The hardest part of Andrew Bonar's job is convincing the world he's not a spammer. It's not easy. Just having "email deliverability consultant" on his business cards is enough to start the Viagra jokes.
The hardest... Bonar... is enough to start the Viagra jokes.
... for an (sic) soulless entity that is designed only for its own perpetuation with no regard for anything that it might perceive as an obstacle...
This might be a description for an atheist. Personally, I tend to agree with you by the way. I place people above corporations (even if corporations put food on people's tables). If only because a corporation often behaves like a bullying mob. I made my post because I wanted to see replies by those who would say that the shareholder needs to be taken into consideration, so that this could be debated. I believe the so called need to satisfy the shareholder with bigger and bigger dividends (at the hands of brokers who receive commissions and bonuses even for bad decisions) is ultimately what is responsible for the recession and job losses. And until this is understood and corrected, the recession and job losses in North America, and likely Europe, will continue or at least not recover substantially. Unless we bring these issues out, they can't be solved. Political correctness and not talking about harsh issues only perpetuates problems, it never solves them.
Or do they have a moral obligation to their shareholders to not spend money if they don't have to (keep up the bottom line)? Or do they have an ethical obligation? Just playing devils advocate since I think the idea of profitability IS a big part of this, and trading shareholders concerns over the customers or the employees seems to be the new morality for companies and corporations. If it is, then what they are doing probably seems just fine to them, and what the OP is complaining about probably seems strange.
Yes, in a big general sense I agree. There are always some good people in every place you go. Note that I left them five years ago.:) When I was there I was fortunate enough to work on R&D coding for a new feature set which used code beyond what most of the production line coders were capable of. We would constantly find mistakes in the existing code base (whenever we had to interface to it) and the people responsible for them never wanted to know about it (e.g. opening a cursor on every fetch in pro-C because they couldn't figure out how to keep it open when they committed before the next fetch from the same big result set). Too 'droid-like. We were left alone so we avoided the toxic atmosphere for the most part. The one thing the XML interface (new code base) does if one cares to use it to learn is describes very well a telecom's business model. They all work generally the same, so if you work in the business you can go to most telecom companies. Especially if you work as a business analyst. Most telcos follow a similar model for orders and billing so it is a leg up to learn the business sector. And if you work on a project (I contract now) with docs, you also have the added benefit of being able to show your client how a company may want to charge for a modification for something that is already there.;) But I personally don't know of any billing system vendor that would do that... cough cough... but then again, all billing system vendors are honest that way in my experience (I've worked with a few)... cough cough cough... I think I herniated myself.
The thing is, this situation is not unusual. Take that big medical system company in K.C. (rhymes with 'berner'). From what I saw, their code base uses even more proprietary features that can almost be considered a proprietary precompiled scripting language (kind of like a pro-C for that particular company). I worked for a company that was bought out by them and we were going to have to learn how to become even more trapped by the company than docs can do to you. I hit the eject button. In my opinion, it is not a good place if you want to be able to work elsewhere at some point in the future.
Anyway, the practice of finding ways to trap your employees is common, even if it wears sheep's clothing and is said to be in the name of providing a transparent interface to the DB by using a proprietary internal 'language'. Then there are practices that are used by both 'high tech' and 'low tech' companies of building in small out of the way locations, say in the corner of Arizona or Oregon where there might be a low employment rate. Then the company is the biggest fish around and if you don't work for them you are screwed. Then they can dictate all sorts of shit to the employees. The point is, the BIG companies are always trying to find ways to legally leverage more for less from their employees. Once decisions are made by committees and not by individual humans, the humanity leaves. In this case less is more, as more humans mean less humanity. I am happy that the JD is doing what it can to stop at least some of this bad behaviour by companies.
Unfortunately organizing programmers and 'high tech' people is like herding cats. We are all independent thinkers by nature. As much as I hate unions this is one sector where it would be nice, if only to stop this kind of behaviour and the ridiculous hours asked of us because of poor project management. The Y2K issue was solved 10 years ago, we need to be governed by the same rules as the rest of the white collar work force and not lumped in with emergency workers still. There is no reason a company should need to ask employees to work crazy hours just because some manager made an unrealistic deadline in some death march project.
I like Saint Louis. I'd like to move back, but since I just had back surgery last summer, I'll have to wait till the 'no preexisting system' clause in the new health care law kicks in, in 2014. I'd like to settle there. A very under-rated city, e
It isn't bad for the company's, but it sure sucks for the employees. That is the point of the investigation. Several years ago when I was working for a major telecom billing system vendor in Saint Louis I was trying to find work elsewhere. Every head hunter in the city told me the same thing: they wouldn't talk to me while I still worked for that vendor. It seems that vendor was a major client of all of the head hunters as they were doing a lot of hiring at the time, and told the head hunters they would not deal with them again if they ever found out that they had helped one of their employees (like me) find a job somewhere else. So it made it that much more difficult to find other work. I did eventually, but this is very much like the situation in the article. In fact I think this is likely way more prevalent and is what the government should be looking at. But it is also very difficult to combat, so they will likely only go after the low hanging fruit; as in cases like Google, MS, IBM, etc.
Some say it doesn't... well at least 80% of the time (according to the (in)famous Standish Group report).;-) I am so looking forward to seeing Bilski being told to get stuffed by the SCOTUS. I am also worried that the SCOTUS may twist this into something worse... "look on the bright side of life, da dum, da dum, da dum da dum da dum!"
Context is definitely required before final judgment. Without it, calling this 'collateral murder' is not appropriate and borders on criminal in itself. I did see two people with AK-47s. Without more info we don't know if they are insurgents or security for the news reporters. Without context we don't know what was going on around there(i.e. insurgent activity) and if anyone in the area with a weapon was considered fair game. Given that a camera can look like a weapon, these guys were taking their lives in their own hands by moving around in a battleground with armed civilians/insurgents. I don't like to see people killed. However given the area and time frame I am inclined at first look to think that the helicopter crews were doing their jobs correctly and assessing any group that shows any weapons as hostile. News crews know the danger of going into a war zone. They should have known that moving around the area with armed men could provoke an attack by the U.S.
The one question I would like to know is whether there was any mechanism for these reporters to report where they were going to the U.S. command, and if they could advise that they had armed guards (if that is what those two fellows with AK-47s were... if not they would surely have to be insurgents), and if is so, if they used that mechanism. That would put the onus on the American pilots. However, if there was no mechanism for doing this or if there was and they didn't use it, then the onus is on the reporters for keeping themselves safe.
What I do have a problem with is attacking rescuers. I wonder how much screaming the U.S. would do if they had footage showing the other side shooting at medics trying to rescue wounded Americans. This was wrong. This one aspect should be treated as a serious crime. Notice they didn't shoot the fellow when he was crawling away because he hadn't reached for a weapon... they even said that was why they didn't shoot over the radio... but when he was being removed to the van with still no sign of weapons they shot them all... what changed? Nothing. Still wounded and unarmed.
This does not however, absolve those who brought children into a battle zone. The fact the children were wounded or killed is immensely sad, but in no way was it the fault of the helicopter crews. You DON'T bring children into the area where shooting is taking place and/or is still unsecured NO MATTER WHAT. The driver of the vehicle was to blame for what happened to the children.
Rule out everything that it can't be, and what you are left with is the correct answer. If they both have the same DNA, and one has an ironclad alibi, then it has to be the other twin who did it. Jesus H. Christ, hasn't anyone heard of logic before?
It's a reminder that retards think it is more important to let a murderer go than to make sure he or she doesn't murder again. Mental masturbation trying to rationalize some ideology into practice that only causes more harm than it anything it may solve. Yes, throw the cops in jail. If they are breaking the law, punish them. If they deal drugs or rob someone, you would have no issue throwing them in jail. If they rob someone of their civil rights, why is there an issue putting them in jail. You seem to think civil rights for the murderer is so precious that you would let him go and potentially, and in some cases almost certainly murder again; the ultimate violation of civil rights. If civil rights are so precious, then I think it behooves us to give the benefit of the doubt to society in general and protect them from a certain threat and use the evidence to convict a felon... protecting societies rights to the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... something that can't be done if one has just been murdered by someone released on a technicality. If police have a threat of being jailed, they will more likely respect someone's rights. In fact, you can make it slightly more fair for them: if they find a smoking gun, then they get a 'get out of jail, free' card. If they don't, they go directly to jail, do not pass go, for say six months. And then they get their job back after. They will be certain to ask for a warrant next time, and society isn't punished yet again by the loss of a trained police officer. But by no means should we continue to let lawyers debate how many angels fit on the head of a pin while society suffers.
The problem is there's nothing to stop the police from engaging in fishing expeditions
Way to take stuff out of context. Read the rest of my comment. If they fish, they are doing an illegal search. This includes if they have a bad or misused warrant or no warrant at all. If they do an illegal search, then they are guilty of a crime. Punish them for it. But if they find a gun that proves someone is a murderer, arrest them too. This idea that you need to let a murderer walk is bullshit. It is time people stop playing fucking games like this and use common sense instead of beancounter sense.
This idea that you let a culprit go because a search was performed without a warrant, or the warrant was issued when it shouldn't have been (essentially the same thing) is a ridiculous bit of mental masturbation. If you find evidence like a literal smoking gun in the person's possession, the person should be convicted. Granted his/her rights were violated, but that is a separate issue. The person still was in possession of something that indicates their guilt, punish them. As well, punish the people who violated his rights by performing the illegal search. But by no mean should the public be punished by allowing a villain to remain at large.
Given the way Agile is usually implemented, it would have then made a detour under London before making it back to Switzerland. Kind of like the famous cartoon... especially the documentation part. Nice legs...
Matt: I remember my first taste of the KDE/Gnome divide when I was involved in the Linux Business Office at Novell. It was fractious then and, judging from your "question," it remains so. I don't want to add to this rancorous debate, but do hope you'll continue to talk actively and openly with Canonical and the Ubuntu community to ensure your views are heard and the Ubuntu distribution remains one that you will enjoy using.
This is executive-ese for, "I don't give a shit, and we won't be doing anything to stop fucking KDE." Very similar to, "thank you for your input, I'll take it under advisement."
I am on the fence when it comes to whether it is a scare tactic or not. It makes sense that the more lines of code there are the more chances for bugs, especially if the code is written by humans. And when I think of code being generated, I don't necessarily think of preprocessors. On a project we worked on we created our own code generators based on some albeit complex templates and data structures. Granted by the end, the code generators were pretty rock solid but they were still written by people, which made them susceptible to error. Stuff out of compiler while just another form of code generator is generally even better tested and bullet proof, is still the product of humans. So sure, generated code is less of an issue. Less of being the key phrase.:) And the more lines of code generated combined with the more situations the generated code is applied to... still more room for error. But yeah, it is more of a concern with human written code than generated. But I don't think the metric is totally useless.
So why wouldn't this type of legislation apply to a client server system when one party doesn't know the other is having their application send your information to them?
Most of the coders I know who work in an environment where SQL is used, and who don't know SQL aren't very good at writing the other half of the code either.
This includes coders who insist Hibernate is the be all and end all of database interfaces. 'I don't need to know SQL well because I have just abstracted that whole icky database thingy.' Meanwhile you get both shit code (because they are all silver bullet use the latest technology and agile technobabble to write factory and strategy patterns everywhere when a simple 'if' statement would have worked well) and shit database performance. No I am not frustrated nor bitter at blind lemming-like stupidity. OK, well a little... (and yes, hibernate and other ORMs are good, when used in moderation).
But it still means there are 100 million lines of code where a bug can exist (assuming it is really 100 million line of code and not say, 99,999,999 lines of code).
Most Americans must like this status quo as they keep electing members of congress (senate and representatives) who most want to keep the status quo in terms of health insurance. Meanwhile the rest of the industrialized world does not have these kinds of worries. This whole article is a good argument on how the current IP laws and US health care system are impeding entrepreneurship by making it too difficult for people to branch out on their own. Being a good Christian country, the phrase "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," should be meaningful.
Or is this possibly a case where people are attempting to use technology as a silver bullet against bad design. Your point cannot be made unless we know that they have a good design to begin with and the reason for the outages lies specifically with the database technology. Sometimes the overlooked problem is with bad or dogmatic coding (i.e. too concerned with good form or over-using patterns, and not enough with performance or the 'KISS' principle), and not with the server or hardware technology. Chances are their code is good, but we don't know that. So your premise is not valid.
Slashdot Mirror
The hardest ... Bonar ... is enough to start the Viagra jokes.
This might be a description for an atheist. Personally, I tend to agree with you by the way. I place people above corporations (even if corporations put food on people's tables). If only because a corporation often behaves like a bullying mob. I made my post because I wanted to see replies by those who would say that the shareholder needs to be taken into consideration, so that this could be debated. I believe the so called need to satisfy the shareholder with bigger and bigger dividends (at the hands of brokers who receive commissions and bonuses even for bad decisions) is ultimately what is responsible for the recession and job losses. And until this is understood and corrected, the recession and job losses in North America, and likely Europe, will continue or at least not recover substantially. Unless we bring these issues out, they can't be solved. Political correctness and not talking about harsh issues only perpetuates problems, it never solves them.
Or do they have a moral obligation to their shareholders to not spend money if they don't have to (keep up the bottom line)? Or do they have an ethical obligation? Just playing devils advocate since I think the idea of profitability IS a big part of this, and trading shareholders concerns over the customers or the employees seems to be the new morality for companies and corporations. If it is, then what they are doing probably seems just fine to them, and what the OP is complaining about probably seems strange.
Microsoft is still in business. Sad... but true.
Yes, in a big general sense I agree. There are always some good people in every place you go. Note that I left them five years ago. :) When I was there I was fortunate enough to work on R&D coding for a new feature set which used code beyond what most of the production line coders were capable of. We would constantly find mistakes in the existing code base (whenever we had to interface to it) and the people responsible for them never wanted to know about it (e.g. opening a cursor on every fetch in pro-C because they couldn't figure out how to keep it open when they committed before the next fetch from the same big result set). Too 'droid-like. We were left alone so we avoided the toxic atmosphere for the most part. The one thing the XML interface (new code base) does if one cares to use it to learn is describes very well a telecom's business model. They all work generally the same, so if you work in the business you can go to most telecom companies. Especially if you work as a business analyst. Most telcos follow a similar model for orders and billing so it is a leg up to learn the business sector. And if you work on a project (I contract now) with docs, you also have the added benefit of being able to show your client how a company may want to charge for a modification for something that is already there. ;) But I personally don't know of any billing system vendor that would do that... cough cough... but then again, all billing system vendors are honest that way in my experience (I've worked with a few)... cough cough cough... I think I herniated myself.
The thing is, this situation is not unusual. Take that big medical system company in K.C. (rhymes with 'berner'). From what I saw, their code base uses even more proprietary features that can almost be considered a proprietary precompiled scripting language (kind of like a pro-C for that particular company). I worked for a company that was bought out by them and we were going to have to learn how to become even more trapped by the company than docs can do to you. I hit the eject button. In my opinion, it is not a good place if you want to be able to work elsewhere at some point in the future.
Anyway, the practice of finding ways to trap your employees is common, even if it wears sheep's clothing and is said to be in the name of providing a transparent interface to the DB by using a proprietary internal 'language'. Then there are practices that are used by both 'high tech' and 'low tech' companies of building in small out of the way locations, say in the corner of Arizona or Oregon where there might be a low employment rate. Then the company is the biggest fish around and if you don't work for them you are screwed. Then they can dictate all sorts of shit to the employees. The point is, the BIG companies are always trying to find ways to legally leverage more for less from their employees. Once decisions are made by committees and not by individual humans, the humanity leaves. In this case less is more, as more humans mean less humanity. I am happy that the JD is doing what it can to stop at least some of this bad behaviour by companies.
Unfortunately organizing programmers and 'high tech' people is like herding cats. We are all independent thinkers by nature. As much as I hate unions this is one sector where it would be nice, if only to stop this kind of behaviour and the ridiculous hours asked of us because of poor project management. The Y2K issue was solved 10 years ago, we need to be governed by the same rules as the rest of the white collar work force and not lumped in with emergency workers still. There is no reason a company should need to ask employees to work crazy hours just because some manager made an unrealistic deadline in some death march project.
I like Saint Louis. I'd like to move back, but since I just had back surgery last summer, I'll have to wait till the 'no preexisting system' clause in the new health care law kicks in, in 2014. I'd like to settle there. A very under-rated city, e
It isn't bad for the company's, but it sure sucks for the employees. That is the point of the investigation. Several years ago when I was working for a major telecom billing system vendor in Saint Louis I was trying to find work elsewhere. Every head hunter in the city told me the same thing: they wouldn't talk to me while I still worked for that vendor. It seems that vendor was a major client of all of the head hunters as they were doing a lot of hiring at the time, and told the head hunters they would not deal with them again if they ever found out that they had helped one of their employees (like me) find a job somewhere else. So it made it that much more difficult to find other work. I did eventually, but this is very much like the situation in the article. In fact I think this is likely way more prevalent and is what the government should be looking at. But it is also very difficult to combat, so they will likely only go after the low hanging fruit; as in cases like Google, MS, IBM, etc.
Some say it doesn't... well at least 80% of the time (according to the (in)famous Standish Group report). ;-) I am so looking forward to seeing Bilski being told to get stuffed by the SCOTUS. I am also worried that the SCOTUS may twist this into something worse... "look on the bright side of life, da dum, da dum, da dum da dum da dum!"
And you sound politically correct. Sorry you lost the ability to think for yourself.
Context is definitely required before final judgment. Without it, calling this 'collateral murder' is not appropriate and borders on criminal in itself. I did see two people with AK-47s. Without more info we don't know if they are insurgents or security for the news reporters. Without context we don't know what was going on around there(i.e. insurgent activity) and if anyone in the area with a weapon was considered fair game. Given that a camera can look like a weapon, these guys were taking their lives in their own hands by moving around in a battleground with armed civilians/insurgents. I don't like to see people killed. However given the area and time frame I am inclined at first look to think that the helicopter crews were doing their jobs correctly and assessing any group that shows any weapons as hostile. News crews know the danger of going into a war zone. They should have known that moving around the area with armed men could provoke an attack by the U.S.
The one question I would like to know is whether there was any mechanism for these reporters to report where they were going to the U.S. command, and if they could advise that they had armed guards (if that is what those two fellows with AK-47s were... if not they would surely have to be insurgents), and if is so, if they used that mechanism. That would put the onus on the American pilots. However, if there was no mechanism for doing this or if there was and they didn't use it, then the onus is on the reporters for keeping themselves safe.
What I do have a problem with is attacking rescuers. I wonder how much screaming the U.S. would do if they had footage showing the other side shooting at medics trying to rescue wounded Americans. This was wrong. This one aspect should be treated as a serious crime. Notice they didn't shoot the fellow when he was crawling away because he hadn't reached for a weapon... they even said that was why they didn't shoot over the radio... but when he was being removed to the van with still no sign of weapons they shot them all... what changed? Nothing. Still wounded and unarmed.
This does not however, absolve those who brought children into a battle zone. The fact the children were wounded or killed is immensely sad, but in no way was it the fault of the helicopter crews. You DON'T bring children into the area where shooting is taking place and/or is still unsecured NO MATTER WHAT. The driver of the vehicle was to blame for what happened to the children.
Rule out everything that it can't be, and what you are left with is the correct answer. If they both have the same DNA, and one has an ironclad alibi, then it has to be the other twin who did it. Jesus H. Christ, hasn't anyone heard of logic before?
It's a reminder that retards think it is more important to let a murderer go than to make sure he or she doesn't murder again. Mental masturbation trying to rationalize some ideology into practice that only causes more harm than it anything it may solve. Yes, throw the cops in jail. If they are breaking the law, punish them. If they deal drugs or rob someone, you would have no issue throwing them in jail. If they rob someone of their civil rights, why is there an issue putting them in jail. You seem to think civil rights for the murderer is so precious that you would let him go and potentially, and in some cases almost certainly murder again; the ultimate violation of civil rights. If civil rights are so precious, then I think it behooves us to give the benefit of the doubt to society in general and protect them from a certain threat and use the evidence to convict a felon... protecting societies rights to the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... something that can't be done if one has just been murdered by someone released on a technicality. If police have a threat of being jailed, they will more likely respect someone's rights. In fact, you can make it slightly more fair for them: if they find a smoking gun, then they get a 'get out of jail, free' card. If they don't, they go directly to jail, do not pass go, for say six months. And then they get their job back after. They will be certain to ask for a warrant next time, and society isn't punished yet again by the loss of a trained police officer. But by no means should we continue to let lawyers debate how many angels fit on the head of a pin while society suffers.
The earth is flat, you insensitive clod!
Way to take stuff out of context. Read the rest of my comment. If they fish, they are doing an illegal search. This includes if they have a bad or misused warrant or no warrant at all. If they do an illegal search, then they are guilty of a crime. Punish them for it. But if they find a gun that proves someone is a murderer, arrest them too. This idea that you need to let a murderer walk is bullshit. It is time people stop playing fucking games like this and use common sense instead of beancounter sense.
This idea that you let a culprit go because a search was performed without a warrant, or the warrant was issued when it shouldn't have been (essentially the same thing) is a ridiculous bit of mental masturbation. If you find evidence like a literal smoking gun in the person's possession, the person should be convicted. Granted his/her rights were violated, but that is a separate issue. The person still was in possession of something that indicates their guilt, punish them. As well, punish the people who violated his rights by performing the illegal search. But by no mean should the public be punished by allowing a villain to remain at large.
Given the way Agile is usually implemented, it would have then made a detour under London before making it back to Switzerland. Kind of like the famous cartoon... especially the documentation part. Nice legs...
Actually, the mouse heard someone call dibs 8 years ago.
... and the Scottish guy is saying, "Hey McCloud, get off of my ewe!"
If you read his reply:
This is executive-ese for, "I don't give a shit, and we won't be doing anything to stop fucking KDE." Very similar to, "thank you for your input, I'll take it under advisement."
I am on the fence when it comes to whether it is a scare tactic or not. It makes sense that the more lines of code there are the more chances for bugs, especially if the code is written by humans. And when I think of code being generated, I don't necessarily think of preprocessors. On a project we worked on we created our own code generators based on some albeit complex templates and data structures. Granted by the end, the code generators were pretty rock solid but they were still written by people, which made them susceptible to error. Stuff out of compiler while just another form of code generator is generally even better tested and bullet proof, is still the product of humans. So sure, generated code is less of an issue. Less of being the key phrase. :) And the more lines of code generated combined with the more situations the generated code is applied to... still more room for error. But yeah, it is more of a concern with human written code than generated. But I don't think the metric is totally useless.
So why wouldn't this type of legislation apply to a client server system when one party doesn't know the other is having their application send your information to them?
This includes coders who insist Hibernate is the be all and end all of database interfaces. 'I don't need to know SQL well because I have just abstracted that whole icky database thingy.' Meanwhile you get both shit code (because they are all silver bullet use the latest technology and agile technobabble to write factory and strategy patterns everywhere when a simple 'if' statement would have worked well) and shit database performance. No I am not frustrated nor bitter at blind lemming-like stupidity. OK, well a little... (and yes, hibernate and other ORMs are good, when used in moderation).
But it still means there are 100 million lines of code where a bug can exist (assuming it is really 100 million line of code and not say, 99,999,999 lines of code).
Windows phone home maybe?
Most Americans must like this status quo as they keep electing members of congress (senate and representatives) who most want to keep the status quo in terms of health insurance. Meanwhile the rest of the industrialized world does not have these kinds of worries. This whole article is a good argument on how the current IP laws and US health care system are impeding entrepreneurship by making it too difficult for people to branch out on their own. Being a good Christian country, the phrase "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," should be meaningful.
Or is this possibly a case where people are attempting to use technology as a silver bullet against bad design. Your point cannot be made unless we know that they have a good design to begin with and the reason for the outages lies specifically with the database technology. Sometimes the overlooked problem is with bad or dogmatic coding (i.e. too concerned with good form or over-using patterns, and not enough with performance or the 'KISS' principle), and not with the server or hardware technology. Chances are their code is good, but we don't know that. So your premise is not valid.