And he's a tedious pain in the A$$. Self-righteous, gloating over the shortcomings of the current crop of apps, reveling in the agony of the kids struggling to release even the most minimal upgrade without 3 fast followers and a deferred feature request until they get enough points banked to figure out something new. He loves their failures.
And our COBOL systems do hum along.
We spent $2 Billion over 7 years on a new core processing platform, written in something 'modern'. It was hell. And it is one of 7 core processes. We are now working on using 'Big Data' to replace another core platform, and I swear they feed it quarters to keep it running - yes, we abandoned Hadoop, but Cassandra isn't much better for my app, we never get the resources we need, and as they convert even these relatively simple apps, we go through a cycle of redesign/minimal deployment/discover massive problems/rewrite/deploy minimal features/add in necessary features/discover problems with all supporting systems/implement error handling and alerts/re-budget to accommodate the real cost/start a new feature cycle... Fortunately we measure most of these events in single-digit months instead of single-digit years. Good bye Websphere, we hardly loved ya.
COBOL need not be replaced for core, transaction-bases systems, but the pressure is enormous. For financial institutions, being able to count on reconciling cash flows reliably cannot be overvalued. Some stuff just has to work. It doesn't have to be 'modern', whatever the hell that means, it just has to work.
COBOL was ubiquitous in the financial industry before SAP's predecessor was someone's dream. COBOL will take 10 years to get rid of *if* all users begin concerted efforts to do so, these transaction processing systems are too important to just 'replace' without careful planning, development, and most importantly defend against feature creep and being engineered into failure.
SAP is a baby. COBOL is grand dad. And grand dad still gets out of bed, does his work, and does it well. There is indeed a market for fresh COBOL programmers, and a decade before they need to move on to a new platform.
In a world where we are cautioned that we will have multiple careers as the job markets change and adapt, it's ludicrous to pretend that programmers can't move on to new languages, new platforms, new challenges. What is being said is "it's cheaper to hire new grads than to hire retrained experienced workers". That is sharp practice. Not nice, but profitable. And not new.
There's also the utter inability to read every Most Recent post - and the remarkable, uncanny consistency of the number of unread posts, which usually stays at the very same number. For days. No matter how many I read.
I just want Facebook to show me stuff, not tell me what they think is true.
I already fight the FB Android app:
- Most Recent is always, ALWAYS populated with hundreds of items, despite my reading every damned one of them 2 hours ago.
- I can Like item after item, and 15 minutes later scroll back through the list and MOST are actually NOT marked 'Like' by me. Huh?
- I can read Most Recent and refresh, and the order changes. Every damned time.
- I can delete all the app data, reinstall, and get the same crap. Hundreds of items unread, when I did in fact read them.
- Recommended For Me includes crap I've been rejecting for a few years now.
The Facebook Android app royally stinks. Facebook has been manipulating my feed for years. I should trust them to fact-check? No, on several counts. Never.
We celebrated the new year by ditching Cingular and getting those awful Blackberry 7105t phones with unlimited voice/data/text.
I'm still grandfathered into that plan, which isn;t always the cheapest, but it is NEVER data capped for me, NEVER limited in any way for video playback, NEVER limited for streaming of any sort.I have never had an overage in now 11 years and 3 months, ever.
Now the complaints...
At my previous office location, the cafeteria suffered from being located too close to an old GPRS tower that TMO leased, and I had to sit by the windows to get 3G service. They could not solve it, the leased tower solved voice problems and the owner was raking in $ without further effort.
Moved to my current office location 3 years ago, and here the lunch time demand is so great that I usually cannot get data service. Fortunately I like the lunch spots that give me WiFi. My Blu R1 HD may not be getting Band 12, but I don;t care to diagnose it further until my new phone next month. TMO will not build out further here, so it may be solved with Band 12/66 (TMO is leaving some Band 12 sites for Band 66, which is wack), though spectrum is changing for TMO so fast they can't keep up with phones, SDR can't come soon enough.
My vacation spot was without service for 10 years until TMO finally got Band 12 there, which they bailed on for Band 66 this past fall. At least the resort WiFi got fixed.
TMO does have odd dead spots, but not as many as Sprint. Mostly long stretches of highway through 'wilderness'.
But on the positive side:
Great customer service. Even when they can't solve the problem, they are at least pleasant and honest.
They follow through when they say they will. I've logged several 3rd level calls, and got engineers calling back explaining. Once even a roaming problem turned out to be a config problem with my phone, and they helped me set it right.
I have no intention of changing service, though right now I'm paying a bit more than I like with a 3rd line and extra phone on EIP. But it's too close to what VZW would gouge me for, and no one else can match it without exposing me to random plan changes.
According to the NHTSAM, deaths per traffic mile in the US have not increased appreciably in the past 10 years. All that texting is either not deadly, or suppressing further decreases in fatalities, which is unsupportable with the current data.
But year-to-year variability is so great it's hard to judge short-term trends, which is what so many try to use to blame smartphone use for deaths.
And try to get a clear picture of trends on non-fatal accidents. That data is not well broken out for the casual investigator.
It's been my experience that lack of readily available data often means the data isn't it isn't useful for propaganda.
I was given a Programma 101 with all docs, fortunately, that just needed some repairs. It used an assembly-like language, and i managed to write a checkbook balancing routine on it. Then i gave it away.
I acquired an HP-41 soon after, that was much more fun. Balancing a checking account in RPN is simple.
seem to indicate that Louisiana is losing 3300 acres a year to the Gulf. about 5 square miles.
Plaquemines Parish is about 780 square miles, so if all loss were in Plaquemines, it would be losing about 0.6% per year land mass. Of course the loss is spread amongst 9 or more parishes, probably 10x the area total, the loss then becoming more like 0.06% per year.
This, my friends, is a Democrat emergency.
Mind you, this is an emergency to any family who used to live on land claimed by the Gulf, but not many do, as they are wise to the ways of water, and build differently there than elsewhere. I've played nine-ball in the Bayou. It's different there, mostly in good ways. But the Governor is certainly working this for all it is worth.
And I won't. Not that I don't trust them, because I don't, nor that I don't think their security is sufficient, because it doesn't matter.
I use Google passwords by default some, and not for many things. Some social sites and such I consider noncritical, and those I'll let a password manager/login helper work for, but some I cannot trust to any system.
And Facebook is proving to be untrustworthy in many areas - 'fact checking' is anything but, censorship is becoming common and biased, which it always is, and the management of my feed proves they cannot be trusted to do what I expect them to do. No surprise there.
They can't even show me what I want to see.
So no thank you, but Facebook is not trustworthy to me. And it is less and less important to me every day.
Where I work, the key value is respect. This allows us to collaborate, to propose the best solution, to do what the customer wants and not what seems right to us.
Even then we struggle with egos, but respect is the most important value, and the core of the business.
Slashdot Mirror
You are probably correct, urgency and money won't solve for quality.
And he's a tedious pain in the A$$. Self-righteous, gloating over the shortcomings of the current crop of apps, reveling in the agony of the kids struggling to release even the most minimal upgrade without 3 fast followers and a deferred feature request until they get enough points banked to figure out something new. He loves their failures.
And our COBOL systems do hum along.
We spent $2 Billion over 7 years on a new core processing platform, written in something 'modern'. It was hell. And it is one of 7 core processes. We are now working on using 'Big Data' to replace another core platform, and I swear they feed it quarters to keep it running - yes, we abandoned Hadoop, but Cassandra isn't much better for my app, we never get the resources we need, and as they convert even these relatively simple apps, we go through a cycle of redesign/minimal deployment/discover massive problems/rewrite/deploy minimal features/add in necessary features/discover problems with all supporting systems/implement error handling and alerts/re-budget to accommodate the real cost/start a new feature cycle... Fortunately we measure most of these events in single-digit months instead of single-digit years. Good bye Websphere, we hardly loved ya.
COBOL need not be replaced for core, transaction-bases systems, but the pressure is enormous. For financial institutions, being able to count on reconciling cash flows reliably cannot be overvalued. Some stuff just has to work. It doesn't have to be 'modern', whatever the hell that means, it just has to work.
COBOL was ubiquitous in the financial industry before SAP's predecessor was someone's dream. COBOL will take 10 years to get rid of *if* all users begin concerted efforts to do so, these transaction processing systems are too important to just 'replace' without careful planning, development, and most importantly defend against feature creep and being engineered into failure.
SAP is a baby. COBOL is grand dad. And grand dad still gets out of bed, does his work, and does it well. There is indeed a market for fresh COBOL programmers, and a decade before they need to move on to a new platform.
In a world where we are cautioned that we will have multiple careers as the job markets change and adapt, it's ludicrous to pretend that programmers can't move on to new languages, new platforms, new challenges. What is being said is "it's cheaper to hire new grads than to hire retrained experienced workers". That is sharp practice. Not nice, but profitable. And not new.
Books on the beach.
Wait, there's TV in the summer? Why?
There's also the utter inability to read every Most Recent post - and the remarkable, uncanny consistency of the number of unread posts, which usually stays at the very same number. For days. No matter how many I read.
'. Did you download the app from Facebook or from some Chinese sideload store?'
really. you think so?
i'm not anywhere that stupid.
"IMHO: At first Amazon didn't get what Echo was."
Oh, you are funny.
I don't care where they are stored.
I care HOW they are USED.
No, I won't be using any of these tools any time soon, if ever. Already these services are too intrusive.
I just want Facebook to show me stuff, not tell me what they think is true.
I already fight the FB Android app:
- Most Recent is always, ALWAYS populated with hundreds of items, despite my reading every damned one of them 2 hours ago.
- I can Like item after item, and 15 minutes later scroll back through the list and MOST are actually NOT marked 'Like' by me. Huh?
- I can read Most Recent and refresh, and the order changes. Every damned time.
- I can delete all the app data, reinstall, and get the same crap. Hundreds of items unread, when I did in fact read them.
- Recommended For Me includes crap I've been rejecting for a few years now.
The Facebook Android app royally stinks. Facebook has been manipulating my feed for years. I should trust them to fact-check? No, on several counts. Never.
Because you know how this could end.
Men with guns.
Wrong-o.
The radio is that device they continuously tune to avoid commercials.
I would not move to Hawaii to play video games.
Get out and surf. Sheesh.
We celebrated the new year by ditching Cingular and getting those awful Blackberry 7105t phones with unlimited voice/data/text.
I'm still grandfathered into that plan, which isn;t always the cheapest, but it is NEVER data capped for me, NEVER limited in any way for video playback, NEVER limited for streaming of any sort.I have never had an overage in now 11 years and 3 months, ever.
Now the complaints...
At my previous office location, the cafeteria suffered from being located too close to an old GPRS tower that TMO leased, and I had to sit by the windows to get 3G service. They could not solve it, the leased tower solved voice problems and the owner was raking in $ without further effort.
Moved to my current office location 3 years ago, and here the lunch time demand is so great that I usually cannot get data service. Fortunately I like the lunch spots that give me WiFi. My Blu R1 HD may not be getting Band 12, but I don;t care to diagnose it further until my new phone next month. TMO will not build out further here, so it may be solved with Band 12/66 (TMO is leaving some Band 12 sites for Band 66, which is wack), though spectrum is changing for TMO so fast they can't keep up with phones, SDR can't come soon enough.
My vacation spot was without service for 10 years until TMO finally got Band 12 there, which they bailed on for Band 66 this past fall. At least the resort WiFi got fixed.
TMO does have odd dead spots, but not as many as Sprint. Mostly long stretches of highway through 'wilderness'.
But on the positive side:
Great customer service. Even when they can't solve the problem, they are at least pleasant and honest.
They follow through when they say they will. I've logged several 3rd level calls, and got engineers calling back explaining. Once even a roaming problem turned out to be a config problem with my phone, and they helped me set it right.
I have no intention of changing service, though right now I'm paying a bit more than I like with a 3rd line and extra phone on EIP. But it's too close to what VZW would gouge me for, and no one else can match it without exposing me to random plan changes.
That was true before smartphones.
According to the NHTSAM, deaths per traffic mile in the US have not increased appreciably in the past 10 years. All that texting is either not deadly, or suppressing further decreases in fatalities, which is unsupportable with the current data.
But year-to-year variability is so great it's hard to judge short-term trends, which is what so many try to use to blame smartphone use for deaths.
And try to get a clear picture of trends on non-fatal accidents. That data is not well broken out for the casual investigator.
It's been my experience that lack of readily available data often means the data isn't it isn't useful for propaganda.
I was given a Programma 101 with all docs, fortunately, that just needed some repairs. It used an assembly-like language, and i managed to write a checkbook balancing routine on it. Then i gave it away.
I acquired an HP-41 soon after, that was much more fun. Balancing a checking account in RPN is simple.
To be fair, Governor Edwards is a Democrat... He succeeded Bobby Jindal, Republican.
seem to indicate that Louisiana is losing 3300 acres a year to the Gulf. about 5 square miles.
Plaquemines Parish is about 780 square miles, so if all loss were in Plaquemines, it would be losing about 0.6% per year land mass. Of course the loss is spread amongst 9 or more parishes, probably 10x the area total, the loss then becoming more like 0.06% per year.
This, my friends, is a Democrat emergency.
Mind you, this is an emergency to any family who used to live on land claimed by the Gulf, but not many do, as they are wise to the ways of water, and build differently there than elsewhere. I've played nine-ball in the Bayou. It's different there, mostly in good ways. But the Governor is certainly working this for all it is worth.
Nope. That would have been 'which one of your parents sells pork?'
Ford still seems to own 19...
Halliburton, Eli Lilly, U Michigan, Prudential, Merck are some of the more notable assignees.
Some of these must be subnetted and farmed out, but IPv4 is destined for obscurity, so why bother?
Still, reading RFCs and seeing Jon Postel's name makes me want to tear up. Miss him.
Don't we all, my friend, don't we all...
Janitor at the Ba Da Bing is a job? Your dad sells pork, right?
And I won't. Not that I don't trust them, because I don't, nor that I don't think their security is sufficient, because it doesn't matter.
I use Google passwords by default some, and not for many things. Some social sites and such I consider noncritical, and those I'll let a password manager/login helper work for, but some I cannot trust to any system.
And Facebook is proving to be untrustworthy in many areas - 'fact checking' is anything but, censorship is becoming common and biased, which it always is, and the management of my feed proves they cannot be trusted to do what I expect them to do. No surprise there.
They can't even show me what I want to see.
So no thank you, but Facebook is not trustworthy to me. And it is less and less important to me every day.
This project reeks of self-righteousness. I wonder what Ballmer's political affiliations are...
Let's guess. Or not.
Where I work, the key value is respect. This allows us to collaborate, to propose the best solution, to do what the customer wants and not what seems right to us.
Even then we struggle with egos, but respect is the most important value, and the core of the business.