This whole exercise reminds me of an experience of trying to do telephone support for a guy setting up the control system for one of the signs on Times Square in NYC. I spent about 3 hours troubleshooting over the phone, and the system finally came up about 5 seconds before the "big boss" who paid for the sign showed up to take a look at what all his money purchased.
I've also taken calls from freeways and sports arenas during the middle of a game (when cell phone coverage drops to nothing due to everybody at the event having a cell phone and overloading the local towers).
Yeah, I can relate as I've done all that and more.
Kudos to you sir, for going above and beyond. But that's kinda the opposite of what I was suggesting. You were *providing* admin assistance, and in the case I was proposing, you are trying to get the ill-trained offshore admin to provide the admin assistance that you are not contractually allowed to do yourself.
That being said, successfully providing assistance remotely over a bad cell phone connection having no access yourself and working with someone with access and no training, is the mark of a Real Administrator.
Seeing the actions being taken? That's cheating. Their only feedback should be the person on the phone describing what they see on the screen.
Oooh. Good one. I insist they share their screen so I can watch them work, but that's even better.
What I was trying to simulate was the condition where you see him start to do something really disastrous (examples: "drop all tables;" "rm *.tmp" instead of "rm *.tmp" and you say "don't execute that command" and get the answer "yes I am being executing that command" and you grab the keyboard to wrest control, which could get you fired in some companies. (Because you're not supposed to do anything as root, ever again, because the contract says so.)
Walk an offshore admin who speaks maybe 500 words of english and has had only hours of training, through creating a Windows Server 2008 VM and configuring an ASP application under IIS. For extra credit, repeat using SUSE and JSP/Tomcat. Simulate an accurate communications channel by having the person playing the offshore admin stand outside by the freeway using an analog cell phone, doing the work on a 1990's era laptop balanced on an ironing board connected to the net by an old Telebit modem that drops often.
Arrange so the student can see the actions being taken, but has no control over the process. The student fails the test if he touches the keyboard.
If the student decides to forego a career in IT and takes up bartending instead, he's passed the test.
> Or maybe, just maybe, the dirty little secret MSFT doesn't want you to know is really the fact that Windows 8.1 is just Windows 8 with a switch flipped that will let you go to the desktop
In fact, weren't there reports that such a switch actually existed in the Win8 preview, but vanished in GA?
Dogfooding is only effective for independent developers if the internals actually use the independent applications in question. I suspect this is unlikely. Rather, dogfooding almost always means internal testing of system features and official company applications. Independent application testing is often an accidental byproduct. (Having managed an IT department in such a company.)
I should add, I understand why Microsoft wants to sell hardware -- it's closer to the business plan of their competitors. But I'm not sure they'd survive the transition, or have the guts to make a clean break.
Say I am John Q. Private. Can you give me a scenario where I might care that someone has this information?
I really can't think of anything bad that could happen to me if that information fell into the wrong hands. Or at least, nothing worse or more likely than many things that could already be done to me by someone with far less information.
Millions of restraining orders issued in the US every year. Not everyone has the luxury of not having to worry about who all might be out to get them. 1.5-2k women murdered per year in US by their SOs. You obviously have no idea what it is like to have to constantly watch over your shoulder. I hope you never do.
Maybe he should be, and just doesn't realize it yet.
John Q. Private is currently at mile marker 23 on highway 2, proceeding at 65 mph in an easterly direction, with 100 miles of range remaining.
Say I am John Q. Private. Can you give me a scenario where I might care that someone has this information?
I really can't think of anything bad that could happen to me if that information fell into the wrong hands. Or at least, nothing worse or more likely than many things that could already be done to me by someone with far less information.
My car physically suddenly misbehaving, even if limited to peripheral systems -- that I can easily imagine causing a distraction and subsequently an accident.
Twenty miles due east of John Q. Public's current location, cellular services cease. Police response time to that location is estimated at 2.5 hours minimum. John Q. Public is driving a really expensive car, may be wearing expensive bling, and almost certainly has credit cards in his possession.
You can't think of anything bad that could happen?
Reeeeeeealy? Weapons research? (physical, chemical, biological, your choice) Profitizing common herbs into expensive medicines? Researching social engineering? Moral? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Scientists want to believe they are more moral, liberals want to believe they are more intelligent, etc etc etc and people exist to tell them what they want to hear. This is not news.
> How would this help? All you'd end up with is all these independent companies doing their own thing and interoperability being a big challenge.
I think what they're saying is that Microsoft apps need to sever the tie with Microsoft OS in order to have a long term viability. Else they're eventually going to end up being a well-integrated platform that almost nobody buys.
We don't run Microsoft Server because we like it. We run it only because it runs certain applications like Exchange. But there are alternatives to Exchange now that gets us away from having to support Microsoft Server. Do you see the problem?
That still leaves the problem...
on
Break Microsoft Up
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
...with what to do with the OS division. Microsoft Windows is simply not in a position to compete with "free". The paradigm of users having no choice but to buy expensive incremental improvements to try to mitigate the bugs of the previous release is too deeply ingrained in Microsoft's business plan. We're more than a decade past any radical improvements in Windows. It's almost to the point where they would have to deliberately break Windows in order to create a market for the next release. Oh, wait....
It's not about the OS anymore. And applications that are tied to an unpopular OS will eventually be left behind, which spells difficulty with a Microsoft applications division. Just the act of creating hardship for the users, which had worked so well in the past, is now only helping the competition. If Apple has a sheltered garden, Microsoft had a prison camp. But they can't keep the gate closed anymore.
Windows 8's biggest competition is Windows 7. This illustrates a fundamental problem with the business plan.
Perhaps the best strategy would be for a hypothetical OS division to adopt "OS as an application", and work on easily enabling legacy applications running on today's platforms, and recognize that this is only an interim business solution. There has been a lot of work in this area, but it tends to be something only geeks can do. Make something that my mom could install on a non-Windows box and run her old copy of Office, and you'd really have something. This will eventually happen anyway; rather than get soundly beaten, and have the OS division be a millstone around the other products' necks, Microsoft might as well participate.
Yeah, it's totally boring that these guys are now able to calculate the observer's position anywhere in the galaxy to within several metres and velocity to within less than a meter per second, something previously only imagined in the realm of sci-fi. Next thing you know they'll be building a working warp drive, holodeck, transporter or something else equally trite and unoriginal.
Warp drive, transporter, all good. (Warp drive now considered theoretically possible, according to previous articles on Slashdot.) I have mixed feelings about the holodeck. We've already seen in other types of entertainment (cough-tv-cough) that people tend to immerse for longer and longer periods of time, eventually becoming a kind of meat-based houseplant. I'm concerned that a holodeck would accelerate the process.
Oliver's retort to Fermi's Paradox: A civilization progresses to the point where it invents television. Then it collapses.
I wore mine 24 hours a day and got a skin infection... wait, too much information.
You got a skin infection from too much information? Hmm. Maybe that crusty orange lump isn't a cheeto...
Cute. Dermatophytosis, if you must know. It happens sometimes when sweaty skin is kept covered for too long by something that doesn't breathe. The moral being, rubber watch straps aren't a good idea, and "take off your watch once in awhile".
Slashdot Mirror
This whole exercise reminds me of an experience of trying to do telephone support for a guy setting up the control system for one of the signs on Times Square in NYC. I spent about 3 hours troubleshooting over the phone, and the system finally came up about 5 seconds before the "big boss" who paid for the sign showed up to take a look at what all his money purchased.
I've also taken calls from freeways and sports arenas during the middle of a game (when cell phone coverage drops to nothing due to everybody at the event having a cell phone and overloading the local towers).
Yeah, I can relate as I've done all that and more.
Kudos to you sir, for going above and beyond. But that's kinda the opposite of what I was suggesting. You were *providing* admin assistance, and in the case I was proposing, you are trying to get the ill-trained offshore admin to provide the admin assistance that you are not contractually allowed to do yourself.
That being said, successfully providing assistance remotely over a bad cell phone connection having no access yourself and working with someone with access and no training, is the mark of a Real Administrator.
> I got it, if you spin it backwards, it just says "Paul is dead" in a chipmunk voice.
I dunno, I think that's pretty funny.
It's been happening off and on all afternoon.
Seeing the actions being taken? That's cheating. Their only feedback should be the person on the phone describing what they see on the screen.
Oooh. Good one. I insist they share their screen so I can watch them work, but that's even better.
What I was trying to simulate was the condition where you see him start to do something really disastrous (examples: "drop all tables;" "rm * .tmp" instead of "rm *.tmp" and you say "don't execute that command" and get the answer "yes I am being executing that command" and you grab the keyboard to wrest control, which could get you fired in some companies. (Because you're not supposed to do anything as root, ever again, because the contract says so.)
Walk an offshore admin who speaks maybe 500 words of english and has had only hours of training, through creating a Windows Server 2008 VM and configuring an ASP application under IIS. For extra credit, repeat using SUSE and JSP/Tomcat. Simulate an accurate communications channel by having the person playing the offshore admin stand outside by the freeway using an analog cell phone, doing the work on a 1990's era laptop balanced on an ironing board connected to the net by an old Telebit modem that drops often.
Arrange so the student can see the actions being taken, but has no control over the process. The student fails the test if he touches the keyboard.
If the student decides to forego a career in IT and takes up bartending instead, he's passed the test.
Or, growing control brains for cyborg death drones. Just sayin'...
(See earlier discussion on scientific moralism.)
Now we don't even test anymore - the customers can test.
Go team retard!
"Now"???
> Or maybe, just maybe, the dirty little secret MSFT doesn't want you to know is really the fact that Windows 8.1 is just Windows 8 with a switch flipped that will let you go to the desktop
In fact, weren't there reports that such a switch actually existed in the Win8 preview, but vanished in GA?
Dogfooding is only effective for independent developers if the internals actually use the independent applications in question. I suspect this is unlikely. Rather, dogfooding almost always means internal testing of system features and official company applications. Independent application testing is often an accidental byproduct. (Having managed an IT department in such a company.)
Mod up.
And I think all three of them post here.
I should add, I understand why Microsoft wants to sell hardware -- it's closer to the business plan of their competitors. But I'm not sure they'd survive the transition, or have the guts to make a clean break.
With this flaw, you could (feasibly) automate Rick Rolls of Model S owners, no small child necessary.
I want to see this as an Android application. Cross-reference with the license plate.
"Look, a model S"
Oooh, what's the license plate?"
(Hilarity ensues.)
Say I am John Q. Private. Can you give me a scenario where I might care that someone has this information?
I really can't think of anything bad that could happen to me if that information fell into the wrong hands. Or at least, nothing worse or more likely than many things that could already be done to me by someone with far less information.
Millions of restraining orders issued in the US every year. Not everyone has the luxury of not having to worry about who all might be out to get them. 1.5-2k women murdered per year in US by their SOs. You obviously have no idea what it is like to have to constantly watch over your shoulder. I hope you never do.
Maybe he should be, and just doesn't realize it yet.
John Q. Private is currently at mile marker 23 on highway 2, proceeding at 65 mph in an easterly direction, with 100 miles of range remaining.
Say I am John Q. Private. Can you give me a scenario where I might care that someone has this information?
I really can't think of anything bad that could happen to me if that information fell into the wrong hands. Or at least, nothing worse or more likely than many things that could already be done to me by someone with far less information.
My car physically suddenly misbehaving, even if limited to peripheral systems -- that I can easily imagine causing a distraction and subsequently an accident.
Twenty miles due east of John Q. Public's current location, cellular services cease. Police response time to that location is estimated at 2.5 hours minimum. John Q. Public is driving a really expensive car, may be wearing expensive bling, and almost certainly has credit cards in his possession.
You can't think of anything bad that could happen?
Threat of gun. Actual use of the gun as a communication tool only leaves you with goose feathers and meat, no more golden eggs.
Except that the remaining geese are more compliant to having their golden eggs taken.
You'd think so. I wonder what would happen were that tested en masse.
The first thing I thought, "what could possibly go wrong?"
Threat of gun. Actual use of the gun as a communication tool only leaves you with goose feathers and meat, no more golden eggs.
Reeeeeeealy? Weapons research? (physical, chemical, biological, your choice) Profitizing common herbs into expensive medicines? Researching social engineering? Moral? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Scientists want to believe they are more moral, liberals want to believe they are more intelligent, etc etc etc and people exist to tell them what they want to hear. This is not news.
> How would this help? All you'd end up with is all these independent companies doing their own thing and interoperability being a big challenge.
I think what they're saying is that Microsoft apps need to sever the tie with Microsoft OS in order to have a long term viability. Else they're eventually going to end up being a well-integrated platform that almost nobody buys.
We don't run Microsoft Server because we like it. We run it only because it runs certain applications like Exchange. But there are alternatives to Exchange now that gets us away from having to support Microsoft Server. Do you see the problem?
It's not about the OS anymore. And applications that are tied to an unpopular OS will eventually be left behind, which spells difficulty with a Microsoft applications division. Just the act of creating hardship for the users, which had worked so well in the past, is now only helping the competition. If Apple has a sheltered garden, Microsoft had a prison camp. But they can't keep the gate closed anymore.
Windows 8's biggest competition is Windows 7. This illustrates a fundamental problem with the business plan.
Perhaps the best strategy would be for a hypothetical OS division to adopt "OS as an application", and work on easily enabling legacy applications running on today's platforms, and recognize that this is only an interim business solution. There has been a lot of work in this area, but it tends to be something only geeks can do. Make something that my mom could install on a non-Windows box and run her old copy of Office, and you'd really have something. This will eventually happen anyway; rather than get soundly beaten, and have the OS division be a millstone around the other products' necks, Microsoft might as well participate.
Yes, I wanted the table. But fuck, I want the Corning house. (& car)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38
Yes. You notice how the display is *not* a crowd of primary color squares that don't clearly indicate what application they represent?
Yeah, it's totally boring that these guys are now able to calculate the observer's position anywhere in the galaxy to within several metres and velocity to within less than a meter per second, something previously only imagined in the realm of sci-fi. Next thing you know they'll be building a working warp drive, holodeck, transporter or something else equally trite and unoriginal.
Warp drive, transporter, all good. (Warp drive now considered theoretically possible, according to previous articles on Slashdot.) I have mixed feelings about the holodeck. We've already seen in other types of entertainment (cough-tv-cough) that people tend to immerse for longer and longer periods of time, eventually becoming a kind of meat-based houseplant. I'm concerned that a holodeck would accelerate the process.
Oliver's retort to Fermi's Paradox: A civilization progresses to the point where it invents television. Then it collapses.
I wore mine 24 hours a day and got a skin infection... wait, too much information.
You got a skin infection from too much information? Hmm. Maybe that crusty orange lump isn't a cheeto...
Cute. Dermatophytosis, if you must know. It happens sometimes when sweaty skin is kept covered for too long by something that doesn't breathe. The moral being, rubber watch straps aren't a good idea, and "take off your watch once in awhile".