You're right, but I don't think it's quite as cut and dried as that.
We HAVE hired people that needed some training in command line stuff, but we're seeing more and more people that ONLY have Windows experience, and NO command line exposure. It would be very unlikely that I would feel comfortable with hiring someone that hasn't had that kind of exposure.
Luckily there is quite a surplus of skilled people available, so while we could train someone, we don't have to; we can hire what we need instead of hiring someone who will require training. At the end of the day, if we have 2 equally capable individuals, with one requiring training, the other not, it makes financial sense for us to choose the one that doesn't require the training.
It all boils down to a ROI... if the person's other skills / qualities are a good reason to invest in the training that they'll need to meet our requirements, then we'll make that investment.
And please don't get the idea that it's all about a skills matrix! We are a very social and dynamic company, and a good social fit is just as important as a technical fit.
I didn't mean for this whole thread to be a "GUI SUCKS, COMMAND LINE ONLY!" debate... the only point I was trying to make was that more and more people are showing up at our door, expousing the fact that they have "universal" (for lack of a better word) DB skills, when in fact their ability to perform the job is dependent upon them using a very specific set of tools in a specific environment.
Apparently the white noise is supposed to be similar to the sound of the womb. I'm not at all sure what this says about you. Perhaps you want to go back...:-).
Not at all. A number of my associates have started to instigate this policy after experiencing some problems of their own, and seeing the success we're enjoying.
To put my position into perspective, maybe some context is required.
We build, deploy, administrate and manage REMOTE Oracle installations and applications for banks, governments, and large corporations. All of these installations are on *nix systems.
We are based in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and a LOT of our customers are in New York, Toronto, Ottawa, and LA.
The "command line" requirement is enforced for Oracle and *nix administration. ALL of the administration work that we do involves the command line. At the end of the day, Oracle administration (with WHATEVER gui you want to use) or Solaris/HP/Linux administration that we do is based on the command line.
Now, do we use GUIs? Damn rights we do, and we'd be idiots NOT to. But at the end of the day, if shit hits the fan, that GUI might not be available, while a perfectly good SSH connection may be. The GUI is an OPTION, not a REQUIREMENT, while command line skills ARE a requirement.
To help empower (and free up) our emergency response team that responds 24x7 to these issues, we've provided them with cel phone / PDA combos that allow them to connect into the server with SSH. That way, if they're on call (which they get paid for), they don't have to be sitting in front of a computer with their specific GUI tools installed in order to get the job done. This helps us reduce the costs of operation (no desk space required, cheaper technology required to get the job done, etc.). It also provides us with a MUCH faster response time. For that matter, our staff like it WAY better because it frees them up so that their "on-call" time has limited effect on their private lives.
Case in point, I can be watching a move, get a vibrating page alert, fire up my PDA/SSH connection, diagnose and/or fix the problem, within minutes usually, and keep watching the movie. I don't have to call the client, tell him I'll be in front of computer in 30 minutes, and miss the show. In a sense, "command line skills" translates somewhat to "better customer response at a lower cost".
It also seems to me that you might not have much Oracle experience. ALL Oracle administration you EVER wanted to do can be done through the command line. As a matter of fact, the command line is the DEFAULT method of admin, GUIs are "niceties". When I took my Oracle Masters certification, we did EVERYTHING through the command line, with the exception of a brief overview of Oracle Enterprise Manager only to the point of relating the GUI functions to what we did on the CL, as well as some of the extra function packs.
Same thing with *nix admin. Some of our installations do not allow the installation of any windowing libraries (X, etc.), so SSH is the ONLY method of connection... tunnelling an XTerm session isn't even possible. ALL tools that we use (backup/recovery, etc.) all have command line interfaces. Never mind it makes it a little easier to deail with crontab scheduling.;)
We are NOT looking to have people know every command line ever... only the ones that are applicable to us.
Also, we don't forsake use of GUIs for the command line.
For instance, when we do Application development (Java / PL/SQL), we DO use GUIs a lot, but at the end of the day the developers WILL know how to build a shell based deployment (ANT based), how to set up their CLASSPATH's, how to set up a shell-based compilation, etc. This allows for automated (crontab, etc.) builds/deployments/documentation generation, etc., in our systems. That being said, we LIVE in TogetherSoft's Control Center, IntelliJ's Idea, TOAD, and we're even developing our own proprietary Java-based "TOAD-like" DB tool.
So, it IS my arbitrary policy (the joys of having your own company) that EVERYBODY that is hired into a position where they will be performing DB or OS admin and various application development WILL have extensive command line understanding and skills as a base. I'm NOT going to spend money on providing them with the specific tools they need (they may quit in 3 months, then what?) to do the job when they are NOT necessay.
This reduces my cost of running the company, and in my experience I find that you get a much more informed/capable staff at the end of the day.
Sure, we might be missing out on some very talented people, but YOU are more than welcome to hire them.:)
It COMPLETELY amazed me that she didn't know how to do all that... she'd learned on a Win2K server, and had used all admin assistants and GUIs to start up, admin, and program the DB.
I wouldn't want someone to write Quicktime code in a text editor! (even though it IS possible).
My point is, that in my specific headspace of Unix Sys Admin, and Oracle admin on top of it, and even application development (PL/SQL and Java), command line is a requirement.
Go nuts and use your IdeaJ Java IDE, but you will still be able to build/deploy things from the command line, and you WILL have an excellent working knowledge of the command line JAVA and JAVAC commands, and the environment variables, etc.
FinalCutPro.. the command line edition. Not Likely!;)
Just because someone leaves the door open doesn't mean I have the right to enter.
This "open door" analogy just doesn't fit.
Human being are NOT natrually pre-disposed to enter houses, whereas network devices ARE generally pre-disposed to connect to the nearest/strongest WAP.
If you install a WAP, secure it.
Then, follow the intent.
If someone purposely hacks into your network, the intent to steal is there. If a network device can/does automatically configure itself to connect, well, it's a piece of hardware... it has no intent of it's own, so there's no intent to steal.
Ignorance of the technology and how to implement it is NOT an excuse!
If an unauthorized person uses that bandwidth without permission of the owner then tehre is less bandwidth available for the owner.owner. That is theft, you are taking away something that someone else owns and they no longer have access to it.
At some point people have to take responsibility for their own actions or inactions.
If the company plugs in wireless networks that are insecure, then they are partially (if not mostly) to blame for the casual mis-use of their "freely available" network connection. For instance, if my laptop automatically configures itself to use the nearest, strongest wireless access point (Mac OS X does this), and it's someone elses network, then tough... that's their fault. I had no intent, nor did I do anything to steal connectivity. That is the default action of the OS, which is the same defense that most WAP installers use... "that's how it was configured out of the box". I'd say the onus is on the WAP owner to make an attempt to keep people out of their network.
If I go out of my way to hack into someone elses network, then the intent to steal is there, and that is MY fault.
At the end of the day, ignorance of the technology and how to implement it properly is no excuse.
Also, this whole "open door to a house" analogy just doesn't work. Humans are not naturally pre-disposed to walk into the nearest house, while network devices ARE generally pre-disposed to connect to the nearest available network.
I have a small development company with a couple of small offices in a relatively empty office building.
More and more of our developers have been switching(TM) to Mac laptops, and they've been bringing them into the office. (We do 99% of our development at home, doing the "office thing" about once a week).
Well, I've got a WAP set up in our office, but it's "silent" in that it only responds to devices that it's been configured to accept.
Needless to say, I came in to a meeting and a couple of guys had new laptops, and they were happily surfing the net, checking their email, etc., wirelessly, which kind of surprised me, because, well, I hadn't set them up yet.
Turns out that someone in the office building had just bought a new LinkSys WAP and just plugged it in, and the "go-find-me-a-network-connection" feature in OS X had automagically configured the closest available network connection.
We proceded to pick up the laptops and walk through the hallways until the signal got strongest, knocked on the door, and offered our services in securing their wireless network.:)
The guy was totally surprised.
At the end of the day, though, I would NOT consider what we did to be theft, because it lacked the intent, and was a result of the other guys negligence in his configuration of his own tool.
At some point, people have to take responsibility for their own action. In the same way that "ignorance of the law is no excuse", "ignorance of the technology is no exuse".
The problems come not from the tools themselves, but the misuse.
And it's NOT just the kids!
I'm an Oracle DBA/Developer/CTO and am responsible for the hiring/firing of technical staff.
It absolutely amazes me to see the number of people that have become totally reliant on GUIs and other tools for doing DB administration.
Case in point:
I found this one person who seemed to REALLY know her stuff... new all of the correct procedures, concepts, etc. for some pretty advanced Oracle config/admin. I was impressed... enough to call her back for a second interview that was more of a "hands-on" practical.
She sat down at the workstation, I brought up an SSH session to the box, and asked her to tell me what the default ORACLE_SID, ORACLE_HOME, etc. was.
She then proceded to start looking around in the "program groups" on the Windoze START menu, and she seemed to be getting a little uncomfortable. I was kind of confused, and eventually asked her what she was doing. "I'm looking for the Oracle programs," she said. I told her, "Ahhh, there aren't any on this box... it's all installed on the Sun box downstairs... this command line is logged into that box, in the Oracle Dev account". She then asked for the console for the box, so she could at LEAST launch OEM to see what was going on. She also asked what other software we use for our DB admin.
At the end of the day, the bottom line was that she didn't have a CLUE how to use the command line interface, or make the "raw" SQL calls from SQL/PLUS to do her job... she'd only learnt how to do that stuff using about $40k in administrative GUI software. In order for us to get our immediate value out of her, we'd have to provide her with that software.
That was just un-acceptable, from my point of view.
For that matter, most of our DBA's rely on "home-grown" shell scripts that do the work for them, and are major proponents of Oracle bringing back the command line install. (Down with the GUI!)
My policy is that GUIs (like calculators) are a luxury, and not a requirement. In my company, you WILL understand how things work at the most primitive of levels (command line, vi, etc.). Once you understand that, you're more than welcome to use whatever "crutches" (GUIs, etc.) that you want to improve your productivity. But at the end of the day, if you're administrating one of my boxes, and I give you an SSH session to that box, you WILL be able to do every aspect of your job. I don't care if you have to fumble a bit to figure out exactly how to do so, but you WILL be able to get the job done.
That philosophy has saved our asses in a couple of weird situations.:) Let's just say that you've never "admin'd" until you've run sqlplus from an SSH session on a Palm using grafiti! It just feels UN-NATURAL!
Hell, I can't even stand the poor spelling and grammar in some "professional" emails! I _REFUSE_ to buy something from a sales guy that can't even make a first-contact email look anything but professional.
And I consider that to be less of an "infraction" than "l33t sp33k" or whatever it is.
I went to University on a rugby scholarship, and played for years. In '97 I had what is commonly reffered to as a "carreer-ending injury" where my right knee was dislocated by about 5 inches, quite effectively ripping 3/4 of the ligaments in my knee completely apart, and severing the nerve that services the lower right side of my leg and all the muscles on the top of my right foot.
I went to the hospital, had it examined, and was told that it was a sprain... "don't worry about it, come back in a week if it's still bugging you".
One week later, I still couldn't lift my foot or feel anything in my leg. So, I went to a specialist.
Long story short, it was one of the "cleanest" (as in no blood, it was as if it was surgically damaged) and most destructive knee injuries they've ever seen. The nerve damage was too old to repair, and after many visits to many neurosurgeons, they all agreed that I'd be lucky to regain 60% usage in 10 years.
Now, I was a pretty active guy... mountain biking every day, rugby 4 times a week, gymn twice a day, so I was in pretty good shape.
They gave me these rehab "protocols" that must have been written for couch-sitting housewives..."the 4 week goal is to bend the knee 25 degrees with minimal pain". Give me a break! I'd done that in 2 days! I threw them away and proceded to do what I could on my own... completing 6 months of protocols in about 3 weeks. The physio guys were blown away, and while concerned, couldn't see anything bad happening. I continued mountain biking, walked to exhaustion, always pushing myself but not to the point of further damage. I was wearing out the "protective" brace every 3 weeks and having to have it replaced (which they said I'd have to wear for the rest of my life, BTW).
I should take a second here to really thank my orthopedic surgeon (Dr. Ross!)... he took the time to show me how to perform basic examinations on my knee and leg, teaching me the signs to look for, and allowing me to monitor my progress. It really helped me guage the amount of exertion I could apply and when I should stop. It was REALLY refreshing to NOT get the whole "well, you're not a doctor, so you wouldn't understand, so I'm not going to teach you" attitude.
After a year and a half, I'd regained a LOT of use of the damaged nerves... I still remember the day that I could lift my foot up for the first time (the guys at work thought I was nuts when I started jumping around and yelling and screaming!).
3 years and 4 knee surgeries after the injury, I could run somewhat normally on the knee (I was never a great runner to begin with!), was practicing rugby, mountain biking normally, and playing other sports... all without the brace. The biggest damage I had was psychological.
I went back to the neurosurgeons who initially examined me, and said "hey, can you retest me?" and they were quite shocked to see that I'd recovered to be about 90-95% of what is normal.
Now, I am what I consider to be 100% recovered; same weights in the gymn, playing rugby again without a brace (not as competitive, but I'm old and lazy now;), and on the mornings that I wake up with knee pain, it usually takes me a couple of minutes to realize that it's the "good" knee! It's almost like they rebuilt the bad one better than the original.:)
So, at the end of the day, and after doing a LOT of research on my own in the local medical libraries, I found that neurologists really don't understand SQUAT about nerve regeneration, and I tend not to believe any limitations they want to put on them. I threw away their advice of relying on a brace for the rest of my life and "taking it easy", and I'm glad I did.
oh yeah... they're SCARED, let me tell you!
on
War Car Offers Wi-Fi
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· Score: 2
If this is such a great business model, and has no real revenue stream (that I can see, anyway), who picks up the tab for the parking meters/tickets?
Sounds to me like this guy just spent a WHACK of cash to outfit a car with WI-FI, plus a couple of bucks in parking, to thumb his nose at Starbuck$ and rip off bandwidth from neighbouring businesses.
Why did Starbuck$ not make a comment? Why bother... the guy (or his car) is not going to be there tomorrow.
A few years ago I saw a neat (expensive!) disc array that could 'freeze' the disc image at a single point in time so that a backup could be taken from the frozen image.
We used to do this years ago before any such "options" were provided by drive manufacturers.
We were doing large Oracle backups, and there were issues with taking too much time to do a backup.
What we did was to throw some extra drives into the (at the time, software) RAID, so that we had a mirror of what we wanted to backup. At backup time, we'd shut down the Oracle instance, break the mirror, and then re-start the Oracle instance. The whole procedure resulted in less than 2 minutes of downtime for the instance, which was more than acceptable. We'd then take the "broken" mirror, re-mount it under a "temp" mount point, and then take our time backing it up (it usually took about 6-8 hours). Once we were finished backing it up, we'd then re-attach the broken mirrors and re-silver it. This was all done via software RAID, before journalling was available.
We did this about once a week, and it worked out great.
Anyone who feels the need to be able to point to their security device shouldn't be making security decisions.
Just remember the info sec triad: good security is a combination of something you are, something you have, and something you know. For that reason, if this physical key had a passphrase requirement (don't know if it does, didn't read the article as per/. SOPs) then it would be a GOOD thing.
If the physical key was the ONLY thing required, then I agree that it would be BAD THING.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're going to hit them, do some REAL damage and check out this Perl driven bio page:
http://www.arentfox.com/cgi-bin/bioEditor.pl
Right within the add, it clearly states:
:)
"excellent command line skills required".
We DO try to be clear and concise.
You're right, but I don't think it's quite as cut and dried as that.
We HAVE hired people that needed some training in command line stuff, but we're seeing more and more people that ONLY have Windows experience, and NO command line exposure. It would be very unlikely that I would feel comfortable with hiring someone that hasn't had that kind of exposure.
Luckily there is quite a surplus of skilled people available, so while we could train someone, we don't have to; we can hire what we need instead of hiring someone who will require training. At the end of the day, if we have 2 equally capable individuals, with one requiring training, the other not, it makes financial sense for us to choose the one that doesn't require the training.
It all boils down to a ROI... if the person's other skills / qualities are a good reason to invest in the training that they'll need to meet our requirements, then we'll make that investment.
And please don't get the idea that it's all about a skills matrix! We are a very social and dynamic company, and a good social fit is just as important as a technical fit.
I didn't mean for this whole thread to be a "GUI SUCKS, COMMAND LINE ONLY!" debate... the only point I was trying to make was that more and more people are showing up at our door, expousing the fact that they have "universal" (for lack of a better word) DB skills, when in fact their ability to perform the job is dependent upon them using a very specific set of tools in a specific environment.
Apparently the white noise is supposed to be similar to the sound of the womb. :-).
;)
I'm not at all sure what this says about you. Perhaps you want to go back...
Been trying non-stop since I was 14.
We should all go borrow a copies of various books that the government might have interest in tracking...
;)
Hey, sure, sounds like a good idea!
Ummm.... you first...
but it's doomed to failure
;)
:)
Not at all. A number of my associates have started to instigate this policy after experiencing some problems of their own, and seeing the success we're enjoying.
To put my position into perspective, maybe some context is required.
We build, deploy, administrate and manage REMOTE Oracle installations and applications for banks, governments, and large corporations. All of these installations are on *nix systems.
We are based in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and a LOT of our customers are in New York, Toronto, Ottawa, and LA.
The "command line" requirement is enforced for Oracle and *nix administration. ALL of the administration work that we do involves the command line. At the end of the day, Oracle administration (with WHATEVER gui you want to use) or Solaris/HP/Linux administration that we do is based on the command line.
Now, do we use GUIs? Damn rights we do, and we'd be idiots NOT to. But at the end of the day, if shit hits the fan, that GUI might not be available, while a perfectly good SSH connection may be. The GUI is an OPTION, not a REQUIREMENT, while command line skills ARE a requirement.
To help empower (and free up) our emergency response team that responds 24x7 to these issues, we've provided them with cel phone / PDA combos that allow them to connect into the server with SSH. That way, if they're on call (which they get paid for), they don't have to be sitting in front of a computer with their specific GUI tools installed in order to get the job done. This helps us reduce the costs of operation (no desk space required, cheaper technology required to get the job done, etc.). It also provides us with a MUCH faster response time. For that matter, our staff like it WAY better because it frees them up so that their "on-call" time has limited effect on their private lives.
Case in point, I can be watching a move, get a vibrating page alert, fire up my PDA/SSH connection, diagnose and/or fix the problem, within minutes usually, and keep watching the movie. I don't have to call the client, tell him I'll be in front of computer in 30 minutes, and miss the show. In a sense, "command line skills" translates somewhat to "better customer response at a lower cost".
It also seems to me that you might not have much Oracle experience. ALL Oracle administration you EVER wanted to do can be done through the command line. As a matter of fact, the command line is the DEFAULT method of admin, GUIs are "niceties". When I took my Oracle Masters certification, we did EVERYTHING through the command line, with the exception of a brief overview of Oracle Enterprise Manager only to the point of relating the GUI functions to what we did on the CL, as well as some of the extra function packs.
Same thing with *nix admin. Some of our installations do not allow the installation of any windowing libraries (X, etc.), so SSH is the ONLY method of connection... tunnelling an XTerm session isn't even possible. ALL tools that we use (backup/recovery, etc.) all have command line interfaces. Never mind it makes it a little easier to deail with crontab scheduling.
We are NOT looking to have people know every command line ever... only the ones that are applicable to us.
Also, we don't forsake use of GUIs for the command line.
For instance, when we do Application development (Java / PL/SQL), we DO use GUIs a lot, but at the end of the day the developers WILL know how to build a shell based deployment (ANT based), how to set up their CLASSPATH's, how to set up a shell-based compilation, etc. This allows for automated (crontab, etc.) builds/deployments/documentation generation, etc., in our systems. That being said, we LIVE in TogetherSoft's Control Center, IntelliJ's Idea, TOAD, and we're even developing our own proprietary Java-based "TOAD-like" DB tool.
So, it IS my arbitrary policy (the joys of having your own company) that EVERYBODY that is hired into a position where they will be performing DB or OS admin and various application development WILL have extensive command line understanding and skills as a base. I'm NOT going to spend money on providing them with the specific tools they need (they may quit in 3 months, then what?) to do the job when they are NOT necessay.
This reduces my cost of running the company, and in my experience I find that you get a much more informed/capable staff at the end of the day.
Sure, we might be missing out on some very talented people, but YOU are more than welcome to hire them.
EXACTLY.
:)
It COMPLETELY amazed me that she didn't know how to do all that... she'd learned on a Win2K server, and had used all admin assistants and GUIs to start up, admin, and program the DB.
It was quite depressing.
Oh, definitely!
;)
I wouldn't want someone to write Quicktime code in a text editor! (even though it IS possible).
My point is, that in my specific headspace of Unix Sys Admin, and Oracle admin on top of it, and even application development (PL/SQL and Java), command line is a requirement.
Go nuts and use your IdeaJ Java IDE, but you will still be able to build/deploy things from the command line, and you WILL have an excellent working knowledge of the command line JAVA and JAVAC commands, and the environment variables, etc.
FinalCutPro.. the command line edition. Not Likely!
Damn... spelling mistake!
*sigh*
Just because someone leaves the door open doesn't mean I have the right to enter.
This "open door" analogy just doesn't fit.
Human being are NOT natrually pre-disposed to enter houses, whereas network devices ARE generally pre-disposed to connect to the nearest/strongest WAP.
If you install a WAP, secure it.
Then, follow the intent.
If someone purposely hacks into your network, the intent to steal is there. If a network device can/does automatically configure itself to connect, well, it's a piece of hardware... it has no intent of it's own, so there's no intent to steal.
Ignorance of the technology and how to implement it is NOT an excuse!
If an unauthorized person uses that bandwidth without permission of the owner then tehre is less bandwidth available for the owner.owner. That is theft, you are taking away something that someone else owns and they no longer have access to it.
At some point people have to take responsibility for their own actions or inactions.
If the company plugs in wireless networks that are insecure, then they are partially (if not mostly) to blame for the casual mis-use of their "freely available" network connection. For instance, if my laptop automatically configures itself to use the nearest, strongest wireless access point (Mac OS X does this), and it's someone elses network, then tough... that's their fault. I had no intent, nor did I do anything to steal connectivity. That is the default action of the OS, which is the same defense that most WAP installers use... "that's how it was configured out of the box". I'd say the onus is on the WAP owner to make an attempt to keep people out of their network.
If I go out of my way to hack into someone elses network, then the intent to steal is there, and that is MY fault.
At the end of the day, ignorance of the technology and how to implement it properly is no excuse.
Also, this whole "open door to a house" analogy just doesn't work. Humans are not naturally pre-disposed to walk into the nearest house, while network devices ARE generally pre-disposed to connect to the nearest available network.
But hey, that's just my thought on the subject.
I have a small development company with a couple of small offices in a relatively empty office building.
:)
More and more of our developers have been switching(TM) to Mac laptops, and they've been bringing them into the office. (We do 99% of our development at home, doing the "office thing" about once a week).
Well, I've got a WAP set up in our office, but it's "silent" in that it only responds to devices that it's been configured to accept.
Needless to say, I came in to a meeting and a couple of guys had new laptops, and they were happily surfing the net, checking their email, etc., wirelessly, which kind of surprised me, because, well, I hadn't set them up yet.
Turns out that someone in the office building had just bought a new LinkSys WAP and just plugged it in, and the "go-find-me-a-network-connection" feature in OS X had automagically configured the closest available network connection.
We proceded to pick up the laptops and walk through the hallways until the signal got strongest, knocked on the door, and offered our services in securing their wireless network.
The guy was totally surprised.
At the end of the day, though, I would NOT consider what we did to be theft, because it lacked the intent, and was a result of the other guys negligence in his configuration of his own tool.
At some point, people have to take responsibility for their own action. In the same way that "ignorance of the law is no excuse", "ignorance of the technology is no exuse".
The problems come not from the tools themselves, but the misuse.
:) Let's just say that you've never "admin'd" until you've run sqlplus from an SSH session on a Palm using grafiti! It just feels UN-NATURAL!
And it's NOT just the kids!
I'm an Oracle DBA/Developer/CTO and am responsible for the hiring/firing of technical staff.
It absolutely amazes me to see the number of people that have become totally reliant on GUIs and other tools for doing DB administration.
Case in point:
I found this one person who seemed to REALLY know her stuff... new all of the correct procedures, concepts, etc. for some pretty advanced Oracle config/admin. I was impressed... enough to call her back for a second interview that was more of a "hands-on" practical.
She sat down at the workstation, I brought up an SSH session to the box, and asked her to tell me what the default ORACLE_SID, ORACLE_HOME, etc. was.
She then proceded to start looking around in the "program groups" on the Windoze START menu, and she seemed to be getting a little uncomfortable. I was kind of confused, and eventually asked her what she was doing. "I'm looking for the Oracle programs," she said. I told her, "Ahhh, there aren't any on this box... it's all installed on the Sun box downstairs... this command line is logged into that box, in the Oracle Dev account". She then asked for the console for the box, so she could at LEAST launch OEM to see what was going on. She also asked what other software we use for our DB admin.
At the end of the day, the bottom line was that she didn't have a CLUE how to use the command line interface, or make the "raw" SQL calls from SQL/PLUS to do her job... she'd only learnt how to do that stuff using about $40k in administrative GUI software. In order for us to get our immediate value out of her, we'd have to provide her with that software.
That was just un-acceptable, from my point of view.
For that matter, most of our DBA's rely on "home-grown" shell scripts that do the work for them, and are major proponents of Oracle bringing back the command line install. (Down with the GUI!)
My policy is that GUIs (like calculators) are a luxury, and not a requirement. In my company, you WILL understand how things work at the most primitive of levels (command line, vi, etc.). Once you understand that, you're more than welcome to use whatever "crutches" (GUIs, etc.) that you want to improve your productivity. But at the end of the day, if you're administrating one of my boxes, and I give you an SSH session to that box, you WILL be able to do every aspect of your job. I don't care if you have to fumble a bit to figure out exactly how to do so, but you WILL be able to get the job done.
That philosophy has saved our asses in a couple of weird situations.
Does anyone think it should be allowed?
Hell, I can't even stand the poor spelling and grammar in some "professional" emails! I _REFUSE_ to buy something from a sales guy that can't even make a first-contact email look anything but professional.
And I consider that to be less of an "infraction" than "l33t sp33k" or whatever it is.
Sorry, just one of my pet peeves.
I can agree from first-hand experience.
;), and on the mornings that I wake up with knee pain, it usually takes me a couple of minutes to realize that it's the "good" knee! It's almost like they rebuilt the bad one better than the original. :)
I went to University on a rugby scholarship, and played for years. In '97 I had what is commonly reffered to as a "carreer-ending injury" where my right knee was dislocated by about 5 inches, quite effectively ripping 3/4 of the ligaments in my knee completely apart, and severing the nerve that services the lower right side of my leg and all the muscles on the top of my right foot.
I went to the hospital, had it examined, and was told that it was a sprain... "don't worry about it, come back in a week if it's still bugging you".
One week later, I still couldn't lift my foot or feel anything in my leg. So, I went to a specialist.
Long story short, it was one of the "cleanest" (as in no blood, it was as if it was surgically damaged) and most destructive knee injuries they've ever seen. The nerve damage was too old to repair, and after many visits to many neurosurgeons, they all agreed that I'd be lucky to regain 60% usage in 10 years.
Now, I was a pretty active guy... mountain biking every day, rugby 4 times a week, gymn twice a day, so I was in pretty good shape.
They gave me these rehab "protocols" that must have been written for couch-sitting housewives..."the 4 week goal is to bend the knee 25 degrees with minimal pain". Give me a break! I'd done that in 2 days! I threw them away and proceded to do what I could on my own... completing 6 months of protocols in about 3 weeks. The physio guys were blown away, and while concerned, couldn't see anything bad happening. I continued mountain biking, walked to exhaustion, always pushing myself but not to the point of further damage. I was wearing out the "protective" brace every 3 weeks and having to have it replaced (which they said I'd have to wear for the rest of my life, BTW).
I should take a second here to really thank my orthopedic surgeon (Dr. Ross!)... he took the time to show me how to perform basic examinations on my knee and leg, teaching me the signs to look for, and allowing me to monitor my progress. It really helped me guage the amount of exertion I could apply and when I should stop. It was REALLY refreshing to NOT get the whole "well, you're not a doctor, so you wouldn't understand, so I'm not going to teach you" attitude.
After a year and a half, I'd regained a LOT of use of the damaged nerves... I still remember the day that I could lift my foot up for the first time (the guys at work thought I was nuts when I started jumping around and yelling and screaming!).
3 years and 4 knee surgeries after the injury, I could run somewhat normally on the knee (I was never a great runner to begin with!), was practicing rugby, mountain biking normally, and playing other sports... all without the brace. The biggest damage I had was psychological.
I went back to the neurosurgeons who initially examined me, and said "hey, can you retest me?" and they were quite shocked to see that I'd recovered to be about 90-95% of what is normal.
Now, I am what I consider to be 100% recovered; same weights in the gymn, playing rugby again without a brace (not as competitive, but I'm old and lazy now
So, at the end of the day, and after doing a LOT of research on my own in the local medical libraries, I found that neurologists really don't understand SQUAT about nerve regeneration, and I tend not to believe any limitations they want to put on them. I threw away their advice of relying on a brace for the rest of my life and "taking it easy", and I'm glad I did.
If this is such a great business model, and has no real revenue stream (that I can see, anyway), who picks up the tab for the parking meters/tickets?
Sounds to me like this guy just spent a WHACK of cash to outfit a car with WI-FI, plus a couple of bucks in parking, to thumb his nose at Starbuck$ and rip off bandwidth from neighbouring businesses.
Why did Starbuck$ not make a comment? Why bother... the guy (or his car) is not going to be there tomorrow.
Larry Miller wrote a great article for the Weekly Standard a while back, and I found it to be a refreshing read.
He's also written another article dated today to discuss 9/11.
Enjoy.
It's not like this is rocket science!
Oh, wait....
Most people get more out of Disney than Michaelangelo. Does that mean that Fantasia is greater art than the Pieta?
Hmmmmm...... I'll go with "Yes!"
A few years ago I saw a neat (expensive!) disc array that could 'freeze' the disc image at a single point in time so that a backup could be taken from the frozen image.
We used to do this years ago before any such "options" were provided by drive manufacturers.
We were doing large Oracle backups, and there were issues with taking too much time to do a backup.
What we did was to throw some extra drives into the (at the time, software) RAID, so that we had a mirror of what we wanted to backup. At backup time, we'd shut down the Oracle instance, break the mirror, and then re-start the Oracle instance. The whole procedure resulted in less than 2 minutes of downtime for the instance, which was more than acceptable. We'd then take the "broken" mirror, re-mount it under a "temp" mount point, and then take our time backing it up (it usually took about 6-8 hours). Once we were finished backing it up, we'd then re-attach the broken mirrors and re-silver it. This was all done via software RAID, before journalling was available.
We did this about once a week, and it worked out great.
Does this mean IBM can help me find all the socks I lose in the wash?
Nope, but now Google can help with that.
Anyone who feels the need to be able to point to their security device shouldn't be making security decisions.
/. SOPs) then it would be a GOOD thing.
Just remember the info sec triad: good security is a combination of something you are, something you have, and something you know. For that reason, if this physical key had a passphrase requirement (don't know if it does, didn't read the article as per
If the physical key was the ONLY thing required, then I agree that it would be BAD THING.
Where's the lameness filter when you need it, eh?
What kind of idiot would buy moon rocks over the Internet for any appreciable sum of money?
Ironically, in this case, someone who would actually WANT moon rocks... these were legit!
Hmmm... makes me re-think that whole Penis Enlargement ad I saw...
And especially, don't call that number from payphones so that they get charged $.26 just for connecting the call.
:)
And, on top of that, don't even _THINK_ of using the fax-on-demand service to have them fax 20 pages of crap to your long-distance phone number.
Twice.