It's a shame when competent people get wasted in management.
I see these type of comments a lot, and I really don't get it. You think it would be better to have an incompetent person in management? You know what? Management is hard! I've been a manager for several years now, having stepped up from system administration when my predecessor left. Dealing with people is much harder than dealing with technology. You can't just google how to fix someone when they've got a problem. There's no reset button on a person. You have to figure it out, and work at it. Rarely do I leave the office and stop thinking about the problems I have to deal with the next day. Especially so when it's a sensitive or emotional issue.
I've had my share of poor managers, and they're not easy to deal with. I regard myself as pretty competent, and I strive to be a good manager, but like you, I'm a person and I sometimes make mistakes. Dealing with the repercussions of that isn't always easy. I've had to deal with accidents, serious illness, family bereavement, depression, infighting, poor performance, politics (oh God, the politics!) and a whole host of other things I wouldn't or couldn't list here. Dealing with a broken server or some dodgy code is a doddle in comparison.
Often it's a case of just taking the responsibility to make a decision. Even if the employee has come to the correct solution, they want someone else to carry it forwards. They can then go away, confident that if it all goes tits up, I'll be there to pick up the pieces and protect them from the shit heading their way.
I love the job, I really do. I feel it's more of a challenge than I ever had as a sysadmin. I'm not making light of the work that the technical guys do in any way. We're all links in the chain, and without good management, it does fall apart. I've seen it more times than I care to remember.
I love the culture novels, and some of the ship names are just fantastic. I was chuffed to see SpaceX name some of their drone ships after these. I really hope the next one is called "Funny, It Worked Last Time...". At some point it'll probably be very apt.
This is only impressive if they didn't use any historical data at all to create the new super computer. If they did use historical data then the answer would be correct by definition. The way to test this is to use historical data make a prediction and then wait a year then compare to the real data only then you have any valid comparison.
That's really dumb. Why would you wait a year, when you have 35 years of data? You test the model on 1980's data, and see how accurate it was by checking with 1981's data, and so on. They can do that 35 times, if they're looking a year ahead. If they're only looking a month ahead, they can do it 12 x 35 times.
Ultimately we will need to ban diesel vehicles from much of London and we need a mayor prepared to take these tough decisions and work with people to make these changes happen.
It's been a while since I was last in a London Black Cab, but I'm pretty sure it was a diesel. Are they suggesting getting rid of them all? Good luck with that.
At that same conference, my colleague talked to someone working in Xpoint R&D who told him, "If you need a solid-state drive right now, buy the cheapest Samsung model you can get by with, because in the next two years we're going to blow the competition completely away."
Oddly enough, I was at a conference last week where we had a keynote by HP. He was saying pretty much the same thing about memristors. He held up a roughtly credit card sized model that would apparently hold 1.5PB of data. It all sounds cool, but I'll believe it when I see it. These "just around the corner" technologies sometimes take a lot longer than expected to reach market.
even the Event log is buried under a metric ton of crap. I pretty much found it by pure accident.
You mean right clicking on Start Button, and selecting Event Viewer is too much? Or Opening Start Menu, typing "event" and selecting Event Viewer is too much? Okay, whatever.
If I find myself fixing someone's computer, then someone else is not doing their job properly. That's why we have (competent) help-desk staff. As a sysadmin I'm far too busy looking after servers, storage and network to worry about your PC. If I'm doing my job properly, you'll never see me.
Of course they need large scale manageability. What the GP post said was that there are no tools that offer the facilities that AD and GP do on Windows. You can do a whole lot of stuff with scripts and other tools, but that doesn't mean it's as straightforward.
The real strength of GP is the ability to modify the way the software that runs on top of Windows works, not just the OS itself. Of course, MS offers the best support for that in things like Office, although other applications can be managed too. With the sheer variety of mechanisms for configuring applications on Linux, there can simply be no equivalent.
Offer me a working equivalent of GP, and an Exchange replacement, and I'll give it serious consideration. Until then, for me, it's just not worth the hassle.
Sounds like you're describing Iain M. Banks' post-scarcity Culture (I'm sure there are other sci-fi examples). That can't really happen until we have an abundance of energy and the ability to manipulate matter to create any material goods we may require. I don't see that happening for another millennia or so, assuming we last that long.
Perhaps that's true. However, I've never clicked on a single ad in any of my apps. I don't use an adblocker, I just don't click on ads. So they'd make more money from me by providing a paid for app. Plus they'd piss me off less.
If you like an app, pay the dollar or two for the ad free version, other wise you're stealing from the developer of the app, justify it however you like, but it is theft.
That's not always possible. There are a few apps that I use where there isn't a version without the ads. I'd happily plonk down a few quid to remove them, but the option isn't there.
1) "If they understood that better" is meaningless. I build systems to meet requirements and demands, not the other way around. Most businesses operate the same way.
I would agree. My point was that people compare a simple IMAP/calendaring solution with Exchnage and think that it competes on the same level. If all you need or want is that, then great, go for it. If you want more, there's nothing else out there that compares.
2) Starting with Exchange 2010, things have gotten far too complex just for the sake of complexity, and with little benefit (and definitely less benefit than the increased requirements justify). This is especially true in smaller implementations, where a small business doesn't need a minimum of four different servers (or two really beefy ones) just to do their email, tasklists, and calendaring.
I wouldn't disagree with that either, although what constitutes a beefy server is not an exact science, and with VM's, not that difficult to deal with. Keep in mind that most of Microsoft's recommendations for minimum specs on these sort of things, and Exchange in particular, far exceed the sort of numbers you'd be looking at with most small businesses. The real complication with 2010 as I see it is that the old style clustering is no longer supported, making a simple failover pair a pain in the arse. But, the hosted services can serve as a backup in that situation, and for many small business, hosted services may be all they need at all.
All together you can gain the same functionality running a multitude of packages. It's not going to have the pretty UI, but the upside is you don't have to rebuild your corrupted mail store every couple of months.
Have you ever run Exchange? Or are you just repeating the same tired bullshit that used to be bandied about 10 years ago? We've been running it for 10 years. Not once have we had to rebuild a mail store. If you're going to take a pot shot at it, at least try something a bit more up to date.
The sad thing is most people that haven't used Exchange just see it as a mail server. It's not. If they understood that better, they might understand why there are no viable alternatives.
Agreed. I'm firmly of the opinion that widespread BYOD is a disaster in the making. You're still going to have to provide your staff with the tools and resources to do their daily work, but now you have to do that on any number of different and incompatible systems. Ignoring the potential security implications, supporting that in any meaningful way is going to be extremely hard. And you can be damn sure that laptops with Windows 8 will be one of those devices, so no, it's not irrelevant.
Fair enough (I work in the academic environment myself, so I know some of the issues). You make a reasonably strong case for it. If you've discussed the issues with them, and they're not listening, then you should take it up with your manager. If your work is being affected, you have a good reason to do so.
You may be unlucky of course, and truly have a bunch of arseholes in IT. It happens. Frankly I try my best to help whenever I can, but sometimes there are good reasons not to do something that aren't immediately obvious to the end user. It's sometimes a technical one, but just as often a politcal one.
As someone who manages an Exchange environment, I'd like to point out that I've not enabled the IMAP service. I have good reasons, and they're nothing to do with being incompetent or intentionally setting out to annoy Linux users (not that we have any, other than me). I'm sure if running an IMAP service was an actual business requirement, your IT department would have done it.
So seriously, most of the time, the number of cores doesn't even matter, because unless you're playing a high-end game, the cores won't even be woken up.
So, unless I was buying a tablet specifically to play high end games on, why would I want to spend money on CPU cores that are going to sit there doing nothing? Surely a dual core CPU is a better move?
People didn't want Linux netbooks, because they couldn't run the applications that they wanted on them. That's why so many were returned, and Linux quickly disappeared from the netbook scene. Why would you think it would be different this time around?
Slashdot Mirror
"Trainers" will make majority of Americans reach for a dictionary
I fail to see the downside here. It's also not slang, it's just the word we use.
It's a shame when competent people get wasted in management.
I see these type of comments a lot, and I really don't get it. You think it would be better to have an incompetent person in management? You know what? Management is hard! I've been a manager for several years now, having stepped up from system administration when my predecessor left. Dealing with people is much harder than dealing with technology. You can't just google how to fix someone when they've got a problem. There's no reset button on a person. You have to figure it out, and work at it. Rarely do I leave the office and stop thinking about the problems I have to deal with the next day. Especially so when it's a sensitive or emotional issue.
I've had my share of poor managers, and they're not easy to deal with. I regard myself as pretty competent, and I strive to be a good manager, but like you, I'm a person and I sometimes make mistakes. Dealing with the repercussions of that isn't always easy. I've had to deal with accidents, serious illness, family bereavement, depression, infighting, poor performance, politics (oh God, the politics!) and a whole host of other things I wouldn't or couldn't list here. Dealing with a broken server or some dodgy code is a doddle in comparison.
Often it's a case of just taking the responsibility to make a decision. Even if the employee has come to the correct solution, they want someone else to carry it forwards. They can then go away, confident that if it all goes tits up, I'll be there to pick up the pieces and protect them from the shit heading their way.
I love the job, I really do. I feel it's more of a challenge than I ever had as a sysadmin. I'm not making light of the work that the technical guys do in any way. We're all links in the chain, and without good management, it does fall apart. I've seen it more times than I care to remember.
I love the culture novels, and some of the ship names are just fantastic. I was chuffed to see SpaceX name some of their drone ships after these. I really hope the next one is called "Funny, It Worked Last Time...". At some point it'll probably be very apt.
This is only impressive if they didn't use any historical data at all to create the new super computer. If they did use historical data then the answer would be correct by definition. The way to test this is to use historical data make a prediction and then wait a year then compare to the real data only then you have any valid comparison.
That's really dumb. Why would you wait a year, when you have 35 years of data? You test the model on 1980's data, and see how accurate it was by checking with 1981's data, and so on. They can do that 35 times, if they're looking a year ahead. If they're only looking a month ahead, they can do it 12 x 35 times.
I think the next time I see him I may actually call 911 and report his license plate.
Not whilst you're driving I hope? :-)
It's been a while since I was last in a London Black Cab, but I'm pretty sure it was a diesel. Are they suggesting getting rid of them all? Good luck with that.
Courtesy of The Last Leg:
http://brickingitforcanada.com...
Still quite a few bricks needed!
At that same conference, my colleague talked to someone working in Xpoint R&D who told him, "If you need a solid-state drive right now, buy the cheapest Samsung model you can get by with, because in the next two years we're going to blow the competition completely away."
Oddly enough, I was at a conference last week where we had a keynote by HP. He was saying pretty much the same thing about memristors. He held up a roughtly credit card sized model that would apparently hold 1.5PB of data. It all sounds cool, but I'll believe it when I see it. These "just around the corner" technologies sometimes take a lot longer than expected to reach market.
even the Event log is buried under a metric ton of crap. I pretty much found it by pure accident.
You mean right clicking on Start Button, and selecting Event Viewer is too much? Or Opening Start Menu, typing "event" and selecting Event Viewer is too much? Okay, whatever.
If I find myself fixing someone's computer, then someone else is not doing their job properly. That's why we have (competent) help-desk staff. As a sysadmin I'm far too busy looking after servers, storage and network to worry about your PC. If I'm doing my job properly, you'll never see me.
Of course they need large scale manageability. What the GP post said was that there are no tools that offer the facilities that AD and GP do on Windows. You can do a whole lot of stuff with scripts and other tools, but that doesn't mean it's as straightforward.
The real strength of GP is the ability to modify the way the software that runs on top of Windows works, not just the OS itself. Of course, MS offers the best support for that in things like Office, although other applications can be managed too. With the sheer variety of mechanisms for configuring applications on Linux, there can simply be no equivalent.
Offer me a working equivalent of GP, and an Exchange replacement, and I'll give it serious consideration. Until then, for me, it's just not worth the hassle.
Sounds like you're describing Iain M. Banks' post-scarcity Culture (I'm sure there are other sci-fi examples). That can't really happen until we have an abundance of energy and the ability to manipulate matter to create any material goods we may require. I don't see that happening for another millennia or so, assuming we last that long.
Perhaps that's true. However, I've never clicked on a single ad in any of my apps. I don't use an adblocker, I just don't click on ads. So they'd make more money from me by providing a paid for app. Plus they'd piss me off less.
If you like an app, pay the dollar or two for the ad free version, other wise you're stealing from the developer of the app, justify it however you like, but it is theft.
That's not always possible. There are a few apps that I use where there isn't a version without the ads. I'd happily plonk down a few quid to remove them, but the option isn't there.
I tried using a TomTom device for a few weeks in the UK this summer and TomTom quite frankly just sucks...
This is clearly made up nonsense. We didn't have a summer in the UK this year.
1) "If they understood that better" is meaningless. I build systems to meet requirements and demands, not the other way around. Most businesses operate the same way.
I would agree. My point was that people compare a simple IMAP/calendaring solution with Exchnage and think that it competes on the same level. If all you need or want is that, then great, go for it. If you want more, there's nothing else out there that compares.
2) Starting with Exchange 2010, things have gotten far too complex just for the sake of complexity, and with little benefit (and definitely less benefit than the increased requirements justify). This is especially true in smaller implementations, where a small business doesn't need a minimum of four different servers (or two really beefy ones) just to do their email, tasklists, and calendaring.
I wouldn't disagree with that either, although what constitutes a beefy server is not an exact science, and with VM's, not that difficult to deal with. Keep in mind that most of Microsoft's recommendations for minimum specs on these sort of things, and Exchange in particular, far exceed the sort of numbers you'd be looking at with most small businesses. The real complication with 2010 as I see it is that the old style clustering is no longer supported, making a simple failover pair a pain in the arse. But, the hosted services can serve as a backup in that situation, and for many small business, hosted services may be all they need at all.
All together you can gain the same functionality running a multitude of packages. It's not going to have the pretty UI, but the upside is you don't have to rebuild your corrupted mail store every couple of months.
Have you ever run Exchange? Or are you just repeating the same tired bullshit that used to be bandied about 10 years ago? We've been running it for 10 years. Not once have we had to rebuild a mail store. If you're going to take a pot shot at it, at least try something a bit more up to date.
The sad thing is most people that haven't used Exchange just see it as a mail server. It's not. If they understood that better, they might understand why there are no viable alternatives.
Sure you can't run exchange, but there are plenty of alternatives many of which are a lot better.
Name one. Just one.
Agreed. I'm firmly of the opinion that widespread BYOD is a disaster in the making. You're still going to have to provide your staff with the tools and resources to do their daily work, but now you have to do that on any number of different and incompatible systems. Ignoring the potential security implications, supporting that in any meaningful way is going to be extremely hard. And you can be damn sure that laptops with Windows 8 will be one of those devices, so no, it's not irrelevant.
Fair enough (I work in the academic environment myself, so I know some of the issues). You make a reasonably strong case for it. If you've discussed the issues with them, and they're not listening, then you should take it up with your manager. If your work is being affected, you have a good reason to do so.
You may be unlucky of course, and truly have a bunch of arseholes in IT. It happens. Frankly I try my best to help whenever I can, but sometimes there are good reasons not to do something that aren't immediately obvious to the end user. It's sometimes a technical one, but just as often a politcal one.
As someone who manages an Exchange environment, I'd like to point out that I've not enabled the IMAP service. I have good reasons, and they're nothing to do with being incompetent or intentionally setting out to annoy Linux users (not that we have any, other than me). I'm sure if running an IMAP service was an actual business requirement, your IT department would have done it.
So seriously, most of the time, the number of cores doesn't even matter, because unless you're playing a high-end game, the cores won't even be woken up.
So, unless I was buying a tablet specifically to play high end games on, why would I want to spend money on CPU cores that are going to sit there doing nothing? Surely a dual core CPU is a better move?
People didn't want Linux netbooks, because they couldn't run the applications that they wanted on them. That's why so many were returned, and Linux quickly disappeared from the netbook scene. Why would you think it would be different this time around?
Okay, but am I still okay to wear my smartphone jockstrap? Not as convenient as a belt clip I'll agree...
but at least I know someone at Apple has personally looked at every app and its update I installed on my phone so a situation like this won't happen.
That's a "famous last words" just waiting to happen. Yes, it's arguably more unlikely. But to say it won't ever happen is just dumb.