There is a flip-side to that though. Sometimes the engineers do not know what they are talking about (usually due to bad hiring by the managers) and the managers are so lacking in IT understanding that they cannot participate in making a good decision based on the engineers recommendation.
What I see very often, is that the engineer understands fully the IT problem/solution, but is unable to see the business perspective. Many times the best IT solution is not the best business decision, there are often many other factors relating to client and vendor relations, budgeting, etc that the manager must deal with.
The best managers seem to have some IT understanding, and are willing to listen to all the engineers recommendations (and ask lots of questions) before making a decision. Then if the decision does not follow the recommendation, the manager will explain the reasoning to the engineers to make sure it will not cause an IT catastrophe.
I must be entirely missing the point here. I do not see why we would hold any of these companies liable for bugs unless they were contractually obligated to be bug-free, which is just about as far from reality as you can get.
The vendors always clearly provide an EULA among other documentation which states that they are accepting no responsibility for problems in this software, and that you use it at your own risk.
So if you are buying this software why are you then upset when it has bugs? If you want a guarentee that it is bug free then you should make this deal with the vendor ahead of time, or purchase some sort of insurance policy.
Why must people be constantly looking to government to protect them from their own short-comings. The vendor clearly tells you they are not sure the product is bug free, and clearly denies liability, and then you are surprised to find there are bugs? Perhaps these people should run to their mothers for a warm glass of milk to help them calm down.
Conclusion: "The pilot, who in a crisis decides against protecting the engines and in favor of saving the aircraft and human lives, is rendered powerless by the "foresighted" programmer of the system."
To be fair, these engines are kept below full reverse to avoid catostrophic engine failure that could likely result in explosion and loss of the entire wing.
People are worried these sites will be used for scamming, but the real scam is being run by the site itself. They are taking advantage of those people that really don't understand finances and think they can make money but lending here.
You can make an equal or greater amount of money in a CD or even savings account with the same money, and have zero risk, AND have access to your money if you need it.
Why the HELL would anyone give their money out to a stranger at fairly high risk, and have no way to get that money back early in an emergency, for zero benefit? There is no ROI.
Go put your money in an ordinary savings account or CD, or if you want some more risk look into some funds where you'll likely recieve an even higher rate of return.
Given that there has never been evidence of this before, it's far more likely theres another cause. Maybe the building is full of asbestos, or some other harmful material... Maybe all the employees took an employee training course near a nuclear plant or something.
It could be any number of things, but this pseudo-science where people assume correlation has any bearing on causation is only for the ignorant.
You might do some work on your own site. It's not bad, It seems like a good start, but there are serious issues with the coloring on the main menu. Allowing the background to bleed into the menu makes it unreadable.
Maybe make it scalable too? I know its always a challenge in site design to cope with the small percentage of users running some absurd 800x600 resolution, but don't let that destroy your site for the rest of us running at modern resolutions. (1280x1024 minimum)
It's not a scam. Do you live in a vacuum? Every financial show has been talking about this for weeks. The general consensus is that it is probably a good short term buy, but long term regulation and competition will force them out of business.
This is not 'outsourcing' as some said, but is in fact a very good step in the right direction.
As we know, space exploration is not cheap, and to advance the knowledge and technology at a significant pace often requires the resources of a government, or several governments.
With very few politicians seeing a return on investment (justly or not) in space travel, NASA budgets are shrinking, and cooperation between governments to reduce the financial burden sounds like a great thing.
I think this also might help bring about a sense of global ownership and responsibility regarding space exploration, which in my opinion is crucial to significant advances.
The fact that people aren't even aware of their reliance on Windows CE is exactly the reason why it is so important Microsoft keeps on the ball with CE releases.
I think you underestimate the sheer volume of Windows CE users, and almost none of them even know it. Most of your major car manufacurers use CE in their newer vehicles, especially luxury cars. It is in cable boxes, dvrs, exercise equipment, dish washers and point of sale systems... It is everywhere and being used more every day.
And what is so wrong with XP that a new version is needed in a rush? Keep in mind that Vista is designed as a new generation of operating system, taking advantage of it (or even using it) will require pretty advanced and expensive hardware... Microsoft needs to wait until people are ready for it.
I actually prefer the cox PVR. First of all it is cheap, but most importantly, it offers features not yet available with any tivo. (Am I wrong here?)
My cox PVR can record two shows simultaneously in HD... I don't even think TIVO makes a model that can record a single HD signal yet, although the upcoming TIVO will have all of these features.
The cox box isn't as feature rich as a tivo, it just has basic recoding and scheduling ability, HDMI outputs, and dual HD tuners. Also a very convienent button is available on the remote to quickly cycle between different aspect ratios, which is helpful for going between HD and SD
Most importantly, it is all integrated so I don't need some IR blaster to tell the Tivo to change channels, and I am able to fully take advantage of all the programming in the On-Demand section. Oh, and the tv guide is much easier to use that Tivo's silly translucent backwards-pivoted table.
A dissapointing feature is the restriction placed on the HDMI output, that keeps it from working with my reciever for rights management reasons.
What is wrong with the oil companies raking it in? If you started a company wouldn't you try to rake it in? They actually sell their product at a much much lower profit margin than most products.
Apple is raking in the profit and probably making many times the profit margin on each device than an oil company does on a barrel of oil.
Also, people seem to forget that the oil business is a very risky business, but no one seems to notice when hurricanes take out oil rigs or a company drills dry wells, and loses billions of dollars, they only notice when the company is profitable.
It is a product just like any other, and you are more than welcome to stop purchasing it. Natural Gas powered vehicles can be purchased just as cheaply as gasoline vehicles in many cases, go get one of them. Or buy an electric car.
You and everyone else keep using oil becuase it is abundant and cheaper than almost any alternative... Sounds like a pretty good product to me, so why be angry with the people providing it to us?
Also keep in mind that these oil companies are not setting the prices, oil is traded as a commodity, it is being bought and sold on speculation just like a stock... If someone is afraid they won't be able to get their hands on any more of it they will of course charge more for what they do have. Wouldn't you?
In response to your implication about congress, I of course agree entirely. They are a bunch of scumbags and are not serving their constituents at all. But that surely isn't their fault, the great people of this country are the ones that keep electing them. The fact that 50% of the public probably could not name a single congressmen gives a little insight into the root of the problem.
Just to play devils advocate here, reviews have been coming around showing as much as a 30% speed increase for common tasks if you install Windows on your Intel mac.
With a 30% speed increase during my normal daily use, I could probably afford a little downtime for spyware or viruses now and then.
I'm pretty baffled as to what Apple is doing, it seems like their marketing people and business strategy are not inline. Everything their doing points to lowering dependence on MacOSX, yet they continue to throw out marketing slogans saying PC's and windows suck.
I hate to tell you this Apple, but the accepted definition of a PC nowadays is a machine that is IBM PC Compatible, which of course your x86 intel macs are. Your marketing spin is starting to get old... First you told us PowerPC was the only way, and x86 was crap, then you decided to use x86 becuase it was cheaper/cooler/faster. Next you told us MacOS was the only way to make the x86 Intel CPU's work well, then you released a tool so we could all install windows and see it run much faster than MacOS. What's next?
Classic slashdot... Microsoft says they will be spending more money next year, so we get articles formulating elaborate stories about Bill Gates taking over the company again and using his monopoly to break anti-trust laws and kill the little guy, etc, etc.
This is just random bullshit speculation, might it just be that microsoft is in the middle of some of the largest product launches in their history, with SQL server, new development tools, a huge new Operating system, new web browsers, and a new website www.live.com.
I suppose it would just be too logical that they might be spending money marketing and supporting all these huge new endeavors.
I know its hard to accept microsoft did something good, but as someone who has been using betas of this for months, I must say it is pretty darn slick.
Think of how great your linux environment is, becuase you can easily chain together applications that pass textual data between each other... This is the same idea, except we can now pass complex objects and custom data types as well.
To solve the problem of how to 'display' an object, each object type can have an xml file describing how to display it in a text environment.
Where is all this mystical child porn anyway? I'm online all day and I've never seen any. I'm starting to think its not as big a problem as it is made out to be.
You gotta relax buddy, this isn't the government oppressing anyone, this is a private ISP. People sign up with AOL in the first place becuase they want to be sheltered from the internet. AOL is welcome to block anything and everything they want to, customers can always leave and find a proper ISP.
My ISP is constantly throttling all the common torrent ports, and even blocks me sometimes from downloading certain popular copyrighted torrents. I suppose that is a sign of a nazi takeover.
So when I look at child porn I should fire up one of my free encrypted SSH proxies first?
Oh wait, the government can't force the server i'm tunneling to, outside of the US, to retain any data... I suppose we better wrap a firewall around our country and not let those damn foreigners access to our internet.
There are dozens of better ways. It is silly, expensive, and pointless to retain all data. Why are we retaining it unless someone plans to illegally search through it?
If your trying to block child porn, why not have the isp retain logs for people looking at child porn.... Theres no reason for them to log my visits to Amazon.com.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a flip-side to that though. Sometimes the engineers do not know what they are talking about (usually due to bad hiring by the managers) and the managers are so lacking in IT understanding that they cannot participate in making a good decision based on the engineers recommendation.
What I see very often, is that the engineer understands fully the IT problem/solution, but is unable to see the business perspective. Many times the best IT solution is not the best business decision, there are often many other factors relating to client and vendor relations, budgeting, etc that the manager must deal with.
The best managers seem to have some IT understanding, and are willing to listen to all the engineers recommendations (and ask lots of questions) before making a decision. Then if the decision does not follow the recommendation, the manager will explain the reasoning to the engineers to make sure it will not cause an IT catastrophe.
I must be entirely missing the point here. I do not see why we would hold any of these companies liable for bugs unless they were contractually obligated to be bug-free, which is just about as far from reality as you can get.
The vendors always clearly provide an EULA among other documentation which states that they are accepting no responsibility for problems in this software, and that you use it at your own risk.
So if you are buying this software why are you then upset when it has bugs? If you want a guarentee that it is bug free then you should make this deal with the vendor ahead of time, or purchase some sort of insurance policy.
Why must people be constantly looking to government to protect them from their own short-comings. The vendor clearly tells you they are not sure the product is bug free, and clearly denies liability, and then you are surprised to find there are bugs? Perhaps these people should run to their mothers for a warm glass of milk to help them calm down.
Land mines would be fun also. For those with a slower connection, they could just watch the feed and see the explosions, rather than having to aim.
Conclusion: "The pilot, who in a crisis decides against protecting the engines and in favor of saving the aircraft and human lives, is rendered powerless by the "foresighted" programmer of the system."
To be fair, these engines are kept below full reverse to avoid catostrophic engine failure that could likely result in explosion and loss of the entire wing.
People are worried these sites will be used for scamming, but the real scam is being run by the site itself. They are taking advantage of those people that really don't understand finances and think they can make money but lending here.
You can make an equal or greater amount of money in a CD or even savings account with the same money, and have zero risk, AND have access to your money if you need it.
Why the HELL would anyone give their money out to a stranger at fairly high risk, and have no way to get that money back early in an emergency, for zero benefit? There is no ROI.
Go put your money in an ordinary savings account or CD, or if you want some more risk look into some funds where you'll likely recieve an even higher rate of return.
Please remember correlation is not causation....
Given that there has never been evidence of this before, it's far more likely theres another cause. Maybe the building is full of asbestos, or some other harmful material... Maybe all the employees took an employee training course near a nuclear plant or something.
It could be any number of things, but this pseudo-science where people assume correlation has any bearing on causation is only for the ignorant.
You might do some work on your own site. It's not bad, It seems like a good start, but there are serious issues with the coloring on the main menu. Allowing the background to bleed into the menu makes it unreadable.
Maybe make it scalable too? I know its always a challenge in site design to cope with the small percentage of users running some absurd 800x600 resolution, but don't let that destroy your site for the rest of us running at modern resolutions. (1280x1024 minimum)
You can join your union... And when you all go on strike I'll fire everyone and pick up a new batch of VB6 programmers from the local radio shack.
Ya but at least you'll have less money to begin with since your paycheck is taxed heavier too!
Oh... Wait... Nevermind.
Isn't socialism grand!
It's not a scam. Do you live in a vacuum? Every financial show has been talking about this for weeks. The general consensus is that it is probably a good short term buy, but long term regulation and competition will force them out of business.
This is not 'outsourcing' as some said, but is in fact a very good step in the right direction.
As we know, space exploration is not cheap, and to advance the knowledge and technology at a significant pace often requires the resources of a government, or several governments.
With very few politicians seeing a return on investment (justly or not) in space travel, NASA budgets are shrinking, and cooperation between governments to reduce the financial burden sounds like a great thing.
I think this also might help bring about a sense of global ownership and responsibility regarding space exploration, which in my opinion is crucial to significant advances.
The fact that people aren't even aware of their reliance on Windows CE is exactly the reason why it is so important Microsoft keeps on the ball with CE releases.
I think you underestimate the sheer volume of Windows CE users, and almost none of them even know it. Most of your major car manufacurers use CE in their newer vehicles, especially luxury cars. It is in cable boxes, dvrs, exercise equipment, dish washers and point of sale systems... It is everywhere and being used more every day.
And what is so wrong with XP that a new version is needed in a rush? Keep in mind that Vista is designed as a new generation of operating system, taking advantage of it (or even using it) will require pretty advanced and expensive hardware... Microsoft needs to wait until people are ready for it.
I actually prefer the cox PVR. First of all it is cheap, but most importantly, it offers features not yet available with any tivo. (Am I wrong here?)
My cox PVR can record two shows simultaneously in HD... I don't even think TIVO makes a model that can record a single HD signal yet, although the upcoming TIVO will have all of these features.
The cox box isn't as feature rich as a tivo, it just has basic recoding and scheduling ability, HDMI outputs, and dual HD tuners. Also a very convienent button is available on the remote to quickly cycle between different aspect ratios, which is helpful for going between HD and SD
Most importantly, it is all integrated so I don't need some IR blaster to tell the Tivo to change channels, and I am able to fully take advantage of all the programming in the On-Demand section. Oh, and the tv guide is much easier to use that Tivo's silly translucent backwards-pivoted table.
A dissapointing feature is the restriction placed on the HDMI output, that keeps it from working with my reciever for rights management reasons.
What is wrong with the oil companies raking it in? If you started a company wouldn't you try to rake it in? They actually sell their product at a much much lower profit margin than most products.
Apple is raking in the profit and probably making many times the profit margin on each device than an oil company does on a barrel of oil.
Also, people seem to forget that the oil business is a very risky business, but no one seems to notice when hurricanes take out oil rigs or a company drills dry wells, and loses billions of dollars, they only notice when the company is profitable.
It is a product just like any other, and you are more than welcome to stop purchasing it. Natural Gas powered vehicles can be purchased just as cheaply as gasoline vehicles in many cases, go get one of them. Or buy an electric car.
You and everyone else keep using oil becuase it is abundant and cheaper than almost any alternative... Sounds like a pretty good product to me, so why be angry with the people providing it to us?
Also keep in mind that these oil companies are not setting the prices, oil is traded as a commodity, it is being bought and sold on speculation just like a stock... If someone is afraid they won't be able to get their hands on any more of it they will of course charge more for what they do have. Wouldn't you?
In response to your implication about congress, I of course agree entirely. They are a bunch of scumbags and are not serving their constituents at all. But that surely isn't their fault, the great people of this country are the ones that keep electing them. The fact that 50% of the public probably could not name a single congressmen gives a little insight into the root of the problem.
Just to play devils advocate here, reviews have been coming around showing as much as a 30% speed increase for common tasks if you install Windows on your Intel mac.
With a 30% speed increase during my normal daily use, I could probably afford a little downtime for spyware or viruses now and then.
I'm pretty baffled as to what Apple is doing, it seems like their marketing people and business strategy are not inline. Everything their doing points to lowering dependence on MacOSX, yet they continue to throw out marketing slogans saying PC's and windows suck.
I hate to tell you this Apple, but the accepted definition of a PC nowadays is a machine that is IBM PC Compatible, which of course your x86 intel macs are. Your marketing spin is starting to get old... First you told us PowerPC was the only way, and x86 was crap, then you decided to use x86 becuase it was cheaper/cooler/faster. Next you told us MacOS was the only way to make the x86 Intel CPU's work well, then you released a tool so we could all install windows and see it run much faster than MacOS. What's next?
your student kills you!
Classic slashdot... Microsoft says they will be spending more money next year, so we get articles formulating elaborate stories about Bill Gates taking over the company again and using his monopoly to break anti-trust laws and kill the little guy, etc, etc.
This is just random bullshit speculation, might it just be that microsoft is in the middle of some of the largest product launches in their history, with SQL server, new development tools, a huge new Operating system, new web browsers, and a new website www.live.com.
I suppose it would just be too logical that they might be spending money marketing and supporting all these huge new endeavors.
I know its hard to accept microsoft did something good, but as someone who has been using betas of this for months, I must say it is pretty darn slick.
Think of how great your linux environment is, becuase you can easily chain together applications that pass textual data between each other... This is the same idea, except we can now pass complex objects and custom data types as well.
To solve the problem of how to 'display' an object, each object type can have an xml file describing how to display it in a text environment.
Microsoft, however, demonstrated a rootkit running in a virtual machine outside of the user's O/S workspace that made detection impossible.
Windows: It's so insecure, not even DARPA can stop it.
(it's funny... laugh)
He doesn't HAVE TO wash his hands 5 times, but he thinks he does.
I'm not sure that you can quantify the difference between 'have to' and 'thinks he has to'.
That would be like saying there is a difference between thinking something is true and it actually being true. Truth exists only as a relative matter.
Where is all this mystical child porn anyway? I'm online all day and I've never seen any. I'm starting to think its not as big a problem as it is made out to be.
Never trust a person that listens to country music. Hell, avoid talking to them if at all possible.
You gotta relax buddy, this isn't the government oppressing anyone, this is a private ISP. People sign up with AOL in the first place becuase they want to be sheltered from the internet. AOL is welcome to block anything and everything they want to, customers can always leave and find a proper ISP.
My ISP is constantly throttling all the common torrent ports, and even blocks me sometimes from downloading certain popular copyrighted torrents. I suppose that is a sign of a nazi takeover.
So when I look at child porn I should fire up one of my free encrypted SSH proxies first?
Oh wait, the government can't force the server i'm tunneling to, outside of the US, to retain any data... I suppose we better wrap a firewall around our country and not let those damn foreigners access to our internet.
Why don't we just all move to china instead?
There are dozens of better ways. It is silly, expensive, and pointless to retain all data. Why are we retaining it unless someone plans to illegally search through it?
If your trying to block child porn, why not have the isp retain logs for people looking at child porn.... Theres no reason for them to log my visits to Amazon.com.