. I'd like to use the fewest number of vendors (preferably only one), so that all the parts arrive at the same time
This isn't necessarily true. the vendor may have some of the parts you want, but be waiting delivery on others. You could end up in one of two situations:
waiting an extended period until your single supplier can ship the whole consignment at once
Getting one shipment for the parts they can provide instantly, then one or more when the other parts arrive.
Niether is satisfactory IMHO. Go with several suppliers, either check their online stock from their website, or ask "can you ship these parts today?"
Given that most of the internet only has english as a second (or higher) language, you need to assess the language in terms of education. Also you should add on the time needed to get to the level of linguistic proficiency to read the terms, as well as understand the legal system of the foreign countries that present these policies.
Once this is taken into account is it any surprise that the vast majority of web users simply click "I agree" to anything they see
Ahhh, you mean the 30-year old recordings.
I think they're available on Amazon as audiobook CDs. Yo can also get the scripts published as a book - including the "naughty" bits the BBC wouldn't broadcast - like Slartybartfast's original name
The order of events is important here. The guy was minding his own business and getting on with his life. He was approached by the dutch company. So he cannot be accused (well, he could be accused, but they'd be wrong) of trying to profit from it.
In his position, I'd try to get them to make the offer - respond with a "what did you have in mind?" email - trying to make sure that they aren't a porno outfit or other "bad" use of his family name.
If the offer is reasonable and fits with his plans, then go for it - simple.
It's not the language - it's the libraries
on
Java, Where To Start?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Learning the mechanics of the Java language are the easy bit - when it boils down to the basics of the syntax, there's not much to it (since you already have many other, similar languages).
The key is the libraries: that's where it goes from being merely another OO language to being able to do something useful. I'd start by getting a simple "hello world" program running, then thinking up a home project which allows you to start adding features and functions.
Most of the documentation I've seen is pretty poor - it gives argument lists and describes functionality in isolation, but misses out the higher level WHY you would want to use a function. Learning that is where the gold is.
Not everyone's motivated by money. Once the basic needs have been met, some like an intellectual challenge - or to feel that they have made something, or contributed to some cause or other.
Normally, companies can't meet these different needs: and extra money doesn't help retain the kind of staff who would want to work on OSS projects. So as a cheap and efficient way of retaining people they value, why not let them work on their own projects - so long as it doesn't interfere with the business of business?
If you're talking to a director, who is not conversant with your work, a decent suit and tie is instantly worth more than a masters degree. The CEO will make up his mind about YOU as you enter the room - before you get to say anything. By the time you sit down, he/she has decided whether to ignore your arguments or whether to take them seriously.
google is still an astounding success and will be
until something better comes along. Think: years.
As for how it treats it's employees, maybe it's escaped your notice but we're in a recession. Expect to get *****ed on from a great height - you'll get your revenge when the next boom happens.
The mistake that I made, however, was in trying to push us too far too fast
More likely the reverse was true. Not enough promotion (to the sort of people who would use it) or that they were turned off by what it offered, or how it was presented.
You can never have too much progress, unless of course you outrun the capabilities of your website providers or programmers.
Any organisation that wishes to be classed in any way professional knows that the value in it's databases has to be protected. That requires them to have the means to recover the data if something bad happens. A hot-mirrored copy is simply not good enough (one corruption would get written to both copies).
As a consequence, the size of commercial databases is limited by the amount of time the organisation is willing to have it unavailable while it is restored, in the case of a disaster, or the time taken to create/update secure, offline, copies.
Not by intrinsic properties of the database or host architecture
They need service access so they can't be sealed solid - some kind of service hatch/door will be a must. Obviously they'd have seals, but these perish and water will get in.
People put up with telegraph poles and electricity pylons for the benefits (electric power and telephones). If you want your broadband and services at rock-bottom prices, you can't expect the utilities to shell-out for NIMBY-approved landscaping.
According to the article, only a few boxes are fridge-sized, most are much smaller. Give it a year ot two and they'll be covered in bushes, to disguise the fact that the residents want all the up-to-date services they offer.
149,000 e-mail accounts
6,100,000 e-mail messages per day
That's over 40 emails per person per day. I've got to assume that most of them are "internal spam" (i.e. merely CC's for CYA reasons). If you have to take action on more than 2 or 3 each day, there's something wrong with your organisation structure.
In my experience, the biggest problem with IT systems is when something gets changed. If you can avoid changing things (i.e. getting them right at the design stage) there's very little for good IT staff to do.
Different companies classify jobs as IT or not, depending on their policies. Ww might all agree that support staff count as IT workers, your place may have outsourced it's developers. Alternatively, there may be 5000 help-desk/telesales staff that get counted as "IT" (well, they work with IT, so that counts - doesn't it?).
The short answer is that there is no answer - although it is my experience that the more different departments there are in the IT organisation, the less efficient it is.
Pressure groups start campaigning about the health effects of bodily exposure to magnetic fields.
unlike the scares surrounding the micro-power electric fields from mobile phones and the virtually non-existent fields from CRTs, the amount of power being emitted by these (enough to power a laptop or lightbulb) might actually be something to get concerned about.
Besides, I don't think it's "humanly" possible to transport this amount of information with absolutely no spillage at all
Sure it is. the government (any government) produces thousands of times this amount of covert data each year. Whether it's surveillance, foreign intelligence or simply military planning information.
The point is, that almost none of this sort of stuff - the info that governments really care about - gets into the wrong hands. If they considered the loss of personal data to be important, they could easily stop all leakages except those done maliciously
Slashdot Mirror
. I'd like to use the fewest number of vendors (preferably only one), so that all the parts arrive at the same time
This isn't necessarily true. the vendor may have some of the parts you want, but be waiting delivery on others. You could end up in one of two situations:
Niether is satisfactory IMHO. Go with several suppliers, either check their online stock from their website, or ask "can you ship these parts today?"
Once this is taken into account is it any surprise that the vast majority of web users simply click "I agree" to anything they see
These are far and away worse than the petty restrictions placed in the examples cited in the article.
Ahhh, you mean the 30-year old recordings. I think they're available on Amazon as audiobook CDs. Yo can also get the scripts published as a book - including the "naughty" bits the BBC wouldn't broadcast - like Slartybartfast's original name
If you can't make your point in 10 lines or less, do you really think people will read all this?
In his position, I'd try to get them to make the offer - respond with a "what did you have in mind?" email - trying to make sure that they aren't a porno outfit or other "bad" use of his family name.
If the offer is reasonable and fits with his plans, then go for it - simple.
The key is the libraries: that's where it goes from being merely another OO language to being able to do something useful. I'd start by getting a simple "hello world" program running, then thinking up a home project which allows you to start adding features and functions.
Most of the documentation I've seen is pretty poor - it gives argument lists and describes functionality in isolation, but misses out the higher level WHY you would want to use a function. Learning that is where the gold is.
there were people on the street corner selling clothes and food within hours of the announcement.
I expect they'd been doing it discretely the whole time. Just revoking the laws brought it out into the open
Normally, companies can't meet these different needs: and extra money doesn't help retain the kind of staff who would want to work on OSS projects. So as a cheap and efficient way of retaining people they value, why not let them work on their own projects - so long as it doesn't interfere with the business of business?
If you're talking to a director, who is not conversant with your work, a decent suit and tie is instantly worth more than a masters degree. The CEO will make up his mind about YOU as you enter the room - before you get to say anything. By the time you sit down, he/she has decided whether to ignore your arguments or whether to take them seriously.
Have you quantified the benefits of improving software quality?
Have you laid out the risks (both personal, to the directors and to the share-price) of low software quality
Did you make the guy aware of the legal implications and liabilities?
Did you describe what the competition does?
Did you actually propose a planned and costed solution - or were you just moaning at him?
But most importantly, did you wear a tie?
don't forget the statutory maximum number of working hours per week we enjoy too.
As for how it treats it's employees, maybe it's escaped your notice but we're in a recession. Expect to get *****ed on from a great height - you'll get your revenge when the next boom happens.
The mistake that I made, however, was in trying to push us too far too fast
More likely the reverse was true. Not enough promotion (to the sort of people who would use it) or that they were turned off by what it offered, or how it was presented.
You can never have too much progress, unless of course you outrun the capabilities of your website providers or programmers.
Any organisation that wishes to be classed in any way professional knows that the value in it's databases has to be protected. That requires them to have the means to recover the data if something bad happens. A hot-mirrored copy is simply not good enough (one corruption would get written to both copies).
As a consequence, the size of commercial databases is limited by the amount of time the organisation is willing to have it unavailable while it is restored, in the case of a disaster, or the time taken to create/update secure, offline, copies.
Not by intrinsic properties of the database or host architecture
Until people such as employers, potential girl/boy-friends realise that:
1.) there are more than one person with each name
2.) almost nothing on the internet is corroborated, valdated or authenticated, it's mostly rumour - so far as individuals go
3.) old information never dies and bad new travels much faster than good news
Then it's a hopelessly unreliable medium for information to make judgements about someone.
Of course cutting the article down to it's basics "we don't know, but it's possible" wouldn't fill much magazine space or sell many adverts.
They need service access so they can't be sealed solid - some kind of service hatch/door will be a must. Obviously they'd have seals, but these perish and water will get in.
People put up with telegraph poles and electricity pylons for the benefits (electric power and telephones). If you want your broadband and services at rock-bottom prices, you can't expect the utilities to shell-out for NIMBY-approved landscaping.
According to the article, only a few boxes are fridge-sized, most are much smaller. Give it a year ot two and they'll be covered in bushes, to disguise the fact that the residents want all the up-to-date services they offer.
149,000 e-mail accounts
6,100,000 e-mail messages per day
That's over 40 emails per person per day. I've got to assume that most of them are "internal spam" (i.e. merely CC's for CYA reasons). If you have to take action on more than 2 or 3 each day, there's something wrong with your organisation structure.
In my experience, the biggest problem with IT systems is when something gets changed. If you can avoid changing things (i.e. getting them right at the design stage) there's very little for good IT staff to do.
The short answer is that there is no answer - although it is my experience that the more different departments there are in the IT organisation, the less efficient it is.
This was before "star wars" and it was dark, so the sight of a couple of people waving 4-foot fluorescent tubes about was quite novel.
unlike the scares surrounding the micro-power electric fields from mobile phones and the virtually non-existent fields from CRTs, the amount of power being emitted by these (enough to power a laptop or lightbulb) might actually be something to get concerned about.
Sure it is. the government (any government) produces thousands of times this amount of covert data each year. Whether it's surveillance, foreign intelligence or simply military planning information.
The point is, that almost none of this sort of stuff - the info that governments really care about - gets into the wrong hands. If they considered the loss of personal data to be important, they could easily stop all leakages except those done maliciously