I've just spent an uncomfortable week or five plowing through the dozen or so regulatory bodies' requirements. Once you get past simple custody and into the feeding frenzy involved in Basel II ratings, they seem to all get into the act. I think iirc the destruction rule came from APRA but it could have been one of the others.
Remember how IBM vs. The BUNCH was resolved? Litigation had gone into critical mass (i.e. the collection of suits and countersuits would complete three minutes after the heat-death of the universe) and the one tape with the index to the warehouses full of punch cards was "inadvertently" erased, and CDC paid the relatively small fine for destruction of evidence as a way of finishing the mess off. Shortly after that a number of technology-specific laws arose regarding backup of media (this was in the US of course). I remember the debate as to 7-track vs. 9-track longevity -- 7 track was perceived as being more durable, but they forsaw 9 track would become the standard and thus went with the puny 7 years it was supposed to last.
Informative? Probably, but boring too. Mod me up for it and your dog will die.
Our bank doesn't even use tape anymore. We just buy another whacking great cheap storage array when we need one. We've done the sums, and tape is gone. Yes, we do buy a lot of bandwidth. Yes, we are heavy into compliance and massively parallel remote storage. Look at MAID storage (massive arrays of inactive disks) and EMC's Centara -- if you add up every cost, right down the the little rubber feet, it's cheaper to keep it on disk. YMMV, but when you have to archive each and every transaction and provide search to it for 7 years or face a seven-figure fine, tape is well and truly feet-nailed-to-the-perch.
Yep. Read Bacon's original treatise on the scientific method, Novum Organum. Was cast as heretical mysticism at the time (no-one expects the Inquisition!), but if you read it it's all about theorim, construction of a proof, empirical evidence, and corroboration via multiple independent investigators. Bit of foundation for you mystics out there, from a time when injudiciously pulling the truth out of a system might have gained you a session with the men with hot pliers instead of a study grant.
Romance, science, mysticism, hot pliers and black holes (okay, dungeons -- but light never escaped!) -- it's all there.
Get into finance industry IT -- the banks -- and there's a very clear code as to not just how long you need to keep the data (in Australia it's 7 years except for registry, which is 5 years) but also at what point you must destroy it.
Incidentally the 7 year rule was because that's how long a 9-track tape reel was supposed to last before magnetic print-through would manifest on the old media. Anyone looking for an update on this, or will this be another business standard that lasts forever based on obsolete technological limits?
Umm, think the min limit for stellar collapse to black hole is 3 solar masses though, or was when I studied it in the 70's (ref. Kaufman, "Relativity and Cosmology" iirc)
Heck, make it look like a miniature System 370 front panel, complete with rotary register switch. Nothing could beat those for lights! Was an ideal environment for bringing a young & lovely in to a darkened computer room for a bit of Guinness and pastrami during a long, late-night CORGZ run. Old geeks like me would buy them for the nostalgia alone.
...Although (Latin) has a more involved grammar and vocabulary than Spanish or some other romance languages, you don't ever have to speak it in real time...
Obviously our respondent never attended a high-court SCA event. I remember once where a choral precession of angelic voices were singing Ecce Edwardete (Winnie ther Pooh) in Latin in plainchant style. Very effective, and very much appreciated by the populace (who, except for a few giggling maniacs, wore appropriately sepulchral frowns) and my Lady and I, who were being invested as B&B at the time. No Latin in real-time? Posh. Sing Gaudete in English sometime -- it snores. Nullus stercus, ipi eram. Gere aut noli, non conari.
OMG the Laxian Key! I was seven when I read that story (and that's a loooong time ago folks!). Prototypical grey-goo short story, written in the SF Golden Age. A must-read, nanocaptains!
GM's first foray into commercial electric cars was named the "Impact". Does that sound like they wanted them to succeed, rather than a sop to the green movement? Heck of a thump to the subconscious. And they do know their subconscious marketing cues.
It was about twenty years ago, a RSTS-E Basic+ function doing a bit of moderately complex parsing iirc. Accounting stuff, boring for the most part, but a challenge given the tools of the time.
Pardon the naiive question, but wouldn't it be more likely that the reason for no next major release is that that the brain behind Firefox recently moved to Google?
I have. I've installed lots of Exchange and a fair bit of Notes. Notes is bandwidth nasty and very admin-hostile, and from a user point of view that little square bracket in column 1 of every message drives me up the wall.
Yes. And when I write a piece of code, I generally don't want to revisit it after the first blush of admiration over it. I comment code to keep someone from trying to find me to fix it after 10 years. Comments are programming.
One of my programmers was fighting an algorithm for the better part of a week. I told him to shut down the editor and write the comments first. He did -- and a moment's code-brain disconnect did the trick. After that little exercise he completed the function in about 15 minutes. Good coding practice or good psychology? Go figure. It ain't an exclusive-or.
The reason cities are wasteful is because bigger organisations have more overheads. Bigger jobs are inherently less efficient, for all the arguments you'll hear about economies of scale.
For example, If you buy a PC, you're up for the cost of a PC. If you install 16,000 PC's, everybody wants to get their oar in -- you're up for the price of the 16,000 PC's plus the costs of an army of process engineers, project managers, auditors, HR representatives, training groups, environmental impact statement writers, wiring certifiers, keyboard cleaners, capacity managers, rollout planners, lifecycle managers, ergonomics studies, legal staff and compliance authorities and you'll be stuck with a high quality PC with a crippled operating environment. You'll be able to lever a better price for the PC's but you'll make up for it in terms of stupefying bureaucracy.
The point? Wherever you have small groups of people going it alone and adding their effort to a distributed, cooperative organisation, the little guy will get a better deal.
Since the global flyer looks just like a glider with a jet engine bolted on...
Basically what Lockheed did with the U-2, iirc. Basically an F104 with very long wings. Saw one tethered to the apron at Aames back in the 70's. There was a light northerly breeze, and I saw daylight under the main gear wheels. Saw it take off later, very vertical takeoff. Out of sight before it cleared the runway, but you could bloody well still hear it.
Yes, jet-powered gliders have been with us for a while. But I'm sure Lockheed's Kelly Johnson would have appreciated Mr. Rutan's achievements.
We're not asked to calculate logarithms much anymore, either -- and yet we're doing far more calculations today then we ever did in Napier's time. A power drill does not build a house; you still need a carpenter.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember how IBM vs. The BUNCH was resolved? Litigation had gone into critical mass (i.e. the collection of suits and countersuits would complete three minutes after the heat-death of the universe) and the one tape with the index to the warehouses full of punch cards was "inadvertently" erased, and CDC paid the relatively small fine for destruction of evidence as a way of finishing the mess off. Shortly after that a number of technology-specific laws arose regarding backup of media (this was in the US of course). I remember the debate as to 7-track vs. 9-track longevity -- 7 track was perceived as being more durable, but they forsaw 9 track would become the standard and thus went with the puny 7 years it was supposed to last.
Informative? Probably, but boring too. Mod me up for it and your dog will die.
Our bank doesn't even use tape anymore. We just buy another whacking great cheap storage array when we need one. We've done the sums, and tape is gone. Yes, we do buy a lot of bandwidth. Yes, we are heavy into compliance and massively parallel remote storage. Look at MAID storage (massive arrays of inactive disks) and EMC's Centara -- if you add up every cost, right down the the little rubber feet, it's cheaper to keep it on disk. YMMV, but when you have to archive each and every transaction and provide search to it for 7 years or face a seven-figure fine, tape is well and truly feet-nailed-to-the-perch.
Romance, science, mysticism, hot pliers and black holes (okay, dungeons -- but light never escaped!) -- it's all there.
Incidentally the 7 year rule was because that's how long a 9-track tape reel was supposed to last before magnetic print-through would manifest on the old media. Anyone looking for an update on this, or will this be another business standard that lasts forever based on obsolete technological limits?
Umm, think the min limit for stellar collapse to black hole is 3 solar masses though, or was when I studied it in the 70's (ref. Kaufman, "Relativity and Cosmology" iirc)
Both are losers. Darwin will win.
I feel like I'm reading a veiled argument between an armature engineer and a rotational assembly engineer
Yes, but I can't work out which is which...
Ummmm. Screensaver.
...read my sig. Turn the RIAA away from the dark side.
Obviously our respondent never attended a high-court SCA event. I remember once where a choral precession of angelic voices were singing Ecce Edwardete (Winnie ther Pooh) in Latin in plainchant style. Very effective, and very much appreciated by the populace (who, except for a few giggling maniacs, wore appropriately sepulchral frowns) and my Lady and I, who were being invested as B&B at the time. No Latin in real-time? Posh. Sing Gaudete in English sometime -- it snores. Nullus stercus, ipi eram. Gere aut noli, non conari.
Moral? Read the fine print.
GM's first foray into commercial electric cars was named the "Impact". Does that sound like they wanted them to succeed, rather than a sop to the green movement? Heck of a thump to the subconscious. And they do know their subconscious marketing cues.
Hello, I'm Bob! I'm here to help get the most out of your Office!
Exempli Gratia: "Oh, how I wish I had an /ignore switch on Slashdot as effective as the one in Everquest."
If it broke, reduce it to walkway gravel and buy another one.
Sears & Roebuck used to do this. See http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/
It was about twenty years ago, a RSTS-E Basic+ function doing a bit of moderately complex parsing iirc. Accounting stuff, boring for the most part, but a challenge given the tools of the time.
Pardon the naiive question, but wouldn't it be more likely that the reason for no next major release is that that the brain behind Firefox recently moved to Google?
I have. I've installed lots of Exchange and a fair bit of Notes. Notes is bandwidth nasty and very admin-hostile, and from a user point of view that little square bracket in column 1 of every message drives me up the wall.
One of my programmers was fighting an algorithm for the better part of a week. I told him to shut down the editor and write the comments first. He did -- and a moment's code-brain disconnect did the trick. After that little exercise he completed the function in about 15 minutes. Good coding practice or good psychology? Go figure. It ain't an exclusive-or.
Ah, like Vetinari, The Patrician ... he enjoyed reading music. He didn't want to play it, or listen to all that noise, merely to read it.
For example, If you buy a PC, you're up for the cost of a PC. If you install 16,000 PC's, everybody wants to get their oar in -- you're up for the price of the 16,000 PC's plus the costs of an army of process engineers, project managers, auditors, HR representatives, training groups, environmental impact statement writers, wiring certifiers, keyboard cleaners, capacity managers, rollout planners, lifecycle managers, ergonomics studies, legal staff and compliance authorities and you'll be stuck with a high quality PC with a crippled operating environment. You'll be able to lever a better price for the PC's but you'll make up for it in terms of stupefying bureaucracy.
The point? Wherever you have small groups of people going it alone and adding their effort to a distributed, cooperative organisation, the little guy will get a better deal.
Hmm... Am I advocating open source here?
Basically what Lockheed did with the U-2, iirc. Basically an F104 with very long wings. Saw one tethered to the apron at Aames back in the 70's. There was a light northerly breeze, and I saw daylight under the main gear wheels. Saw it take off later, very vertical takeoff. Out of sight before it cleared the runway, but you could bloody well still hear it.
Yes, jet-powered gliders have been with us for a while. But I'm sure Lockheed's Kelly Johnson would have appreciated Mr. Rutan's achievements.
We're not asked to calculate logarithms much anymore, either -- and yet we're doing far more calculations today then we ever did in Napier's time. A power drill does not build a house; you still need a carpenter.
Can you tune one so only your reflections in the mirror are invisible?