If you're bringing in a complete new computer system then you're simply asking for trouble if one night you switch the old one off and switch the new one on. New systems (especially ones this large and important) should be bedded in, run alongside and mirroring the old system (but not taking over from it) in the live enviroment while bugs are shaken down and other types of problems solved. You NEVER EVER put it live without running in parallel first. EVER! If the companies or port authority who brought this system in have done this (and it doesn't say in the article but this seems to be the implication) then heads should roll as this is basic IT practice.
"how the fuck did they manage to rack up $250 MILLION"
Simple - trying to get websphere and java to run at a reasonable rate. Obviously they still failed. A friend on mine has had the misfortune to work with websphere and according to him its the slowest , worst piece of bloatware ever to grace a computer. It even makes windows apps look lithe and athletic.
How can you colonise unless you've explored the place first? You can't just fire some space colonists at mars and say: "Good luck chaps , hope the weathers nice and the soil isn't poisoness!". You have to send expeditionary forces first. If you want an analogy , medieval european colonists didnt just head off lock stock & barrel over the atlantic without knowing what was there on the off chance there might be some nice farmland waitinf - many many expeditions were launched first. Same thing with space - you can't just send some robots to take a few snaps and root around in the dirt for 5 mins then give the thumns up - you need people to *be* there.
Ooooh , you're a pilot too! Wow , you really are Mr Amazing. Any other facts you want to casually drop in? Perhaps you're training to be an astronaut in your spare time?
I don't give a shit who you are or what you do. My original point if your lonely braincell could have figured it out (god help your passengers if this is your level of intellect) is that O2 partial pressure is NOT the whole story since if it was people couldn't live full time at these altitudes. Now go off to your plane airborn bus driver , and leave the thinking to the rest of us.
Well done , you can use Google and you're probably even a Real Hero (tm) as you've been in real altitude chamber and drooled. Have a dog biscuit. However , its not just "extremely fit" people who "survive" at 15000 feet, entire families *live* at that altitude. Yes , that means little children. So while you can probably impress you mates by waffling on about your near death experience for 2 minutes in a chamber , theres some 3 year old scurrying about right now in similar conditions.
Nice theory. Except it doesn't explain how people manage to lives for days , even weeks above that altitude. Ever heard of sherpas? Sure , they have more red blood cells but if O2 partial pressure is all that mattered they'd die just as fast as the rest of us would. And don't forget , people have *climbed* - never mind just sat still - up to the top of everest at 29000 feet with no breathing equipment whatsoever.
So what chance does a 3D game have of looking even remotely decent on something a few inches square? OMG! WATCH OUT FOR THE.... errr... 4 pixel squidge coming at you... no wait... thats a coffee spot...
What are the odds that mobile phone manufacturers will bother with JIT systems for 101 different CPU types out there that the phones use? Pretty slim I reckon. So it'll be a standard interpreter type JVM with the accompanying slowdown.
Simple - unless you buy an expensive SLR digital cameras are rubbish for capturing quick fleeting moments. Also I prefer storing negatives as backups rather than computer files and the future hassle of having to transfer them between ever changing formats. As for paying , well I've yet to find a way to go from digital to print without having to A) pay at a kiosk or B) buy my own printer and pay $$$ for ink. Unless you know better.
I'm sure the enemy would happily stop shooting and bombing for 2 hours while the OP charges his camera batteries from a conveniently located powerpoint on the front.
So whats stopping you getting the fim camera out of its glass case then? I use digital AND film , and I'm not going to stop using the latter just because the fashion police and self interested corperation marketing depts declare it outmoded.
"I got a Blackberry two weeks ago, so I could stay in touch with work and such while my wife was in the hospital undergoing surgery "
Is there a good reason you can't just use a phone? If my wife was seriously ill I'd rather like to talk to her if I can't be there in person , not send some impersonal email.
Emacs is one of the worst examples of code bloat I've ever seen. Who the hell decided that having an LISP interpreter inside of a text editor was a good idea? (And you ivory tower academic types just can put a sock on it , its NOT a good idea. If you want LISP use a proper interpreter). If I had asked someone to write a piece of code to carry out a specific action and he added a load of unnecessary functionality and other rubbish into it simply for the intellectual satisfaction and kudos then he wouldn't be in my team for very long.
What the cellphone companies never mention (and hackets don't seem to have picked up on) is that if you want to jam a cellphone network just switch on a high power wideband UHF transmitter on the same frquency band (easily built by someone with reasonable RF electronics ability) It shouldn't even need to be modulated but you could always play metallica on it just to be sure the phones can't pick up any data.
Unfortunately a lot of these researchers seem to think that just because something can survive in hostile conditions it could have evolved in similar conditions elsewhere. As far as we can tell life on earth evolved in failry benign conditions (warm seas, plenty of mineral nutrients etc) and then moved out to the less hospitable places later. If the whole earth had been dry volcanic craters with little or no water what do you reckon the odds on lfe ever evolving would be? Right, probably next to nothing. So just because something could *possibly* survive on Mars that sur as hell doesn't mean anything even as complex as a bacterium could ever evolve there.
"an extraordinarily bright future in which technological progress has leapt by such exponentially large bounds that it will be... well, for lack of a better word: 'utopian'"
Yeah sure , and Porcine Airlines will be launching the very same day. What people like him forget is that no amount of technology or wealth can change basic human nature. No doubt he thinks that someone pampered with everything they could ever want and don't have to work would be completely content and live in a blissful state for their entire lives. Yeah , that would be why poor little rich saudi boy Osama Bin Laden had 3000 people killed on 9/11. Imagining that pure wealth and a comfortable lifestyle is all any human being wants is naive in the extreme.
"But technology will continue to make it more likely."
No it won't. The fact which most head-in-the-clouds techno pundits forget is that no amount of technology (aside from some sort of genetic fiddling) can change basic human nature. These pundits always make the simply assumptions , ie:
poverty = crime
more technology = less poverty
Nice idea, but total bullshit. Despite levels of technology which to someone from even 200 years ago would seem like magic, we still have people starving in large parts of the world and even in the west we have people living on the streets, violence, wars and so forth.
"And if we have to sacrifice a little usability on the way there, then so be it."
Nice dream , meanwhile in the real world both users and most coders (if they dare to admit it) will NOT sacrfice usability or ease of coding for security measures that (in their minds) are nothing to do with their application. Unless that is they're forced to either by company policy or restrictions in the OS. If there are restrictions in the OS then IT tech leads might start to ask "well, I can do this in OS A , why won't OS B let me do it? I'll use OS A". Not an ideal situation but when all that matters is delivery times and saving $$$ then its what will happen. Security , as ever , will come a poor second.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're bringing in a complete new computer system then you're
simply asking for trouble if one night you switch the old one
off and switch the new one on. New systems (especially ones this
large and important) should be bedded in, run alongside and
mirroring the old system (but not taking over from it) in the
live enviroment while bugs are shaken down and other types
of problems solved. You NEVER EVER put it live without running
in parallel first. EVER! If the companies or port authority who
brought this system in have done this (and it doesn't say in
the article but this seems to be the implication) then heads
should roll as this is basic IT practice.
"how the fuck did they manage to rack up $250 MILLION"
Simple - trying to get websphere and java to run at a reasonable
rate. Obviously they still failed. A friend on mine has had the
misfortune to work with websphere and according to him its the
slowest , worst piece of bloatware ever to grace a computer. It even makes windows apps look lithe and athletic.
He won't even divert funds from trident to the rest of the cash starved *military*. What chance science?
How can you colonise unless you've explored the place first?
You can't just fire some space colonists at mars and say:
"Good luck chaps , hope the weathers nice and the soil isn't
poisoness!". You have to send expeditionary forces first.
If you want an analogy , medieval european colonists didnt
just head off lock stock & barrel over the atlantic without
knowing what was there on the off chance there might
be some nice farmland waitinf - many many expeditions were
launched first. Same thing with space - you can't just send
some robots to take a few snaps and root around in the dirt
for 5 mins then give the thumns up - you need people to *be*
there.
Ooooh , you're a pilot too! Wow , you really are Mr Amazing. Any other
facts you want to casually drop in? Perhaps you're training to be an
astronaut in your spare time?
I don't give a shit who you are or what you do. My original point if your
lonely braincell could have figured it out (god help your passengers if this
is your level of intellect) is that O2 partial pressure is NOT the whole
story since if it was people couldn't live full time at these altitudes.
Now go off to your plane airborn bus driver , and leave the thinking to the
rest of us.
Well done , you can use Google and you're probably even a Real Hero (tm) as
you've been in real altitude chamber and drooled. Have a dog biscuit.
However , its not just "extremely fit" people who "survive" at 15000 feet,
entire families *live* at that altitude. Yes , that means little children.
So while you can probably impress you mates by waffling on about your near
death experience for 2 minutes in a chamber , theres some 3 year old scurrying
about right now in similar conditions.
Errr , sorry , you're going to have to explain that punchline. Don't get it.
"everal seconds per step breathing like we were running a marathon. Very exhilarating :)"
And what do you do for normal recreation, visit Madam Whiplash and get
her to beat you for an hour?
Nice theory. Except it doesn't explain how people manage to lives for
days , even weeks above that altitude. Ever heard of sherpas? Sure , they
have more red blood cells but if O2 partial pressure is all that mattered
they'd die just as fast as the rest of us would. And don't forget , people
have *climbed* - never mind just sat still - up to the top of everest
at 29000 feet with no breathing equipment whatsoever.
It means it'll resists anything except a bunch of bored teenage
scratch-taggers armed with screwdrivers at 3am on a sunday morning.
Is that true or just hearsay?
So what chance does a 3D game have of looking even remotely decent on .... errr... 4 ... no wait ... thats a coffee spot ...
something a few inches square? OMG! WATCH OUT FOR THE
pixel squidge coming at you
What are the odds that mobile phone manufacturers will bother
with JIT systems for 101 different CPU types out there that the
phones use? Pretty slim I reckon. So it'll be a standard
interpreter type JVM with the accompanying slowdown.
Simple - unless you buy an expensive SLR digital cameras are rubbish
for capturing quick fleeting moments. Also I prefer storing negatives
as backups rather than computer files and the future hassle of having
to transfer them between ever changing formats. As for paying , well
I've yet to find a way to go from digital to print without having to
A) pay at a kiosk or B) buy my own printer and pay $$$ for ink. Unless
you know better.
Unless your digital camera's broken. In which case you can't turn
around anything.
I'm sure the enemy would happily stop shooting and bombing for 2 hours
while the OP charges his camera batteries from a conveniently located
powerpoint on the front.
Idiot.
So whats stopping you getting the fim camera out of its glass case then?
I use digital AND film , and I'm not going to stop using the latter
just because the fashion police and self interested corperation marketing
depts declare it outmoded.
"I got a Blackberry two weeks ago, so I could stay in touch with work and such while my wife was in the hospital undergoing surgery "
Is there a good reason you can't just use a phone? If my wife was
seriously ill I'd rather like to talk to her if I can't be there in
person , not send some impersonal email.
Emacs is one of the worst examples of code bloat I've ever
seen. Who the hell decided that having an LISP interpreter
inside of a text editor was a good idea? (And you ivory
tower academic types just can put a sock on it , its NOT a
good idea. If you want LISP use a proper interpreter). If
I had asked someone to write a piece of code to carry out
a specific action and he added a load of unnecessary functionality and other rubbish into it simply for the
intellectual satisfaction and kudos then he wouldn't be
in my team for very long.
What the cellphone companies never mention (and hackets don't
seem to have picked up on) is that if you want to jam a
cellphone network just switch on a high power wideband
UHF transmitter on the same frquency band (easily built by someone
with reasonable RF electronics ability) It shouldn't even
need to be modulated but you could always play metallica on it
just to be sure the phones can't pick up any data.
Unfortunately a lot of these researchers seem to think that
just because something can survive in hostile conditions it
could have evolved in similar conditions elsewhere. As far as
we can tell life on earth evolved in failry benign conditions
(warm seas, plenty of mineral nutrients etc) and then moved
out to the less hospitable places later. If the whole earth
had been dry volcanic craters with little or no water what do
you reckon the odds on lfe ever evolving would be? Right, probably
next to nothing. So just because something could *possibly*
survive on Mars that sur as hell doesn't mean anything even as
complex as a bacterium could ever evolve there.
"So we are not going to see BBC outside UK any time soon."
So what do you think BBC World is then?
"an extraordinarily bright future in which technological progress has leapt by such exponentially large bounds that it will be... well, for lack of a better word: 'utopian'"
Yeah sure , and Porcine Airlines will be launching the very same day.
What people like him forget is that no amount of technology or wealth can
change basic human nature. No doubt he thinks that someone pampered with
everything they could ever want and don't have to work would be completely
content and live in a blissful state for their entire lives. Yeah , that would
be why poor little rich saudi boy Osama Bin Laden had 3000 people killed on 9/11. Imagining that pure wealth and a comfortable lifestyle is all any
human being wants is naive in the extreme.
"But technology will continue to make it more likely."
No it won't. The fact which most head-in-the-clouds techno
pundits forget is that no amount of technology (aside from
some sort of genetic fiddling) can change basic human nature.
These pundits always make the simply assumptions , ie:
poverty = crime
more technology = less poverty
Nice idea, but total bullshit. Despite levels of technology
which to someone from even 200 years ago would seem like magic,
we still have people starving in large parts of the world and
even in the west we have people living on the streets, violence,
wars and so forth.
Technology doesn't change humanity , humanity changes technology.
"And if we have to sacrifice a little usability on the way there, then so be it."
Nice dream , meanwhile in the real world both users and most coders
(if they dare to admit it) will NOT sacrfice usability or ease of
coding for security measures that (in their minds) are nothing to
do with their application. Unless that is they're forced to either
by company policy or restrictions in the OS. If there are restrictions
in the OS then IT tech leads might start to ask "well, I can do this in
OS A , why won't OS B let me do it? I'll use OS A". Not an ideal situation
but when all that matters is delivery times and saving $$$ then its what
will happen. Security , as ever , will come a poor second.