I've never been in a corporate environment where there weren't passwords and enforcement of their usage (auto screen saver locks, employees held responsible for actions taken using their computer accounts, etc.)
How is a key card different than logging off? Does the key card not change the effective user id? If it does, then how is it faster than logging of and back on? If not, what good is it for tracking users?
Passwords facilitate accountability. If fraud is committed how do you track it without passwords?
Handwriting recognition?
(not on a computer) Logs of physical location?
(not when all the data is accessible from one desk)
When a client give me an account to their system, I specifically ask for no production system access. I don't want the liability. I would be concerned working in an environment where trouble couldn't be tracked to someone else.
Looks slick. Those products weren't there when I needed them 18 months ago. I didn't realized how long ago it was.
I didn't think about code generation. I was thinking about dynamic allocation (DOM). I suppose these products would only process a tag at a time (ala SAX, but in a structured way), so random document traversal could get ugly, but for batch processing, you want to avoid that anyway.
OK. I wasn't specific enough. If you don't have dynamic allocation, then you also don't get facilities to access dynamic allocated data, hence, strcpy(char *, char *) wouldn't exist.
I don't know how to copy arrays or sub arrays in COBOL, but I'll bet it is safer than strcpy.
Mainframes are a very expensive source of CPU time. They are very good with IO.
I worked a job where the 6 processor multimillion dollar mainframe was about half the speed of our workgroup dell 8way Xeon for CPU power. We had to share that mainframe with 5000 other employees. Running X apps on it would be a huge waste of resources.
An html/http interface could work. It would be very similar to 3270 terminal and would be very efficient on a mainframe (avoid memory allocation and cpu, just copy data from here to there...).
Applications written in COBOL are stable, because they are so constrained.
My limited understanding of COBOL is that there is no dynamic memory allocation. Try writing a C program without any dynamic memory allocation. It may be hard, but I'll bet it didn't crash.
Nice response, this is part of the discussion we don't see. There aren't news specials about kids who aren't starving on farms that are doing OK in Africa.
My town here in the midwest USA could easily support 5 times the current population, but the town has shrunk in size over the last 100 years. Our main export is corn and beans. Why has the population grown in areas with repeated droughts and repeated need for food aid?
Since college students (including me at the time) refuse to see things from the perspective of the real world, we must adapt and interpret their comments as if from the cozy confines of a dorm.
My uncle is a self employed farmer. My grandfather, uncle, and cousin are all self employed construction contractor (each works alone). I am a self employed software consultant. My father runs a menswear store alone.
You'll need it to cover unexpected expenses when out of work. You will be out of work. You will be out of work more than when working for a contract house, because a contract house has full time professional sales people that are better than you and you will then be competing against.
I wouldn't worry too much about the health care. Buy some catastrophic insurance and keep that 6 months savings. Buy disability insurance. (The insurance to cover the first 6 months is the expensive stuff.)
Don't incorporate unless you must to work with particular clients. The paper work is killer.
Get an accountant that you trust.
Keep a couple customers in good standing all the time. If it is just you try to work for more than one client at once (40 hrs here, 20 there) so that if one has to drop you, you still have some cash flow.
A custom DB will be faster than a general purpose DB (by definition).
A relational DB offers great flexibility (pull any data from the database, add most any index to greatly improve the performance, etc).
I would base the decision mostly on the interfaces to the application. I've worked on applications where the company prefered to access the SQL database directly for reporting and I've worked on projects where the only interface to the application was via HTTP/XML. In the latter case, no one cared how we stored the data, so we dumped XML into a filesystem.
1. Around my senior year, using a C64 and basic, I was able to control electric motors. A robot wouldn't have been much more of a stretch. With today's tech, controlling motors via a parallel on an old PC would be fun.
2. Build a trebuchet or a potato gun.
Then again, you only get that high school summer once. You can build a trebuchet once you retire.
In college, I often worked through the change of the day. It wasn't nearly as confusing as figuring out what time it is in California when you live in Indiana.
I would know that it is 19:21 Oct 10 and that my friend in California gets to work at 19:00 GMT and leaves at 3:00 GMT the next day.
public class Test2 {
static public class A {
static public class B {
static public String c = "C";
}
}
static public void main(String [] a){
System.err.println("test.Test2A.B.c="+test.Test2.A.B.c);
} } -- Why differentiate packages from classes?
Ah, 'multiple dispatch'. That was the term I was looking for. After more thought this afternoon, I have to agree that the efficiency trade off would not be worth it all the time, but it would be a nifty answer to the huge switch statements that occur when parsing.
Ah, 'meta classes'. Another term. That would fix that problem.
I guess the only difference we have is import with globing or regular expressions. I just figure that the extremely limiting import a package, but not a group of packages is a silly limit.
Would you use J2EE when failure costs were $1m/s? I wouldn't. I would want a system that could more easily be audited, where I could read all the code. (Even using JBoss, you couldn't understand all the code due to the complex execution path.)
Banks need something much simpler than J2EE that can be completely understood. Airlines need something that is more efficient than J2EE. Once you implement a system in J2EE that is efficent, you will have removed all the OO effects that make it convenient. You might as well have implemented it in COBOL.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never been in a corporate environment where there weren't passwords and enforcement of their usage (auto screen saver locks, employees held responsible for actions taken using their computer accounts, etc.)
How is a key card different than logging off? Does the key card not change the effective user id? If it does, then how is it faster than logging of and back on? If not, what good is it for tracking users?
Joe
depending on their proxy of course, but I've had very good luck escaping corporate fire walls with the HTTP CONNECT method.
( echo CONNECT 127.0.0.1:13 HTTP/1.0; echo ) | nc firewall 8000
will print out the time on firewall. Using a similar method and maybe a couple fifos, you should be able to put anything through that firewall.
This is the method that I use to layer VNC over SSH over SSL/HTTP through the firewall back to my home office from all my client locations.
Joe
Passwords facilitate accountability. If fraud is committed how do you track it without passwords?
Handwriting recognition?
(not on a computer)
Logs of physical location?
(not when all the data is accessible from one desk)
When a client give me an account to their system, I specifically ask for no production system access. I don't want the liability. I would be concerned working in an environment where trouble couldn't be tracked to someone else.
Joe
But IBM would only have to write it once. An DHTML 3270 kind of thing.
I agree that having to rewrite it for ever contract has been a bit of a bore.
Joe
Looks slick. Those products weren't there when I needed them 18 months ago. I didn't realized how long ago it was.
I didn't think about code generation. I was thinking about dynamic allocation (DOM). I suppose these products would only process a tag at a time (ala SAX, but in a structured way), so random document traversal could get ugly, but for batch processing, you want to avoid that anyway.
Thanks,
Joe
OK. I wasn't specific enough. If you don't have dynamic allocation, then you also don't get facilities to access dynamic allocated data, hence, strcpy(char *, char *) wouldn't exist.
I don't know how to copy arrays or sub arrays in COBOL, but I'll bet it is safer than strcpy.
Joe
Nice to know.
So why can't I find an XML parser for OS390? I had assumed it was due to the variable sized record problems.
Joe
It would be an 80 hour movie. There is a lot of material there.
The Asimov Fondation series is a must read, so you can read the Brin, Bear, Benford Foundation books, which are so much better.
Asimov has a real nack for plot and story, I just get tired of the simple phrasing. I don't want my fiction to read like a tech manual.
Joe
Why would you want to run X apps on a mainframe?
Mainframes are a very expensive source of CPU time. They are very good with IO.
I worked a job where the 6 processor multimillion dollar mainframe was about half the speed of our workgroup dell 8way Xeon for CPU power. We had to share that mainframe with 5000 other employees. Running X apps on it would be a huge waste of resources.
An html/http interface could work. It would be very similar to 3270 terminal and would be very efficient on a mainframe (avoid memory allocation and cpu, just copy data from here to there...).
Joe
Applications written in COBOL are stable, because they are so constrained.
My limited understanding of COBOL is that there is no dynamic memory allocation. Try writing a C program without any dynamic memory allocation. It may be hard, but I'll bet it didn't crash.
Joe
Nice response, this is part of the discussion we don't see. There aren't news specials about kids who aren't starving on farms that are doing OK in Africa.
My town here in the midwest USA could easily support 5 times the current population, but the town has shrunk in size over the last 100 years. Our main export is corn and beans. Why has the population grown in areas with repeated droughts and repeated need for food aid?
Joe
You don't have TV in your dorm room?
Since college students (including me at the time) refuse to see things from the perspective of the real world, we must adapt and interpret their comments as if from the cozy confines of a dorm.
Joe
Some of use need English skills.
Supply and demand. There is a larger need for leaders than followers... leaders get paid better.
Joe
My uncle is a self employed farmer.
My grandfather, uncle, and cousin are all self employed construction contractor (each works alone).
I am a self employed software consultant.
My father runs a menswear store alone.
None of us can even sing.
You trust someone else more than yourself with your own life?! You are probably pro union.
Joe
Keep 6 months salary in the bank.
You'll need it to cover unexpected expenses when out of work. You will be out of work. You will be out of work more than when working for a contract house, because a contract house has full time professional sales people that are better than you and you will then be competing against.
I wouldn't worry too much about the health care. Buy some catastrophic insurance and keep that 6 months savings. Buy disability insurance. (The insurance to cover the first 6 months is the expensive stuff.)
Don't incorporate unless you must to work with particular clients. The paper work is killer.
Get an accountant that you trust.
Keep a couple customers in good standing all the time. If it is just you try to work for more than one client at once (40 hrs here, 20 there) so that if one has to drop you, you still have some cash flow.
Joe
I'm sitting in front of two monitors hooked to a Radeon VE with the testing version of Debian.
---
chip:battjt > X -version
XFree86 Version 4.2.1 (Debian 4.2.1-3 20021016191246 branden@deadbeast.net) / X Window System
---
Ditto.
I can't test software when the basics fail. I've not gotten 2.5.* to compile for even my most basic setup.
Features that are known to fail (obviously if they don't compile) should not be sent to testing.
Joe
A custom DB will be faster than a general purpose DB (by definition).
A relational DB offers great flexibility (pull any data from the database, add most any index to greatly improve the performance, etc).
I would base the decision mostly on the interfaces to the application. I've worked on applications where the company prefered to access the SQL database directly for reporting and I've worked on projects where the only interface to the application was via HTTP/XML. In the latter case, no one cared how we stored the data, so we dumped XML into a filesystem.
Joe
MSSQL did a very lousy job at stuff in parallel.
We had to tune our queries very carefully to utilize all 8 processors (even when we were only issuing reads).
Expect to have more developer/DBA work to utilize all those processors.
Joe
1. Around my senior year, using a C64 and basic, I was able to control electric motors. A robot wouldn't have been much more of a stretch. With today's tech, controlling motors via a parallel on an old PC would be fun.
2. Build a trebuchet or a potato gun.
Then again, you only get that high school summer once. You can build a trebuchet once you retire.
Joe
In college, I often worked through the change of the day. It wasn't nearly as confusing as figuring out what time it is in California when you live in Indiana.
I would know that it is 19:21 Oct 10 and that my friend in California gets to work at 19:00 GMT and leaves at 3:00 GMT the next day.
Joe
Actually we subscribe to newtonian physics. Time is constant. This is a step forward from when the legislature declared PI to be 3.
I personally think that everyone should switch to GMT. Why should everyone in the country wake up at 6 am local time anyway?
Joe
Classes can act like namespaces.
A .B.c);
--
package test;
public class Test2 {
static public class A {
static public class B {
static public String c = "C";
}
}
static public void main(String [] a){
System.err.println("test.Test2A.B.c="+test.Test2.
}
}
--
Why differentiate packages from classes?
Ah, 'multiple dispatch'. That was the term I was looking for. After more thought this afternoon, I have to agree that the efficiency trade off would not be worth it all the time, but it would be a nifty answer to the huge switch statements that occur when parsing.
Ah, 'meta classes'. Another term. That would fix that problem.
I guess the only difference we have is import with globing or regular expressions. I just figure that the extremely limiting import a package, but not a group of packages is a silly limit.
Thanks for taking time out this afternoon.
Joe
Would you use J2EE when failure costs were $1m/s? I wouldn't. I would want a system that could more easily be audited, where I could read all the code. (Even using JBoss, you couldn't understand all the code due to the complex execution path.)
Banks need something much simpler than J2EE that can be completely understood. Airlines need something that is more efficient than J2EE. Once you implement a system in J2EE that is efficent, you will have removed all the OO effects that make it convenient. You might as well have implemented it in COBOL.
Joe