The exercise isn't about what does the patient see compared to what others have seen. The exercise is about how does the patient react compared to how others have reacted.
And for that, the need for 10 consistent meaningless images is dubious. The fact that the Rorschach test is so well known, and so many of the images have already been shown, and that the expectations that people have of the test while participating in it likely makes using those known images even less effective.
Any way, this isn't about getting data, it IS about anecdotal evidence. A psychologist can not even begin to tap an understanding of a persons full life, experiences, and interactions with all of society. They have to make conclusions based on incomplete and quite often inaccurate responses.
The camera is an example of technology developed for and used by the military making a transition to civilian applications, Rutan said."
When you have the Military controling civilian security, the civilians become the enemy. This would normally just be a gross overstepping of the government, but to use it as a "transition" for EASing military is just crazy. Things are different in the Military. The rules, norms and expectations are completely different. You can't just take an MP out of the fleet, give him a badge and a gun, and expect him to take a squad car around the block with out incident.
Different companies have different costs. For example, the current medium sized business (500 local employees, ~6500 world wide) I'm with is much larger with a rather young employee base. My health insurance premium is right around $13,0000 a year (employee + employer contributions).
With the last small business I worked for (~15 employees) the average employee age was right around 50. My health insurance premium was about $20,000 a year.
Like wise, payroll taxes, SID, and other program deductions vary wildly from state to state and even by municipality. I can't even begin to make a fair assessment of how much those deductions add up to.
As for the 66% for small businesses, I think it's probably fair. If you think of a small/medium business that develops software. Developers, project managers, DBAs, BRMs, even Management can all be cited as revenue generators. They are the ones required for your company to turn a profit. But what about accounting and HR? If you are a 10 person company, you probably just have a manager handle the HR work. But what about a 25 person company? When the HR work starts becoming more time demanding and you need to hire a person just to handle it. That person doesn't generate any revenue for the company, they wont add more sales or improve the product. So their salary can be view as an opportune cost that can be dirstributed across all revenue generating employees.
So if it costs you $100,000/yr to keep an HR specialist on staff for your team of 25, you could argue that each employee is effectively costing you an additional $4,000 a year. That 1 HR specialist though can actually support closer to 100-200 employees. So a larger company is only looking at an additional $500 per employee per year.
Ideally for $9mil over 5 years they had better have a kick plan and a rock solid team. Realistically, they'll go over budget in the 3rd year as the scrap everything they've done so far and bring in consultants to redesign and manage the site for the remaining 2 years.
1 employee ------------ Base Pay: $75,000 Family Health Care 80/20: ~$10,000 SS Contribution: $4,650 MC Contribution: $1,088 Unemployment Insurance (.8%-7.2%): $3,000 (at 4%) 401K 50% matching to 8%: $3,000 3 year PC replacement: $266 work area lease (8x8 cube @ $18/sq ft): $1,152
Which adds up to just shy of $100,000. I would take a guess that if you include other support factors (electric, HR, IT, vacation, etc...) into the picture, it wouldn't be hard to make a solid claim of a $75,000 employee costing $125,000.
Even then, assuming 1/2 of the $18 million is for labor and the other half is for equipment, bandwidth, and the server room... $9 mil over 5 years is $1.8 mil per year for the life of the project. At roughly $100,000 cost per employee that is only 18 employees.
Also, given the location and company, $75,000 isn't realistic (IMO). A decade ago I was in the Marine Corps working side by side with consultants pulling $125,000/year bill rates, and I can't imagine the price tag has dropped recently. Not to mention that the $125 covered an experienced code monkey, not a project manager, DBA, or management. So that $9 mil over 5 years is probably going to be closer to a 10-man shop of 4 developers, 1 DBA, 1 PM, 1 middle manager, 1 senior manager, 1 PR/Marketing manager, and 1 liaison for the government. Although I would bet that 2 of the developers would get laid off before the project is half completed.
I've been doing this exact same work since the mid-90's. Anytime you have a processor intensive or I/O task in a Windows environment, it should be moved off of the primary thread. Even if the process is being run on a single core processor the UI will still be responsive (albeit possibly laggy) while the I/O and calculation is running.
Not sure about that. I can't listen at work anymore, but I used to have Pandora on all day. You could skip something like 3 songs in a 15 minute period or 6 songs an hour. And with the rating system you could filter out bad music rather easily. And if you ever just got tired of a song there is the "ZZZ" button to remove the song from your play list for 30 days.
Pandora had it's issues. Like I hate listening to live recordings, which I know is one of the tags that they mark songs with. But I couldn't just set that as a preference. Instead I have to give all live performances a thumbs down and hope that their engine is smart enough to realize that I just rated down a band I like because that specific song was live.
I am agreeing with you here;) But there are two different schools of thought on the "RAID as a backup" solution. The first, is the completely idiotic, "I'll mirror the drive and call it a backup". This solution is so obviously poor that only the dimmest would ever consider it even worth mentioning.
The second is the "I dun learnt about backup solutions so lets mirror the drive and pull it every night for an off site rotation." And this, while better than the above idea, still fails hard as a backup solution.
If you ever get into the RAID as a backup argument with someone, and you immediately point out the problems with just leaving the mirror in the bay, they will quickly advance to applying the second argument.
So what I'm saying is that many of the GGGGGP's arguments against RAID as a backup fail as soon as the idiot puts the drives into a rotation. So it is important to identify which of those arguments are related to a good backup process and solution and which are related explicitly to RAID.
No, he's simply saying that you need to store backups off-site otherwise they can get taken out along with the original data. Only an idiot would buy an expensive tape drive then just leave one tape in there all the time.
Yep, and he was saying nothing about tapes at that point, he was just saying "why RAID is not a backup".. in fact I don't think he mentioned tapes at all in that post!
And only an idiot would leave a hard drive with backup data on it sitting there all the time. His point is valid in that ANY backup solution is worthless if you don't get the media secured. But that isn't a reason against using a RAID mirror to populate that backup data.
Using a RAID mirror to populate the backup data is a process. The hard drive that is populated is the media. Using hard drives as backup media is not a problem. Using RAID mirrors to populate that data is the problem. More accurately, recovering data from a RAID mirror is a HUGE problem with significant risks.
There are very good reasons to avoid using a RAID system in your backup solution, but the GP missed the mark on many of them.
No, he's simply saying that you need to store backups off-site otherwise they can get taken out along with the original data. Only an idiot would buy an expensive tape drive then just leave one tape in there all the time.
True, but the same is true for any backup solution, regardless of the media. If you use tapes, you have to store them off site. If you use external hard drives, you have to store them off site. How ever you get your data to the media is immaterial if you just leave it sitting in the server room.
A tape back up does not offer any advantage over any other media in that regard.
Are you suggesting a tape that is in your tape drive in the PC/Server room is going to be readable after enduring a fire?
5) more expensive than a good backup
Last time I was speccing out backup solutions (about a year ago), high volume DLTs and a drive costed significantly more than an array of similarly sized SATA drives.
6) not protable offsite
External HD cases and caddies are extremely portable.
7) does not track versionb history or old files (something that should be of critical importance to a programmer...
So long as you have a proper rotation of hard drives it does. Also, if you are counting on your backup solution as a code repository, you are doing something very VERY wrong. Using a backup system as a code repository is about as smart as using RAID for a backup solution.
8) Viruses, mailware, hackers oh my!
A corrupted file or virus that gets backed up will be just as potent as the one written to the RAID drive when you pull the data off of it. Mal-ware (I'm assuming you weren't referring to outlook) isn't going to be much of an issue as he should only be backing up data. And I'm not sure why a RAID configuration would make you any more at risk of hackers than a backup solution, although you may have better odds of finding a buffer overrun in one driver than the other.
9) bad/corrupt install
Same can be said for tapes and tape drivers.
Point being, RAID is not a backup solution, it is a tool for ensuring maximum availability of data. Now IF you have a proper backup solution (off site storage, data management, recovery plan, etc...) but you are too cheap to buy a new tape drive and media. Then yanking a mirrored drive every night from a software raid and sending it off to storage can work. But it should only be done with the understanding of the risks that it poses.
The most important part of a backup solution is not the medium. It doesn't matter if you are rotating tapes, disks, thumb drives, punch cards, or what ever. What does matter is that your data is being stored in a secured manner and that you have a TRIED and TESTED recovery plan.
So, your traditional porn is still safe in the US. There is porn and then there is sick minded porn.
Thank you for identifying what I should be identifying as morally objectable. Are there any other subjects that you believe I should find morally objectable? And what is the penalty if I do something that you believe I should find morally objectable?
My coworkers like my code reviews because I'm thorough and careful.
You are not a cowboy programmer.
Cowboys do not do code reviews. Cowboys do not question their own code. Cowboys just throw code at any and all situations. Cowboys don't test. Cowboys treat users like idiots. Cowboys don't document.
I am 6'0" tall. I weight just shy of 210 pounds. I work out 3 times a week. According the the BMI scale I am closer to severely obese (225lbs) than I am to a healthy weight (180lbs). Yet I am probably the most fit person on my development team. For me to get down to 180lbs, I would have to slash my diet, leave the gym, and spend a lot of time walking.
I'm not in as great of shape as I used to be, but just before I got out of the Marine Corps in 2001 I was in the 10% body fat range and right on the verge of being "over weight" on the BMI.
At this point in my life, if I continue training, I'll probably shed a few more pounds of fat to get back down to the 10% body fat range, but I've got some muscle to build up before I get back to a 6 minute mile. Which will leave me well into the over weight category.
Agreed. I would look at this like less of a Copy Right issue and more of a digital trespass issue. Although, I think the digital side would be much easier to prove if you could get a conviction for copy right violation. While the newspaper has pretty solid grounds for their publishing, I'd be hard pressed to believe that the Principal could make the same arguments successfully.
I disagree. With Javascript, AJAX, Silverlight, or likely even Flash, we can make changes to the DOM after the page has loaded. Loading adds after the page render completes is not the issue. Lazy web designers and poorly designed CMS coupled with the financial model tied to ad revenue is the issue.
So if I put up a web site that allows all of the local barterers and pawn brokers to add themselves to the site (or for others to add them), and some of those pawn brokers perform illegal trades with out my knowledge, should I be held accountable for disseminating the information as to their location?
As a circumsized man I have never had any desensitization, I have only once had any issue with going all the way, and I think that had more to do with my emotional and inhebriated state.
One thing I will say though, is make sure you are using an appropriately sized condom. I used to have a much more challenging go at it until I switched to a "large" size condom (Trojan Magnum is my current cover of choice) and I have have had much few issues with application and protection.
If you are experiencing desensitization and having difficult reaching a climax, see your doctor!
What about doing socially unacceptable, yet legal things? Or torts? Or embarrassing events?
For instance, lets say that a group of "volunteers" target a known gay night club and watch every tape that shows someone entering or exiting the club. They then leak the identity of every person they can identify to the public. With out the camera system, they would not physically be able to maintain their watch, but thanks to time sliding and distributed viewing, they can monitor the entire night.
Or, from another angle. Let's say Election Season is coming up. A group of "volunteers" target known political opponents of their chosen candidate, and they work to monitor every single thing that the targets do, every single day. Looking for any and all socially unacceptable or embarrassing events that the target is involved in.
Should the government have the power to record every action you take during the day? Do you trust the entire body of volunteers to have no agenda other then reporting violations of the law? Should we all live our lives as though we are constantly under the microscope, knowing that even a quick itch of the nose could wind us up on the 5:00 news nose-pickers image list?
Anyway, I'm not dead set against security cameras. I think for private owners of private property, security check points, and government building entrances, it's a great idea. But, it must be weighed not just against the possible harm it could bring to society, but also the opportune and actual costs it implies.
I am a developer in a very similar boat. Recently I picked up with a larger organization that is moving a lot of their technology to the web (and off of thick client on Citrix).
I've been doing web development for years, long before AJAX was AJAX. But the shop here has some guys who have done only minimal web development. In order to spin them up on serious web development we're talking about teaching them HTML, CSS, Javascript, ASP.Net's model, and the AJAX model, coupled with the challenges of developing for multiple platforms.
Well, I had been playing around with Silverlight 1 and Beta 2 for a while, and I was having the same feelings as you. It's so much more elegant, so much more simple, so much faster to develop with.
I also have fears about support. Especially with SL 2 as most outstanding bugs have been fixed in SL 3 (due out in Q4) so a lot of the support is just "Install SL 3 Beta", which doesn't really fly in a corporate environment.
But I'm pushing ahead in this direction anyway. For a internal development where I can kick out better looking apps in less time with a higher level of usability, it just makes sense. For external development, I'm still in the air though, I'd like to see more adoption and SL 3 stable before pushing for public projects.
I am still excited for HTML 5, but I'm not expecting it to be a viable development platform for at least another 3-5 years. And with the rate of adoption in most corporations, I'd venture that the 5+ year time frame is more likely.
I have been recently working on a system to do just this. We already had an audit system that some of our apps were using, but after generating a set of usage reports showing the volume of usage we managed to get some more buy in and it is now being used by almost all of our apps.
To go even further, we are trying to get access to the help desk's database so that we can generate reports comparing usage to tickets.
Metrics like these can still pose some risk for mis-interpretation. It'll definately be more useful to view them as a trend line with notations as to deployment dates and business factors that lead to peeks in errors per usage. But the over all trend should be a downward slope as the software matures.
I don't know if I would directly compare numbers from one app to another, but after a sufficient period of data collection, you should be able to identify goals in error per use performance and determine if one application is ahead or behind the curve.
The goal in my case is to try to negotiate the replacement of old VB6 applications that have higher error per usage rates than their modern cousins. But I won't have the data to back up my theory for a while yet:(
Okay, I'll try another angle, maybe that pea sized pebble you call your fucking brain can only comprehend crass statements.
I am not saying that GPS on child = fascism, you fucking window licker.
I am saying that if you close your eyes to all threats, fail to consider any of them and to act appropriately, your going to get fucking screwed. So go ahead, act like a fucking todler. Toss out all the ad hominem attacks you like. If that's what makes you feel better about your childish point of view. "Ohh I might be wrong, but that guy is a moron, so I must be right." Good luck with that view on life, I'm sure you'll make it real far.
Maybe you and the rest of the half minded sheeple twits on either side of the isle are perfectly content to put on the blinders and see nothing but your desires. Happily attacking anyone with a different point of view instead of having an open and free discussion of your differences. Maybe that's the future you want, where if anyone doesn't agree 100% with you, they must be a moron or a terrorist. But personally, I think you're just a fuck wad.
Hell, you're not even capable of a discussion. You've challenged none of the points I've made through out this discussion. You've just been crying about the fallacy of a slippery slope and attacking people personally. You are an incompotent debater. I can't believe I wasted this many posts attempting to debate someone so mentally handicapped and close minded about such a fine level of nuance. I tell ya what, next time I need a debate opponent over the quality of Saturday morning cartoons, I'll give you a call.
zOMG look at me, I'm so cool, I can be insulting and use naughty words, I'm so proud of myself./sarcasm (incase you are too retarded to catch it)
If you'll allow me to rephrase that question: "What is wrong with a GPS on a parolee?" Nothing. If there are specific situations where it is deemed necesary, so be it. But when we go from parole being an exercise in trust to just a continued controlled environment, we lose the value of the parole. So using it in specific cases, I'm fine with, but turning it into a system where in every single parolee is issued one and the parole becomes more about tracking a GPS unit than rehabilitating a criminal, the system fails.
and what makes you think that has any implications whatsoever as to them being put in my car?
Are you OK with a GPS unit being placed on someone else's car? With out a warrent? With out probable cause? Would you still be OK with it if it were your car? Now what if you have spent your preteen-teen years with a GPS unit on your hip, knowing that you were always being monitored? Woudl you still have the same reservations? Obviously this is all hypothetical as I know I haven't been through such an experience and I would guess that you haven't either. But the concept remains, if you have experienced something to be a social norm your entire youth life, would you be less likely to oppose it in your adult life? I would say the answer to that is almost absolutely yes.
Would you ever consider it to be socially acceptable to have a government entity place hundreds of thousands of video cameras across major metropolitan areas in the US and to allow for the centralized monitoring of them?
While that idea is socially unacceptable in the US currently, it is the social norm in the UK.
Social norms take time to change. Sure, if you asked the average man on the street if they thought slavery should be illegal, you would have near 100% of the respondents say yes. But jump back 100 years, a while after the Civil War had ended, think you would still get 100%? How about 150 years? Just before the emancipation proclamation, think 100% of the average population would stand by your side as being opposed to slavery?
Heck, go back 50 years and see what the average concensous is on racial integration.
Social norms are in constant flux. Historically, they have been long slow changes. But with the advent of the internet and great imrpovements in communication, we are seeing social norms develop and change at much faster rates. It will still take generations to propigate a full swing, but thanks to the better communication, not nearly so long as it used to.
Saying flat out that there is no such thing as a "slippery slope" is as disinginuous as saying that putting a GPS tracking unit on your child will lead to a nation wide GPS mandate. That's is not to say that we should trust all "slippery slope" arguements, nor that the use of GPS monitors by parents may not have a detrimental (IMO) effect on society.
But we should look at issues from a more pragmatic point of view.
Slashdot Mirror
The exercise isn't about what does the patient see compared to what others have seen. The exercise is about how does the patient react compared to how others have reacted.
And for that, the need for 10 consistent meaningless images is dubious. The fact that the Rorschach test is so well known, and so many of the images have already been shown, and that the expectations that people have of the test while participating in it likely makes using those known images even less effective.
Any way, this isn't about getting data, it IS about anecdotal evidence. A psychologist can not even begin to tap an understanding of a persons full life, experiences, and interactions with all of society. They have to make conclusions based on incomplete and quite often inaccurate responses.
-Rick
The camera is an example of technology developed for and used by the military making a transition to civilian applications, Rutan said."
When you have the Military controling civilian security, the civilians become the enemy. This would normally just be a gross overstepping of the government, but to use it as a "transition" for EASing military is just crazy. Things are different in the Military. The rules, norms and expectations are completely different. You can't just take an MP out of the fleet, give him a badge and a gun, and expect him to take a squad car around the block with out incident.
-Rick
Different companies have different costs. For example, the current medium sized business (500 local employees, ~6500 world wide) I'm with is much larger with a rather young employee base. My health insurance premium is right around $13,0000 a year (employee + employer contributions).
With the last small business I worked for (~15 employees) the average employee age was right around 50. My health insurance premium was about $20,000 a year.
Like wise, payroll taxes, SID, and other program deductions vary wildly from state to state and even by municipality. I can't even begin to make a fair assessment of how much those deductions add up to.
As for the 66% for small businesses, I think it's probably fair. If you think of a small/medium business that develops software. Developers, project managers, DBAs, BRMs, even Management can all be cited as revenue generators. They are the ones required for your company to turn a profit. But what about accounting and HR? If you are a 10 person company, you probably just have a manager handle the HR work. But what about a 25 person company? When the HR work starts becoming more time demanding and you need to hire a person just to handle it. That person doesn't generate any revenue for the company, they wont add more sales or improve the product. So their salary can be view as an opportune cost that can be dirstributed across all revenue generating employees.
So if it costs you $100,000/yr to keep an HR specialist on staff for your team of 25, you could argue that each employee is effectively costing you an additional $4,000 a year. That 1 HR specialist though can actually support closer to 100-200 employees. So a larger company is only looking at an additional $500 per employee per year.
Ideally for $9mil over 5 years they had better have a kick plan and a rock solid team. Realistically, they'll go over budget in the 3rd year as the scrap everything they've done so far and bring in consultants to redesign and manage the site for the remaining 2 years.
-Rick
IANASBO, but..
1 employee
------------
Base Pay: $75,000
Family Health Care 80/20: ~$10,000
SS Contribution: $4,650
MC Contribution: $1,088
Unemployment Insurance (.8%-7.2%): $3,000 (at 4%)
401K 50% matching to 8%: $3,000
3 year PC replacement: $266
work area lease (8x8 cube @ $18/sq ft): $1,152
Which adds up to just shy of $100,000. I would take a guess that if you include other support factors (electric, HR, IT, vacation, etc...) into the picture, it wouldn't be hard to make a solid claim of a $75,000 employee costing $125,000.
Even then, assuming 1/2 of the $18 million is for labor and the other half is for equipment, bandwidth, and the server room... $9 mil over 5 years is $1.8 mil per year for the life of the project. At roughly $100,000 cost per employee that is only 18 employees.
Also, given the location and company, $75,000 isn't realistic (IMO). A decade ago I was in the Marine Corps working side by side with consultants pulling $125,000/year bill rates, and I can't imagine the price tag has dropped recently. Not to mention that the $125 covered an experienced code monkey, not a project manager, DBA, or management. So that $9 mil over 5 years is probably going to be closer to a 10-man shop of 4 developers, 1 DBA, 1 PM, 1 middle manager, 1 senior manager, 1 PR/Marketing manager, and 1 liaison for the government. Although I would bet that 2 of the developers would get laid off before the project is half completed.
-Rick
I've been doing this exact same work since the mid-90's. Anytime you have a processor intensive or I/O task in a Windows environment, it should be moved off of the primary thread. Even if the process is being run on a single core processor the UI will still be responsive (albeit possibly laggy) while the I/O and calculation is running.
-Rick
Not sure about that. I can't listen at work anymore, but I used to have Pandora on all day. You could skip something like 3 songs in a 15 minute period or 6 songs an hour. And with the rating system you could filter out bad music rather easily. And if you ever just got tired of a song there is the "ZZZ" button to remove the song from your play list for 30 days.
Pandora had it's issues. Like I hate listening to live recordings, which I know is one of the tags that they mark songs with. But I couldn't just set that as a preference. Instead I have to give all live performances a thumbs down and hope that their engine is smart enough to realize that I just rated down a band I like because that specific song was live.
-Rick
I am agreeing with you here ;) But there are two different schools of thought on the "RAID as a backup" solution. The first, is the completely idiotic, "I'll mirror the drive and call it a backup". This solution is so obviously poor that only the dimmest would ever consider it even worth mentioning.
The second is the "I dun learnt about backup solutions so lets mirror the drive and pull it every night for an off site rotation." And this, while better than the above idea, still fails hard as a backup solution.
If you ever get into the RAID as a backup argument with someone, and you immediately point out the problems with just leaving the mirror in the bay, they will quickly advance to applying the second argument.
So what I'm saying is that many of the GGGGGP's arguments against RAID as a backup fail as soon as the idiot puts the drives into a rotation. So it is important to identify which of those arguments are related to a good backup process and solution and which are related explicitly to RAID.
-Rick
No, he's simply saying that you need to store backups off-site otherwise they can get taken out along with the original data. Only an idiot would buy an expensive tape drive then just leave one tape in there all the time.
Yep, and he was saying nothing about tapes at that point, he was just saying "why RAID is not a backup".. in fact I don't think he mentioned tapes at all in that post!
And only an idiot would leave a hard drive with backup data on it sitting there all the time. His point is valid in that ANY backup solution is worthless if you don't get the media secured. But that isn't a reason against using a RAID mirror to populate that backup data.
Using a RAID mirror to populate the backup data is a process. The hard drive that is populated is the media. Using hard drives as backup media is not a problem. Using RAID mirrors to populate that data is the problem. More accurately, recovering data from a RAID mirror is a HUGE problem with significant risks.
There are very good reasons to avoid using a RAID system in your backup solution, but the GP missed the mark on many of them.
-Rick
No, he's simply saying that you need to store backups off-site otherwise they can get taken out along with the original data. Only an idiot would buy an expensive tape drive then just leave one tape in there all the time.
True, but the same is true for any backup solution, regardless of the media. If you use tapes, you have to store them off site. If you use external hard drives, you have to store them off site. How ever you get your data to the media is immaterial if you just leave it sitting in the server room.
A tape back up does not offer any advantage over any other media in that regard.
-Rick
I agree with you, but...
1) not fireproof.
Are you suggesting a tape that is in your tape drive in the PC/Server room is going to be readable after enduring a fire?
5) more expensive than a good backup
Last time I was speccing out backup solutions (about a year ago), high volume DLTs and a drive costed significantly more than an array of similarly sized SATA drives.
6) not protable offsite
External HD cases and caddies are extremely portable.
7) does not track versionb history or old files (something that should be of critical importance to a programmer...
So long as you have a proper rotation of hard drives it does. Also, if you are counting on your backup solution as a code repository, you are doing something very VERY wrong. Using a backup system as a code repository is about as smart as using RAID for a backup solution.
8) Viruses, mailware, hackers oh my!
A corrupted file or virus that gets backed up will be just as potent as the one written to the RAID drive when you pull the data off of it. Mal-ware (I'm assuming you weren't referring to outlook) isn't going to be much of an issue as he should only be backing up data. And I'm not sure why a RAID configuration would make you any more at risk of hackers than a backup solution, although you may have better odds of finding a buffer overrun in one driver than the other.
9) bad/corrupt install
Same can be said for tapes and tape drivers.
Point being, RAID is not a backup solution, it is a tool for ensuring maximum availability of data. Now IF you have a proper backup solution (off site storage, data management, recovery plan, etc...) but you are too cheap to buy a new tape drive and media. Then yanking a mirrored drive every night from a software raid and sending it off to storage can work. But it should only be done with the understanding of the risks that it poses.
The most important part of a backup solution is not the medium. It doesn't matter if you are rotating tapes, disks, thumb drives, punch cards, or what ever. What does matter is that your data is being stored in a secured manner and that you have a TRIED and TESTED recovery plan.
-Rick
So, your traditional porn is still safe in the US. There is porn and then there is sick minded porn.
Thank you for identifying what I should be identifying as morally objectable. Are there any other subjects that you believe I should find morally objectable? And what is the penalty if I do something that you believe I should find morally objectable?
-Rick
Okay, so the public school system isn't allowed to server 2% milk. That's a far cry from saying that YOU can not consume 2% milk.
You can still consume 2% milk.
Stores can still sell 2% milk.
Private schools can still serve 2% milk.
That doesn't mean it's not a dumb rule, but it's hardly as invasive as was implied by the GGP post.
-Rick
I'm a self-taught cowboy programmer.
...
My coworkers like my code reviews because I'm thorough and careful.
You are not a cowboy programmer.
Cowboys do not do code reviews. Cowboys do not question their own code. Cowboys just throw code at any and all situations. Cowboys don't test. Cowboys treat users like idiots. Cowboys don't document.
-Rick
I am 6'0" tall. I weight just shy of 210 pounds. I work out 3 times a week. According the the BMI scale I am closer to severely obese (225lbs) than I am to a healthy weight (180lbs). Yet I am probably the most fit person on my development team. For me to get down to 180lbs, I would have to slash my diet, leave the gym, and spend a lot of time walking.
I'm not in as great of shape as I used to be, but just before I got out of the Marine Corps in 2001 I was in the 10% body fat range and right on the verge of being "over weight" on the BMI.
At this point in my life, if I continue training, I'll probably shed a few more pounds of fat to get back down to the 10% body fat range, but I've got some muscle to build up before I get back to a 6 minute mile. Which will leave me well into the over weight category.
-Rick
Agreed. I would look at this like less of a Copy Right issue and more of a digital trespass issue. Although, I think the digital side would be much easier to prove if you could get a conviction for copy right violation. While the newspaper has pretty solid grounds for their publishing, I'd be hard pressed to believe that the Principal could make the same arguments successfully.
-Rick
I disagree. With Javascript, AJAX, Silverlight, or likely even Flash, we can make changes to the DOM after the page has loaded. Loading adds after the page render completes is not the issue. Lazy web designers and poorly designed CMS coupled with the financial model tied to ad revenue is the issue.
-Rick
So if I put up a web site that allows all of the local barterers and pawn brokers to add themselves to the site (or for others to add them), and some of those pawn brokers perform illegal trades with out my knowledge, should I be held accountable for disseminating the information as to their location?
-Rick
As a circumsized man I have never had any desensitization, I have only once had any issue with going all the way, and I think that had more to do with my emotional and inhebriated state.
One thing I will say though, is make sure you are using an appropriately sized condom. I used to have a much more challenging go at it until I switched to a "large" size condom (Trojan Magnum is my current cover of choice) and I have have had much few issues with application and protection.
If you are experiencing desensitization and having difficult reaching a climax, see your doctor!
-Rick
What about doing socially unacceptable, yet legal things? Or torts? Or embarrassing events?
For instance, lets say that a group of "volunteers" target a known gay night club and watch every tape that shows someone entering or exiting the club. They then leak the identity of every person they can identify to the public. With out the camera system, they would not physically be able to maintain their watch, but thanks to time sliding and distributed viewing, they can monitor the entire night.
Or, from another angle. Let's say Election Season is coming up. A group of "volunteers" target known political opponents of their chosen candidate, and they work to monitor every single thing that the targets do, every single day. Looking for any and all socially unacceptable or embarrassing events that the target is involved in.
Should the government have the power to record every action you take during the day? Do you trust the entire body of volunteers to have no agenda other then reporting violations of the law? Should we all live our lives as though we are constantly under the microscope, knowing that even a quick itch of the nose could wind us up on the 5:00 news nose-pickers image list?
Anyway, I'm not dead set against security cameras. I think for private owners of private property, security check points, and government building entrances, it's a great idea. But, it must be weighed not just against the possible harm it could bring to society, but also the opportune and actual costs it implies.
-Rick
I am a developer in a very similar boat. Recently I picked up with a larger organization that is moving a lot of their technology to the web (and off of thick client on Citrix).
I've been doing web development for years, long before AJAX was AJAX. But the shop here has some guys who have done only minimal web development. In order to spin them up on serious web development we're talking about teaching them HTML, CSS, Javascript, ASP.Net's model, and the AJAX model, coupled with the challenges of developing for multiple platforms.
Well, I had been playing around with Silverlight 1 and Beta 2 for a while, and I was having the same feelings as you. It's so much more elegant, so much more simple, so much faster to develop with.
I also have fears about support. Especially with SL 2 as most outstanding bugs have been fixed in SL 3 (due out in Q4) so a lot of the support is just "Install SL 3 Beta", which doesn't really fly in a corporate environment.
But I'm pushing ahead in this direction anyway. For a internal development where I can kick out better looking apps in less time with a higher level of usability, it just makes sense. For external development, I'm still in the air though, I'd like to see more adoption and SL 3 stable before pushing for public projects.
I am still excited for HTML 5, but I'm not expecting it to be a viable development platform for at least another 3-5 years. And with the rate of adoption in most corporations, I'd venture that the 5+ year time frame is more likely.
-Rick
Moonlight is the open source Linux version.
-Rick
I have been recently working on a system to do just this. We already had an audit system that some of our apps were using, but after generating a set of usage reports showing the volume of usage we managed to get some more buy in and it is now being used by almost all of our apps.
To go even further, we are trying to get access to the help desk's database so that we can generate reports comparing usage to tickets.
Metrics like these can still pose some risk for mis-interpretation. It'll definately be more useful to view them as a trend line with notations as to deployment dates and business factors that lead to peeks in errors per usage. But the over all trend should be a downward slope as the software matures.
I don't know if I would directly compare numbers from one app to another, but after a sufficient period of data collection, you should be able to identify goals in error per use performance and determine if one application is ahead or behind the curve.
The goal in my case is to try to negotiate the replacement of old VB6 applications that have higher error per usage rates than their modern cousins. But I won't have the data to back up my theory for a while yet :(
-Rick
How's the air inside your bubble?
-Rick
Okay, I'll try another angle, maybe that pea sized pebble you call your fucking brain can only comprehend crass statements.
I am not saying that GPS on child = fascism, you fucking window licker.
I am saying that if you close your eyes to all threats, fail to consider any of them and to act appropriately, your going to get fucking screwed. So go ahead, act like a fucking todler. Toss out all the ad hominem attacks you like. If that's what makes you feel better about your childish point of view. "Ohh I might be wrong, but that guy is a moron, so I must be right." Good luck with that view on life, I'm sure you'll make it real far.
Maybe you and the rest of the half minded sheeple twits on either side of the isle are perfectly content to put on the blinders and see nothing but your desires. Happily attacking anyone with a different point of view instead of having an open and free discussion of your differences. Maybe that's the future you want, where if anyone doesn't agree 100% with you, they must be a moron or a terrorist. But personally, I think you're just a fuck wad.
Hell, you're not even capable of a discussion. You've challenged none of the points I've made through out this discussion. You've just been crying about the fallacy of a slippery slope and attacking people personally. You are an incompotent debater. I can't believe I wasted this many posts attempting to debate someone so mentally handicapped and close minded about such a fine level of nuance. I tell ya what, next time I need a debate opponent over the quality of Saturday morning cartoons, I'll give you a call.
zOMG look at me, I'm so cool, I can be insulting and use naughty words, I'm so proud of myself. /sarcasm (incase you are too retarded to catch it)
Loser.
-Rick
whats wrong with gps on parolees?
If you'll allow me to rephrase that question: "What is wrong with a GPS on a parolee?" Nothing. If there are specific situations where it is deemed necesary, so be it. But when we go from parole being an exercise in trust to just a continued controlled environment, we lose the value of the parole. So using it in specific cases, I'm fine with, but turning it into a system where in every single parolee is issued one and the parole becomes more about tracking a GPS unit than rehabilitating a criminal, the system fails.
and what makes you think that has any implications whatsoever as to them being put in my car?
Are you OK with a GPS unit being placed on someone else's car? With out a warrent? With out probable cause? Would you still be OK with it if it were your car? Now what if you have spent your preteen-teen years with a GPS unit on your hip, knowing that you were always being monitored? Woudl you still have the same reservations? Obviously this is all hypothetical as I know I haven't been through such an experience and I would guess that you haven't either. But the concept remains, if you have experienced something to be a social norm your entire youth life, would you be less likely to oppose it in your adult life? I would say the answer to that is almost absolutely yes.
Would you ever consider it to be socially acceptable to have a government entity place hundreds of thousands of video cameras across major metropolitan areas in the US and to allow for the centralized monitoring of them?
While that idea is socially unacceptable in the US currently, it is the social norm in the UK.
Social norms take time to change. Sure, if you asked the average man on the street if they thought slavery should be illegal, you would have near 100% of the respondents say yes. But jump back 100 years, a while after the Civil War had ended, think you would still get 100%? How about 150 years? Just before the emancipation proclamation, think 100% of the average population would stand by your side as being opposed to slavery?
Heck, go back 50 years and see what the average concensous is on racial integration.
Social norms are in constant flux. Historically, they have been long slow changes. But with the advent of the internet and great imrpovements in communication, we are seeing social norms develop and change at much faster rates. It will still take generations to propigate a full swing, but thanks to the better communication, not nearly so long as it used to.
Saying flat out that there is no such thing as a "slippery slope" is as disinginuous as saying that putting a GPS tracking unit on your child will lead to a nation wide GPS mandate. That's is not to say that we should trust all "slippery slope" arguements, nor that the use of GPS monitors by parents may not have a detrimental (IMO) effect on society.
But we should look at issues from a more pragmatic point of view.
-Rick