Agreed. After months of work repairing the damage caused by the previous SysAdmin, the single most beneficial thing we ever did was remove Admin privileges from users. Now, as you say, the only real causes of errors are the death rattles of hard drives (mostly in older or re-built PCs).
Whilst I'm all for choice in general, I have better things to do with my life than choose between various media players. It's not laziness, it's the fact that I'm more interested than the music than which particular bit of software it's playing on.
Whilst I tend to agree on the GUI side of things, you CAN write decent shell scripts for Windows boxes; for example, we use one for adding bunches of AD users from CSV files. However, there are many Windows admins who ONLY know how to use the GUI, whereas the proportion of *nix admins who can shell script is probably a lot higher. I'll confess to never having written a linux shell script, so I can't compare Windows shell scripting to linux.
Agreed, but when evaluating the motivations of people in the past it's necessary to bear in mind the context of the era. The trigger in this instance was, as you say, the extension of central government control into what had previously been frontier territory (which had until recently been preoccupied fighting the French colonies). I admit, however, to not being an expert on this subject; I studied the French rather than American revolution:)
True, but bear in mind that none of those actions (quashing public protests, censoring the media, infiltrating seditious organisations, using agents provocateurs, etc) were unusual for 18th Century governments. George III dealt with the matter incompetantly. You're right to point out that many Americans of the time saw themselves as defending their English liberties against a tyrannical government. Two key forces driving the movement were the rise of governmental authority (big government), and the rise of and popular participation in radical political philosophy.
If you check the shot, it's in classic view. As I recall, everyone complained when XP implemented a categorised view to the Control Panel; now when someone sets the CP to view ALL applets, someone complains that it's not categorised.
Try using them on data files containing lots of blobs... then try doing that on an upsized Access database storing thousands of OLE pictures (existing system, not mine). Nightmare.
Also, BMP files are lossless. If your only copy of a faded old photo is digital, you don't want jpeg artefacts appearing, losing yet more detail. The same applies to art created on computers - it needs to be stored in a lossless format, otherwise the museum curators of the future will be spending their time restoring digital masterpieces from heavily-compressed jpegs.
No site license for XP Pro, all OS installations are OEM (around 20 PCs in the head office). Boss doesn't see why we'd have to spend extra, and convincing either of them is about a week's worth of effort. The boss doesn't see the need to buy licenses for ANY software (not a linux believer, just thinks that 'everyone pirates software'). Telling him that we can't connect an XP Home machine to the domain is impossible because only one of the directors knows that we HAVE a domain (it's kept secret from the other because he didn't want it, and it was introduced in secret... don't ask).
Anyway, the last time we bought the boss a decent laptop she dropped a brick on the keyboard.
It's slow when accessing other shares using netbios addressing; stick a linux box on the network and it speeds up dramatically (or a win2k / 2k3 server, or anything running wins or netbios naming). XP Home can't connect to Active Directory, making it useless for companies who implement this; if you're not running Active Directory, you might as well just use Linux and save yourself money and hassle.
My company recently hired a surveyor to cover jobs in Scotland (not enough jobs to warrant opening a branch office yet), working from home. Rather than buying him a laptop, they insisted that we configure his own laptop 'so that it's on our network'.
Well, after an hour cleaning out his XP Home machine, setting up a non-admin account, we flat-out refused to give him VPN access, and he pretty much has to request files over email, or get them from an FTP share.
The main reason you get XP Home on laptops is when bosses go out to PC World and come back proudly bearing some shiny piece of crap and ask us to 'set it up on the network'.
Bah, the two Directors at my company regularly have screaming rows with each other, sometimes involving plate hurling or one of them stomping off whilst the other screams "WANKER" at his retreating back.
Have to agree, ASP.NET is good stuff. I like SQL Server, but then I haven't used Postgres so that might well be better. SQL Server 2005 supposedly allows you to write.NET code within Sprocs, if that's your idea of a good time...
Ah, I remember the days when I was the first to get a CD-ROM drive - the hours spent when friends would bring round a stack of floppies, and we'd experiment with the PKZip options so we could copy files from a CD to floppies.
Not relevant, just brought back a rush of nostalgia...
I still think that until someone produces a killer IDE like Flash, any new standard will not take off. I'd like a vector animation protocol that plays better with server-side code, and can (say) interface with PHP or ASP much more cleanly than Flash.
So how do you propose we present animated vector-based content over the web, without using large mpeg or avi files? How will this new solution impact existing flash movies and will it be backwardly-compatible? Will it come with its own IDE like Flash?
Sometimes animated content is useful. Sometimes it's the whole point of a site (say, a site that presents animated comics, like Weebl and Bob). Or are you saying that people aren't allowed to post animated content on the web because the web doesn't allow for THAT kind of innovation?
People have created some stunning Flash animations, and some sites deliver useful animated content. That is innovative and useful. What medium they use to do it is, ultimately, less important than the actual content it delivers.
Exactly, they're writing software. If they're not selling it (by which I mean actively promoting its use), why are you surprised when people don't use it? There are software users out there who have better things to do with their time that search out the best piece of software on SourceForge; they will simply buy commercial software where they KNOW that the developer owes them something.
Benefits of working for a small company in my case (3 IT staff, 1 HR woman). Plus the bosses got really burned the last time they hired an IT guy without consulting us (suffice to say we're still cleaning up his legacy).
Personally I'd like some certs, because I have no formal CS or IT qualifications (an amateur who fell into IT and learned it on the job), and it'd be nice to have on the resume for - as you say - getting through pre-screening tests. One thing I would say is that if you're not working in an IT-related industry, bosses will not give you pay rises for IT qualifications because they don't understand them. I could take as many as I want at my current place without getting a raise, whereas a Planning Supervisor could take a NEBOSH (construction industry) exam and get an instant £2k rise.
In our place, a senior IT guy (sometimes myself, sometimes my colleague) always sits in on any tech interviews; we ask the technical questions, the HR woman asks the standard HR questions, then we compare notes - and IT can veto HR's decision.
That works both ways - the users do not owe you anything either, which means that you can't complain if they then decide to go and use XYZ other OS.
"Why do all these lusers keep using crappy Windows? They should use a product that they don't understand and that we refuse to improve for them because it's free and we don't owe them anything!"
Reminds me of our last sysadmin (before he got the sack for gross incompetance), whose teeth could be used to gross-out the office secretaries if you were bored (just by yelling out "Lee's rancid teeth!" in the middle of a conversation).
Once we had a power-cut, and rather than wait 30 minutes for the power to come back on, he went and made a coffee with the lukewarm water still in the kettle from the last round.
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BUGGER! I knew I meant to do something before I went back to work...
Agreed. After months of work repairing the damage caused by the previous SysAdmin, the single most beneficial thing we ever did was remove Admin privileges from users. Now, as you say, the only real causes of errors are the death rattles of hard drives (mostly in older or re-built PCs).
See that, and raise you 1 office radio constantly blaring out the latest chart music.
Whilst I'm all for choice in general, I have better things to do with my life than choose between various media players. It's not laziness, it's the fact that I'm more interested than the music than which particular bit of software it's playing on.
So use Notepad. At least VS2005 doesn't rewrite your indents (carriage return then left-indent), which is nice.
Whilst I tend to agree on the GUI side of things, you CAN write decent shell scripts for Windows boxes; for example, we use one for adding bunches of AD users from CSV files. However, there are many Windows admins who ONLY know how to use the GUI, whereas the proportion of *nix admins who can shell script is probably a lot higher. I'll confess to never having written a linux shell script, so I can't compare Windows shell scripting to linux.
Agreed, but when evaluating the motivations of people in the past it's necessary to bear in mind the context of the era. The trigger in this instance was, as you say, the extension of central government control into what had previously been frontier territory (which had until recently been preoccupied fighting the French colonies). I admit, however, to not being an expert on this subject; I studied the French rather than American revolution :)
True, but bear in mind that none of those actions (quashing public protests, censoring the media, infiltrating seditious organisations, using agents provocateurs, etc) were unusual for 18th Century governments. George III dealt with the matter incompetantly. You're right to point out that many Americans of the time saw themselves as defending their English liberties against a tyrannical government. Two key forces driving the movement were the rise of governmental authority (big government), and the rise of and popular participation in radical political philosophy.
If you check the shot, it's in classic view. As I recall, everyone complained when XP implemented a categorised view to the Control Panel; now when someone sets the CP to view ALL applets, someone complains that it's not categorised.
Try using them on data files containing lots of blobs... then try doing that on an upsized Access database storing thousands of OLE pictures (existing system, not mine). Nightmare.
Also, BMP files are lossless. If your only copy of a faded old photo is digital, you don't want jpeg artefacts appearing, losing yet more detail. The same applies to art created on computers - it needs to be stored in a lossless format, otherwise the museum curators of the future will be spending their time restoring digital masterpieces from heavily-compressed jpegs.
No site license for XP Pro, all OS installations are OEM (around 20 PCs in the head office). Boss doesn't see why we'd have to spend extra, and convincing either of them is about a week's worth of effort. The boss doesn't see the need to buy licenses for ANY software (not a linux believer, just thinks that 'everyone pirates software'). Telling him that we can't connect an XP Home machine to the domain is impossible because only one of the directors knows that we HAVE a domain (it's kept secret from the other because he didn't want it, and it was introduced in secret... don't ask).
Anyway, the last time we bought the boss a decent laptop she dropped a brick on the keyboard.
It's slow when accessing other shares using netbios addressing; stick a linux box on the network and it speeds up dramatically (or a win2k / 2k3 server, or anything running wins or netbios naming). XP Home can't connect to Active Directory, making it useless for companies who implement this; if you're not running Active Directory, you might as well just use Linux and save yourself money and hassle.
My company recently hired a surveyor to cover jobs in Scotland (not enough jobs to warrant opening a branch office yet), working from home. Rather than buying him a laptop, they insisted that we configure his own laptop 'so that it's on our network'.
Well, after an hour cleaning out his XP Home machine, setting up a non-admin account, we flat-out refused to give him VPN access, and he pretty much has to request files over email, or get them from an FTP share.
The main reason you get XP Home on laptops is when bosses go out to PC World and come back proudly bearing some shiny piece of crap and ask us to 'set it up on the network'.
Bah, the two Directors at my company regularly have screaming rows with each other, sometimes involving plate hurling or one of them stomping off whilst the other screams "WANKER" at his retreating back.
Have to agree, ASP.NET is good stuff. I like SQL Server, but then I haven't used Postgres so that might well be better. SQL Server 2005 supposedly allows you to write .NET code within Sprocs, if that's your idea of a good time...
Ah, I remember the days when I was the first to get a CD-ROM drive - the hours spent when friends would bring round a stack of floppies, and we'd experiment with the PKZip options so we could copy files from a CD to floppies.
Not relevant, just brought back a rush of nostalgia...
Lots of things would be nice...
I still think that until someone produces a killer IDE like Flash, any new standard will not take off. I'd like a vector animation protocol that plays better with server-side code, and can (say) interface with PHP or ASP much more cleanly than Flash.
So how do you propose we present animated vector-based content over the web, without using large mpeg or avi files? How will this new solution impact existing flash movies and will it be backwardly-compatible? Will it come with its own IDE like Flash?
Sometimes animated content is useful. Sometimes it's the whole point of a site (say, a site that presents animated comics, like Weebl and Bob). Or are you saying that people aren't allowed to post animated content on the web because the web doesn't allow for THAT kind of innovation?
People have created some stunning Flash animations, and some sites deliver useful animated content. That is innovative and useful. What medium they use to do it is, ultimately, less important than the actual content it delivers.
Exactly, they're writing software. If they're not selling it (by which I mean actively promoting its use), why are you surprised when people don't use it? There are software users out there who have better things to do with their time that search out the best piece of software on SourceForge; they will simply buy commercial software where they KNOW that the developer owes them something.
Benefits of working for a small company in my case (3 IT staff, 1 HR woman). Plus the bosses got really burned the last time they hired an IT guy without consulting us (suffice to say we're still cleaning up his legacy).
Personally I'd like some certs, because I have no formal CS or IT qualifications (an amateur who fell into IT and learned it on the job), and it'd be nice to have on the resume for - as you say - getting through pre-screening tests. One thing I would say is that if you're not working in an IT-related industry, bosses will not give you pay rises for IT qualifications because they don't understand them. I could take as many as I want at my current place without getting a raise, whereas a Planning Supervisor could take a NEBOSH (construction industry) exam and get an instant £2k rise.
In our place, a senior IT guy (sometimes myself, sometimes my colleague) always sits in on any tech interviews; we ask the technical questions, the HR woman asks the standard HR questions, then we compare notes - and IT can veto HR's decision.
That works both ways - the users do not owe you anything either, which means that you can't complain if they then decide to go and use XYZ other OS.
"Why do all these lusers keep using crappy Windows? They should use a product that they don't understand and that we refuse to improve for them because it's free and we don't owe them anything!"
Because THAT'S a good sales pitch...
Reminds me of our last sysadmin (before he got the sack for gross incompetance), whose teeth could be used to gross-out the office secretaries if you were bored (just by yelling out "Lee's rancid teeth!" in the middle of a conversation).
Once we had a power-cut, and rather than wait 30 minutes for the power to come back on, he went and made a coffee with the lukewarm water still in the kettle from the last round.
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