It's highly likely that if this had happened on September 10, 2001, there wouldn't have been this kind of uproar. But in a post-9/11 U.S.A., the authorities have to assume things like this could be terrorist in nature and respond as if they were. Just because it's cartoony doesn't mean it should be taken less seriously. If we took that attitude, next thing you know, you'd be getting shredded by a Hello Kitty full of C4 and nails.
I think it's cool that he is taking responsibility instead of cleaning house. He can afford to go without a salary for a good while, and the rest of his accomplishments as CEO will probably earn him a nice position once the smoke clears. The marketing guys who would have been sacrificed if he cleaned house instead, are probably just living to the edge of their means on 5-figure salaries. And if his replacement cleans house, at least he's earned them some time to prepare for the axe.
How much carbon dioxide does a single tree consume in a year of respiration and how many trees could be planted for $25 million?
Either that or find a way to build large scale air scrubbers that simulate plant respiration (stripping the carbon atom off a CO2 molecule and releasing O2), then compress the pure carbon into bricks for use in industry. If it could be done cheaply enough it might not just be eco-friendly, but profitable as well, with the $25 million payment as a bonus.
If you were to dig down, I think you'd find that the level of resistance to the initiative is directly proportional to the cost of complying. Those states that have more modernized digital systems that they could more easily adapt to comply are going to be the ones that resist least.
There is an element of states' rights here, and the federal government has become larger and more intrusive into the afairs of the states than the original framers of the Constitution intended. The original colonies, when they formed a federal republic, were very conscious of reigning in the power of the national government and how much influence it could exert over the states. Over time, the independence and self-determination of the states has been constricted. So for some states, this could be a line in the sand over principle. But for most, I suspect, the real issue is expense.
Isn't this the Republicans domain, increasing privacy?
Are you being sarcastic?
The Republicans have always positioned themselves as champions of law and order, and their favorite tool for it is intelligence gathering. Things like the Patriot Act as well as the warrantless wiretapping controversy just prove that out.
Both parties like to pick and choose which civil liberties they defend and which ones they attack in the name of fighting crime. While the Republicans are big on intelligence gathering at the expense of our right to privacy, the Democrats are big on gun control at the expense of our right to bear arms.
I think the more important aspect is the increased penalties for willfully concealing a security breach. Increasing criminal penalties is of varying value. One of the reasons criminals commit crimes is because they think they won't get caught, so whether they risk 2 years in jail or 4 isn't going to matter that much to them.
But increasing penalties for willfully covering up a data breach may have more effect. As we've seen, bigger breaches cannot be kept secret for long. There are too many ways for them to be ferreted out. Furthermore, the people who would be in a position to conceal a data breach are often people who are more afraid of jail than those who willfully commit crimes like identity theft.
Of course, what I'd really like to see is a death penalty for spammers.
Instead of unfairly penalizing those of us who can listen to music while crossing the street (and, heaven forbid, chewing gum at the same time), why don't you just make it illegal to get hit by a vehicle while crossing the street and using an electronic gadget?
Yes, because making suicide illegal has really cut down on that problem.
But this is natural selection at work. If you're too stupid to pause your music/chat/game while you're crossing through traffic, you should be removed from the gene pool, and a city bus going 30+ mph is a capable tool for that extraction.
It's just like the government to try to make laws to keep stupid people from killing themselves. How else are we going to evolve as a species if the government tries to legislate out of existence those activities that get people into the Darwin Awards?
Indeed. And according to my most recent Wikipedia reading, this is entirely due to Congress being taken over by Elephants in the midterms (apparently comprehensively beating out the Martians who'd held the majority for the last sixteen quintillion years).
Actually, Congress was taken over by donkeys, who ended years of elephant domination. Martians have actually been guiding things behind the scenes.
Just observe the astronauts jumping around on the moon, despite the added weight of their space suits. The lowered gravity has an observable effect of magnifying lifting strength.
I am not a physicist, but AFAICT, if you hit someone with a solid uppercut in 1/6 gee, you could lift them off their feet.
Naturally, a basketball court for all us white folk...
Yes, the 1/6 gee would definitely increase your vertical leap and increase the odds of being able to dunk. But you should specify that the court be indoors, heated, and pressurized. Trying to do a lay-up in those big bulky spacesuits might be harder than you think.
I think other indoor, 1/6 gee sports that would be pretty cool:
Diving. Besides jumping higher, you fall slower, giving you more time to execute some gnarly moves on your way down.
Trampoline. Just make sure the room has high ceilings.
Boxing. Your punch has 150 pounds of force behind it. Your opponent weighs 30 pounds in the moon's gravity. Hilarity ensues.
The best way to advocate Linux is to ask some questions. What doesn't the guy like about Windows that's making him even consider Linux? What kinds of things does he do in Windows and what apps does he use? Why does he think Linux is harder than Windows?
When you know that, you know the selling points of Linux that you can spool out in 5 minutes. The biggest difficulty in evangelizing anything is when you talk at people instead of with them. If you ask questions, he'll provide you with all the talking points that will be most effective.
But it's worth mentioning... It all depends on the person's needs. Sometimes Windows will be the person's best option for a comfortable operating environment, because they have peripherals and software that Linux just doesn't have a good solution for supporting or replacing. If the guy's not ready for Linux or it's not ready for him, be honest. That way, when the situation changes, he's going to trust your advice and be ready to switch because of it.
My experience was sort of the opposite. My dad started his own store on Yahoo. He was happy to use their tools and build something himself, but after a few months, he realized he needed a more professional touch.
He went on some outsourcing site (not sure which) and got some "designers" to overhaul it for $500. And they did a TERRIBLE job. Finally, I overhauled it for him as a Christmas present. I not only had to completely re-design the site, I had to learn how to do it within the Yahoo store platform, and build him a management interface so he could update his store with new products easily.
Took me a couple of weekends, but I got it together.
Actually, it was Colonel Mustard in the study with the candlestick.:-)
The webmaster is dead. Long live the webmaster.
on
Who Killed the Webmaster?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The answer is simple. What killed the webmaster? Specialization!
The old time "webmaster" was a jack of all trades, doing design, HTML, managing your hosting account, submitting your site to search engines, and coding or subcontracting interactive scripts.
But the web and the number of ways to create content and interactivity have expanded faster than any person's skillset can. Furthermore, people started seeing really slick, professional sites, and the "Geocities Home Page On Steroids" junk that a lot of webmasters were churning our just wasn't acceptable anymore.
There are still "webmasters" where the web operation for a company or organization is kept in-house and limited to a single person. But when you get into concepts like economy of scale... if you don't need a full-time person (i.e. your site doesn't need that much active management), it's just cheaper to contract it out. And in most cases, the big, slick operations are getting those contracts.
For the big slicks, it doesn't make sense to have a bunch of jacks of all trades, mastering none, doing merely acceptable jobs. It's better to have a team of specialists and parcel out different parts to the people who excel in those parts. You get slicker, better product, faster turnaround, and the employees are plug-and-play making a single point of failure less likely.
As web sites needed to have more and varied pieces, demanded more expertise in more areas, the "webmaster" started to be replaced by the Graphic Designer, the Web Dev, the Server Jockey, the DBA, the SEO person, etc. It's sort of like math or science. A long, long time ago, it was possible for a single person to obtain the sum total of human knowledge in these disciplines. Now, you can't. You have to pick a specialty. People entering the world of web site construction and maintenance are finding that they have to pick a speciality too.
There are webmasters out there, but they're being killed off by an environment that is growing ever more complex.
You're forgetting a major factor here. Most people didn't learn the applications they use. They were *trained on them*. They never learned the program conceptually. They learned it procedurally... step-by-step.
If you change the steps, the order of the steps, or the location of the steps, and they're LOST. Not only are they lost... they're angry, unhappy, less productive, complaining, and in need of re-training. It doesn't matter if the new software is better or "just as good". It doesn't matter if the platform is better. They know how to be productive when they're following these specific procedures. If changing the software changes the procedures, you have to re-train them in the new procedures, and you have to deal with all the productivity lost while they learn and adapt. And that doesn't include the pushback from the ones who resist change out of fear or inertia.
Any exec or front-line salesperson who uses ACT!... never going to switch platforms until ACT! supports that platform. Seriously.
And that's where your hurdle comes in. Change is neither easy nor painless. Imagine a pain meter on a scale from 1 to 10. Let's say that Windows is a 5 and Linux or Mac is a 2. But the adjustment of switching is an 8. People will opt to stay with the 5. They know the 5. They know they can tolerate the 5. Because even though the 2 is promised, the 8 looms large in the immediate future.
What's going to prompt people to switch is when the combination of Microsoft arrogance and aggressive bad guys raise the pain of Windows to a 6.5, while the efforts of Linux and/or Apple developers lower the pain of switching to a 6.5 or lower. When switching is no more painful than staying the course (or possibly even less painful), you'll see the needles start to move in bigger ways.
Honestly, I don't see this as a positive development. My time on the pot is a time for reflection and grunting. If someone leaves the section with the comics and "Dear Abby" in the stall, I might elect to read, but I prefer to dump and run (TMI??). Also, knowing what Google employees are reading while they crap... Would "disquieting" be the right word for the sense of unease this gives me?
Sounds like the DARPA Challenge, but more violent. Cool!
I'm all for anything that advances us toward real-life MechWarrior/Gundam type stuff. Though I'd prefer to avoid Robot Jox.:-)
I like the Canadian warnings that come with photos, like impotence (4th down on this page). They're inventive. And, according to CNN, they're effective. Some of them (particularly the mouth diseases one, 8th from top) are sort of gross, though.
Sous-vide, IIRC, requires a consistent, controlled temperature. You'd definitely need to write a system monitor that keeps the processor at a specific load (not above, not below) so you could maintain that perfect cooking temperature.
Reminds me of cell phones. It's depressing reading review after review that says the manufacturer put 85 capabilities in a phone, then the phone company that sold it to you has had half of them crippled or shut off entirely in the firmware.
Slashdot Mirror
It's highly likely that if this had happened on September 10, 2001, there wouldn't have been this kind of uproar. But in a post-9/11 U.S.A., the authorities have to assume things like this could be terrorist in nature and respond as if they were. Just because it's cartoony doesn't mean it should be taken less seriously. If we took that attitude, next thing you know, you'd be getting shredded by a Hello Kitty full of C4 and nails.
I think it's cool that he is taking responsibility instead of cleaning house. He can afford to go without a salary for a good while, and the rest of his accomplishments as CEO will probably earn him a nice position once the smoke clears. The marketing guys who would have been sacrificed if he cleaned house instead, are probably just living to the edge of their means on 5-figure salaries. And if his replacement cleans house, at least he's earned them some time to prepare for the axe.
- Greg
How much carbon dioxide does a single tree consume in a year of respiration and how many trees could be planted for $25 million?
Either that or find a way to build large scale air scrubbers that simulate plant respiration (stripping the carbon atom off a CO2 molecule and releasing O2), then compress the pure carbon into bricks for use in industry. If it could be done cheaply enough it might not just be eco-friendly, but profitable as well, with the $25 million payment as a bonus.
- Greg
If you were to dig down, I think you'd find that the level of resistance to the initiative is directly proportional to the cost of complying. Those states that have more modernized digital systems that they could more easily adapt to comply are going to be the ones that resist least.
There is an element of states' rights here, and the federal government has become larger and more intrusive into the afairs of the states than the original framers of the Constitution intended. The original colonies, when they formed a federal republic, were very conscious of reigning in the power of the national government and how much influence it could exert over the states. Over time, the independence and self-determination of the states has been constricted. So for some states, this could be a line in the sand over principle. But for most, I suspect, the real issue is expense.
- Greg
Isn't this the Republicans domain, increasing privacy?
Are you being sarcastic?
The Republicans have always positioned themselves as champions of law and order, and their favorite tool for it is intelligence gathering. Things like the Patriot Act as well as the warrantless wiretapping controversy just prove that out.
Both parties like to pick and choose which civil liberties they defend and which ones they attack in the name of fighting crime. While the Republicans are big on intelligence gathering at the expense of our right to privacy, the Democrats are big on gun control at the expense of our right to bear arms.
I think the more important aspect is the increased penalties for willfully concealing a security breach. Increasing criminal penalties is of varying value. One of the reasons criminals commit crimes is because they think they won't get caught, so whether they risk 2 years in jail or 4 isn't going to matter that much to them.
But increasing penalties for willfully covering up a data breach may have more effect. As we've seen, bigger breaches cannot be kept secret for long. There are too many ways for them to be ferreted out. Furthermore, the people who would be in a position to conceal a data breach are often people who are more afraid of jail than those who willfully commit crimes like identity theft.
Of course, what I'd really like to see is a death penalty for spammers.
- Greg
Instead of unfairly penalizing those of us who can listen to music while crossing the street (and, heaven forbid, chewing gum at the same time), why don't you just make it illegal to get hit by a vehicle while crossing the street and using an electronic gadget?
Yes, because making suicide illegal has really cut down on that problem.
- Greg
But this is natural selection at work. If you're too stupid to pause your music/chat/game while you're crossing through traffic, you should be removed from the gene pool, and a city bus going 30+ mph is a capable tool for that extraction.
It's just like the government to try to make laws to keep stupid people from killing themselves. How else are we going to evolve as a species if the government tries to legislate out of existence those activities that get people into the Darwin Awards?
- Greg
Indeed. And according to my most recent Wikipedia reading, this is entirely due to Congress being taken over by Elephants in the midterms (apparently comprehensively beating out the Martians who'd held the majority for the last sixteen quintillion years).
Actually, Congress was taken over by donkeys, who ended years of elephant domination. Martians have actually been guiding things behind the scenes.
- Greg
a Gap, Starbucks, and McDonalds on every lunar corner.
Sounds like downtown Seattle.
- Greg
Just observe the astronauts jumping around on the moon, despite the added weight of their space suits. The lowered gravity has an observable effect of magnifying lifting strength.
I am not a physicist, but AFAICT, if you hit someone with a solid uppercut in 1/6 gee, you could lift them off their feet.
And hilarity ensues...
- Greg
Well, if you REALLY want to make it American, you need to hand out free guns and bibles to all disembarking passengers.
Well, if we're going to get into stereotypes (says the non-Christian, non-gun-owning American)...
To make it British: Hand out halloween fake snaggletooth inserts and white greasepaint so they can get that pasty look.
To make it French: Spray them with horse sweat, remove their spines and replace them with a stick up their ass.
To make it German: Everyone will line up here... NOW!!!
- Greg
Naturally, a basketball court for all us white folk...
Yes, the 1/6 gee would definitely increase your vertical leap and increase the odds of being able to dunk. But you should specify that the court be indoors, heated, and pressurized. Trying to do a lay-up in those big bulky spacesuits might be harder than you think.
I think other indoor, 1/6 gee sports that would be pretty cool:
Diving. Besides jumping higher, you fall slower, giving you more time to execute some gnarly moves on your way down.
Trampoline. Just make sure the room has high ceilings.
Boxing. Your punch has 150 pounds of force behind it. Your opponent weighs 30 pounds in the moon's gravity. Hilarity ensues.
- Greg
The best way to advocate Linux is to ask some questions. What doesn't the guy like about Windows that's making him even consider Linux? What kinds of things does he do in Windows and what apps does he use? Why does he think Linux is harder than Windows?
When you know that, you know the selling points of Linux that you can spool out in 5 minutes. The biggest difficulty in evangelizing anything is when you talk at people instead of with them. If you ask questions, he'll provide you with all the talking points that will be most effective.
But it's worth mentioning... It all depends on the person's needs. Sometimes Windows will be the person's best option for a comfortable operating environment, because they have peripherals and software that Linux just doesn't have a good solution for supporting or replacing. If the guy's not ready for Linux or it's not ready for him, be honest. That way, when the situation changes, he's going to trust your advice and be ready to switch because of it.
- Greg
My experience was sort of the opposite. My dad started his own store on Yahoo. He was happy to use their tools and build something himself, but after a few months, he realized he needed a more professional touch.
He went on some outsourcing site (not sure which) and got some "designers" to overhaul it for $500. And they did a TERRIBLE job. Finally, I overhauled it for him as a Christmas present. I not only had to completely re-design the site, I had to learn how to do it within the Yahoo store platform, and build him a management interface so he could update his store with new products easily.
Took me a couple of weekends, but I got it together.
...management of a public-facing web site is increasingly just one facade of a far more important job...
I think you meant "facet" instead of "facade", but it also makes a sort of perverse sense as originally written.
- Greg
Actually, it was Colonel Mustard in the study with the candlestick. :-)
The answer is simple. What killed the webmaster? Specialization!
The old time "webmaster" was a jack of all trades, doing design, HTML, managing your hosting account, submitting your site to search engines, and coding or subcontracting interactive scripts.
But the web and the number of ways to create content and interactivity have expanded faster than any person's skillset can. Furthermore, people started seeing really slick, professional sites, and the "Geocities Home Page On Steroids" junk that a lot of webmasters were churning our just wasn't acceptable anymore.
There are still "webmasters" where the web operation for a company or organization is kept in-house and limited to a single person. But when you get into concepts like economy of scale... if you don't need a full-time person (i.e. your site doesn't need that much active management), it's just cheaper to contract it out. And in most cases, the big, slick operations are getting those contracts.
For the big slicks, it doesn't make sense to have a bunch of jacks of all trades, mastering none, doing merely acceptable jobs. It's better to have a team of specialists and parcel out different parts to the people who excel in those parts. You get slicker, better product, faster turnaround, and the employees are plug-and-play making a single point of failure less likely.
As web sites needed to have more and varied pieces, demanded more expertise in more areas, the "webmaster" started to be replaced by the Graphic Designer, the Web Dev, the Server Jockey, the DBA, the SEO person, etc. It's sort of like math or science. A long, long time ago, it was possible for a single person to obtain the sum total of human knowledge in these disciplines. Now, you can't. You have to pick a specialty. People entering the world of web site construction and maintenance are finding that they have to pick a speciality too.
There are webmasters out there, but they're being killed off by an environment that is growing ever more complex.
You're forgetting a major factor here. Most people didn't learn the applications they use. They were *trained on them*. They never learned the program conceptually. They learned it procedurally... step-by-step.
If you change the steps, the order of the steps, or the location of the steps, and they're LOST. Not only are they lost... they're angry, unhappy, less productive, complaining, and in need of re-training. It doesn't matter if the new software is better or "just as good". It doesn't matter if the platform is better. They know how to be productive when they're following these specific procedures. If changing the software changes the procedures, you have to re-train them in the new procedures, and you have to deal with all the productivity lost while they learn and adapt. And that doesn't include the pushback from the ones who resist change out of fear or inertia.
Any exec or front-line salesperson who uses ACT!... never going to switch platforms until ACT! supports that platform. Seriously.
And that's where your hurdle comes in. Change is neither easy nor painless. Imagine a pain meter on a scale from 1 to 10. Let's say that Windows is a 5 and Linux or Mac is a 2. But the adjustment of switching is an 8. People will opt to stay with the 5. They know the 5. They know they can tolerate the 5. Because even though the 2 is promised, the 8 looms large in the immediate future.
What's going to prompt people to switch is when the combination of Microsoft arrogance and aggressive bad guys raise the pain of Windows to a 6.5, while the efforts of Linux and/or Apple developers lower the pain of switching to a 6.5 or lower. When switching is no more painful than staying the course (or possibly even less painful), you'll see the needles start to move in bigger ways.
So now Google's gunning for Uncle John's Bathroom Reader ?
Honestly, I don't see this as a positive development. My time on the pot is a time for reflection and grunting. If someone leaves the section with the comics and "Dear Abby" in the stall, I might elect to read, but I prefer to dump and run (TMI??). Also, knowing what Google employees are reading while they crap... Would "disquieting" be the right word for the sense of unease this gives me?
- Greg
"I own robot jox on vhs"
Okay, whatever you do, NEVER EVER use that as an opening line with a woman.
- Greg
Sounds like the DARPA Challenge, but more violent. Cool! I'm all for anything that advances us toward real-life MechWarrior/Gundam type stuff. Though I'd prefer to avoid Robot Jox. :-)
I like the Canadian warnings that come with photos, like impotence (4th down on this page). They're inventive. And, according to CNN, they're effective. Some of them (particularly the mouth diseases one, 8th from top) are sort of gross, though.
- Greg
Sous-vide, IIRC, requires a consistent, controlled temperature. You'd definitely need to write a system monitor that keeps the processor at a specific load (not above, not below) so you could maintain that perfect cooking temperature.
- Greg
There's a great page that tracks spammed stocks. While TFA shows that people who buy in before the touts start arriving make a 5-6% gain, the spammed stock tracker shows that once the spam starts showing up in inboxes, it's too late.
The guy's got records going back over 2 years. It's pretty interesting.
- Greg
Reminds me of cell phones. It's depressing reading review after review that says the manufacturer put 85 capabilities in a phone, then the phone company that sold it to you has had half of them crippled or shut off entirely in the firmware.