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User: Old+VMS+Junkie

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  1. Talk to Vendors on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Store a Half-Petabyte of Data? (And Back It Up?) · · Score: 3

    Honestly, you should talk to the pros. I would call a couple of storage vendors, give them the basic outline of what you want to do, and let them tell you how they would do it. You can even get more formal and issue a Request for Information (RFI) or even a Request for Quote (RFQ). If you're a biggish company, your purchasing people probably have an SOP and standard forms for how to issue an RFI/RFQ. For the big boy storage vendors, half a petabyte is commonplace. The bigger question may very well be what this is going to look like at a software level. Managing the data might be a bigger challenge than storing it. Is this going to be organized in some sort of big data solution like Hadoop? Is it just a whole bunch of files and a people are going to write R or SAS jobs to query against it? Sometimes the tool set that you want to use will drive your choices in how to build the infrastructure under it.

  2. Re: freedom on Obama: Maybe It's Time For Mandatory Voting In US · · Score: 1

    Actually, they have this data. The government keeps meticulous records of exactly who voted in every single election. And, oh by the way, that data is NOT private. You can get it just for the asking, and both parties do. That's how they target their "get out the vote" campaigns. They have a record of your party affiliation and your voting record, not who you voted on but everything else. Then they target calls to repeat voters that have been long-time members of their party. That's part of the role of poll watchers. They record everyone who voted and then, sometime in the middle of the day, they report to their party who didn't vote. Your phone rings at 3 PM saying, "Hey Mr or Mrs Republican or Democrat. We haven't seen you at the polls today. Do you need a ride to the polls or a babysitter or something? We want to make sure you vote!"

  3. Re:freedom on Obama: Maybe It's Time For Mandatory Voting In US · · Score: 2

    Maybe they weren't quite the lies that the left would like you to believe... http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

  4. Re:Awkward... on Ask Slashdot: Pros and Cons of Homeschooling? · · Score: 0

    I'm with Anonymous on this one. Every home schooled person that I've met or worked with has been a social mutant to one degree or another, from just a bit odd to flat-out batshit crazy. I'm sure there are exceptions and I haven't met a statistically significant sample, blah blah blah, whatever... I'm just callin' it likes I sees it. It's been my experience that the purportedly better academics is vastly outweighed by the scary social damage.

  5. Even the National Weather Service fucked it up on "Mammoth Snow Storm" Underwhelms · · Score: -1, Troll

    As of 10 PM last night, they were still calling for 6-10" where I am. I'd be surprised if I got 2". People stayed home from work, schools closed. It was utter bullshit. If I missed the mark this bad with my budgets and time line predictions, I'd be out on the street looking for a job.

  6. The man who saved Onagawa on TEPCO: Nearly All Nuclear Fuel Melted At Fukushima No. 3 Reactor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It could have been worse except for one determined engineer, Yanosuke Hirai, who insisted on a higher seawall for the Onagawa plant. A good article can be found at http://www.oregonlive.com/opin.... I have a quote on my wall from Tatsuji Oshima, one of his proteges. "Corporate ethics and compliance may be similar, but their cores are different. From the perspective of corporate social responsibility, we cannot say that there is no need to question a company's actions just because they are not a crime under the law."

  7. Re:19,000 on No Shortage In Tech Workers, Advocacy Groups Say · · Score: 2

    DING DING DING DING DING! We have a winner. When you take someone who craps in a hole where they grew up, paltry wages seem like they hit the friggin' lottery.

  8. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. on No Shortage In Tech Workers, Advocacy Groups Say · · Score: 5, Informative

    "The only reason to outsource is because of the massive shortage of tech workers." I call bullshit grande. I'm living through an outsource right now and it's ALL ABOUT COST. The existing help desk, first level support, and second level support were shown the door and replaced with 50% off bargain employees from Elbonia and elsewhere. Competence had zero to do with it. Uptime of our apps has tanked, ticket queues are ballooning, the new support folks can't find their ass with both hands and a map... but they sure are cheaper.

  9. Re:Two sides to every issue on No Shortage In Tech Workers, Advocacy Groups Say · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah, and the American workers laid off to be replaced by outsourcers at 1/3 the price, that's the workers' fault too. Capitalism will always leverage poverty and when you can hire someone who thinks that having a flush toilet is a luxury over someone who expects a decent wage, you can pretty much count on the switch being made.

  10. Leverage the poor, whoever they are on China Starts Outsourcing From ... the US · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Businesses will continue to take advantage of poverty, wherever it exists and whoever it is. Greed is blind to creed and color. All it cares about is profit.

  11. Obligatory Sterling Archer Quote on Japan Orders Military To Strike Any New North Korea Missiles · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Relax. It's North Korea, the nation-state equivalent of the short bus."

  12. More H-1Bs? on Gates Warns of Software Replacing People; Greenspan Says H-1Bs Fix Inequity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can't see the logic with this one. Off-shore even more well-paying jobs to low-cost replacements in third world countries? How does that fix income inequity? The H-1B visa is being perverted by big business. It was intended to bring skill workers to the US, presuming that at least some percentage of them would stay and add to the economic engine. In practice, these visas are used by shell companies to bring migrant workers here to train, then return to their off-shore operations centers, taking permanent positions with them. Greenspan is correct only in the theoretical use of the H-1B, not in it's actual practice.

  13. When I hear "I work 60 hours a week"... on Your 60-Hour Work Week Is Not a Badge of Honor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... my BS meter begins to go off the scale. While I've done my fair share of brutal weeks (I'm an IT guy), it's been my experience that 99% of people who claim that they regularly work 60 hrs a week are full of crap. If you work an extra hour a day, and then put in five more over the weekend, you're still only at 50. You need to work five ten hour days and then STILL put in ten more hours over the weekend. Humans just aren't built for that. When people have boasted that in interviews, I've drilled into them and I'll get excuses like, "I was on call, so even though I wasn't actually working, I was still working..." or "Technically I have a home office so when I drive every day, I count my commute..." or "Well, it was 60 hours for the last three weeks before go live, but before that it was 45-50!" Yes, there are legitimate workaholics that do 60 hours a week. Average Joes doing it? Rarely.

  14. Seems like a resource, not a threat on How Much Should You Worry About an Arctic Methane Bomb? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Seems to me we should be figuring out how to tap into this stuff and use it for fuel.

  15. This is the slope before the cliff on PC Sales See 'Longest Decline' In History · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    The era of the PC is over. I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised at this.

  16. You get what you pay for... on India To Overtake US On Number of Developers By 2017 · · Score: 3, Informative

    As long as they're willing to work for peanuts, regardless of the crap they produce, US CEOs will keep hiring them. I'm watching an outsourcing fiasco in progress at my company. The "smartsourced" apps are blowing up like crazy and executive management screams at the PMs and middle management, neither of which wanted these barely-trained, fundamentally incompetent programmers to begin with.

  17. Re:But I like guns! on House Bill Would Mandate Smart Gun Tech By U.S. Manufacturers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Define "sensible". This bill is not "sensible" by any definition I can think of. How about forcing states to add their mental health records to the instant background check database? Less than 30 states currently do. God forbid we violate the privacy of fucking crazy people.

  18. Yet another ham-handed attempt to eliminate guns on House Bill Would Mandate Smart Gun Tech By U.S. Manufacturers · · Score: 2

    Aside from the fact that the technology doesn't exist... What if I want to let a friend shoot my gun, for example when I was teaching someone to shoot? What if I wanted to try a friend's gun so I could see if I liked it? How about collectible guns? The last firearm I bought was a WWII vintage Finnish rifle. What if I wanted to buy a very-collectable WWII 1911? Would that be legal? It's just another blatant attempt to restrict my constitutional rights. If you want to pass gun control, amend the Constitution. Stop wasting our time with this kind of legislative theater.

  19. Wait, wut? on Do Developers Need Free Perks To Thrive? · · Score: 0

    Of course. Duh.

  20. Re:Much of the world has "illegal speech" on Journalist Arrested By Interpol For Tweet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a big difference between threats or statements that might endanger the safety of others and someone stating their feelings towards a religious figure. Just another sign of the Muslim world's complete intolerance, total lack of religious freedom, and complete lack of respect for human life and dignity.

  21. Who started what? on The New Transparency of War and Lethality of Hatred · · Score: 2

    'I think we should reflect on that before we start another war.'" We? Really? We flew our own planes into the World Trade Center? We attacked the Cole? We shot our own Blackhawks down in Somalia? Get a friggin' grip. We didn't start this war, we're just finishing it.

  22. Capitalism at work on Is the Master's Degree the New Bachelor's? · · Score: 2

    Easy access to on-line degrees and the for-profit colleges are huge drivers in this. There was no University of Phoenix (or whatever) back in the 1960s. If people can make money at it, you can bet it's going to expand until every dollar that can be spent is being spent.

  23. Re:I still don't think people are getting it on BlackBerry PlayBook First Tablet To Gain NIST Approval · · Score: 2

    Spoken like a marketer for RIM. RIM is a dead man walking in the enterprise. Yes, they're the only ones to have their own management software but there are a dozen vendors lining up with mobile device management solutions. Vendors like Good Technology and MobileIron are making enterprise-grade equivalents to BES for the iPhone/iPad and Android space. The problem, as it's always been, is applications. It's a nightmare to write anything for BlackBerry. Comparatively speaking, writing apps for iPhones and Androids is a breeze. RIM's percentage of the enterprise market is falling and will continue to fall. They're going the way of so many market leaders before them who thought that once you got to the top you'd automagically stay on the top.

  24. "Wired for War" on Afghanistan Called First "Robotic War" · · Score: 1

    I highly recommend "Wired for War" by P. W. Singer. Outstanding read. He's also a pretty interesting speaker, if you get the chance to hear him.

  25. Typical knee-jerk reaction on US May Disable All Car Phones, Says Trans. Secretary · · Score: 1

    Welcome to the Nanny State. We're obviously not capable of taking care of ourselves. Do the Democrats not realize that this is the kind of crap that fires up the crazies and gets Tea Party candidates into office?