We have about 20 SQL servers around the country connected via leased-line T1s originally designed to be constantly replicating to HQ. Not a huge system, but about 2TB of data total. One can imagine the kind of bandwidth such a redundant system sucks up. The cost and performance hits associated with this are absolutely extraordinary and there simply is no reason for about 90% of load.
It's kind of like the SunRay system. Yeah, the idea is neat, but the architecture is a network-clogging, CPU-leeching nightmare and there is an ample supply of alternatives that have nowhere near the same scaling issues.
This management style has no "soft skills." Suggestions that it is flawed are invariably met with contempt. It is not the same as someone who has simply become obsessed with micro-managing, who you can take aside and say "hey, let it go." Someone with a KITA attitude is only going to respond to this sort of tactic with, well, a KITA.
Personally, I'd just leave. I'm getting too old to put up with that crap. However, I've found the best way to ease that pain is just to accept it, deal with it and not take any of it personally--and document the living hell out of everything. If you do your job as you are told and can prove it, these types back down. They're looking for weakness and any excuse to shift blame from themselves to you. ANYTHING in the "soft skills" category with these types will be viewed as a perfect weakness to label you "not a team player" or "does not work well under supervision" or just, "does not work here anymore."
So, either leave or find a way to play by the rules... and if that means throwing back a scotch after work, so be it.
...except that it's an explicit violation of my ToS--and I DO respect contracts I sign.
I would rather see people "stick it to the man" while playing by the man's rules. Fine, form a cooperative and network the neighborhood, whatever. However, people have a very, very distorted view of what they are getting for $49.95. "Piggybacking" so many users maxes out the available bandwidth. If enough people do this, it becomes a tragedy of the commons. So, right, it would take an entire neighborhood of, say, 60 [REASONABLY PRUDENT] connections to truly max out a 4Mbps connection. Well, folks, businesses pay on the order of $3k/month for that kind of connectivity. Is it any surprise that your $50/month internet connection is 1/60th that if you could conceivably put 60 people on it? Is it any surprise that, given that, your internet provider expects you to keep your connection private?
Yeah, yeah, small businesses are offered DSL And Cable too, but they're marketed on the same assumptions as residential plans: namely, that most people will use about 2% of their service. The point is, if a large enough people start piggybacking like this, you'll quickly find yourself paying for cable and DSL the same rates that businesses pay for the T1s to OC192s that your residential and small business connections link to. "The man" is not "sticking it to you." You're just buying a service at a price you can afford in a model your vendor can afford.
Yeah, when I drop $500 in coin for a whiz-bang PDA phone (I've had three or four) only to have that damned flip crack and/or snap off, I lose all affection for any "feature" that stupid flip may provide. No wonder the lastest PDAs have dropped them. If I'm worried about scratching, I'll get a cover film or a leather case.
I never said desktops would go away, just that their purpose as we recently have thought of it is already in the process of changing so drastically that the distinction between desktop, laptop, handheld and all manner of both stationary and mobile devices will become practically meaningless. Perhaps I did not say that in those words, but that was my point. So what if a device of any form, desktop included, has X amount of ram or processor speed if it can connect to a 1 million CPU grid with exabytes of storage? If any device can make that connection, it matters less and less which particular flavor of device you happen to be using---and we're already there. It is just a question of degree.
With that, "ubiquitous computing" may morph into personal computers merely being interfaces for The Grid, essentially providing the basis for _all_ applications to scale like Seti@Home. Perhaps that's also why Google is interested in electronic micropayments...and it could all happen very, very quickly.
After shelling out $612M over this, spending another $100M on a massive PR campaign to get the public and Congress behind tearing up the whole patent system and starting over will seem like a gratuity.
Keep in mind, the House and Senate (not to mention damn near every federal agency imaginable) use Blackberry, so they're already on their side and will probably be more than happy to make life $612M easier for RIM over time.
I put GoogleDesktop on a pretty non-critical personal machine awhile ago and just got the creeps, so I removed it--not to mention the HUGE index files ticked me off.
However, if Google is going to vacuum up the contents--in any amount--of my local drive from software that from all appearances is meant to be LOCAL, they damned well better have a huge flashing 87pt type warning to that effect. It's disturbing enough that, owing largely to Google, the web has become such an indelible medium, but if I don't intend to send my info out into the ether to be forever inscribed, leave it the !#%k where it is, 'kay?
I hope they get a swift kick in the nads for this one.
"It would strip their power to screw over the average citizen."
If you don't think the people who either own or run said corporations wouldn't be business as usual hob nobbing and charging up $3k tabs at the Capital Grille, you're out of your fricken mind. Most politicians are already millionaires before they enter office and the wealthy generally like to mingle with the wealthy. The campaign contributions are the _symptom_ of the problem, not the cause. Take out every penny of it, private individual included, and the problem would persist.
If a local piano teacher wanders into your representative's _local_ office (when they actually happen to be there) followed five minutes later by the local owner of a large manufacturing plant and they both want to blather on about their views on economics and labor issues... who do you think will get more time and consideration? It has nothing to do with money changing hands and everything to do with economic and social standing... and there's no silver bullet to kill that beast.
Someone will market a plug-and-play email server appliance a-la the Vonage phone box. Sure, you don't _need_ a separate doo-dad to do it, but if someone came up with a whiz-bang, minimal configuration, DynDns-using, WebMail serving "think GMail is good, this has 2 HUNDRED gigabytes and unlimited accounts" box for $99.95, if this stuff became widespread, they'd sell like hotcakes on Sunday morning....or Jobs will just load it up as standard software on the Mini, et voila.
Since I don't have a single family member, friend or business contact with an AOL address--and can't remember the last time I did, must be at least five years ago--I really couldn't care less.
It seems to me a bit more intelligent to form your communication based on how the living will receive it, rather than priding yourself on how people might speak when you are long since dead.
How much similar EM radiation is coming off the plane itself and all its integral electronics?
I had this happen in a hospital waiting room years ago. I knew my battery was shot, so I asked at reception if I could plug in somewhere. "Oh, no, this is a HOSPITAL. We have VERY sensitive equipment in here. We can't have computers running." I sort of chuckled and said "yes, while the first two are true, uhm, [pointing to the several commodity computers on the desk, complete with massive CRTs], what are those strange devices right there? I bet this hospital has LOTS of those." They got in a complete huff and stood their ground, "just because, we just can't."
With the amount of EM radiation surrounding your average airport and with landing being the absolute most critical point for this equipment, how the hell can they certify landing-via-GPS if the radiation from a fricken laptop could be catastrophic? If true, the market for backpack EMP weapons is going to skyrocket.
"One gets the impression from certain religious believers that they fondly hope for the durability of certain gaps in our scientific knowledge of evolution, so that they can fill them with God. This is the exact opposite of what human intelligence is all about."
--Father George V. Coyne S.J., director of the Vatican Observatory
Don't give them any ideas. As intelligent design loses out, I can see the lines being drawn at total relativism and it won't be just science in the crosshairs.
Countries have total control over their country-code TLD. The _only_ thing the US can be considered "intransigent" about is keeping control over net/com/org/mil/edu -- and so what? They're just anachronisms of the early days when the net was for all intents and purposes a project of the United States. It's just friggen three letters for godssake. It's not like the English freak out that they have to type in ".co.uk" instead of ".com," but the UK could just as well make it ".flibityflabityfloo.uk" and neither the US proper nor ICANN would have a damned thing to say about it and every country has that prerogative. Hell, theycanevensell it.
"...That's why I'd rather hear your name than see your face" --Laurie Anderson, respect to Wm. Burroughs
He may alienate people on the topic in question, but if he succeeds in waking them up to the importance of recognizing this kind of language, he's succeeded in something, IMHO, far more important.
Remember, I live in a place that requires an act of Congress to pass the city budget. A congress in which I have no vote. So, pardon if I balk at the idea of 'writing my rep' or voting in order to change something. I HAVE NO VOTE.
Sound rather similar to the situation prior to the revolutionary war? It should.
Da Vinci Code: Doubleday HBHG: Bantam Dell...both divisions of Random House.
But then, the ultimate copyrights on the works (and liabilities for infringing on others) are held by the authors, not the publishers. See the inside covers of both. The (C) does not precede "Random House."
"Nullification" is by definition an acquittal. It is not however _just_ an aquittal, it is an acquittal when the evidence would strongly support a guilty verdict (say, OJ as a bad example). It is definitely NOT synonymous with "hung jury," which is a total lack of any verdict.
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams... and this guy who knew a thing or two about law around the time of the revolution:
"If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states then that juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty, -- For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time."
Slashdot Mirror
We have about 20 SQL servers around the country connected via leased-line T1s originally designed to be constantly replicating to HQ. Not a huge system, but about 2TB of data total. One can imagine the kind of bandwidth such a redundant system sucks up. The cost and performance hits associated with this are absolutely extraordinary and there simply is no reason for about 90% of load.
It's kind of like the SunRay system. Yeah, the idea is neat, but the architecture is a network-clogging, CPU-leeching nightmare and there is an ample supply of alternatives that have nowhere near the same scaling issues.
This management style has no "soft skills." Suggestions that it is flawed are invariably met with contempt. It is not the same as someone who has simply become obsessed with micro-managing, who you can take aside and say "hey, let it go." Someone with a KITA attitude is only going to respond to this sort of tactic with, well, a KITA.
Personally, I'd just leave. I'm getting too old to put up with that crap. However, I've found the best way to ease that pain is just to accept it, deal with it and not take any of it personally--and document the living hell out of everything. If you do your job as you are told and can prove it, these types back down. They're looking for weakness and any excuse to shift blame from themselves to you. ANYTHING in the "soft skills" category with these types will be viewed as a perfect weakness to label you "not a team player" or "does not work well under supervision" or just, "does not work here anymore."
So, either leave or find a way to play by the rules... and if that means throwing back a scotch after work, so be it.
...except that it's an explicit violation of my ToS--and I DO respect contracts I sign.
I would rather see people "stick it to the man" while playing by the man's rules. Fine, form a cooperative and network the neighborhood, whatever. However, people have a very, very distorted view of what they are getting for $49.95. "Piggybacking" so many users maxes out the available bandwidth. If enough people do this, it becomes a tragedy of the commons. So, right, it would take an entire neighborhood of, say, 60 [REASONABLY PRUDENT] connections to truly max out a 4Mbps connection. Well, folks, businesses pay on the order of $3k/month for that kind of connectivity. Is it any surprise that your $50/month internet connection is 1/60th that if you could conceivably put 60 people on it? Is it any surprise that, given that, your internet provider expects you to keep your connection private?
Yeah, yeah, small businesses are offered DSL And Cable too, but they're marketed on the same assumptions as residential plans: namely, that most people will use about 2% of their service. The point is, if a large enough people start piggybacking like this, you'll quickly find yourself paying for cable and DSL the same rates that businesses pay for the T1s to OC192s that your residential and small business connections link to. "The man" is not "sticking it to you." You're just buying a service at a price you can afford in a model your vendor can afford.
Yeah, when I drop $500 in coin for a whiz-bang PDA phone (I've had three or four) only to have that damned flip crack and/or snap off, I lose all affection for any "feature" that stupid flip may provide. No wonder the lastest PDAs have dropped them. If I'm worried about scratching, I'll get a cover film or a leather case.
I never said desktops would go away, just that their purpose as we recently have thought of it is already in the process of changing so drastically that the distinction between desktop, laptop, handheld and all manner of both stationary and mobile devices will become practically meaningless. Perhaps I did not say that in those words, but that was my point. So what if a device of any form, desktop included, has X amount of ram or processor speed if it can connect to a 1 million CPU grid with exabytes of storage? If any device can make that connection, it matters less and less which particular flavor of device you happen to be using---and we're already there. It is just a question of degree.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/20/15142
With that, "ubiquitous computing" may morph into personal computers merely being interfaces for The Grid, essentially providing the basis for _all_ applications to scale like Seti@Home. Perhaps that's also why Google is interested in electronic micropayments...and it could all happen very, very quickly.
After shelling out $612M over this, spending another $100M on a massive PR campaign to get the public and Congress behind tearing up the whole patent system and starting over will seem like a gratuity.
Keep in mind, the House and Senate (not to mention damn near every federal agency imaginable) use Blackberry, so they're already on their side and will probably be more than happy to make life $612M easier for RIM over time.
I put GoogleDesktop on a pretty non-critical personal machine awhile ago and just got the creeps, so I removed it--not to mention the HUGE index files ticked me off.
However, if Google is going to vacuum up the contents--in any amount--of my local drive from software that from all appearances is meant to be LOCAL, they damned well better have a huge flashing 87pt type warning to that effect. It's disturbing enough that, owing largely to Google, the web has become such an indelible medium, but if I don't intend to send my info out into the ether to be forever inscribed, leave it the !#%k where it is, 'kay?
I hope they get a swift kick in the nads for this one.
Even those who make their money on, well, money, don't want a truly free market. They want CAPITAL mobility. Period.
"They're so rich, one small withdrawal and Switzerland goes THIRD WORLD!"
--Edina Monsoon.
"It would strip their power to screw over the average citizen."
If you don't think the people who either own or run said corporations wouldn't be business as usual hob nobbing and charging up $3k tabs at the Capital Grille, you're out of your fricken mind. Most politicians are already millionaires before they enter office and the wealthy generally like to mingle with the wealthy. The campaign contributions are the _symptom_ of the problem, not the cause. Take out every penny of it, private individual included, and the problem would persist.
If a local piano teacher wanders into your representative's _local_ office (when they actually happen to be there) followed five minutes later by the local owner of a large manufacturing plant and they both want to blather on about their views on economics and labor issues... who do you think will get more time and consideration? It has nothing to do with money changing hands and everything to do with economic and social standing... and there's no silver bullet to kill that beast.
That would be ME.
Someone will market a plug-and-play email server appliance a-la the Vonage phone box. Sure, you don't _need_ a separate doo-dad to do it, but if someone came up with a whiz-bang, minimal configuration, DynDns-using, WebMail serving "think GMail is good, this has 2 HUNDRED gigabytes and unlimited accounts" box for $99.95, if this stuff became widespread, they'd sell like hotcakes on Sunday morning. ...or Jobs will just load it up as standard software on the Mini, et voila.
Since I don't have a single family member, friend or business contact with an AOL address--and can't remember the last time I did, must be at least five years ago--I really couldn't care less.
Like, this one, perhaps.
It seems to me a bit more intelligent to form your communication based on how the living will receive it, rather than priding yourself on how people might speak when you are long since dead.
How much similar EM radiation is coming off the plane itself and all its integral electronics?
I had this happen in a hospital waiting room years ago. I knew my battery was shot, so I asked at reception if I could plug in somewhere. "Oh, no, this is a HOSPITAL. We have VERY sensitive equipment in here. We can't have computers running." I sort of chuckled and said "yes, while the first two are true, uhm, [pointing to the several commodity computers on the desk, complete with massive CRTs], what are those strange devices right there? I bet this hospital has LOTS of those." They got in a complete huff and stood their ground, "just because, we just can't."
With the amount of EM radiation surrounding your average airport and with landing being the absolute most critical point for this equipment, how the hell can they certify landing-via-GPS if the radiation from a fricken laptop could be catastrophic? If true, the market for backpack EMP weapons is going to skyrocket.
I'll have you know, I'm out at a bar on Mardi Gras RIGHT NOW. ...god, the shame, it's actually true. Damn, WiFi, damn it to hell.
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2006/US/733_ intelligent_design_belittles_2_1_2006.asp
"One gets the impression from certain religious believers that they fondly hope for the durability of certain gaps in our scientific knowledge of evolution, so that they can fill them with God. This is the exact opposite of what human intelligence is all about."
--Father George V. Coyne S.J., director of the Vatican Observatory
Don't give them any ideas. As intelligent design loses out, I can see the lines being drawn at total relativism and it won't be just science in the crosshairs.
Countries have total control over their country-code TLD. The _only_ thing the US can be considered "intransigent" about is keeping control over net/com/org/mil/edu -- and so what? They're just anachronisms of the early days when the net was for all intents and purposes a project of the United States. It's just friggen three letters for godssake. It's not like the English freak out that they have to type in ".co.uk" instead of ".com," but the UK could just as well make it ".flibityflabityfloo.uk" and neither the US proper nor ICANN would have a damned thing to say about it and every country has that prerogative. Hell, they can even sell it.
"...That's why I'd rather hear your name than see your face"
--Laurie Anderson, respect to Wm. Burroughs
He may alienate people on the topic in question, but if he succeeds in waking them up to the importance of recognizing this kind of language, he's succeeded in something, IMHO, far more important.
...the continued benevolence of the government.
Remember, I live in a place that requires an act of Congress to pass the city budget. A congress in which I have no vote. So, pardon if I balk at the idea of 'writing my rep' or voting in order to change something. I HAVE NO VOTE.
Sound rather similar to the situation prior to the revolutionary war? It should.
Da Vinci Code: Doubleday ...both divisions of Random House.
HBHG: Bantam Dell
But then, the ultimate copyrights on the works (and liabilities for infringing on others) are held by the authors, not the publishers. See the inside covers of both. The (C) does not precede "Random House."
"Nullification" is by definition an acquittal. It is not however _just_ an aquittal, it is an acquittal when the evidence would strongly support a guilty verdict (say, OJ as a bad example). It is definitely NOT synonymous with "hung jury," which is a total lack of any verdict.
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams... and this guy who knew a thing or two about law around the time of the revolution:
"If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states then that juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty, -- For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a
saving hand while yet there was time."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophilus_Parsons
Frightful how far we've come from that view.