of asking Symantec et al to improve their spyware detectors, ask those other colleges to improve their web pages. You might even offer to help. Of course, you should first make sure that all of your web pages are standards-conforming.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
...novel, useful, and can be reproducibly implemented based on the patent application.
It seems to me that a patent involving computer software should have to disclose the source code for the software, in order to be valid. Without such disclosure the patent cannot be "practiced" once it expires.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
The SCO Group has such a poor reputation for telling the truth that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that both sales claims are pure fabrication.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
It is unrealistic to think that the librarian will have a list of allowed books per student.
Why is that unrealistic? I would think that the data processing capabiliites of a good school library would extend to having information about each student, such as what books were currently checked out. That information could be extended to include a list of what books the student's parents permit the student to check out.
The hard part, of course, is to get the parents to come to the library and have a conversation with the librarian about what books, or class of books, their child should be permitted to read. The motivated parents will come; for the unmotivated parents, have the default be that all books are accessible.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Slashdot Mirror
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
In a small office like ours, I am the facilities department. Similarly, the Human Resources department is one person, who also serves as secretary for the Finance Director and Welfare Officer. The Water Department is a single clerk, who does all the billing and hand-holding of customers who's water supply fails. (We contract out installation, repairs and meter reading to a regional company that has been doing these things for 100 years.) One person does Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Payroll. Working in a small office can be very broadening!
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
It is an interesting job.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
The origin of computer-based word processing goes back further than vi. I used TVEDIT in the mid-1960s to write a paper for my anthropology class at Stanford. TVEDIT ran on a PDP-1, though printing was done by sending the data to an IBM 7090 which wrote it to tape for an IBM 1401. This was my first experience with word processing and networking.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
I am in the perhaps unusual position of having the confidence of my management. If something new comes in the door, I will try to get it to work within our data processing environment. If I cannot, I say that it is defective, and, so far at least, nobody has second-guessed me.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
In my shop, administrative rights are strictly limited, and so I see this effect also. There is some Kodak camera-handling software that complains if you run it without administrative rights (though it seems to work just fine) and a weather display application that fails like Citrix Client unless it is run as an administrator. I am sure there are other examples.
My answer to this class of problems is to declare the software not working, and suggest that the user ask the vendor for a version that will run without administrator privileges. I have yet to see a software vendor respond positively to this request, but in the long run I think it is the only solution. I am not willing to give my users administrator privileges so they can run some poorly-written application!
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
I can second that. I have been using popfile for months, and it is currently doing an excellent job of putting my spam in a separate folder from my other correspondence.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
I would expect the head of process quality at Ford to know that quality means that the product does what it is supposed to do; that is, it conforms to specifications. In addition, I would expect the head of process quality at Ford to know that the World Wide Web is not limited to Microsoft software, but in fact has a set of specifications of its own. Whenever I write or update a web site, I run each page through the W3C markup validation service. I recommend that site to your (and his) attention; it is a good starting point for learning how to write good HTML, and thus quality web sites.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Pick a well-known distribution, such as Red Hat or SuSE/Novell, and make all of its bundled packages available. Be sure the students can edit and rebuild the kernel; that is a great draw for future open source coders.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Note that this story is also being covered by Groklaw, with some good commentary by Pamela Jones.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
It's hard to tell, but I suspect that Microsoft's license is not compatible with the GPL. Consider the following question and answer:
Does anybody have any insight on whether or not I could include Microsoft's XML schemas into an existing program which is licensed to me under the GPL, and redistribute the result under the GPL?
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
The proximate cause is the pilot pushing the button, but that isn't enough analysis. We need to ask why the pilot pushed the button. Did he feel a need to stop the engines? If so, why? Might there have been a false indication that the engines were on fire? Or, did he push the button because it was right next to a button he intended to push? Should there be another button that restarts the engines in case the big red button is pushed accidently?
To put this in the context of project management, the project manager needs to have accurate, trustworthy information about the condition of the project and the consequences of whatever changes he might make in the project's procedures. In addition, he needs a way to tell his management that he is no longer able to bring the project in on time and under budget.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
I would be happy to offer such a service in competition with them, for a lower price, if the studios would all send me their most popular copyrighted works for comparison. I make no guarantees as to how many copyright violators I will discover.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.net)
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
The SCO Group has such a poor reputation for telling the truth that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that both sales claims are pure fabrication.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
The hard part, of course, is to get the parents to come to the library and have a conversation with the librarian about what books, or class of books, their child should be permitted to read. The motivated parents will come; for the unmotivated parents, have the default be that all books are accessible.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)