developed many years ago as a standards compliant webapp,... If you plan appropriately when acquiring new software, these problems wouldn't occur.
I'm not sure what you mean by "standards compliant". The standards are only suggestions, and not all browsers followed them, or interpret them differently, and CHANGE how they interpret them over time.
I've seen web apps "break" and/or degenerate due to browser implementation changes that one could not foresee.
One really annoying problem is that if Page X opens Page Y in a new browser window via a form (Http POST), and if one put a JavaScript "Close" button on the Page Y ("window.close();"), Internet Explorer added a very annoying and confusing warning prompt I think around version 7. (The Windows "X" close button is too small to be practical.)
Granted, it wasn't an outright show-stopper, but created bunches of phone calls from confused users. I've had to go back and re-code bunches of web apps.
The less you rely on JavaScript the better. JavaScript DOM manipulation often breaks or acts flaky over time, often due to alleged "security patches". But JS gets you the interaction users and managers expect from an app such that it's hard to avoid it. Many managers don't care about 7 years down the road, they want it pretty now.
And odd rendering differences seem to pop-up over time. I tested the hell out of one app in 3 diff versions of IE and in FireFox around 2009 because I knew it had to last many years. Last year when I happened to check it, stuff was shifted all funny in FireFox and Chrome. (Oddly, IE did it right, which is unexpected.)
Granted, web apps are probably more likely to wilt rather than outright die such that they still may be use-able, just grow distorted or clunky over time, like a Salvador Dali painting.
(Notice: Rant Ahead)
I really miss WYSIWYG layouts from the desktop days: no funny shifty shit (except for Windows fonts, but it could have been prevented if MS wasn't dicky). They traded DLL-Hell for Render-Version-Hell. Auto-flow layouts suck maggots, they are job security for testers and UI fiddlers, but a Yuuuuuge waste of resources. I want to focus on domain (business) logic and solve real problems, not on shifty fiddly UI's.
Bring back vector-based plotted coordinates to bring back productivity. Auto-flow can flow into my damned toilet. Tim Berners-Lee probably cost the world economy around 5 to 20 $Trillion. I'll punch him in the afterlife along with the guy who invented neckties, since all 3 of us will wind up in Hell for the suffering and ranting we, I mean they caused the entire Planet.
A new CRUD-Friendly network UI standard is needed.
The USA has crap similar to this also. Big co's legally bribe* politicians to help them milk money out of the little guy (little co's and individuals) for unrealistic reasons.
I haven't really been keeping up on that. There is CDBF for Linux shareware you can try. Also, older versions of MS-Access could open them. Older ODBC drivers may also allow access. Is this a one-time export, or continuous editing?
There's no clear-cut distinction between malware and problematic software that tricks you into using or installing it through various shades of misleading techniques, or carries with it unpleasant side-effects even if it has a useful side. I thus lump them all together under "pestware" to avoid a vocabulary or categorization debate.
worst case you close the LLC and open another one.
My dad knew a guy at church* who would open a furniture store, screw the customers, file bankruptcy, reopen a similar store under a relative's name, screw the customer, file bankruptcy, rinse, repeat until after 7 years where the original owner is no longer liable for the bankruptcy, and starts the cycle again.
Ever wonder why folks like Romney spend so much time in school? It's learning the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit.
If you can afford big lawyers, you get away with far more.
* All the scams and mayhem from church members always puzzled me. Lots of shit going on there. If they are true believers, they should realize they are going to hell. Are they so greedy or horny that they'll take pleasure now and rot for eternity because of it? Either the devil is real and tempting them, or deep down they believe the religion to be full of shit. Or maybe greed and sex are a reflex more powerful than the fear of baking 30 years from now. I've known women with seemingly hypnotic powers myself. I'm too geeky to draw their interest though (for good or bad). Humans are odd. Religion odder still.
I can tell you that if you don't make your sales quota you get fired... Doesn't help that the pay is so low it's either cheat on your sales or skip eating this week.
Although not a call-center, I've been in ugly situations during recessions, so I can relate.
It's why something like a union would be nice: if you have evidence of being pressured into deceiving customers by your manager(s), you could report it without risk of being terminated. If it's likely to turn into word against word, then other employees can testify also. I imagine there's lots of gray areas, though.
A century or so ago, factory employers made work a high-pressure hellhole, and that's why unions grew. These Phone Tanks have reinvented similar ugliness.
The problem is that unions make the cost of labor too high such that the jobs flow to the 3rd world now. Perhaps we can demand that if a country wants to trade with us, they must have sufficient labor protections in place. We don't have to let them into our market: it's our damned country: let's not make it a race to the bottom.
If you need to repair something that's no longer manufactured and hard to find parts for, it's unrealistic to have to hire a lawyer to find and help negotiate "design usage rights". That's just plain dumb.
Or if it's a simple part with no patents on it, such as a gear, connector pin, etc. Ancient Greeks invented the (known) gear, for goodness sake.
There should be "repair reality" clause of some sort.
We've had the experience whereby we order a new service or discount program. The AT&T "operator" starts talking fast and rattling off obscure names and words. When we ask for clarification, the operator just changes the subject, or says, "one second, let me check on something". Then a month and a half later, strange fees start showing up on our bill. After giving us the transfer run-around, we finally ask to have the fees removed. The "operator" says, "Sorry, they must have gotten there by accident".
I suspect these "operators" get a cut of any add-on service they sell, and thus have an incentive to stick you with a service using well-honed tricks of the mouth. In case the conversation is recorded, they have their "sloppy talk" as an excuse. In the end, it's "just a misunderstanding".
Why are all their "misunderstandings" in THEIR favor and not ours?
If there truly is a hell, these "operators" will roast crispy and crunchy (along with the managers who know about it and do nothing).
Keeping the Primary and backup generators close enough to each other for one to destroy the other, sounds like bad design to me.
Also, shouldn't they have halon (or equivalent) fire retardant systems to automatically put fires out, or is that only for computers themselves?
It might be the power has to be shut down if a fire detected, and the backup generator was on the same power line or group as the one with the fire.
Like you said, they probably should be spread apart from each other but maybe the real-estate of the area would make that very expensive. Or, they just didn't plan right.
[PHB:] How does the cloud go down?... Where are the damn synergies? I was told there would be synergies!
Engineer: "The synergies got transposed in the Flux Capacitor and will need a Matrix Realignment with the Cloudification Quantum Dot Decryption Cycler Stack."
PHB: "Bahh, whaddever, just fix it fast, or you're fired!"
Yes, but banks can be ran nearly independently of each other, while airlines cannot: each flight is potentially inter-related. Banks don't fly and cannot land in the same city during the same time period.
One could perhaps split out airlines into artificial groupings, but that may create inefficiencies that an integrated (centralized) approach wouldn't have. There may be a trade-off between efficiency and independence, and this airline may have chosen efficiency over less down-time.
Also it's probably impossible to keep transactions in-sync for spare systems separated by many miles without some delay. Light doesn't travel fast enough. There probably has to be a primary system with the other 2 regions you mentioned lagging. The more transactions involved, the harder it may be to have reliable up-to-date spares. It's possible airlines have more transactions than banks and that Delta did have spares, but they were not up-to-date enough to be transparently useful.
I don't know the transaction rate of airlines compared to banks. This info may include flight positions and status, in addition to ticket purchases.
There's an increasing number of security-related Slashdot stories. While not necessarily a bad thing, perhaps an easier way should be provided to browse non-security-related stories when one wants to. Suggestions welcome.
Security certainly is a growing problem, I don't dispute that, but reading too many gets depressing.
A preliminary suggestion is to adjust the top "Categories" to have checkmarks. Your preferred (default) checkmarks would be stored with your user profile, along with a link next to the category menu to change preferences (to avoid hunting around in menu trees).
Draft categories:
* Hardware * Security * Development * Open Source * Non-IT STEM * Politics * Social Media / Entertainment * Other
One would uncheck categories they don't want included.
Many stories will fall into multiple categories, which could make things tricky. There are of course UI's for fancier filtering, but that may be overkill. Maybe color coding of some kind?
As long as it's usually "the other guy" who's a victim of leaks, not enough will care to bring about change.
But one of these days, enough people will be publicly humiliated that politicians will be forced to take action (and probably ham-handed action, based on their past).
They know where you are in the basement, who your mother is, who your father is (not who you think), how many pizza crumbs and pepperonis you left in the couch, how many times you wanked last week, what you were wearing while wanking, how many Linux distros you own, how many still won't boot, how many times you cried over losing D&D this year, how many times you told users to RTFM, how many times they actually did, why your last and only girlfriend is at Bellevue Psychiatric Ward, and that you are about to mod me down based on probabilistic models of both our past behaviors.
But cheer up, for they are giving you a 12% discount on your next Dell server purchase being there's a 38.7% probability that once you get familiar with Dell hardware, you'll buy more in the future. (Well, actually you'll get your mom to buy it for you, like you did your other 17 boxes.)
To anybody who has ever had one of those long metallic "snakes" shoved up or down an orifice for medical examinations while awake will likely welcome this technology. Trust, me, "the snake" is sooo f8cking uncomfortable. I won't ever do the snake while awake again unless my life is directly on the line.
1. Rapid Growth 2. Monopolization 3. Monopoly cash-cow cruse-mode 4. Changes make you irrelevant 5. Try to change, but lost competitive edge 6. Milk locked-in customers for every last dime 7. Sue everything and everyone for money 8. Shrink to nothing 9. Borg'ed: get bought out by a conglomerate at a discount
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure what you mean by "standards compliant". The standards are only suggestions, and not all browsers followed them, or interpret them differently, and CHANGE how they interpret them over time.
I've seen web apps "break" and/or degenerate due to browser implementation changes that one could not foresee.
One really annoying problem is that if Page X opens Page Y in a new browser window via a form (Http POST), and if one put a JavaScript "Close" button on the Page Y ("window.close();"), Internet Explorer added a very annoying and confusing warning prompt I think around version 7. (The Windows "X" close button is too small to be practical.)
Granted, it wasn't an outright show-stopper, but created bunches of phone calls from confused users. I've had to go back and re-code bunches of web apps.
The less you rely on JavaScript the better. JavaScript DOM manipulation often breaks or acts flaky over time, often due to alleged "security patches". But JS gets you the interaction users and managers expect from an app such that it's hard to avoid it. Many managers don't care about 7 years down the road, they want it pretty now.
And odd rendering differences seem to pop-up over time. I tested the hell out of one app in 3 diff versions of IE and in FireFox around 2009 because I knew it had to last many years. Last year when I happened to check it, stuff was shifted all funny in FireFox and Chrome. (Oddly, IE did it right, which is unexpected.)
Granted, web apps are probably more likely to wilt rather than outright die such that they still may be use-able, just grow distorted or clunky over time, like a Salvador Dali painting.
(Notice: Rant Ahead)
I really miss WYSIWYG layouts from the desktop days: no funny shifty shit (except for Windows fonts, but it could have been prevented if MS wasn't dicky). They traded DLL-Hell for Render-Version-Hell. Auto-flow layouts suck maggots, they are job security for testers and UI fiddlers, but a Yuuuuuge waste of resources. I want to focus on domain (business) logic and solve real problems, not on shifty fiddly UI's.
Bring back vector-based plotted coordinates to bring back productivity. Auto-flow can flow into my damned toilet. Tim Berners-Lee probably cost the world economy around 5 to 20 $Trillion. I'll punch him in the afterlife along with the guy who invented neckties, since all 3 of us will wind up in Hell for the suffering and ranting we, I mean they caused the entire Planet.
A new CRUD-Friendly network UI standard is needed.
I suspect they are repressed, and when they "slip", they slip big and heavy because bottled up emotion overwhelms them.
XLNT!
The USA has crap similar to this also. Big co's legally bribe* politicians to help them milk money out of the little guy (little co's and individuals) for unrealistic reasons.
* Thanks to Citizens United ruling etc.
What, no ability to leverage synergy? Bah!
I haven't really been keeping up on that. There is CDBF for Linux shareware you can try. Also, older versions of MS-Access could open them. Older ODBC drivers may also allow access. Is this a one-time export, or continuous editing?
There's no clear-cut distinction between malware and problematic software that tricks you into using or installing it through various shades of misleading techniques, or carries with it unpleasant side-effects even if it has a useful side. I thus lump them all together under "pestware" to avoid a vocabulary or categorization debate.
My dad knew a guy at church* who would open a furniture store, screw the customers, file bankruptcy, reopen a similar store under a relative's name, screw the customer, file bankruptcy, rinse, repeat until after 7 years where the original owner is no longer liable for the bankruptcy, and starts the cycle again.
If you can afford big lawyers, you get away with far more.
* All the scams and mayhem from church members always puzzled me. Lots of shit going on there. If they are true believers, they should realize they are going to hell. Are they so greedy or horny that they'll take pleasure now and rot for eternity because of it? Either the devil is real and tempting them, or deep down they believe the religion to be full of shit. Or maybe greed and sex are a reflex more powerful than the fear of baking 30 years from now. I've known women with seemingly hypnotic powers myself. I'm too geeky to draw their interest though (for good or bad). Humans are odd. Religion odder still.
Although not a call-center, I've been in ugly situations during recessions, so I can relate.
It's why something like a union would be nice: if you have evidence of being pressured into deceiving customers by your manager(s), you could report it without risk of being terminated. If it's likely to turn into word against word, then other employees can testify also. I imagine there's lots of gray areas, though.
A century or so ago, factory employers made work a high-pressure hellhole, and that's why unions grew. These Phone Tanks have reinvented similar ugliness.
The problem is that unions make the cost of labor too high such that the jobs flow to the 3rd world now. Perhaps we can demand that if a country wants to trade with us, they must have sufficient labor protections in place. We don't have to let them into our market: it's our damned country: let's not make it a race to the bottom.
If you need to repair something that's no longer manufactured and hard to find parts for, it's unrealistic to have to hire a lawyer to find and help negotiate "design usage rights". That's just plain dumb.
Or if it's a simple part with no patents on it, such as a gear, connector pin, etc. Ancient Greeks invented the (known) gear, for goodness sake.
There should be "repair reality" clause of some sort.
It used to be trendy to blame every breach on N. Korea. Did they take a nap or something?
We've had the experience whereby we order a new service or discount program. The AT&T "operator" starts talking fast and rattling off obscure names and words. When we ask for clarification, the operator just changes the subject, or says, "one second, let me check on something". Then a month and a half later, strange fees start showing up on our bill. After giving us the transfer run-around, we finally ask to have the fees removed. The "operator" says, "Sorry, they must have gotten there by accident".
I suspect these "operators" get a cut of any add-on service they sell, and thus have an incentive to stick you with a service using well-honed tricks of the mouth. In case the conversation is recorded, they have their "sloppy talk" as an excuse. In the end, it's "just a misunderstanding".
Why are all their "misunderstandings" in THEIR favor and not ours?
If there truly is a hell, these "operators" will roast crispy and crunchy (along with the managers who know about it and do nothing).
Just outsource it to the overseas guy who hacked you
Also, shouldn't they have halon (or equivalent) fire retardant systems to automatically put fires out, or is that only for computers themselves?
It might be the power has to be shut down if a fire detected, and the backup generator was on the same power line or group as the one with the fire.
Like you said, they probably should be spread apart from each other but maybe the real-estate of the area would make that very expensive. Or, they just didn't plan right.
Engineer: "The synergies got transposed in the Flux Capacitor and will need a Matrix Realignment with the Cloudification Quantum Dot Decryption Cycler Stack."
PHB: "Bahh, whaddever, just fix it fast, or you're fired!"
The business mindset between the countries may be different with different trade-offs.
Perhaps the USA is best at being "cowboys", breaking into new industries, while Europe is better at longer-term infrastructure.
Yes, but banks can be ran nearly independently of each other, while airlines cannot: each flight is potentially inter-related. Banks don't fly and cannot land in the same city during the same time period.
One could perhaps split out airlines into artificial groupings, but that may create inefficiencies that an integrated (centralized) approach wouldn't have. There may be a trade-off between efficiency and independence, and this airline may have chosen efficiency over less down-time.
Also it's probably impossible to keep transactions in-sync for spare systems separated by many miles without some delay. Light doesn't travel fast enough. There probably has to be a primary system with the other 2 regions you mentioned lagging. The more transactions involved, the harder it may be to have reliable up-to-date spares. It's possible airlines have more transactions than banks and that Delta did have spares, but they were not up-to-date enough to be transparently useful.
I don't know the transaction rate of airlines compared to banks. This info may include flight positions and status, in addition to ticket purchases.
There's an increasing number of security-related Slashdot stories. While not necessarily a bad thing, perhaps an easier way should be provided to browse non-security-related stories when one wants to. Suggestions welcome.
Security certainly is a growing problem, I don't dispute that, but reading too many gets depressing.
A preliminary suggestion is to adjust the top "Categories" to have checkmarks. Your preferred (default) checkmarks would be stored with your user profile, along with a link next to the category menu to change preferences (to avoid hunting around in menu trees).
Draft categories:
* Hardware
* Security
* Development
* Open Source
* Non-IT STEM
* Politics
* Social Media / Entertainment
* Other
One would uncheck categories they don't want included.
Many stories will fall into multiple categories, which could make things tricky. There are of course UI's for fancier filtering, but that may be overkill. Maybe color coding of some kind?
The oligopolies are also the jerkiest. Lack of competition does that.
It's so unpleasant, I didn't want to google its real name.
Like spammers who "protect" us from missing out on Great Deals.
As long as it's usually "the other guy" who's a victim of leaks, not enough will care to bring about change.
But one of these days, enough people will be publicly humiliated that politicians will be forced to take action (and probably ham-handed action, based on their past).
They know where you are in the basement, who your mother is, who your father is (not who you think), how many pizza crumbs and pepperonis you left in the couch, how many times you wanked last week, what you were wearing while wanking, how many Linux distros you own, how many still won't boot, how many times you cried over losing D&D this year, how many times you told users to RTFM, how many times they actually did, why your last and only girlfriend is at Bellevue Psychiatric Ward, and that you are about to mod me down based on probabilistic models of both our past behaviors.
But cheer up, for they are giving you a 12% discount on your next Dell server purchase being there's a 38.7% probability that once you get familiar with Dell hardware, you'll buy more in the future. (Well, actually you'll get your mom to buy it for you, like you did your other 17 boxes.)
To anybody who has ever had one of those long metallic "snakes" shoved up or down an orifice for medical examinations while awake will likely welcome this technology. Trust, me, "the snake" is sooo f8cking uncomfortable. I won't ever do the snake while awake again unless my life is directly on the line.
They are at Stage 7:
1. Rapid Growth
2. Monopolization
3. Monopoly cash-cow cruse-mode
4. Changes make you irrelevant
5. Try to change, but lost competitive edge
6. Milk locked-in customers for every last dime
7. Sue everything and everyone for money
8. Shrink to nothing
9. Borg'ed: get bought out by a conglomerate at a discount