If there is one thing I've learned while being a network consultant it's this: it doesn't matter what company you work for, you still don't know crap until you are thrown into a fire. So, when you go out and spend big money bringing in an "expert" from any vendor, chances are darned good that you are getting a newbie. After all, the best techs are the ones that are promoted into higher-level jobs, leaving the BS calls for the new guys.
Fortunately for me, I live in Kentucky, where our schools are more adequately funded, education reform has moved the state toward the national norm over the past 15 years, and our schools have computers. Oh, and we don't have the 30% dropout rate of Indiana.
This is a great idea, but the school system is still required to buy the computers, regardless of if they have Linux or Windows. My wife teaches in Dearborn County, IN, which is in the southeastern corner of the state. To this day, they don't have a single one of these systems, nor do they have anything else instead. The teachers at her school don't have their own working computers, much less the students, as the state of Indiana doesn't push a technology agenda like the rest of the real world.
Over this entire school year, she's actually had email working on her desk MAYBE 2 days. Each Windows PC in the school is so full of CometCursors and SmileyCentrals that they don't run worth a darn. Their tech support uses the famous "in the private sector" excuse. If you work for the government, you know that this means "in the private sector, people aren't as overworked." (HA!)
Not that a Pentium II Windows 95 machine logging into the Netware network is going to be that great to begin with. That being said, their gymnasium at the high school is shiny and nice.
If you want to see where the gaming industry is going, take a look in the arcades. All of the games I can think of are somehow immersive with simple controls: you dance on light pads, you drive a car with a steering wheel, you shoot zombies with a shotgun, you paddle a raft down a gulley, etc. You won't find joystick controlled games in your local Dave and Buster's anymore.
This is what the Wii developers took into account when they started this project. They created a simple controller that can be used in a variety of ways as many different things. It can be pointed like a gun, turned like a steering wheel, swung like a sword, cast like a fishing rod, swung like a golf club....heck, I can't even think of all the uses.
Now, with this device as the interface, they added wireless connectivity, a neat secondary controller for the other hand, and backward compatibility for GameCube games. What more can you ask for a single system? And for $250? They've done an amazing job, which is exactly why I can't wait to buy mine.
What CS courses should be required for a Mathematics major? When I was a student (about 10 years ago), we still used FORTRAN for most of our work in computational methods and numerical analysis. Is a better programming language for this task available?
Working at Microsoft doesn't force him to "believe" that Vista is more secure. I fully believe that each version of Windows gets better, regardless of what folks on/. think about it. Windows XP is more secure than Windows 2000, though both have had a few issues. However, would you uninstall either to go back to Windows 98? People tend to quickly forget the bugginess of the older versions and jump on the "Oh, but XP is insecure!" bandwagon.
Let's be honest. How many of the patches do normal users really "need" to install? Sure, there's a proof of concept here or there that will cause a patch to be generated, but if you have AV loaded, be careful in regards to downloading trashware, and use Firefox instead of IE, most users will never need to load a patch.
In fact even though my entire IT organization is in India I'll soon be looking for a Systems Engineer in the US because I'm not happy with what I find in India.
One device acts as a phone, music player, chat device, squawk box (if you use 2-Way), camera, email gadget, sport scoreboard, stock ticker, weather forecaster, web browser, voice recorder, document reader, calendar, Franklin-Covey planner, and time killer (games) at once already. With all of that, do we really need more information at our fingertips? Maybe we've reached a point where we have enough.
No, these betas are a by-product of having open ended deadlines, letting people jump from project to project, and letting people do whatever the hell else they want to on the company's time. For all of the things that make Google sound like such a perfect utopian company, there are reasons that things never seem to officially get finished.
Let me check. Gmail->Beta. Calendar->Beta. Spreadsheets->Beta. Heck, the only thing that I use from them that is officially released is www.google.com! Of course, I use the personalized version, which may or may not be in beta.
How about starting to behave like every other company by having some accountability in your personnel? I would love nothing more than to tell folks to use their tools for all of their business needs, but as long as I keep getting "service is temporarily unavailable" on my own GMail connection, I cannot recommend the service to a business customer. Until they get start behaving like a mature company behaves, this kind of stuff will continue.
Computer literacy is non-issue to me. Schools shouldn't teach things that will be completely obsolete in 10 years. Instead of spending millions teaching kids how to use different applications, teach them to TYPE!
Give me a person who can type and I can show them which window to type an email into, which to type a document into, and which to type a chat message into. The applications are made to be easy to use...showing a user how to get their job done isn't that difficult.
An even better example of this is the AS/400. Millions of people stare at a green screen (or an emulator) for hours a day. If they can type, they can be taught how to use the system. I guarantee that a school isn't going to teach high school kids how to use AS/400 Client Access or any of the software that runs on the system. I can also guarantee the people don't have an AS/400 at home to play with. All of this and yet these users can do their work without even looking at the screen most of the time!
Only foundational skills need to be taught to the through the school systems. Job-specific skills are taught on the job. Reading, writing, and arithmetic used to be the only things necessary. Typing should now be included.
For a reporter to acquire the information, it must be made available from someone who knows it. The reporter is not at fault, the leaker is. Acquiring information through research cannot be criminalized.
You always need to pay your licensing fee for each Windows system running in a VM. The only difference between MS and VMWare licensing costs would be the cost of the Windows-based host system, which you would pay for if you were hosting your VMs on a Windows machine either way.
Microsoft is getting their money no matter what. If you don't like it, don't use it.
On one of the NPR shows (Weekend Edition, maybe,) I heard a discussion regarding this about 2 months ago. According to the interviewee, studies and polls show that most listeners prefer the non-local content, which is why stations are moving toward it. The interviewer gave a similar reaction to what you would give, in that he liked the local stuff better. These national shows (Prairie Home Companion, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Car Talk, and so forth) actually bring in more listeners than the local stuff.
So, to say "the best NPR (and TV network, for that matter) affiliates offer great local content," is accurate ONLY for the purists. Even NPR listeners are not immune to the appeal of good nationally-covered shows.
And this beats collaboration via email how? I don't have to retrain users to collaborate through email, chat, or telephone conversations. Users are now expected to be webmasters, too, and be responsible for maintaining a collaboration site, along with all of the rest of their work? You tell a user that instead of saving a file to My Documents (or any other network-attached drive,) that they need to browse through the sites in the little "Save As" box until they find the right location.
How does this help outside consultants and the collaboration done with them? Should I be expected to create a B2B site using Sharepoint Services so that our external vendors can access our files? What if the external vendors aren't on the newest version of Office? Should I buy it for them so they can work with us? Should I then create a VPN subsystem for them to use to get to this site? How does the collaboration occur during times away from the Internet? Sure, you say he can take it off of the site for 3 weeks, but the project must go on.
Who will be the core administrator of this system? Does the IT department take responsibility for the content of every subsite? Do we train users to create their own sites at will? Who sets the limits as far as document retention policies? Who enforces these limits? How does the backup work for the system? For a decent-sized deployment, SQL Server is required, so who maintains that?
I agree that the features are nice for a small, centrally-located workgroup, but it isn't worth a crap beyond that. Unfortunately, I've worked with Sharepoint Services since 1.0 and found it to be cumbersome and difficult to get people to adopt. I've upgraded Office 2 times and the software from version 1 to version 2 to attempt to get this working, yet the document management features that I've wanted are going to be in the next version, requiring upgrades for everything again!
(You can tell that I did not pick this solution to start with. Yes, I'm slightly bitter.)
I liked the old games because without using cheat codes or digging for info (maps, how-tos, etc.) you could still beat the games in a reasonable amount of time. I see too many people going to Blockbuster, renting a game, using all of the cheats, beating the game, and taking it back the next day. However, if you actually attempt to beat it on your own, without the cheats, they are way too difficult.
The developers need to reach a nice middle ground, where it's challenging enough to remain fun, but not impossible either. Games like Mario Bros (at least the 1, 2, and 3,) Dragon Warrior, and Ninja Gaiden could be beat without consulting a gigantic book of tricks.
Some of us aren't interested in playing online, getting pummelled by people who play all the time, or making a video game feel like real work. I just want them to be fun. Sonic, Mario, and Metroid games are the best for me. And that's not just because I'm "old."
There is more to a business than a bunch of people handling individual tasks; most positions require a background in areas other than just a single job. For instance, our developers spend a lot of time with our distribution, finance, and customer service departments. One of our guys has worked with distribution and supply chain stuff his entire career and has a business degree, while another is a full-fledged accountant. Neither of these areas of expertise were learned through self-study, nor do I think they could learn it through a couple of Dummies books. Regardless of the language they program in, they understand business processes well enough that they can programmatically handle daily problems. These are examples of why a degree is often required.
There's more to IT than just bits and flops. Just because you can write code in a particular language faster or more efficiently than someone else does not make you a better IT employee. It just makes you a better programmer.
And to say that "most successful businessmen do not have a degree" is completely overstating the few examples where they do not. I would argue that the folks who get their MBAs at Harvard, Wharton, and the other business schools and succeed in business far outnumber the successful ones who didn't get a degree at all. You can throw as many Gates' and Bransons' at it as you want, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.
Yet another "look at this great Linux distribution" article on Slashdot. Who needs all these different distributions? Sure, readers here will say that having such choice is a great thing, but getting people to move to "Linux" is hard enough. Try telling them to use a specific distribution.....you'll get nothing but blank stares.
Typical Recruiter Statement: "Make sure to check out the IT programs, as they prepare you for a career that is demanding, ever changing, and has endless possibilities."
True Statement: "Make sure to check out the IT programs. They will prepare you for a career of long evenings, high pressure deadlines, catering to higher-ups, and never getting the budget you need to get the job done. Oh, and 5 years after your graduation, we'll still be here to advance your skills! For instance, our MCSE program changes every time Microsoft changes their tracts....you can keep up just by taking classes with us!"
Quality Control is done using statistics. Sample so many, make sure they are okay, and move on. Microsoft certainly has QC procedures in place, but as a statistical process, you will still have untested units going to the marketplace.
There isn't a manufacturing facility in the world that can test every single unit that is going to market. Even if there was, they can't have a QC team at every sales outlet checking the products on the shelves, as things do get broken during shipping.
Learn a little bit of manufacturing procedure before you mouth off about QC with the XBox. So what if a few are broken.....they'll be replaced or fixed and the owners will be happy with it.
I've seen you test the theory that running your car's air conditioning reduces your gas mileage, but here's a better one: is it necessarily true that you should change your oil "every 3 months or 3000 miles"?
I believe that, while changing it every 3000 miles is definitely a safe thing to do, it is overkill. My Honda's manual, for instance, states that I should only perform the maintenance (oil changes included), every 10000 miles. Over the life of the vehicle (say, 150000 miles,) that's the difference of 35 oil changes.
What happens to these Doogie Howser kids anyway? If they are so darned smart, shouldn't they be curing cancer or something now? Shouldn't I hear about them on TV as adults, when they are doing something amazing? My theory is that they may be incredibly smart for their age, but people catch up to them, or else we'd hear of them more often later in life.
This does not necessarily hold for music prodigies....they play in orchestras and stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
If there is one thing I've learned while being a network consultant it's this: it doesn't matter what company you work for, you still don't know crap until you are thrown into a fire. So, when you go out and spend big money bringing in an "expert" from any vendor, chances are darned good that you are getting a newbie. After all, the best techs are the ones that are promoted into higher-level jobs, leaving the BS calls for the new guys.
Fortunately for me, I live in Kentucky, where our schools are more adequately funded, education reform has moved the state toward the national norm over the past 15 years, and our schools have computers. Oh, and we don't have the 30% dropout rate of Indiana.
This is a great idea, but the school system is still required to buy the computers, regardless of if they have Linux or Windows. My wife teaches in Dearborn County, IN, which is in the southeastern corner of the state. To this day, they don't have a single one of these systems, nor do they have anything else instead. The teachers at her school don't have their own working computers, much less the students, as the state of Indiana doesn't push a technology agenda like the rest of the real world.
Over this entire school year, she's actually had email working on her desk MAYBE 2 days. Each Windows PC in the school is so full of CometCursors and SmileyCentrals that they don't run worth a darn. Their tech support uses the famous "in the private sector" excuse. If you work for the government, you know that this means "in the private sector, people aren't as overworked." (HA!)
Not that a Pentium II Windows 95 machine logging into the Netware network is going to be that great to begin with. That being said, their gymnasium at the high school is shiny and nice.
If you want to see where the gaming industry is going, take a look in the arcades. All of the games I can think of are somehow immersive with simple controls: you dance on light pads, you drive a car with a steering wheel, you shoot zombies with a shotgun, you paddle a raft down a gulley, etc. You won't find joystick controlled games in your local Dave and Buster's anymore.
This is what the Wii developers took into account when they started this project. They created a simple controller that can be used in a variety of ways as many different things. It can be pointed like a gun, turned like a steering wheel, swung like a sword, cast like a fishing rod, swung like a golf club....heck, I can't even think of all the uses.
Now, with this device as the interface, they added wireless connectivity, a neat secondary controller for the other hand, and backward compatibility for GameCube games. What more can you ask for a single system? And for $250? They've done an amazing job, which is exactly why I can't wait to buy mine.
What CS courses should be required for a Mathematics major? When I was a student (about 10 years ago), we still used FORTRAN for most of our work in computational methods and numerical analysis. Is a better programming language for this task available?
Working at Microsoft doesn't force him to "believe" that Vista is more secure. I fully believe that each version of Windows gets better, regardless of what folks on /. think about it. Windows XP is more secure than Windows 2000, though both have had a few issues. However, would you uninstall either to go back to Windows 98? People tend to quickly forget the bugginess of the older versions and jump on the "Oh, but XP is insecure!" bandwagon.
Let's be honest. How many of the patches do normal users really "need" to install? Sure, there's a proof of concept here or there that will cause a patch to be generated, but if you have AV loaded, be careful in regards to downloading trashware, and use Firefox instead of IE, most users will never need to load a patch.
And in the interest of having a secure operating system, Microsoft absolutely SHOULD secure the lowest levels from third party applications.
In fact even though my entire IT organization is in India I'll soon be looking for a Systems Engineer in the US because I'm not happy with what I find in India.
So where do I send my resume?
One device acts as a phone, music player, chat device, squawk box (if you use 2-Way), camera, email gadget, sport scoreboard, stock ticker, weather forecaster, web browser, voice recorder, document reader, calendar, Franklin-Covey planner, and time killer (games) at once already. With all of that, do we really need more information at our fingertips? Maybe we've reached a point where we have enough.
No, these betas are a by-product of having open ended deadlines, letting people jump from project to project, and letting people do whatever the hell else they want to on the company's time. For all of the things that make Google sound like such a perfect utopian company, there are reasons that things never seem to officially get finished. Let me check. Gmail->Beta. Calendar->Beta. Spreadsheets->Beta. Heck, the only thing that I use from them that is officially released is www.google.com! Of course, I use the personalized version, which may or may not be in beta. How about starting to behave like every other company by having some accountability in your personnel? I would love nothing more than to tell folks to use their tools for all of their business needs, but as long as I keep getting "service is temporarily unavailable" on my own GMail connection, I cannot recommend the service to a business customer. Until they get start behaving like a mature company behaves, this kind of stuff will continue.
Computer literacy is non-issue to me. Schools shouldn't teach things that will be completely obsolete in 10 years. Instead of spending millions teaching kids how to use different applications, teach them to TYPE!
Give me a person who can type and I can show them which window to type an email into, which to type a document into, and which to type a chat message into. The applications are made to be easy to use...showing a user how to get their job done isn't that difficult.
An even better example of this is the AS/400. Millions of people stare at a green screen (or an emulator) for hours a day. If they can type, they can be taught how to use the system. I guarantee that a school isn't going to teach high school kids how to use AS/400 Client Access or any of the software that runs on the system. I can also guarantee the people don't have an AS/400 at home to play with. All of this and yet these users can do their work without even looking at the screen most of the time!
Only foundational skills need to be taught to the through the school systems. Job-specific skills are taught on the job. Reading, writing, and arithmetic used to be the only things necessary. Typing should now be included.
For a reporter to acquire the information, it must be made available from someone who knows it. The reporter is not at fault, the leaker is. Acquiring information through research cannot be criminalized.
You always need to pay your licensing fee for each Windows system running in a VM. The only difference between MS and VMWare licensing costs would be the cost of the Windows-based host system, which you would pay for if you were hosting your VMs on a Windows machine either way. Microsoft is getting their money no matter what. If you don't like it, don't use it.
On one of the NPR shows (Weekend Edition, maybe,) I heard a discussion regarding this about 2 months ago. According to the interviewee, studies and polls show that most listeners prefer the non-local content, which is why stations are moving toward it. The interviewer gave a similar reaction to what you would give, in that he liked the local stuff better. These national shows (Prairie Home Companion, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Car Talk, and so forth) actually bring in more listeners than the local stuff.
So, to say "the best NPR (and TV network, for that matter) affiliates offer great local content," is accurate ONLY for the purists. Even NPR listeners are not immune to the appeal of good nationally-covered shows.
And this beats collaboration via email how? I don't have to retrain users to collaborate through email, chat, or telephone conversations. Users are now expected to be webmasters, too, and be responsible for maintaining a collaboration site, along with all of the rest of their work? You tell a user that instead of saving a file to My Documents (or any other network-attached drive,) that they need to browse through the sites in the little "Save As" box until they find the right location.
How does this help outside consultants and the collaboration done with them? Should I be expected to create a B2B site using Sharepoint Services so that our external vendors can access our files? What if the external vendors aren't on the newest version of Office? Should I buy it for them so they can work with us? Should I then create a VPN subsystem for them to use to get to this site? How does the collaboration occur during times away from the Internet? Sure, you say he can take it off of the site for 3 weeks, but the project must go on.
Who will be the core administrator of this system? Does the IT department take responsibility for the content of every subsite? Do we train users to create their own sites at will? Who sets the limits as far as document retention policies? Who enforces these limits? How does the backup work for the system? For a decent-sized deployment, SQL Server is required, so who maintains that?
I agree that the features are nice for a small, centrally-located workgroup, but it isn't worth a crap beyond that. Unfortunately, I've worked with Sharepoint Services since 1.0 and found it to be cumbersome and difficult to get people to adopt. I've upgraded Office 2 times and the software from version 1 to version 2 to attempt to get this working, yet the document management features that I've wanted are going to be in the next version, requiring upgrades for everything again!
(You can tell that I did not pick this solution to start with. Yes, I'm slightly bitter.)
I liked the old games because without using cheat codes or digging for info (maps, how-tos, etc.) you could still beat the games in a reasonable amount of time. I see too many people going to Blockbuster, renting a game, using all of the cheats, beating the game, and taking it back the next day. However, if you actually attempt to beat it on your own, without the cheats, they are way too difficult. The developers need to reach a nice middle ground, where it's challenging enough to remain fun, but not impossible either. Games like Mario Bros (at least the 1, 2, and 3,) Dragon Warrior, and Ninja Gaiden could be beat without consulting a gigantic book of tricks. Some of us aren't interested in playing online, getting pummelled by people who play all the time, or making a video game feel like real work. I just want them to be fun. Sonic, Mario, and Metroid games are the best for me. And that's not just because I'm "old."
How many of you are in a lecture hall or class right now?
There is more to a business than a bunch of people handling individual tasks; most positions require a background in areas other than just a single job. For instance, our developers spend a lot of time with our distribution, finance, and customer service departments. One of our guys has worked with distribution and supply chain stuff his entire career and has a business degree, while another is a full-fledged accountant. Neither of these areas of expertise were learned through self-study, nor do I think they could learn it through a couple of Dummies books. Regardless of the language they program in, they understand business processes well enough that they can programmatically handle daily problems. These are examples of why a degree is often required.
There's more to IT than just bits and flops. Just because you can write code in a particular language faster or more efficiently than someone else does not make you a better IT employee. It just makes you a better programmer.
And to say that "most successful businessmen do not have a degree" is completely overstating the few examples where they do not. I would argue that the folks who get their MBAs at Harvard, Wharton, and the other business schools and succeed in business far outnumber the successful ones who didn't get a degree at all. You can throw as many Gates' and Bransons' at it as you want, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.
Didn't radio stations play ads long before the Internet was invented?
I realize that Slashdot is "News for Nerds," but calling any TCP/IP book a "classic" is where I draw the line. Now, back to NOVA....
Yet another "look at this great Linux distribution" article on Slashdot. Who needs all these different distributions? Sure, readers here will say that having such choice is a great thing, but getting people to move to "Linux" is hard enough. Try telling them to use a specific distribution.....you'll get nothing but blank stares.
Typical Recruiter Statement: "Make sure to check out the IT programs, as they prepare you for a career that is demanding, ever changing, and has endless possibilities." True Statement: "Make sure to check out the IT programs. They will prepare you for a career of long evenings, high pressure deadlines, catering to higher-ups, and never getting the budget you need to get the job done. Oh, and 5 years after your graduation, we'll still be here to advance your skills! For instance, our MCSE program changes every time Microsoft changes their tracts....you can keep up just by taking classes with us!"
Quality Control is done using statistics. Sample so many, make sure they are okay, and move on. Microsoft certainly has QC procedures in place, but as a statistical process, you will still have untested units going to the marketplace. There isn't a manufacturing facility in the world that can test every single unit that is going to market. Even if there was, they can't have a QC team at every sales outlet checking the products on the shelves, as things do get broken during shipping. Learn a little bit of manufacturing procedure before you mouth off about QC with the XBox. So what if a few are broken.....they'll be replaced or fixed and the owners will be happy with it.
I've seen you test the theory that running your car's air conditioning reduces your gas mileage, but here's a better one: is it necessarily true that you should change your oil "every 3 months or 3000 miles"?
I believe that, while changing it every 3000 miles is definitely a safe thing to do, it is overkill. My Honda's manual, for instance, states that I should only perform the maintenance (oil changes included), every 10000 miles. Over the life of the vehicle (say, 150000 miles,) that's the difference of 35 oil changes.
What happens to these Doogie Howser kids anyway? If they are so darned smart, shouldn't they be curing cancer or something now? Shouldn't I hear about them on TV as adults, when they are doing something amazing? My theory is that they may be incredibly smart for their age, but people catch up to them, or else we'd hear of them more often later in life. This does not necessarily hold for music prodigies....they play in orchestras and stuff.