I think Temple Grandin said something like: if we were all neural-typical [er.. normal], we'd still be sitting in the dark in a cold cave having lots of conversations.
Thanks goodness for Asperger's.
BTW: there is some science to communication with "eccentrics". In particular, look up "social stories". You have to modify it a bit to use in the work place but this method works surprisingly well with the Ferengi as well as the tech-droids.
Hey AC... vitamin therapy is not accepted generally by the MD crowd but like a lot of things, turns out to be effective for a number of people.
Also look into diet: gluten, casein, soy proteins are good targets for trial elimination to see if there are improvements.
Gut physiology and the roles of trace elements is not well understood, especially with respect to chronic disorders.
Certainly there is a lot of anecdotal evidence wrt diet/vitamins and improvement of some ASD symptoms.
There exist major problems in getting funding to look into these areas as most research is funded for development of profit-making drugs. The drugs are useful too, but I am convinced that drug treatments are not targeting the disease source locus.
Those who aren't able to put on a "consumer compatible liveware" persona usually don't migrate to public facing positions.
Almost everyone I know (even the "jerks") know how to be service/user focused when a customer is around. We are all bright enough to understand how our pay is generated and pretty much all take pride in some sort of professional attitude.
Now then, dealing with VENDORs is completely different!
I think there was a time when that was true, but not really any longer. IT isn't quite the basement-dwelling, bitter social outcast draw it once was.......On the other hand, maybe I'm just fooling myself.
Of course you are fooling yourself. Everyone in our IT shop is near-ASD; one more symptom each and we'd all be eligible for disability.
Now don't be moddin' me flamebait, bucko: this works out just fine and we're all pretty chuffed with it.
OCD and high IQ are perfect for the IT work place and we all get along quite well, thank you, when left alone to play with our systems and networks. No one's bothered by the given examples; most think that the heretic would be a fool to think any different, the flake is just ADD/ADHD and just needs a PM to keep on track, and the jerk is really just NLD (possibly Tourette's if he has a tick) and doesn't mean anything nasty by what he says. Besides, it's all quite entertaining as long as there is lots of work to do and the pay checks keep coming in.
As for me, I'm just a freakin' ASD rainbow.
The great thing is, everyone is bright and all dive deep into the knowledge well. The answer to any problem is close at hand. Also, everyone has coping strategies and has learned how to communicate depending on who is being dealt with.
... they might reduce the number of bugs, or the time taken to fix one, However if that time is already accounted for in your working day then the only way these things could save money is if they get you fired and can save your salary...
Ahhh.... I can't let this go by.
First off, let me say I agree that simply bringing in a consultant and doing some "thing" (process change, tool implementation) based solely on a best practice is foolish. Absolutely there has to be a real, identified problem to fix or efficiency to be made and there has to be a real, concrete, measurable way of determining whether the change works. Almost always, the answers exist already within the core group of experienced employees.
But... I must take issue with the idea that "the only way these things could save money is if they get you fired". That statement is almost never true for any non-trivial, non-monolithic IT shop. It is important to attribute costs accurately and reducing labor spent on a product, whether support (operational expense) or development (capital expense), is important. From a business view, spending less time on a particular item is a real savings.... no matter what. That is one issue.
What the business does with the employee time that is returned to the resource pool is another issue. It is important to separate these items. Also the phrase "save money" is almost meaningless or at best a fuzzy concept that has a subjective meaning when referring to work efficiencies. It would be better to say "reduce operational/capital cost" for a particular item instead. From a business POV, the returned resource time is an opportunity to redirect the resource to another ROI generating area. The time saved becomes time that can earn more $$ on something else.
Employee time is almost always the single largest cost for an organization. Increasing productivity (reducing time spent per unit) is always a top priority. If the company's management does not understand this then there are fundamental problems in the organization. If a firm's response to reducing required hours on a project is to let go of permanent employees, then there are other issues and a smart IT worker should make sure his/her parachute is packed, IMO. Reducing consultants/contractors is one thing; reducing permanent staff means there is a willingness to write off a significant investment in training and experience.
Backups may be unusable. Any bad thing that can happen will, and at the worst possible moment.
Or perhaps there were finger problems...
Or perhaps, like many large mail systems, restore of a major loss of data is not possible within the constraints imposed (time, machine load, other crap), and the best choice for the business is to write off the data.
Perhaps there are backups but they are not current enough. Say 24/48 hrs earlier, meaning all new stuff is lost. New stuff is the highest priority.
Full nightly backups may be impossible due to cost or time constraints.
RAID systems only go so far to provide protection against data loss. Some types of failure will corrupt the entire volume.
IMHO, someone who relies on an email system file folder as a secure repository for data is a fool or is ignorant of the realities. Anyone who has administrated a large email system (say > 1M users) knows this. Even small systems can be problematic. Email (SMTP, POP, IMAP etc) is just the wrong app to have confidence in for the purpose of secure, long term storage. Large email systems are a study in contradictory requirements (humongous flow of data in and out requiring high bandwidth coupled with most stored data having very low access rates but huge size). Storage is highly fragmented. Low cost per mailbox is usually a requirement despite the high price on technology to meet the storage performance needs. Couple that with the fact that most large mail systems have numerous abuses (network attacks, spamming, hacking) going on at any point in time.
The surprise is how robust these systems have been made.
Lesson is: if it is important, bring it home and keep it in a safe place. Loss of new mail is and always has been an issue, whether snail mail or internet. It is the nature of the beast. Be ready for it.
"at least once every 2-3 months I see some bug I fixed come back, and I can only assume it's because we don't have a formal test suite"
I assume that what you really want is to improve the development process and reduce your frustration time. A shiny test suite seems to be the answer.
Hmmmm... before you go buying a test suite you have to understand that the business should drive what you do. Business cases are all about research, analysis and documentation:
1. Metrics: What is the value of the app? What is the cost of maintaining it? ie: How many person hours are spent on development and maintenance? How many bugs are fixed per period and what is the average cost? Can you create some metrics for code quality and code brittleness based on version release stats and fault stats? You should have a handle on all of these items. If you are not in a position to know then you might start by persuading your boss to do some research on these topics. If you have an experienced crew then you should be able to estimate at a high level what the important metrics are, even if there are no formal stats being tracked. What do these metrics reveal as hot spots?
2. Processes: What are your current development, maintenance, and release processes? How are bugs tracked? If there is no formal process then what is the informal process? How do things happen? Do other people have thoughts about the processes and issues? Document how things are done and what the known or perceived issues are. If bugs are being reintroduced because of bad process then document this. If you don't have good processes then software tools will just be anchors that help drag you to the bottom. The worst thing you can do is introduce a tool that only you know, which then becomes part of a hidden, informal process that only you know.
3. Analysis: What does the research into metrics and processes show? How do you compare against standards either from industry or from inside the company? If you can't find a comparison then how do things look versus where you would like to be? What is the low hanging fruit: the obvious things that would improve quality? Lack of formal bug tracking, change control, and other metric gathering may be the obvious place to start.
4. Make a plan to improve things. This means that there has to be a sequence of changes and for each change there must be details of what the change will improve and how to measure the improvement. Be clear on what the goals are. No airy-fairy stuff. Hard, documentable, measurable changes. At this point you may identify some software that would help, such as a test suite. Remember though, software tools are just that: tools. No sense using a hammer to push in screws. Simply creating a change control process with a regression test may get rid of a lot of issues with spending a dime on tools or hardware. Simply formalizing and adhering to strict development and release processes that utilize (free) version control and (free) bug tracking may cure many problems. Similarly, standardizing methods can go a long way to improving quality and reducing problems.
5. Buy in: at every step of the way, from initiating the research into the situation to creating an improvement plan, you need support from your boss and from your peers. If nobody wants to change then fuhgetaboutit.
The above may seem like a lot but it isn't really. The initial metrics gathering, analysis, and plan development should not require a huge effort, especially if you are a relatively small shop. Some of the numbers may be sourced as WAGs from subject matter experts but I prefer to use the term "heuristics" or educated WAGs;->
Yeah, I think that is an excellent point. Interesting to note that trash heaps are information gold mines: newspapers are still readable literally a hundred years later (or more) but I doubt that any digital storage media would be... even if the method to retrieve the information was known.
Information is retrievable and can be interpreted (the meaning made known) after millenia.
You disdain is misplaced. Kodachrome is a slide film or a colour positive. The reason for its demise began before digital cameras came along and starts with the fact that people just don't find time to sit around looking at slide shows. The 35mm film speed was ASA64 or ASA200 which was slow compared to the 400 and 800 print films that are available today. Finally, processing requires mailing it away and people have given that up as an acceptable practice. In the 1970's, Kodachrome film came with a pre-addressed mailer pouch that you would drop your film can into. Two weeks later you'd get a slide box in the mail.
Kodachrome provided outstanding colour and detail and I still love the product it produces. I have yet to find a digital camera that has the same detail, dynamic range, and colour precision and accuracy. It also has terrific stability and longevity, probably better than most digital files when all things are considered. My slide collection (FWIW), given a little TLC, will be easily viewed 100 years from now.
Truth is I stopped using it before I had my first digital camera and so did a lot of other people. It just was not convenient.
The submitter "actually enjoys a lot of advertising"? What's wrong with them?
The only ads that bug me are: 1. oversize ads that temporarily obliterate what I am trying to interact with or otherwise annoy with obtrusive sounds or attention grabbing optical effects. 2. ads that load first and prevent the rest of the page loading in parallel.
Other than that, who cares? I have a highly developed ability to ignore the stuff I don't care about.
OTOH, there have been many times that I have seen an ad that I was interested in and I wish I could have bookmarked it quickly for later examination. umm, mostly technology items but also mundane stuff like local services (plumbers!). I want to continue on with whatever I'm doing at the time and not be distracted but if I come back to the page later the ad servers often put up a different ad. Usually I open the ad in another tab and that's normally OK. Mobile on a BB or iPhone there is no satisfactory way to do this. Ur, this is a very low grade issue but still...
The best advertising helps the consumer; it doesn't just trigger a "buy" reaction. In the tech area, advertising is part of staying current with products and changes in trends/standards. I always save vendor product emails, especially when they link to hard information such as white papers with succinct information about functionality, performance and cost. It's amazing how often it is useful to go back to these files.
Advertising can also be more than just annoying; it can be downright disruptive and interfere with productivity.
I would support and use an adkeeper that provided the ability to quickly tag/bookmark an ad for later use and which provided a feedback channel to indicate what was useful / not useful about an ad.
I doubt if this would help improve laundry detergent ads but it could help in many sectors.
Finally, electricity comes to Canada. We shall use it to light our National Igloo on windy days.
We will plant them all along the Only Road in Canada. Life has been hard up here since the Cola Wars so we are not so proud as to refuse second hand generators from a down and out Yankee billionaire.
On the face of it no one should really object to Mastercard / Visa / etc denying service to criminal enterprises or criminal activities.
Innocent until proven guilty.
Don't be silly. This is a refusal of service, not a court of law. The legal side will come in to play when they target someone they shouldn't. Like I said above... I don't know why Wikileaks hasn't started a legal action against the payment providers.
"no one should really object to Mastercard / Visa / etc denying service to criminal enterprises or criminal activities"
And just what criminal activity exactly has WikiLeaks been "convicted" of? Answer: None.
er... if you read what I said, I didn't say Wikileaks was criminal. I didn't come close to saying any particular outfit is criminal. I just said that it is reasonable to expect Mastercard to cut off services to criminal enterprises. Don't see anything controversial about that.
My question was how are they determining what is illegal and what are the recourses?
It will be interesting to see how all this plays out.
It means that the banks are deciding what's illegal now. The government either doesn't have the authority (not this country) or a real reason to shut them down, so now the banks are doing it for them. Justice is served?
The question was rhetorical but what the hay! The issue of jurisdiction is likely a big one.
Seems to me that this is a "right to refuse service" type thing. A business operator has a right to refuse service if there is a legitimate business reason that does not violate the rights of protected groups. So you can refuse service to bikers who won't take off their patches (preventing fights) in your bar but you can't reserve secluded booths for heterosexuals only. To do this, you just refuse service... no notice, no warrants, and no court orders, etc are required.
But... be prepared for lawsuits if you are not careful about who you refuse service to. I am surprised that Wikileaks has not sought injunctions against the removal of payment services pending resolution of the issues.
Else, I would say that if a site primarily engages in illegal activity then Mastercard is perfectly correct to refuse service. Not to mention that if they continue to knowingly provide support to a criminal enterprise then they may risk some liability. Where the divide sits and how this would come out in a court case is beyond me.
IMHO, this will depend on what sort of diligence Mastercard exercises. Do they just take the RIAAs word on what is bad, a la Homeland Security? RIAA cast a wide net and obviously did not take care not to check out what was what. Or are they smarter than that?
Homeland Security may be able to get away with this but I think MasterCard would have some legal liabilities.
What does this really mean? On the face of it no one should really object to Mastercard / Visa / etc denying service to criminal enterprises or criminal activities. This is to be expected both in terms of business ethics and legal liability.
So the question is: who determines which enterprise is criminal / violating copyrights and what are the criteria and what is the process to have someone cut off? What is the appeal process?
From TFA: "This move by MasterCard is just another in a recent long line of corporations and organizations that are taking it upon themselves to define the legality of situations rather than leaving it to the courts. One problem is that the US federal government is allowing the lobbyists for these organizations to dictate right and wrong. The RIAA and MPAA were the big influence behind the government’s seizure of several domains during the last week of November. "
Worst case, this is a monetary blacklist controlled by the RIAA (eg: RIAA sends unsubstantiated note to Mastercard listing "offenders". Mastercard moves immediately to deny service.) Very nice club for the RIAA to hold.
Can we stop posting every bit wikileaks minutiae and get back to real news for nerds?
wikileaks almost has nothing to do with tech anyways, and this tidbit is almost certainly not stuff that matters.
Don't be daft. Wikileaks is a major story in the news and internet technology made it possible and continues to enable it. The story is fascinating in many ways, including potential technology measures and counter measures (eg: domain shut downs). Much of what we read here does not make it to the mainstream news sites or the spin on it changes. Some of the minutiae is a little much but certainly some people must want to see it or it would not have been modded up on submission.
Besides, you can always pick some story you are tired of reading about and pick on it. Me, I could care less about games and all of the foofarah around releases, reviews, etc. Obviously many others do care so more power to them. Skipping a story is easy --- just don't open it/read it. If you want to change things then go do some firehose rating.
And they were useful as weapons. Plus they had a real lifetime. Telecom technology students could get summer jobs refurbing black Northern/ATT desksets and wallphones: shave a few mil off the case, polish, put everything back together and voila! Just like new!
Only ever saw one wallphone broken. Subscriber had a party and reported the phone not working afterwards. Went to the location and found part of the wall missing where the phone had been attached. Phone was in three pieces scattered in the debris on the floor. The phone frame was still attached to a wall stud/gyprock that was stuck through the door of the frigidaire.
We replaced the phone, no charge, but the sub had to deal with the wall and fridge. Gave them a deskset so they would have a cord to swing it with and not have to rip the wall apart.
Ahhhh! Don't all of you YEARN for the past? Of course you do!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you go back far enough, dinosaurs walked the earth and human beings hadn't even evolved yet.
It's always possible to cherry pick a point in time where things were worse than they are now. That doesn't imply that every change going forward is necessarily for the better.
Hey.. Not cherry picking at all! Must be my sense of humour I guess.
Just making an obscure suggestion that this type of billing (per unit, per item, per customer, per service and all piled together) is reminiscent of the days when competition was limited and there was, perhaps, a real need for natural monopolies and heavy government regulation.
In the Telco/Cable industry there are many who would like to see a return to that level of power and control. This type of billing model appeals to that mindset, and why not? They are in it to make money and the telco industry has had to invest huge sums in technology for limited returns. eg: the company I work for spent over $1 billion last year upgrading DSL equipment while the per month per customer revenue dropped. This just kept us competitive. No tears necessary; its a cost of doing business. However, profitability is not guaranteed from year to year; it is definitely 'swim or die'.
Problem is that these type of billing plans are predicated on sucking some money off of the services that someone else created. The thing that really sticks in the craw of a telco CEO is that the telco carries all of the data that others get rich off of. This is seen as an unfair burden, hence the desire to act like a vampire and drink from the flow. So the telco adds nothing to the equation and wants to be paid for it. Understand that they are already being paid by their subscribers for the "bandwidth".
From a telco/cable view, the subscriber has only paid for connectivity and not for the data. This is definitely old school.
There is no recognition that this train left the station a long time ago and that they need to do something positive/imaginative/creative for the subscriber in order to generate more revenue. Telcos do NOT do positive/imaginative/creative. Telcos are run by CPAs and lawyers; they are not technology/service driven.
Sigh, I thought I was being funny and creative but obviously not. I have worked in telecoms for too long.
Of the days that were good, of long ago, a fabled past, when...
- you needed a business line to install a modem - data charges were on top of phone charges and it was per KB each way - you could make real money on long distance phone calls - a number belonged to the company, not the customer
Ahhhh! Don't all of you YEARN for the past? Of course you do!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I've yet to run into a "normal" person.
I think Temple Grandin said something like: if we were all neural-typical [er.. normal], we'd still be sitting in the dark in a cold cave having lots of conversations.
Thanks goodness for Asperger's.
BTW: there is some science to communication with "eccentrics". In particular, look up "social stories". You have to modify it a bit to use in the work place but this method works surprisingly well with the Ferengi as well as the tech-droids.
Hey AC... vitamin therapy is not accepted generally by the MD crowd but like a lot of things, turns out to be effective for a number of people.
Also look into diet: gluten, casein, soy proteins are good targets for trial elimination to see if there are improvements.
Gut physiology and the roles of trace elements is not well understood, especially with respect to chronic disorders.
Certainly there is a lot of anecdotal evidence wrt diet/vitamins and improvement of some ASD symptoms.
There exist major problems in getting funding to look into these areas as most research is funded for development of profit-making drugs. The drugs are useful too, but I am convinced that drug treatments are not targeting the disease source locus.
Exactamundo.
Those who aren't able to put on a "consumer compatible liveware" persona usually don't migrate to public facing positions.
Almost everyone I know (even the "jerks") know how to be service/user focused when a customer is around. We are all bright enough to understand how our pay is generated and pretty much all take pride in some sort of professional attitude.
Now then, dealing with VENDORs is completely different!
I think there was a time when that was true, but not really any longer. IT isn't quite the basement-dwelling, bitter social outcast draw it once was... ....On the other hand, maybe I'm just fooling myself.
Of course you are fooling yourself. Everyone in our IT shop is near-ASD; one more symptom each and we'd all be eligible for disability.
Now don't be moddin' me flamebait, bucko: this works out just fine and we're all pretty chuffed with it.
OCD and high IQ are perfect for the IT work place and we all get along quite well, thank you, when left alone to play with our systems and networks. No one's bothered by the given examples; most think that the heretic would be a fool to think any different, the flake is just ADD/ADHD and just needs a PM to keep on track, and the jerk is really just NLD (possibly Tourette's if he has a tick) and doesn't mean anything nasty by what he says. Besides, it's all quite entertaining as long as there is lots of work to do and the pay checks keep coming in.
As for me, I'm just a freakin' ASD rainbow.
The great thing is, everyone is bright and all dive deep into the knowledge well. The answer to any problem is close at hand. Also, everyone has coping strategies and has learned how to communicate depending on who is being dealt with.
This is just business as usual. ;->
sed 's/eficdence/evidence/' summary
So wrong it's not even right. Can we get wiki style volunteer editors?
Your aint nuthine butt a gamma natssi.
"malware-laced e-mail"
Ok... isn't this a tautology?
"contractors who work on cybersecurity "
and isn't this an oxymoron?
Signed "anxious to learn"
--
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Man, that is SO true!
... they might reduce the number of bugs, or the time taken to fix one, However if that time is already accounted for in your working day then the only way these things could save money is if they get you fired and can save your salary...
Ahhh.... I can't let this go by.
First off, let me say I agree that simply bringing in a consultant and doing some "thing" (process change, tool implementation) based solely on a best practice is foolish. Absolutely there has to be a real, identified problem to fix or efficiency to be made and there has to be a real, concrete, measurable way of determining whether the change works. Almost always, the answers exist already within the core group of experienced employees.
But... I must take issue with the idea that "the only way these things could save money is if they get you fired". That statement is almost never true for any non-trivial, non-monolithic IT shop. It is important to attribute costs accurately and reducing labor spent on a product, whether support (operational expense) or development (capital expense), is important. From a business view, spending less time on a particular item is a real savings.... no matter what. That is one issue.
What the business does with the employee time that is returned to the resource pool is another issue. It is important to separate these items. Also the phrase "save money" is almost meaningless or at best a fuzzy concept that has a subjective meaning when referring to work efficiencies. It would be better to say "reduce operational/capital cost" for a particular item instead. From a business POV, the returned resource time is an opportunity to redirect the resource to another ROI generating area. The time saved becomes time that can earn more $$ on something else.
Employee time is almost always the single largest cost for an organization. Increasing productivity (reducing time spent per unit) is always a top priority. If the company's management does not understand this then there are fundamental problems in the organization. If a firm's response to reducing required hours on a project is to let go of permanent employees, then there are other issues and a smart IT worker should make sure his/her parachute is packed, IMO. Reducing consultants/contractors is one thing; reducing permanent staff means there is a willingness to write off a significant investment in training and experience.
Backups may be unusable. Any bad thing that can happen will, and at the worst possible moment.
Or perhaps there were finger problems...
Or perhaps, like many large mail systems, restore of a major loss of data is not possible within the constraints imposed (time, machine load, other crap), and the best choice for the business is to write off the data.
Perhaps there are backups but they are not current enough. Say 24/48 hrs earlier, meaning all new stuff is lost. New stuff is the highest priority.
Full nightly backups may be impossible due to cost or time constraints.
RAID systems only go so far to provide protection against data loss. Some types of failure will corrupt the entire volume.
IMHO, someone who relies on an email system file folder as a secure repository for data is a fool or is ignorant of the realities. Anyone who has administrated a large email system (say > 1M users) knows this. Even small systems can be problematic.
Email (SMTP, POP, IMAP etc) is just the wrong app to have confidence in for the purpose of secure, long term storage. Large email systems are a study in contradictory requirements (humongous flow of data in and out requiring high bandwidth coupled with most stored data having very low access rates but huge size). Storage is highly fragmented. Low cost per mailbox is usually a requirement despite the high price on technology to meet the storage performance needs. Couple that with the fact that most large mail systems have numerous abuses (network attacks, spamming, hacking) going on at any point in time.
The surprise is how robust these systems have been made.
Lesson is: if it is important, bring it home and keep it in a safe place. Loss of new mail is and always has been an issue, whether snail mail or internet. It is the nature of the beast. Be ready for it.
Good questions. Some regression testing can be done through simple scripting, especially if it is a web based app.
From the original question, my main worry would be that the app is getting brittle.
Cheers
"at least once every 2-3 months I see some bug I fixed come back, and I can only assume it's because we don't have a formal test suite"
I assume that what you really want is to improve the development process and reduce your frustration time. A shiny test suite seems to be the answer.
Hmmmm... before you go buying a test suite you have to understand that the business should drive what you do. Business cases are all about research, analysis and documentation:
1. Metrics: What is the value of the app? What is the cost of maintaining it? ie: How many person hours are spent on development and maintenance? How many bugs are fixed per period and what is the average cost? Can you create some metrics for code quality and code brittleness based on version release stats and fault stats? You should have a handle on all of these items. If you are not in a position to know then you might start by persuading your boss to do some research on these topics. If you have an experienced crew then you should be able to estimate at a high level what the important metrics are, even if there are no formal stats being tracked. What do these metrics reveal as hot spots?
2. Processes: What are your current development, maintenance, and release processes? How are bugs tracked? If there is no formal process then what is the informal process? How do things happen? Do other people have thoughts about the processes and issues? Document how things are done and what the known or perceived issues are. If bugs are being reintroduced because of bad process then document this. If you don't have good processes then software tools will just be anchors that help drag you to the bottom. The worst thing you can do is introduce a tool that only you know, which then becomes part of a hidden, informal process that only you know.
3. Analysis: What does the research into metrics and processes show? How do you compare against standards either from industry or from inside the company? If you can't find a comparison then how do things look versus where you would like to be? What is the low hanging fruit: the obvious things that would improve quality? Lack of formal bug tracking, change control, and other metric gathering may be the obvious place to start.
4. Make a plan to improve things. This means that there has to be a sequence of changes and for each change there must be details of what the change will improve and how to measure the improvement. Be clear on what the goals are. No airy-fairy stuff. Hard, documentable, measurable changes. At this point you may identify some software that would help, such as a test suite. Remember though, software tools are just that: tools. No sense using a hammer to push in screws. Simply creating a change control process with a regression test may get rid of a lot of issues with spending a dime on tools or hardware. Simply formalizing and adhering to strict development and release processes that utilize (free) version control and (free) bug tracking may cure many problems. Similarly, standardizing methods can go a long way to improving quality and reducing problems.
5. Buy in: at every step of the way, from initiating the research into the situation to creating an improvement plan, you need support from your boss and from your peers. If nobody wants to change then fuhgetaboutit.
The above may seem like a lot but it isn't really. The initial metrics gathering, analysis, and plan development should not require a huge effort, especially if you are a relatively small shop. Some of the numbers may be sourced as WAGs from subject matter experts but I prefer to use the term "heuristics" or educated WAGs ;->
Yeah, I think that is an excellent point. Interesting to note that trash heaps are information gold mines: newspapers are still readable literally a hundred years later (or more) but I doubt that any digital storage media would be... even if the method to retrieve the information was known.
Information is retrievable and can be interpreted (the meaning made known) after millenia.
Hmmmmm..... ;->
Progress.
You disdain is misplaced. Kodachrome is a slide film or a colour positive. The reason for its demise began before digital cameras came along and starts with the fact that people just don't find time to sit around looking at slide shows. The 35mm film speed was ASA64 or ASA200 which was slow compared to the 400 and 800 print films that are available today. Finally, processing requires mailing it away and people have given that up as an acceptable practice. In the 1970's, Kodachrome film came with a pre-addressed mailer pouch that you would drop your film can into. Two weeks later you'd get a slide box in the mail.
Kodachrome provided outstanding colour and detail and I still love the product it produces. I have yet to find a digital camera that has the same detail, dynamic range, and colour precision and accuracy. It also has terrific stability and longevity, probably better than most digital files when all things are considered. My slide collection (FWIW), given a little TLC, will be easily viewed 100 years from now.
Truth is I stopped using it before I had my first digital camera and so did a lot of other people. It just was not convenient.
The submitter "actually enjoys a lot of advertising"? What's wrong with them?
The only ads that bug me are:
1. oversize ads that temporarily obliterate what I am trying to interact with or otherwise annoy with obtrusive sounds or attention grabbing optical effects.
2. ads that load first and prevent the rest of the page loading in parallel.
Other than that, who cares? I have a highly developed ability to ignore the stuff I don't care about.
OTOH, there have been many times that I have seen an ad that I was interested in and I wish I could have bookmarked it quickly for later examination. umm, mostly technology items but also mundane stuff like local services (plumbers!). I want to continue on with whatever I'm doing at the time and not be distracted but if I come back to the page later the ad servers often put up a different ad. Usually I open the ad in another tab and that's normally OK. Mobile on a BB or iPhone there is no satisfactory way to do this. Ur, this is a very low grade issue but still...
The best advertising helps the consumer; it doesn't just trigger a "buy" reaction. In the tech area, advertising is part of staying current with products and changes in trends/standards. I always save vendor product emails, especially when they link to hard information such as white papers with succinct information about functionality, performance and cost. It's amazing how often it is useful to go back to these files.
Advertising can also be more than just annoying; it can be downright disruptive and interfere with productivity.
I would support and use an adkeeper that provided the ability to quickly tag/bookmark an ad for later use and which provided a feedback channel to indicate what was useful / not useful about an ad.
I doubt if this would help improve laundry detergent ads but it could help in many sectors.
My bad. Sorry for the typical Canadian ignorance of American cultural values. I take back "Yankee" and substitute "Texas".
Much shame. Back to my igloo.
Finally, electricity comes to Canada. We shall use it to light our National Igloo on windy days.
We will plant them all along the Only Road in Canada. Life has been hard up here since the Cola Wars so we are not so proud as to refuse second hand generators from a down and out Yankee billionaire.
On the face of it no one should really object to Mastercard / Visa / etc denying service to criminal enterprises or criminal activities.
Innocent until proven guilty.
Don't be silly. This is a refusal of service, not a court of law. The legal side will come in to play when they target someone they shouldn't. Like I said above... I don't know why Wikileaks hasn't started a legal action against the payment providers.
"no one should really object to Mastercard / Visa / etc denying service to criminal enterprises or criminal activities"
And just what criminal activity exactly has WikiLeaks been "convicted" of? Answer: None.
er... if you read what I said, I didn't say Wikileaks was criminal. I didn't come close to saying any particular outfit is criminal. I just said that it is reasonable to expect Mastercard to cut off services to criminal enterprises. Don't see anything controversial about that.
My question was how are they determining what is illegal and what are the recourses?
It will be interesting to see how all this plays out.
What does this really mean?
It means that the banks are deciding what's illegal now. The government either doesn't have the authority (not this country) or a real reason to shut them down, so now the banks are doing it for them. Justice is served?
The question was rhetorical but what the hay! The issue of jurisdiction is likely a big one.
Seems to me that this is a "right to refuse service" type thing. A business operator has a right to refuse service if there is a legitimate business reason that does not violate the rights of protected groups. So you can refuse service to bikers who won't take off their patches (preventing fights) in your bar but you can't reserve secluded booths for heterosexuals only. To do this, you just refuse service... no notice, no warrants, and no court orders, etc are required.
http://www.legalzoom.com/us-law/equal-rights/right-refuse-service
But... be prepared for lawsuits if you are not careful about who you refuse service to. I am surprised that Wikileaks has not sought injunctions against the removal of payment services pending resolution of the issues.
Else, I would say that if a site primarily engages in illegal activity then Mastercard is perfectly correct to refuse service. Not to mention that if they continue to knowingly provide support to a criminal enterprise then they may risk some liability. Where the divide sits and how this would come out in a court case is beyond me.
IMHO, this will depend on what sort of diligence Mastercard exercises. Do they just take the RIAAs word on what is bad, a la Homeland Security? RIAA cast a wide net and obviously did not take care not to check out what was what. Or are they smarter than that?
Homeland Security may be able to get away with this but I think MasterCard would have some legal liabilities.
Watch for legal battles.
What does this really mean? On the face of it no one should really object to Mastercard / Visa / etc denying service to criminal enterprises or criminal activities. This is to be expected both in terms of business ethics and legal liability.
So the question is: who determines which enterprise is criminal / violating copyrights and what are the criteria and what is the process to have someone cut off? What is the appeal process?
From TFA:
"This move by MasterCard is just another in a recent long line of corporations and organizations that are taking it upon themselves to define the legality of situations rather than leaving it to the courts. One problem is that the US federal government is allowing the lobbyists for these organizations to dictate right and wrong. The RIAA and MPAA were the big influence behind the government’s seizure of several domains during the last week of November. "
Worst case, this is a monetary blacklist controlled by the RIAA (eg: RIAA sends unsubstantiated note to Mastercard listing "offenders". Mastercard moves immediately to deny service.) Very nice club for the RIAA to hold.
Can we stop posting every bit wikileaks minutiae and get back to real news for nerds?
wikileaks almost has nothing to do with tech anyways, and this tidbit is almost certainly not stuff that matters.
Don't be daft. Wikileaks is a major story in the news and internet technology made it possible and continues to enable it. The story is fascinating in many ways, including potential technology measures and counter measures (eg: domain shut downs). Much of what we read here does not make it to the mainstream news sites or the spin on it changes. Some of the minutiae is a little much but certainly some people must want to see it or it would not have been modded up on submission.
Besides, you can always pick some story you are tired of reading about and pick on it. Me, I could care less about games and all of the foofarah around releases, reviews, etc. Obviously many others do care so more power to them. Skipping a story is easy --- just don't open it/read it. If you want to change things then go do some firehose rating.
A telephone heavy enough to use as a weapon.
And they were useful as weapons. Plus they had a real lifetime. Telecom technology students could get summer jobs refurbing black Northern/ATT desksets and wallphones: shave a few mil off the case, polish, put everything back together and voila! Just like new!
Only ever saw one wallphone broken. Subscriber had a party and reported the phone not working afterwards. Went to the location and found part of the wall missing where the phone had been attached. Phone was in three pieces scattered in the debris on the floor. The phone frame was still attached to a wall stud/gyprock that was stuck through the door of the frigidaire.
We replaced the phone, no charge, but the sub had to deal with the wall and fridge. Gave them a deskset so they would have a cord to swing it with and not have to rip the wall apart.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you go back far enough, dinosaurs walked the earth and human beings hadn't even evolved yet.
It's always possible to cherry pick a point in time where things were worse than they are now. That doesn't imply
that every change going forward is necessarily for the better.
Hey.. Not cherry picking at all! Must be my sense of humour I guess.
Just making an obscure suggestion that this type of billing (per unit, per item, per customer, per service and all piled together) is reminiscent of the days when competition was limited and there was, perhaps, a real need for natural monopolies and heavy government regulation.
In the Telco/Cable industry there are many who would like to see a return to that level of power and control. This type of billing model appeals to that mindset, and why not? They are in it to make money and the telco industry has had to invest huge sums in technology for limited returns. eg: the company I work for spent over $1 billion last year upgrading DSL equipment while the per month per customer revenue dropped. This just kept us competitive. No tears necessary; its a cost of doing business. However, profitability is not guaranteed from year to year; it is definitely 'swim or die'.
Problem is that these type of billing plans are predicated on sucking some money off of the services that someone else created. The thing that really sticks in the craw of a telco CEO is that the telco carries all of the data that others get rich off of. This is seen as an unfair burden, hence the desire to act like a vampire and drink from the flow. So the telco adds nothing to the equation and wants to be paid for it. Understand that they are already being paid by their subscribers for the "bandwidth".
From a telco/cable view, the subscriber has only paid for connectivity and not for the data. This is definitely old school.
There is no recognition that this train left the station a long time ago and that they need to do something positive/imaginative/creative for the subscriber in order to generate more revenue. Telcos do NOT do positive/imaginative/creative. Telcos are run by CPAs and lawyers; they are not technology/service driven.
Sigh, I thought I was being funny and creative but obviously not. I have worked in telecoms for too long.
Of the days that were good, of long ago, a fabled past, when...
- you needed a business line to install a modem
- data charges were on top of phone charges and it was per KB each way
- you could make real money on long distance phone calls
- a number belonged to the company, not the customer
Ahhhh! Don't all of you YEARN for the past? Of course you do!
You just don't know it yet.
There is no arctic tundra in North Dakota. Insensitive AP story writer.