There was a big announcement about supporting
GoogleTalk
on the N770 last year...I guess it works, but I can't find anything
about it on the actual GoogleTalk site. I'd assume the 800 supports it too.
I nearly bought the 770 last year, but decided to buy a
XV6700 instead. After playing w/ the 770
awhile, it just seemed to need a few extra bells/whistles (e.g., a camera - which the 800 now has),
and the size/resolution of the screen wasn't that much better than the 6700.
(Plus my carrier made the latter real cheap if I renewed my contract).
I just downloaded the Skype beta that supports the 6700, so I guess
I've got pretty much everything the 770/800 have, plus a cellphone,
except the 6700 only has 802.11b, and a slightly smaller screen.
I wouldn't commit to these smaller devices until you've laid hands on the newer
generation of UMPC's. The ASUS R2H looks pretty kewl,
and the latest versions of the Samsung are getting much better as well.
While they're 2.5x more expensive, the extra screen real estate and storage
will likely more than make up for the difference.
Actually, this whole episode - including the AJAX trainwreck known as
the "tv.yahoo.com beta", and the firing of the entertainment division head - may be
better explained by understanding
Mr. Semel's background. Yahoo seems intent on becoming an entertainment
company, and thinks that shoving the garbage witnessed at tv.yahoo.com
in users faces is the way to improve revenue.
In the same way network television shoves braindead reality TV and retread sitcoms
sandwiched between hours of commercials.
Or the way the RIAA and MPAA attempt to generate revenue by shoving subpoenas
in the faces of small children and the disabled.
Frankly, I suspect the decline of Yahoo began the minute the ink dried on the
deal to give Marc Cuban $2,000,000,000 for Broadcast.com (which was several years
ago).
As for tv.yahoo.com, I must thank Yahoo for weaning me off it, and forcing
me to hack together my own XMLTV scripts.
A much better offline experience!
Ah yes, what was I thinking. I'd better go delete
all those meddlesome language, OS, DBMS, protocol,
and framework references from my resume, as they're
just unneccesary clutter that employers offering those
"jobs galore" will ignore anyway. After all, recruiters and HR reps
certainly never look for those things in the 1000s
of CVs they run thru their keyword filters. They're just
interested in which "type theory, denotational semantics, complexity theory
and compiler theory" classes I took.
Hmmm, on second thought, I think I'll keep them in...
Just because there are "jobs galore", doesn't mean they're jobs worth taking.
Based on the stream of migrant farm workers flowing into the US from points south,
there are "jobs galore" in agriculture as well.
The issue isn't raw numbers, its ROI. Given the $10,000's now required for a 4 year degree,
the course of study one undertakes now must be considered wrt whether it will lead to
a reasonable return. At prevailing salaries, its not certain that CS is the best choice.
Plus, given the limited shelf life of any area of CS expertise, those choosing CS also
have to bear the burden of constant retraining, usually at a breakneck pace.
Many other disciplines don't have such burdens (yes, things may change in medicine/law/etc.,
but at a much slower pace).
Keep in mind that those flogging for more CS majors are often the same folks doing
everything in their power to keep wages down (e.g., Mr. Gates), or have a vested
interest in pushing paying bodies through their degree programs (e.g., Ms. Bigas of
Stanford).
If you really love the CS discipline, its fine...but if considered in the cold
calculus of "tuition as investment", even the geekiest of CS students would
be well advised to consider a dual major (or minor in some other field).
...but performance improvements essentially for free...
I see. I was unaware that my IBM/Sun/Oracle/BEA/etc. site engineer was
going to just waltz into my office, do a quick copy of all those J2EE 1.4
JAR/XML/WAR/etc. files over to a shiny new EE 5 system, flip the switch and it will
all magically work wo/ any service interruption. And of course, there will be
no bill. Just like when they forced us to upgrade from 1.3 to 1.4...er, um,
wait a sec...
I'm guessing you've never had to budget for such an upgrade project ? Based on the
pain I've seen/heard wrt the move from 1.3 to 1.4, I'd guess many CIOs are going to need
to hear a lot more than "performance improvements essentially for free" before
they write any checks. Like, "This upgrade will improve our sales by 10%", or
"This upgrade will reduce our production costs by 10%".
Frankly, wrt upgrades, I'm seeing a number of major J2EE users trying to identify
app servers they can replace with LAMP stacks, so they don't have to deal
with a vendor forcing them thru "free" upgrade cycles.
I'm sure the/. ubergeeks will reel off a dozen reasons to upgrade to EE 5, but my customers are
still beating up their vendors for forcing them to move to JDK 1.4, and practically begging me
to continue supporting JDK 1.3/J2EE 1.3. Making such upgrades costs money, and unless the
end user's core business (which usually is not about building out app servers)
sees a real ROI in upgrading, its not likely to happen...unless/until vendors force them kicking
and screaming to upgrade.
Yes, we could have used Python. Or Ruby. Both these languages have better threading support by leaps and bounds.
Er, how ? Because they don't really use threads ? Sure, they're fast
and lightweight...but since they don't use the underlying OS's threads implementation (ie, kernel-compatible threads), they're only marginally useful on multiCPU and/or multicore systems.
2. Perl threads are still quite unstable.
Whats your basis for that statement ? Have you tested the latest versions of the threads and
threads::shared modules ? Some significant effort has been applied in the past year to improve stability, as well as reduce footprint...you might want to give it a look...
Perhaps if your org can get some funding, you might throw some
money at the TPF to get iCOW implemented ? Which should vastly improve thread startup and reduce footprint. threads::shared remains a bit of a challenge, but that issue can be addressed by some carefully crafted XS (which I'm told Stas is pretty good at;^).
I've skimmed the book and considered the purchase, but I've been hacking SQL for decades now,
and can't really justify it. If only the author had provided an error code cross reference for all those DBMS's, I would pay much, much more than its cover price.
Error codes remain the one area where SQL variants have vast differences - SQLSTATE support is still pretty hit and miss - and so, while syntax portability is getting better and better, application portability remains a challenge.
Palm Trio, Motorola Q, etc.... And you don't have to be near a free/open WiFi spot.
Or get a XV6700/PPC6700/etc (all HTC Apache variants) and get WiFi...and camera...to boot. I got mine a month ago
and, while it took a bit of getting used to, its pretty damn near a complete communicator. I
think it might even give Spock gadget envy. (Tho it does run WinMobile).
I nearly picked up the 770, but wo/ a camera or phone, it just doesn't seem worth the $350
(tho the various announcements wrt hooking up with Google Talk were intriguing). FWIW, my local COMPUSA does have 770's in stock (and the last email flyer I got last Sunday indicates they're
still selling 'me for $350)
Here in Nevada we have no personal income taxes, and corp. taxes are nearly
nonexistant (unless you're in the gaming biz...but since they mint their
own money, its not too big an issue). Sales taxes may be considered
high (7+%) and gas taxes are pretty high (which I consider
a great idea).
Not to mention that, despite severe rises in the past few years,
real estate prices are much lower than those for our neighbors to
the west in the People's Republic.
Which may explain the significant stream of both small and large businesses
escaping across the border to Las Vegas or Reno-Tahoe. In fact, there are a number
of small s/w outfits just across the border from CA in the pleasant
surrounds of Lake Tahoe. And that short trip from CA to NV usually
comes with a massive decrease in insurance costs.
And from Northern NV, I can be in SillyCon Valley with a pleasant
drive of a few hours (well, at least up to SacraMoscow).
As someone who lived in LA, CA for many years, and has done biz in
SillyCon Valley, I can't imagine why people still consider the Bay
Area so damn great. Since it costs the same, but the weather
and lifestyle in SoCal is much better, why not get a life
while you work ?
Other things to consider:
Bill Gates chooses to live in Seattle, WA
Linus Torvalds chooses to live in Portland, OR
Microsoft maintains its Licensing operations in Reno, NV
Apple just opened its own "capital management" firm in Reno
wrt "what happens when you lose your job", keep in mind that being
unemployed in Reno-Tahoe for 6 months - esp during the winter - is often
something people look forward to!. Plus the savings
from living outside of SillyCon usually mean a 6 to 12 month vacation
is actually affordable/survivable. If you make US$120K/year in SillyCon,
but lose your job, you damn well better start humping for a new job.
If you make US$75K/year in NV and lose your job, you can usually wait
until ski season is over.
I guess its a matter of choice: "live to work" vs. "work to live".
In closing: The FOX channel here in Reno is just a feed from the Bay Area.
So when I get up in the morning, I turn on the news on FOX...and just laugh
and laugh..and laugh!.
We'll show those telecommuters...OFFSHORE!!!
on
Telecommuting Backlash
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So those uppity geeks think they can sit at home on their tender pimpled asses
and draw a paycheck ? Taking our sensitive data home ? Workin in
pajamas ? We'll show 'em! We'll send our data and IP to the other side of
the planet to folks we've never met, where our laws don't mean squat...and
we'll save massive bucks to boot! Yep, that'll larn 'em...
As someone who's read the book (and previously commented on it
here), this book is just what the title says, "Foundations".
It is not a comprehensive analysis, nor does it attempt to lead the reader through graduate level UML and design pattern analysis
like some other massive tomes. It delivers the basic concepts,
shows a few nice examples, and provides lots of links to sites
doing interesting things w/ AJAX.
So I'd say, yes, the book is neccesary. Rather than meandering all over the web trying to figure out "what this AJAX stuff is all about", you can grab this little book, have a nice quick afternoon's read, and then do a much more targeted browsing session to fill in
the details. It certainly helped me bootstrap into developing
AJAX applications.
My advice to college students: Go out there and get yourself some experience
OK, lemme see if I understand your predicament...you want to hire an entry level admin at subsistence wages, complain you can't find anyone with the qualifications you expect and, apparently, won't hire anyone with fewer qualifications and train them, and then have the gall to tell students to go out and get more experience ?
Am I the only one to see the irony here ?
A Shorter, More Direct Alternative
on
Ajax in Action
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I read the sample chapters of the reviewed book and was underwhelmed.
Chapter 4 spent way too much time trying to sound "impressive",
with lots of UML diagrams and Design Patterns references. Plus,
615 pages for AJAX ? Unless 400 of those pages
are weblinks to online references, I'm afraid its just killing
a lot of trees.
I just picked up Foundations of Ajax, and its a good, focused 273 pages, of which nearly half is resources and tools for implementing. I haven't had a chance to download and try out the examples, but the reference links all look like great resources. While I wish they'd skipped the usual Chapter 1 "Here's the history of the web" that any reader of the subject matter already knows, all in all, its a great way to cut thru the BS and get rolling with the AJAX concepts.
In summary:
If you want to learn UML, buy a UML book
If you want to learn Design Patterns, buy the GangofFour book.
If you already know how to put together a webpage, write some Javascript, and maybe a little CSS, and just want to understand how it all to hangs together in AJAX, then Foundations of Ajax is probably a better choice than "Ajax in Action".
"well, I've been nursing some decaying infrastructure for the past
12 months until they finally shut it all down, then I sat
on my ass for 4 months living off the severance and unemployment.
Yep, good times, good times. But now my money and insurance have
run out, so I really need a job..."
I can't think of a better story to tell prospective
employers after your undying loyalty to the current organization is rewarded by
being kicked to the curb. I know when I'm hiring quality staff,
thats exactly the sort of response I like to hear when I ask,
"So, tell me what you've been doing in your current position...".
Seriously: If you're as worried about employment as you seem to be,
you'd best plan to get the hell out pretty quickly, albeit taking your time
to find the right position. Waiting for some sweet severance pkg that may or
may not materialize may set your career back several years, if
only from skill decay and/or the fact that any prospective
employer will likely offer significantly less for someone unemployed
(aka "desperate") than someone fully employed.
In brief, don't worry about trying to negotiate a severance package.
Worry about negotiating a new hire package.
Corporations are too hooked on the report and ad hoc query capability of RDBs I guess.
Yes, those damn corporations (and governments, too!).
Actually trying to distill useful (often legally required) information from terabytes of data using a simple declarative language! How dare they! Don't they realize there is an army of unemployed Java/Python/Ruby developers out there that can process each of those 5 billion records one at a time after transfering them across the wire without any transactional controls ? Thats certainly much better than
running the query inside the database
under transactional control
without pushing any data across the wire except for the final results
using fine grained parallelism
using state of the art data management algorithms, including advanced statistical OLAP functions
in a centralized, manageable datastore
within a coherent data model
My personal experience dealing with critical information from very large datawarehouses populated by the sort of O-R nonsense that seems to be "best practice" is that the O-R folks are more concerned about the user's browser than the data model. Here's a free clue to the O-R advocates: the information you're storing isn't being collected just for the convenience of persisting web forms in an indexed journaled filesystem. A personal anecdote: After struggling to derive useable information from an O-R generated database, consisting of 3 tables with
about 100 columns each, I arrived at the office one day to discover there were now 5 tables with about 75 columns each. Thinking to myself,
"Maybe they've finally figured out what a data model is...", I inquired about the change, and was told "because the tables were getting more than 100 columns each, so we thought we'd better break them up.".
There are people (many of whom work in corner offices, and some in legal enforcement offices) that expect to be able to query that data and quickly get rollup data to tell them how the business is doing, project how the business will do next month/year; or to find fraud;
or to find customer patterns. Data models exist for a reason, and ad hoc queries exist for a reason.
...but some folks believe you've gotta pay money or the app isn't any good.
There are good reasons to pay someone for support,
if the people you're paying know their stuff. If you're building enterprise level,
mission critical data warehouses, you'll want
immediate access to expert help when things
go horribly wrong. And Sorbannes/Oxley reinforces that need.
For those seeking paid support, there are several
companies working to do interesting things with
Pg:
EnterpriseDB - working to make Pg interoperable w/ Oracle tools
Netezza - MPP appliance h/w running a modded version of Pg
There are some other outfits dedicated to Pg support, but I can't recall the particulars...
Meanwhile, MySQL still seems to be having difficulty getting stored procs and real views released...5.0 is starting to make Longhorn's development schedule look like a quarterly maintenance release.
It's also interesting that TFA didn't mention the rise of alternatives ranging from SQLite (which pretty much does everything that folks used MySQL for in the first place, but wo/ any license confusion), to Firebird, to the recently open'd Ingres.
SCENE: The year is 2007. Staff architect Erst Wile Programmer
enters the office of low level IT manager P.H.B. Risq'averse.
EW: Boss, I think I've found a great little open source perl script
to solve our database reporting issue...
PHB (turns to PC and begins typing): That was "p-e-a-r-l",
right ? Sorry, SpikeSource(TM) doesn't report a BRR for it...
EW confused look: Er, no, "p-e-r-l"...
PHB looks anxious, types some more: OK...Perl is OK,
but whats the module ?
EW: "Super::Califragilistic"
PHB typing furiously: OK, its listed, but the BRR
is only 11.23065. Sorry, our required min BRR is 27.83409.
EW: Wha...?
PHB: BRR. You know, number of downloads, numer of reported errors, number of reporting users, that sort of thing.
EW: But its only been out about 5 months, and its only really relevant to this particular problem we've got...
PHB: Look, E-dub, we have to follow practices and procedures.
If we don't, CEO's go to jail, and the insurance company drops
us like a bad case of clap. And one requirement is, "Open source
software must be a minimum BRR of 27.83409".
EW: But what about...
PHB looks concerned and sympathetic:
Look, E-dub, I'd love to help ya, but frankly, I'm not even
certain you're allowed to download this software; I'd hate to have
to report you to Network admin, so why don't we just pretend this
conversation never happened ?
Thats the road BRR leads us down.
I'd love to believe that the BRR was(a) a useful metric
that would (b) be used intelligently, but 2.5 decades
of experience leads me to believe otherwise.
Furthermore, we've given them the damn source! How about
doing something actually useful, like running an automated
metric on it (e.g., McCabe testing), or maybe just looking
at it ? Apparently, BigBiz isn't satisfied with finding money
in the street anymore, they expect someone to pick it up for them, too.
Yes, excellent idea. We'll rate all OSS with all these nice quantitative factors using mostly arbitrary value assignments, so the already risk-averse PHB community have yet another reason to avoid using OSS!
I'm certain the boys in the Redmond boardroom are all nodding their heads in delighted approval.
Perhaps members of the OSS community should turn the tables ? I suggest we create a set of metrics to rate the business users of OSS, e.g.,
Has XYZ Corp. contributed any patches ?
Has XYZ Corp. contributed any staff time ?
Has XYZ Corp. offered to hire the key developers for consulting or as FTE's ?
Has XYZ Corp. offered to pay for a support contract ?
Do users at XYZ Corp. know what they're doing when they send a support request ?
How do users at XYZ Corp. respond when told the feature/bugfix they want will take time or resources the development staff currently doesn't have ? Do they offer to contribute a fix, or offer any financial support ?
That is a rating system I could use!
Seriously, this is only a good idea for the PHB's looking to for reasons to avoid OSS, and it will likely kill small/niche OSS projects that don't have the huge download numbers these metrics seem to require.
I've written 5 different web servers (embedded in
other apps) in C (twice), Java(twice), and Perl
(once). It ain't really all that difficult...its just HTTP.
So every time I start trying to hack together an Apache config file, then setup the.htaccess, and then...well, about that time I say awfuckit
and just grab one of those dusty old code nuggets
and roll my own. its actually faster to setup that way...and possibly more secure, since I hardwire the pages/images/etc.
Apache performance can't be beat ('cept maybe for the kernel-embedded HTTP server, can't recall the name), but the config process is way too damn difficult for something with such a simple protocol; hell, I can completely reconfig a UNIX kernel more reliably, and in less time, than configing Apache.
I see lots of predictions wrt Mr. Kay's future
employer. For someone of his intellect, experience,
rep, and age, I'd think he'd be ready to bootstrap
his own. He certainly shouldn't have difficulty
getting VC's to pay attention. And if he isn't willing to bootstrap his own, it may explain his various "jobhops" of late, and HP's relative indifference to losing him.
"The only way for evil to prevail is if good men do nothing"
Slashdot Mirror
I nearly bought the 770 last year, but decided to buy a XV6700 instead. After playing w/ the 770 awhile, it just seemed to need a few extra bells/whistles (e.g., a camera - which the 800 now has), and the size/resolution of the screen wasn't that much better than the 6700. (Plus my carrier made the latter real cheap if I renewed my contract). I just downloaded the Skype beta that supports the 6700, so I guess I've got pretty much everything the 770/800 have, plus a cellphone, except the 6700 only has 802.11b, and a slightly smaller screen.
I wouldn't commit to these smaller devices until you've laid hands on the newer generation of UMPC's. The ASUS R2H looks pretty kewl, and the latest versions of the Samsung are getting much better as well. While they're 2.5x more expensive, the extra screen real estate and storage will likely more than make up for the difference.
In the same way network television shoves braindead reality TV and retread sitcoms sandwiched between hours of commercials.
Or the way the RIAA and MPAA attempt to generate revenue by shoving subpoenas in the faces of small children and the disabled.
Frankly, I suspect the decline of Yahoo began the minute the ink dried on the deal to give Marc Cuban $2,000,000,000 for Broadcast.com (which was several years ago).
As for tv.yahoo.com, I must thank Yahoo for weaning me off it, and forcing me to hack together my own XMLTV scripts. A much better offline experience!
Ah yes, what was I thinking. I'd better go delete all those meddlesome language, OS, DBMS, protocol, and framework references from my resume, as they're just unneccesary clutter that employers offering those "jobs galore" will ignore anyway. After all, recruiters and HR reps certainly never look for those things in the 1000s of CVs they run thru their keyword filters. They're just interested in which "type theory, denotational semantics, complexity theory and compiler theory" classes I took.
Hmmm, on second thought, I think I'll keep them in...
Just because there are "jobs galore", doesn't mean they're jobs worth taking.
Based on the stream of migrant farm workers flowing into the US from points south, there are "jobs galore" in agriculture as well.
The issue isn't raw numbers, its ROI. Given the $10,000's now required for a 4 year degree, the course of study one undertakes now must be considered wrt whether it will lead to a reasonable return. At prevailing salaries, its not certain that CS is the best choice. Plus, given the limited shelf life of any area of CS expertise, those choosing CS also have to bear the burden of constant retraining, usually at a breakneck pace. Many other disciplines don't have such burdens (yes, things may change in medicine/law/etc., but at a much slower pace).
Keep in mind that those flogging for more CS majors are often the same folks doing everything in their power to keep wages down (e.g., Mr. Gates), or have a vested interest in pushing paying bodies through their degree programs (e.g., Ms. Bigas of Stanford).
If you really love the CS discipline, its fine...but if considered in the cold calculus of "tuition as investment", even the geekiest of CS students would be well advised to consider a dual major (or minor in some other field).
I see. I was unaware that my IBM/Sun/Oracle/BEA/etc. site engineer was going to just waltz into my office, do a quick copy of all those J2EE 1.4 JAR/XML/WAR/etc. files over to a shiny new EE 5 system, flip the switch and it will all magically work wo/ any service interruption. And of course, there will be no bill. Just like when they forced us to upgrade from 1.3 to 1.4...er, um, wait a sec...
I'm guessing you've never had to budget for such an upgrade project ? Based on the pain I've seen/heard wrt the move from 1.3 to 1.4, I'd guess many CIOs are going to need to hear a lot more than "performance improvements essentially for free" before they write any checks. Like, "This upgrade will improve our sales by 10%", or "This upgrade will reduce our production costs by 10%".
Frankly, wrt upgrades, I'm seeing a number of major J2EE users trying to identify app servers they can replace with LAMP stacks, so they don't have to deal with a vendor forcing them thru "free" upgrade cycles.
I.e., if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Er, how ? Because they don't really use threads ? Sure, they're fast and lightweight...but since they don't use the underlying OS's threads implementation (ie, kernel-compatible threads), they're only marginally useful on multiCPU and/or multicore systems.
Whats your basis for that statement ? Have you tested the latest versions of the threads and threads::shared modules ? Some significant effort has been applied in the past year to improve stability, as well as reduce footprint...you might want to give it a look...
Perhaps if your org can get some funding, you might throw some money at the TPF to get iCOW implemented ? Which should vastly improve thread startup and reduce footprint. threads::shared remains a bit of a challenge, but that issue can be addressed by some carefully crafted XS (which I'm told Stas is pretty good at ;^).
Error codes remain the one area where SQL variants have vast differences - SQLSTATE support is still pretty hit and miss - and so, while syntax portability is getting better and better, application portability remains a challenge.
Or get a XV6700/PPC6700/etc (all HTC Apache variants) and get WiFi ...and camera...to boot. I got mine a month ago
and, while it took a bit of getting used to, its pretty damn near a complete communicator. I
think it might even give Spock gadget envy. (Tho it does run WinMobile).
I nearly picked up the 770, but wo/ a camera or phone, it just doesn't seem worth the $350 (tho the various announcements wrt hooking up with Google Talk were intriguing). FWIW, my local COMPUSA does have 770's in stock (and the last email flyer I got last Sunday indicates they're still selling 'me for $350)
Not to mention that, despite severe rises in the past few years, real estate prices are much lower than those for our neighbors to the west in the People's Republic.
Which may explain the significant stream of both small and large businesses escaping across the border to Las Vegas or Reno-Tahoe. In fact, there are a number of small s/w outfits just across the border from CA in the pleasant surrounds of Lake Tahoe. And that short trip from CA to NV usually comes with a massive decrease in insurance costs.
And from Northern NV, I can be in SillyCon Valley with a pleasant drive of a few hours (well, at least up to SacraMoscow).
As someone who lived in LA, CA for many years, and has done biz in SillyCon Valley, I can't imagine why people still consider the Bay Area so damn great. Since it costs the same, but the weather and lifestyle in SoCal is much better, why not get a life while you work ?
Other things to consider:
wrt "what happens when you lose your job", keep in mind that being unemployed in Reno-Tahoe for 6 months - esp during the winter - is often something people look forward to!. Plus the savings from living outside of SillyCon usually mean a 6 to 12 month vacation is actually affordable/survivable. If you make US$120K/year in SillyCon, but lose your job, you damn well better start humping for a new job. If you make US$75K/year in NV and lose your job, you can usually wait until ski season is over.
I guess its a matter of choice: "live to work" vs. "work to live".
In closing: The FOX channel here in Reno is just a feed from the Bay Area. So when I get up in the morning, I turn on the news on FOX...and just laugh and laugh..and laugh!.
So those uppity geeks think they can sit at home on their tender pimpled asses and draw a paycheck ? Taking our sensitive data home ? Workin in pajamas ? We'll show 'em! We'll send our data and IP to the other side of the planet to folks we've never met, where our laws don't mean squat...and we'll save massive bucks to boot! Yep, that'll larn 'em...
</irony>
"So much crap, they had to start a second pile."
Mimi Bobeck, "The Drew Carey Show"
As in a "2.0" pile..
So I'd say, yes, the book is neccesary. Rather than meandering all over the web trying to figure out "what this AJAX stuff is all about", you can grab this little book, have a nice quick afternoon's read, and then do a much more targeted browsing session to fill in the details. It certainly helped me bootstrap into developing AJAX applications.
Now that ActiveState has been spun out of Sophos, might it be an opportunity to merge all those IDEs into one super bundle ?
OK, lemme see if I understand your predicament...you want to hire an entry level admin at subsistence wages, complain you can't find anyone with the qualifications you expect and, apparently, won't hire anyone with fewer qualifications and train them , and then have the gall to tell students to go out and get more experience ?
Am I the only one to see the irony here ?
I just picked up Foundations of Ajax, and its a good, focused 273 pages, of which nearly half is resources and tools for implementing. I haven't had a chance to download and try out the examples, but the reference links all look like great resources. While I wish they'd skipped the usual Chapter 1 "Here's the history of the web" that any reader of the subject matter already knows, all in all, its a great way to cut thru the BS and get rolling with the AJAX concepts.
In summary:
(I know I've seen an actual scientific study to back this up, but Google didn't cooperate)
I can't think of a better story to tell prospective employers after your undying loyalty to the current organization is rewarded by being kicked to the curb. I know when I'm hiring quality staff, thats exactly the sort of response I like to hear when I ask, "So, tell me what you've been doing in your current position...".
Seriously: If you're as worried about employment as you seem to be, you'd best plan to get the hell out pretty quickly, albeit taking your time to find the right position. Waiting for some sweet severance pkg that may or may not materialize may set your career back several years, if only from skill decay and/or the fact that any prospective employer will likely offer significantly less for someone unemployed (aka "desperate") than someone fully employed.
In brief, don't worry about trying to negotiate a severance package. Worry about negotiating a new hire package.
My personal experience dealing with critical information from very large datawarehouses populated by the sort of O-R nonsense that seems to be "best practice" is that the O-R folks are more concerned about the user's browser than the data model. Here's a free clue to the O-R advocates: the information you're storing isn't being collected just for the convenience of persisting web forms in an indexed journaled filesystem. A personal anecdote: After struggling to derive useable information from an O-R generated database, consisting of 3 tables with about 100 columns each, I arrived at the office one day to discover there were now 5 tables with about 75 columns each. Thinking to myself, "Maybe they've finally figured out what a data model is...", I inquired about the change, and was told "because the tables were getting more than 100 columns each, so we thought we'd better break them up.".
There are people (many of whom work in corner offices, and some in legal enforcement offices) that expect to be able to query that data and quickly get rollup data to tell them how the business is doing, project how the business will do next month/year; or to find fraud; or to find customer patterns. Data models exist for a reason, and ad hoc queries exist for a reason.
There are good reasons to pay someone for support, if the people you're paying know their stuff. If you're building enterprise level, mission critical data warehouses, you'll want immediate access to expert help when things go horribly wrong. And Sorbannes/Oxley reinforces that need.
For those seeking paid support, there are several companies working to do interesting things with Pg:
There are some other outfits dedicated to Pg support, but I can't recall the particulars...
Meanwhile, MySQL still seems to be having difficulty getting stored procs and real views released...5.0 is starting to make Longhorn's development schedule look like a quarterly maintenance release.
It's also interesting that TFA didn't mention the rise of alternatives ranging from SQLite (which pretty much does everything that folks used MySQL for in the first place, but wo/ any license confusion), to Firebird, to the recently open'd Ingres.
EW: Boss, I think I've found a great little open source perl script to solve our database reporting issue...
PHB (turns to PC and begins typing): That was "p-e-a-r-l", right ? Sorry, SpikeSource(TM) doesn't report a BRR for it...
EW confused look: Er, no, "p-e-r-l"...
PHB looks anxious, types some more: OK...Perl is OK, but whats the module ?
EW: "Super::Califragilistic"
PHB typing furiously: OK, its listed, but the BRR is only 11.23065. Sorry, our required min BRR is 27.83409.
EW: Wha...?
PHB: BRR. You know, number of downloads, numer of reported errors, number of reporting users, that sort of thing.
EW: But its only been out about 5 months, and its only really relevant to this particular problem we've got...
PHB: Look, E-dub, we have to follow practices and procedures. If we don't, CEO's go to jail, and the insurance company drops us like a bad case of clap. And one requirement is, "Open source software must be a minimum BRR of 27.83409".
EW: But what about...
PHB looks concerned and sympathetic: Look, E-dub, I'd love to help ya, but frankly, I'm not even certain you're allowed to download this software; I'd hate to have to report you to Network admin, so why don't we just pretend this conversation never happened ?
Thats the road BRR leads us down.
I'd love to believe that the BRR was(a) a useful metric that would (b) be used intelligently, but 2.5 decades of experience leads me to believe otherwise.
Furthermore, we've given them the damn source! How about doing something actually useful, like running an automated metric on it (e.g., McCabe testing), or maybe just looking at it ? Apparently, BigBiz isn't satisfied with finding money in the street anymore, they expect someone to pick it up for them, too.
I'm certain the boys in the Redmond boardroom are all nodding their heads in delighted approval.
Perhaps members of the OSS community should turn the tables ? I suggest we create a set of metrics to rate the business users of OSS, e.g.,
That is a rating system I could use!
Seriously, this is only a good idea for the PHB's looking to for reasons to avoid OSS, and it will likely kill small/niche OSS projects that don't have the huge download numbers these metrics seem to require.
So every time I start trying to hack together an Apache config file, then setup the .htaccess, and then...well, about that time I say awfuckit
and just grab one of those dusty old code nuggets
and roll my own. its actually faster to setup that way...and possibly more secure, since I hardwire the pages/images/etc.
Apache performance can't be beat ('cept maybe for the kernel-embedded HTTP server, can't recall the name), but the config process is way too damn difficult for something with such a simple protocol; hell, I can completely reconfig a UNIX kernel more reliably, and in less time, than configing Apache.
"The only way for evil to prevail is if good men do nothing"