Well, I was in a very large corporation (I'll tell - it was BellSouth). We started our project at a departmental level, using Visual Works Smalltalk on Windows and HP-UX.
We brought in several teams of tutors/mentors to get us going with OOP and OOD. We "got it" and things were going very well. Within a few months, we had a highly functional demo of what our end result could look like and do.
Then, the big corporation management saw that we were having some success and decided to fold us in to a corporate-wide project. We were told that Smalltalk would no longer be used and that the project would shift to C++. We were retrained.
Even though we had our experience with Smalltalk and OOD, HUGE teams of consultants were brought in and we were told to do everything differently. They bought tons of equipment. We were forced to work in other cities for weeks at a stretch. Because of the largeness of the project, NOTHING was ever finalized.
After about a year of this, all of the old, departmental Smalltalk team begged to be released from that project and found new jobs within BellSouth (some dis quit and go elsewhere). A couple of years later, I ran into someone in the corporate project and I found out that the original Smalltalk demo we had produced was still the only real output. Even better, the management of the big project still used it to show off what "they" were able to accomplish!
He did mention some things along these lines in the article. (It has been several days since I read it, so I don't remember the specifics). I am generally talking about the parts where he was emphasizing that everyone on the project has to buy in to the same methodology and have excellent team-wide cooperation. IMHO, the larger the team, the lower the liklihood of this occurring.
Most of the points made in the article are very close to the truth in the general medium and large business world. I worked on a OO project (we did use OO design methodology) at a large corporation in the early to mid 90's, and it mostly played out exactly as the article describes.
However, in the course of my participation in that project, I saw some absolutely amazing things done, both by our staff of programmers and by the outside consultants (several sets of them) who came in to mentor and tutor us.
I personally believe that OOP can be extremely powerful and productive for an individual developer or for a very small team of like-minded, cooperative developers. There ARE some strong benefits to be had from OOP/OOD but, just as the article says, you have to apply the paradigm consistently in order to reap them.
I still enjoy using Smalltalk (Squeak) at home, but I never get the chance to use it professionally, anymore. I wish I did.
Well, even if the detailed messages are hidden by a GUI splash screen, they should still be written to a log file. So, if something does go wrong, the info should still be available.
I disagree with a lot of what is being said. I would jump at the chance to have a good, reasonably priced fixed wireless broadband service to my home, here in the U.S.
I live in a moderately large city (metro area pop. > 1 million) in a modern neighborhood (house was new in late 1993). I cannot get ADSL from my telco - I have been requesting it over and over for the last two years. I could get cable internet access, but I have checked with those who have tried it in my area and it totally sucks.
The telco will not provision my area with the equipment necessary to provide ADSL. I cannot understand why. It is a densly housed, well-to-do neighborhood with over 200 houses.
I have heard that the same cable company does provide decent internet service in other areas of the city, but they haven't yet upgraded the facilities in my area, so they give inferior service at the same prices. I refuse to subscribe.
So, wireless would be extremely attractive, to me.
I know this doesn't apply to everyone, but this is a symptom of too much wealth. Most kids, these days, have no interest in real work, they are only looking for entertainment and self gratification. Their parents provide them with everything they need, often through their 20's and well on into their 30's. There is no real necessity for them to scramble to find something worthwhile to do with their lives.
I am guilty, myself (I am 49 and have two young children, ages 9 and 2). I work hard, pay for their private school, and try to give them what they want. I hope they will gain some meaningful sense of direction and I hope I am not "spoiling" them. I only do it because I love them.
IMHO, telecommuting is not so much a matter of money (even though it does cost some money to provide the facilities) as it is of policy. Most management simply cannot make the leap in policy to ALLOW people to work from home. They always had to come to the office and put in long hours, so, by God, everyone else should, too.
If my company would allow me to telecommute on a regular basis, I might even consider paying some of the costs, myself. I would still save a ton on auto maintenance, clothing, lunch, and what have you. Also, I can just hear them now: "We are paying for that high speed connection, and you will use it for business purposes, ONLY."
Nothing difficult about installing Slackware
on
Slackware For Sparc
·
· Score: 1
I am definitely a Linux newbie and the only distro I have ever installed was Slackware (4.0). I had a few problems, almost all relating to my ancient hardware (Pentium 100 / PCI / 2-small IDE drives / 5-1/4 and 3-1/2 floppies), but I was able to work around everything in a couple of days and get a working system.
With my goofy hardware, I doubt that any distro would have been easy and my guess is that the more automated ones would have been more difficult or even impossible to install. Slackware gave me enough manual control to reconfigure around the hardware oddities.
It is a sad state of affairs. We are where we are today because, once upon a time, companies were willing to spend significant amounts on research to lead to a brighter future. Today, all that seems to count is current profitability. Get rid of all expenses that aren' absolutely necessary so that this quarter's income statement and stock price will be maximized.
One day, we will look up and find that this approach is entirely inadequate. We will have reached the limits of usefulness of our current knowledge and have nowhere to go.
IBM, AT&T, Apple, HP, Xerox, etc became truly great because of their former willingness to invest for the future. I hope that some future organizations will develop with similar foresight, but very little of it seems to be occurring, now. And with this announcement, even less.
I like my job, but there are heavy pressures to do everything perfectly. While mgmt generally wants everything to get better and better, they are also highly adverse to making any significant changes that might actually make things better. The exciting part of my job is when I am allowed to tweak the system, but I have to sign my name in blood, twenty different ways, to assure mgmt that there will be only benefits and no negative impacts.
So, I am often reduced to long stretches of extreme boredom with interspersed periods of highly intense activity (e.g., replacing three existing database servers with five larger ones). The boredom is actually more stressful, but the heavy activity periods can be stressful in their own ways.
Have any of you ever seen an actual electrolytic aluminum processing cell? I mean an industrial one. It is awesome.
The plant I saw was Reynolds Aluminum in the Tennessee River Valley in north Alabama. There were multiple electrolytic cells. When you stood at one end, you could not see to the other end.
Each cell used 96,000 amps. The plant was pretty much directly connected to the main output of the Wilson Dam. We were told that the plant used over 90% of the dam's output capacity and that the remainder supplied electricity to all the cities and towns over a large surrounding area.
At the end of the cell was an electrical connection that looked about like the lead battery post and ring of a car battery. Except that the ring was about four feet thick and about twelve feet in diameter.
Just trying to comprehend the amount of electricity going through there was what boggled my mind.
I recently switched from BellSouth metered access because, even though I was on the lowest rate basic plan, I found that flat-rate service had become lower than what I was paying for the metered service.
I am sure that this was because I was on the phone too much using the Internet, but when I had originally signed up for the metered plan, they had told me that it was capped to never be more than the flat-rate. I guess something changed.
I am with the people who believe that SOME software methods and SOME business processes are and should be patentable. That is, those that are new / innovative.
However, I vehemently oppose the issuance of any patents to those (primarily corporations) who begin to use a technology / method that is already in general use, then see that there is no patent on it and rush to file for one. This is what is evil.
The problem lies in the patent office, whether through lack of resources or whatever, failing to recognize the existence of the prior art and issuing these DUMB patents.
I'm sure all of this has been said over and over. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I wanted to add my opinion of the situation.
No, it looks to me like XFS is much more advanced. At least, it has significantly higher limits (filesystem size, file size, number of files, etc) and ALL of the required features of an ideal JFS.
I saw in a news article a few days ago (of course, I forgot where) that two insurance companies (one is Chubb, I forgot the other one; damn, I'm getting old) are now offering insurance against identity theft. It really sucks that this is becoming necessary, but I am afraid that it is.
Just about a year ago, I signed a 2-year contract for cellular service with a great deal on the phone.
Now, prices are quite a bit lower for better (more minutes) service. I am allowed to switch to the newer, better deal, but only if I agree to extend the contract for another year.
If I decide to cancel the current contract and go somewhere else, I still have to pay for the remaining months in full. So, I am trapped.
On the other hand, I am getting exactly what I agreed to a year ago, so in some sense I am satisfied. But, the contract system has worked exactly as described to keep me from moving away or from getting a better deal where I am.
It was not too long ago (late 1997) when a fairly standard PC with a 4GB UW SCSI drive cost $3500. I know because I bought one.
So, to me, this kind of storage server seems to be quite a bargain. Also, even though I think it might be reasonable for personal use and you don't, Maxtor's intent is to provide a cheap BUSINESS solution, and it certainly IS that.
Good for you. In my opinion, the very essence of the meaning of the term "professional" is one who completely puts the interests of his clients above his own.
Well, I disagree with this argument. Every citizen or alien contractor I have ever worked with HAS been paid hourly overtime. I have always felt slighted because as a full-time employee, I have to work unpaid overtime alongside contractors who are raking in the dough for their extra hours.
Also, even though the contractors themselves (the alien ones) are probably not getting that much, the companies that are using them are usually paying quite a high rate to their agency. I'd say that $65 / hr is very common in my part of the country, although I'd guess that the person actually doing the work usually gets $30 or less.
I have been a permanent technical employee for the past 24 years (22 yrs at first company, then 16 months at another, now 1 yr at my present company).
I quit my first company because I had several alien contractors reporting to me. We paid them about double what I made (I have no idea how much of that they actually got, but that is beside the point) and I had to constantly babysit them. I would tell them specifically not to do something and they would do it. And vice versa. When they made mistakes (which was frequent), it was me who was dragged through the fire, not them.
When I was hired for my second job, I specifically asked if I could work as a contractor. "No", was the answer, the position was "too critical". However, the company had plenty of alien contractors in positions every bit as critical as mine. The real reason was so they could pay me less (especially so they wouldn't have to pay me overtime). I left that company because it was bought in a "merger". I could keep my job if I would move to a huge city that I didn't want to live in.
My current job is similar to the second. Once again, I asked if I could work as a contractor and was told, "Absolutely not". At least I have the comfort that this company is not full of other contractors, so I don't feel singled out.
Also, by making the two job changes, I have significantly increased my salary (up about 35% from the point I left the first job). But, this is still nowhere near what I could make as an hourly contractor, if anybody would hire me that way.
Yep, it is so simple I cannot understand the guy's complaint (the one at the top of this sub-thread. If you don't want to be bothered by incoming calls, just turn off the phone. If you want to make a call, turn it on, make your call, and turn it back off.
The story of this century (the 20th) is one of giant monopolies in several industries wielding so much power that it extended into most people's everyday lives.
Just off the top of my head I can think of the original Standard Oil Company, the giant railroads, and AT&T. To the best of my knowledge, there were similar situations in banking, insurance, and heavy industries (e.g., steel).
My comment is that the RDBMS paradigm is in an of itself a set of patterns devised to help create complex and efficient data storage and retrieval.
However, I can see a need for what you are requesting because, as a RDBMS DBA since 1986 (DB2, Access, now Oracle) I see more horrible implementations than good ones. It seems that most designers have a strong preference for ignoring the known good practices instead of following them.
I currently work on a large project where the application is supplied by a major vendor (name omitted to protect the guilty). Its central table accounts for more than 95% of all data access in the system, and more than 95% of those accesses are full table scans (and it is a 2 GB + table with more than 10 million rows). Why? Because the table is horribly denormalized with 2 sets of 12 columns each, for two attributes for each of the months of the year. Also because about ten other columns comprise the primary key.
Everyone needs to read and understand Chris Date's book on relational concepts (I don't have the title conveniently available). This book thoroughly describes and explains almost everything anyone would ever need to know about relational design, independent of any particular RDBMS implementation.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I was in a very large corporation (I'll tell - it was BellSouth). We started our project at a departmental level, using Visual Works Smalltalk on Windows and HP-UX.
We brought in several teams of tutors/mentors to get us going with OOP and OOD. We "got it" and things were going very well. Within a few months, we had a highly functional demo of what our end result could look like and do.
Then, the big corporation management saw that we were having some success and decided to fold us in to a corporate-wide project. We were told that Smalltalk would no longer be used and that the project would shift to C++. We were retrained.
Even though we had our experience with Smalltalk and OOD, HUGE teams of consultants were brought in and we were told to do everything differently. They bought tons of equipment. We were forced to work in other cities for weeks at a stretch. Because of the largeness of the project, NOTHING was ever finalized.
After about a year of this, all of the old, departmental Smalltalk team begged to be released from that project and found new jobs within BellSouth (some dis quit and go elsewhere). A couple of years later, I ran into someone in the corporate project and I found out that the original Smalltalk demo we had produced was still the only real output. Even better, the management of the big project still used it to show off what "they" were able to accomplish!
He did mention some things along these lines in the article. (It has been several days since I read it, so I don't remember the specifics). I am generally talking about the parts where he was emphasizing that everyone on the project has to buy in to the same methodology and have excellent team-wide cooperation. IMHO, the larger the team, the lower the liklihood of this occurring.
Most of the points made in the article are very close to the truth in the general medium and large business world. I worked on a OO project (we did use OO design methodology) at a large corporation in the early to mid 90's, and it mostly played out exactly as the article describes.
However, in the course of my participation in that project, I saw some absolutely amazing things done, both by our staff of programmers and by the outside consultants (several sets of them) who came in to mentor and tutor us.
I personally believe that OOP can be extremely powerful and productive for an individual developer or for a very small team of like-minded, cooperative developers. There ARE some strong benefits to be had from OOP/OOD but, just as the article says, you have to apply the paradigm consistently in order to reap them.
I still enjoy using Smalltalk (Squeak) at home, but I never get the chance to use it professionally, anymore. I wish I did.
Well, even if the detailed messages are hidden by a GUI splash screen, they should still be written to a log file. So, if something does go wrong, the info should still be available.
I disagree with a lot of what is being said. I would jump at the chance to have a good, reasonably priced fixed wireless broadband service to my home, here in the U.S.
I live in a moderately large city (metro area pop. > 1 million) in a modern neighborhood (house was new in late 1993). I cannot get ADSL from my telco - I have been requesting it over and over for the last two years. I could get cable internet access, but I have checked with those who have tried it in my area and it totally sucks.
The telco will not provision my area with the equipment necessary to provide ADSL. I cannot understand why. It is a densly housed, well-to-do neighborhood with over 200 houses.
I have heard that the same cable company does provide decent internet service in other areas of the city, but they haven't yet upgraded the facilities in my area, so they give inferior service at the same prices. I refuse to subscribe.
So, wireless would be extremely attractive, to me.
I know this doesn't apply to everyone, but this is a symptom of too much wealth. Most kids, these days, have no interest in real work, they are only looking for entertainment and self gratification. Their parents provide them with everything they need, often through their 20's and well on into their 30's. There is no real necessity for them to scramble to find something worthwhile to do with their lives.
I am guilty, myself (I am 49 and have two young children, ages 9 and 2). I work hard, pay for their private school, and try to give them what they want. I hope they will gain some meaningful sense of direction and I hope I am not "spoiling" them. I only do it because I love them.
Asking for rational management is nuts. You are talking about turning the business world upside down and inside out with ideas like that.
IMHO, telecommuting is not so much a matter of money (even though it does cost some money to provide the facilities) as it is of policy. Most management simply cannot make the leap in policy to ALLOW people to work from home. They always had to come to the office and put in long hours, so, by God, everyone else should, too.
If my company would allow me to telecommute on a regular basis, I might even consider paying some of the costs, myself. I would still save a ton on auto maintenance, clothing, lunch, and what have you. Also, I can just hear them now: "We are paying for that high speed connection, and you will use it for business purposes, ONLY."
I am definitely a Linux newbie and the only distro I have ever installed was Slackware (4.0). I had a few problems, almost all relating to my ancient hardware (Pentium 100 / PCI / 2-small IDE drives / 5-1/4 and 3-1/2 floppies), but I was able to work around everything in a couple of days and get a working system.
With my goofy hardware, I doubt that any distro would have been easy and my guess is that the more automated ones would have been more difficult or even impossible to install. Slackware gave me enough manual control to reconfigure around the hardware oddities.
BTW, this is not my primary machine.
It is a sad state of affairs. We are where we are today because, once upon a time, companies were willing to spend significant amounts on research to lead to a brighter future. Today, all that seems to count is current profitability. Get rid of all expenses that aren' absolutely necessary so that this quarter's income statement and stock price will be maximized.
One day, we will look up and find that this approach is entirely inadequate. We will have reached the limits of usefulness of our current knowledge and have nowhere to go.
IBM, AT&T, Apple, HP, Xerox, etc became truly great because of their former willingness to invest for the future. I hope that some future organizations will develop with similar foresight, but very little of it seems to be occurring, now. And with this announcement, even less.
I like my job, but there are heavy pressures to do everything perfectly. While mgmt generally wants everything to get better and better, they are also highly adverse to making any significant changes that might actually make things better. The exciting part of my job is when I am allowed to tweak the system, but I have to sign my name in blood, twenty different ways, to assure mgmt that there will be only benefits and no negative impacts.
So, I am often reduced to long stretches of extreme boredom with interspersed periods of highly intense activity (e.g., replacing three existing database servers with five larger ones). The boredom is actually more stressful, but the heavy activity periods can be stressful in their own ways.
Have any of you ever seen an actual electrolytic aluminum processing cell? I mean an industrial one. It is awesome.
The plant I saw was Reynolds Aluminum in the Tennessee River Valley in north Alabama. There were multiple electrolytic cells. When you stood at one end, you could not see to the other end.
Each cell used 96,000 amps. The plant was pretty much directly connected to the main output of the Wilson Dam. We were told that the plant used over 90% of the dam's output capacity and that the remainder supplied electricity to all the cities and towns over a large surrounding area.
At the end of the cell was an electrical connection that looked about like the lead battery post and ring of a car battery. Except that the ring was about four feet thick and about twelve feet in diameter.
Just trying to comprehend the amount of electricity going through there was what boggled my mind.
You are wrong.
I recently switched from BellSouth metered access because, even though I was on the lowest rate basic plan, I found that flat-rate service had become lower than what I was paying for the metered service.
I am sure that this was because I was on the phone too much using the Internet, but when I had originally signed up for the metered plan, they had told me that it was capped to never be more than the flat-rate. I guess something changed.
I am with the people who believe that SOME software methods and SOME business processes are and should be patentable. That is, those that are new / innovative.
However, I vehemently oppose the issuance of any patents to those (primarily corporations) who begin to use a technology / method that is already in general use, then see that there is no patent on it and rush to file for one. This is what is evil.
The problem lies in the patent office, whether through lack of resources or whatever, failing to recognize the existence of the prior art and issuing these DUMB patents.
I'm sure all of this has been said over and over. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I wanted to add my opinion of the situation.
No, it looks to me like XFS is much more advanced. At least, it has significantly higher limits (filesystem size, file size, number of files, etc) and ALL of the required features of an ideal JFS.
I saw in a news article a few days ago (of course, I forgot where) that two insurance companies (one is Chubb, I forgot the other one; damn, I'm getting old) are now offering insurance against identity theft. It really sucks that this is becoming necessary, but I am afraid that it is.
You are so right.
Just about a year ago, I signed a 2-year contract for cellular service with a great deal on the phone.
Now, prices are quite a bit lower for better (more minutes) service. I am allowed to switch to the newer, better deal, but only if I agree to extend the contract for another year.
If I decide to cancel the current contract and go somewhere else, I still have to pay for the remaining months in full. So, I am trapped.
On the other hand, I am getting exactly what I agreed to a year ago, so in some sense I am satisfied. But, the contract system has worked exactly as described to keep me from moving away or from getting a better deal where I am.
Tim
???
It was not too long ago (late 1997) when a fairly standard PC with a 4GB UW SCSI drive cost $3500. I know because I bought one.
So, to me, this kind of storage server seems to be quite a bargain. Also, even though I think it might be reasonable for personal use and you don't, Maxtor's intent is to provide a cheap BUSINESS solution, and it certainly IS that.
Good for you. In my opinion, the very essence of the meaning of the term "professional" is one who completely puts the interests of his clients above his own.
That was funny!
Well, I disagree with this argument. Every citizen or alien contractor I have ever worked with HAS been paid hourly overtime. I have always felt slighted because as a full-time employee, I have to work unpaid overtime alongside contractors who are raking in the dough for their extra hours.
Also, even though the contractors themselves (the alien ones) are probably not getting that much, the companies that are using them are usually paying quite a high rate to their agency. I'd say that $65 / hr is very common in my part of the country, although I'd guess that the person actually doing the work usually gets $30 or less.
Tim
Although I'm not so worked up about it, I agree.
I have been a permanent technical employee for the past 24 years (22 yrs at first company, then 16 months at another, now 1 yr at my present company).
I quit my first company because I had several alien contractors reporting to me. We paid them about double what I made (I have no idea how much of that they actually got, but that is beside the point) and I had to constantly babysit them. I would tell them specifically not to do something and they would do it. And vice versa. When they made mistakes (which was frequent), it was me who was dragged through the fire, not them.
When I was hired for my second job, I specifically asked if I could work as a contractor. "No", was the answer, the position was "too critical". However, the company had plenty of alien contractors in positions every bit as critical as mine. The real reason was so they could pay me less (especially so they wouldn't have to pay me overtime). I left that company because it was bought in a "merger". I could keep my job if I would move to a huge city that I didn't want to live in.
My current job is similar to the second. Once again, I asked if I could work as a contractor and was told, "Absolutely not". At least I have the comfort that this company is not full of other contractors, so I don't feel singled out.
Also, by making the two job changes, I have significantly increased my salary (up about 35% from the point I left the first job). But, this is still nowhere near what I could make as an hourly contractor, if anybody would hire me that way.
Tim
Yep, it is so simple I cannot understand the guy's complaint (the one at the top of this sub-thread. If you don't want to be bothered by incoming calls, just turn off the phone. If you want to make a call, turn it on, make your call, and turn it back off.
Its not rocket science.
I don't think so.
The story of this century (the 20th) is one of giant monopolies in several industries wielding so much power that it extended into most people's everyday lives.
Just off the top of my head I can think of the original Standard Oil Company, the giant railroads, and AT&T. To the best of my knowledge, there were similar situations in banking, insurance, and heavy industries (e.g., steel).
The book I referred to:
An Introduction to Database Systems - 7th Edition
Christopher J. Date
Addison-Wesley
1999
My comment is that the RDBMS paradigm is in an of itself a set of patterns devised to help create complex and efficient data storage and retrieval.
However, I can see a need for what you are requesting because, as a RDBMS DBA since 1986 (DB2, Access, now Oracle) I see more horrible implementations than good ones. It seems that most designers have a strong preference for ignoring the known good practices instead of following them.
I currently work on a large project where the application is supplied by a major vendor (name omitted to protect the guilty). Its central table accounts for more than 95% of all data access in the system, and more than 95% of those accesses are full table scans (and it is a 2 GB + table with more than 10 million rows). Why? Because the table is horribly denormalized with 2 sets of 12 columns each, for two attributes for each of the months of the year. Also because about ten other columns comprise the primary key.
Everyone needs to read and understand Chris Date's book on relational concepts (I don't have the title conveniently available). This book thoroughly describes and explains almost everything anyone would ever need to know about relational design, independent of any particular RDBMS implementation.