Given that the FAA is responsible for the lives of thousands of people who travel by air every day, not to mention cargo planes which represent billions of dollars in economic activity, I'd be extremely alarmed if they were constantly switching to the latest and greatest technology without testing each and every line of code in the entire software stack, up to and including the bare metal. Change is slow in organizations like that because it has to be. Improper testing can easily lead to lost lives, or at the very least huge delays like these ones that can cost millions in lost productivity.
Yes, change should be slower in larger organizations, and especially slow in systems this critical. I would (and often do) even argue that a fully transparent and rigorous change control process should be in place in all but the youngest and fastest organizations who still have a fully dedicated and constantly available band of heroes with ownership stake.
BUT, that does not mean that it is remotely excusable to leave technology in place for 40 years without noticing that you have SINGLE POINTS OF FAILURE IN MISSION-CRITICAL SYSTEMS (apparently, in this case, actually a circuit board in a router) without building in automatic failover and redundancy throughout the system. Failing to do so presents far too much risk. It may be close to rocket science, but it isn't.
And to those who seem to think that this isn't a big deal, it disrupted to flow of aircraft information to the military such that AWACS had to be scrambled to compensate for the government's loss of visibility into air traffic. Leaving single points of failure like this in place in systems this critical is not only unacceptable IT risk management, but is also clearly an unacceptable national security risk.
At least then little boys would get to look foward to their sunday school lessons on [...] sexual rapture.
I don't think the association between that and Wacko needs explaining. Jackson was recently rumored to be involved with recording the prayers of the late John Paul II. Big story on internet, don't feel like researching. Google it.
The only thing I regret about religion is that the Greeks didn't win more wars. At least then little boys would get to look foward to their sunday school lessons on Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty and sexual rapture.
Hey, Michael, when is your new album coming out? And whatever happened to that project you were working on with the Catholic Church?
"Star Trek: The Menacing Phantom" gets terrible reviews, meanwhile, civil rights groups are up in arms over perceived racial stereotyping as members of a pre-Borg civilization appear to demonstrate predominately "white" traits.
Today MICROSOFT CORP. (MSFT) announced the imminent rollout of PortPlay, it's new chip designed to work seamlessly with all varieties of MP3 players, including iPod. Speculation of a Microsoft/Apple merger led to a wild office party in the Justice Department's Anti-Trust wing. Details are still sketchy at this point, but rumor has it that a truckload of cigars was dropped off compliments of Fmr. President Clinton. Microsoft stock was up sharply on the news, but was outpaced by SWISHER INTERNATIONAL GROUP INC. (SWR), which posted a 250% increase, a company record.
I completely agree. I didn't see ONE ad for the movie, or, for that matter, the show. I only heard about either by word of mouth... which means that I know people that should put me in places where the ads would reach me, as we have similar interests. I'm not *completely* oblivious if you put something interesting in front of me.
Viral marketing did almost all of the work on this one. It could also be the downfall of the "we tell you what you want" profit model... but that's only a hope.
"But yes, it's fairly ridiculous to claim that you can't live morally without faith in a higher power, or that people who don't live morally can't have (albeit probably hypocritically) faith. You don't have to believe you'll be burned in Hell eternally for doing so to recognize that it's not very nice to steal from people or kill them."
Hmm... I should have been more careful in the way I worded this, considering the crowd. As I stated in another response, I didn't mean to imply that you can't live ethically in the absence of the typically defined "faith in a higher power."
I was arguing within the context of the analogy used in the original post, which is to say that I was arguing from within the Judeo-Christian perspective, assuming a fundamental belief in God... because the poster's argument appeared to be based on the failure of Jews and Christians to follow the Ten Commandments, as obviously no one else would give two shits about some stone tablet some crazy nomad found.
But yeah... I should have made my argument more clear... it kinda seems like flamebait in retrospect, though that's not quite what I intended. I'll be more cautious next time.
Hypocrite would also be accurate. But I meant "liar." You can't really claim to have faith in a God while doing something contrary to what you believe is his/her/whatever's message. To do so obviously implies a lack of faith, at least at the time.
You thought I was a Christian!
I'm actually extremely liberal, and agree with the religious right on NO political issues.
Anyone who claims to have faith, but still does the things you mention, is a liar.
Sorry, there's no test that I'm aware of to measure "faith," so I'm not sure I can help you on that...
And I am NOT suggesting that scientific atheists or agnostics are incapable of following the Ten Commandments, if you got that impression. They tend to be highly educated and ethical people, in my experience. Also, they generally do have faith... IN SCIENCE.
I'm speaking in generalities about the entire population, which Slashdot obviously doesn't coincide with.
There are people who follow the original Ten Commandments and there are people who don't. Those who have faith, generally do. Those who have none, generally do not.
Time doesn't wash away convictions and ideals. Laziness, lack of faith, and ego do.
There is no reason Google cannot maintain a positive work environment while being successful. They may not, but we can hope.
And, as knowledge workers, we will lose what we fail to demand.
"There is almost no legitimate use of email to send executable code, way over 99% of all executable attachments are malicious."
Almost all worms come in zip files these days. You want them to block zip files!?
I'd sure rather send a 500k attachment than a 2mb one when possible, and any amount of decrease in size of REALLY large attachments is welcome... especially since our company is a Microsoft shop using that wonderful bandwidth hog, Exchange, with a 512k pipe serving an average of 50 users.
"Imagine if electricity was not a public utility but a service offered by two or three price-gouging regional monopolies. A quick comparison of US broadband penetration and Europe's (largely) socialised system demonstrates why these sorts of projects are needed."
You mean... like natural gas?
Hey... that's my old screen name. Another Butler fan, I guess. Now I know who's been getting it before me everywhere.
All I've ever wanted from cable is HBO, Sci-Fi, and Comedy Central. But I refuse to pay $60/mo. for three channels. I think the cable providers should be all over this... how many people like me are out there who don't have cable now because we're only interested in a small group of channels that don't justify the cost? They should be able to get penetration into a new segment of the market this way.
I've got to think there are plenty of other people who would buy in at $20/mo (permanently, not just for a few months) who won't buy in at $60.
Power corrupts? Is this a law now? Can't we hold out some hope that it's possible to lead an industry without having questionable ethics? If not, shouldn't we all be revolting against capitalism?
Even if the hardware isn't as good as the PS3's will be, Microsoft's still the better choice. With all the touted internet functionality of the new systems, at least we can be faithful that Microsoft's system will be secure without, you know, leaving open any backdoors for hackers or anything...
As if Islam wasn't expanding fast enough, now they'll be able to quickly tranlate the Qu'ran into Klingon? And they think it sounds beautiful in Arabic...
Slashdot Mirror
Given that the FAA is responsible for the lives of thousands of people who travel by air every day, not to mention cargo planes which represent billions of dollars in economic activity, I'd be extremely alarmed if they were constantly switching to the latest and greatest technology without testing each and every line of code in the entire software stack, up to and including the bare metal. Change is slow in organizations like that because it has to be. Improper testing can easily lead to lost lives, or at the very least huge delays like these ones that can cost millions in lost productivity.
Yes, change should be slower in larger organizations, and especially slow in systems this critical. I would (and often do) even argue that a fully transparent and rigorous change control process should be in place in all but the youngest and fastest organizations who still have a fully dedicated and constantly available band of heroes with ownership stake.
BUT, that does not mean that it is remotely excusable to leave technology in place for 40 years without noticing that you have SINGLE POINTS OF FAILURE IN MISSION-CRITICAL SYSTEMS (apparently, in this case, actually a circuit board in a router) without building in automatic failover and redundancy throughout the system. Failing to do so presents far too much risk. It may be close to rocket science, but it isn't.
And to those who seem to think that this isn't a big deal, it disrupted to flow of aircraft information to the military such that AWACS had to be scrambled to compensate for the government's loss of visibility into air traffic. Leaving single points of failure like this in place in systems this critical is not only unacceptable IT risk management, but is also clearly an unacceptable national security risk.
I don't think the association between that and Wacko needs explaining. Jackson was recently rumored to be involved with recording the prayers of the late John Paul II. Big story on internet, don't feel like researching. Google it.
The only thing I regret about religion is that the Greeks didn't win more wars. At least then little boys would get to look foward to their sunday school lessons on Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty and sexual rapture. Hey, Michael, when is your new album coming out? And whatever happened to that project you were working on with the Catholic Church?
I knew Enterprise would suck the moment that I heard the theme song, Bacula notwithstanding...
"Star Trek: The Menacing Phantom" gets terrible reviews, meanwhile, civil rights groups are up in arms over perceived racial stereotyping as members of a pre-Borg civilization appear to demonstrate predominately "white" traits.
Today MICROSOFT CORP. (MSFT) announced the imminent rollout of PortPlay, it's new chip designed to work seamlessly with all varieties of MP3 players, including iPod. Speculation of a Microsoft/Apple merger led to a wild office party in the Justice Department's Anti-Trust wing. Details are still sketchy at this point, but rumor has it that a truckload of cigars was dropped off compliments of Fmr. President Clinton. Microsoft stock was up sharply on the news, but was outpaced by SWISHER INTERNATIONAL GROUP INC. (SWR), which posted a 250% increase, a company record.
I completely agree. I didn't see ONE ad for the movie, or, for that matter, the show. I only heard about either by word of mouth... which means that I know people that should put me in places where the ads would reach me, as we have similar interests. I'm not *completely* oblivious if you put something interesting in front of me.
Viral marketing did almost all of the work on this one. It could also be the downfall of the "we tell you what you want" profit model... but that's only a hope.
"But yes, it's fairly ridiculous to claim that you can't live morally without faith in a higher power, or that people who don't live morally can't have (albeit probably hypocritically) faith. You don't have to believe you'll be burned in Hell eternally for doing so to recognize that it's not very nice to steal from people or kill them." Hmm... I should have been more careful in the way I worded this, considering the crowd. As I stated in another response, I didn't mean to imply that you can't live ethically in the absence of the typically defined "faith in a higher power." I was arguing within the context of the analogy used in the original post, which is to say that I was arguing from within the Judeo-Christian perspective, assuming a fundamental belief in God... because the poster's argument appeared to be based on the failure of Jews and Christians to follow the Ten Commandments, as obviously no one else would give two shits about some stone tablet some crazy nomad found. But yeah... I should have made my argument more clear... it kinda seems like flamebait in retrospect, though that's not quite what I intended. I'll be more cautious next time.
"...is a liar. Hypocrite would be more accurate."
Hypocrite would also be accurate. But I meant "liar." You can't really claim to have faith in a God while doing something contrary to what you believe is his/her/whatever's message. To do so obviously implies a lack of faith, at least at the time.
You thought I was a Christian! I'm actually extremely liberal, and agree with the religious right on NO political issues. Anyone who claims to have faith, but still does the things you mention, is a liar.
Sorry, there's no test that I'm aware of to measure "faith," so I'm not sure I can help you on that... And I am NOT suggesting that scientific atheists or agnostics are incapable of following the Ten Commandments, if you got that impression. They tend to be highly educated and ethical people, in my experience. Also, they generally do have faith... IN SCIENCE. I'm speaking in generalities about the entire population, which Slashdot obviously doesn't coincide with.
There are people who follow the original Ten Commandments and there are people who don't. Those who have faith, generally do. Those who have none, generally do not.
Time doesn't wash away convictions and ideals. Laziness, lack of faith, and ego do.
There is no reason Google cannot maintain a positive work environment while being successful. They may not, but we can hope.
And, as knowledge workers, we will lose what we fail to demand.
"There is almost no legitimate use of email to send executable code, way over 99% of all executable attachments are malicious."
Almost all worms come in zip files these days. You want them to block zip files!?
I'd sure rather send a 500k attachment than a 2mb one when possible, and any amount of decrease in size of REALLY large attachments is welcome... especially since our company is a Microsoft shop using that wonderful bandwidth hog, Exchange, with a 512k pipe serving an average of 50 users.
(NO, I did NOT make these decisions!)
"Imagine if electricity was not a public utility but a service offered by two or three price-gouging regional monopolies. A quick comparison of US broadband penetration and Europe's (largely) socialised system demonstrates why these sorts of projects are needed." You mean... like natural gas?
Hey... that's my old screen name. Another Butler fan, I guess. Now I know who's been getting it before me everywhere.
All I've ever wanted from cable is HBO, Sci-Fi, and Comedy Central. But I refuse to pay $60/mo. for three channels. I think the cable providers should be all over this... how many people like me are out there who don't have cable now because we're only interested in a small group of channels that don't justify the cost? They should be able to get penetration into a new segment of the market this way.
I've got to think there are plenty of other people who would buy in at $20/mo (permanently, not just for a few months) who won't buy in at $60.
Power corrupts? Is this a law now? Can't we hold out some hope that it's possible to lead an industry without having questionable ethics? If not, shouldn't we all be revolting against capitalism?
Even if the hardware isn't as good as the PS3's will be, Microsoft's still the better choice. With all the touted internet functionality of the new systems, at least we can be faithful that Microsoft's system will be secure without, you know, leaving open any backdoors for hackers or anything...
As if Islam wasn't expanding fast enough, now they'll be able to quickly tranlate the Qu'ran into Klingon? And they think it sounds beautiful in Arabic...