One must also learn how to have half hour conversations about the weather. It's a very important subject here, because it's so varied! The weather in Holland is really the major drawback - a warm sunny wind-free day is very rare, but the weather is always liveable - never too cold, never too hot.
But, as far as cities go, Amsterdam does have something if you want an active and diverse city. The Hague (Den Haag) is a good place to have a quiet beer with you and your friends, but it's not really a party town, and there are far too many guys for girls, due to the nature of expat demographics. Delft is boring. Leiden is nice if you want a small main-street city with everything you need, plus it also has more women thanks to the University's soft subject focus. Rotterdam is big and lively but has no old-city, thanks to the War. Whatever you do, live in the Randstadt (between Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam, & Utrecht) or you'll be out in the sticks.
As the locals say, the best beer in the Netherlands comes from Belgium. Heineken is not beer by most peoples' standards, even though it's almost universally available. I recommend Americans drink small glasses though, as almost all beers (and beer-like drinks) in Europe tends to have a higher alcohol percentage.
I quite like the configuration channels, but I tend to find that their tools are lacking. The official API is not feature complete, and I've been forced to hack together my own clients for configuration file management to allow nice, orderly, uploading and centralised revision control..
In my organisation, we also have multiple environments (dev, test, prod) and need to migrate config channels between them. I also had to hack together a way to automatically upload config files to the override channel for individual systems, because the API lacks support for this.
I eagerly look forward to being able to simply send patches upstream, instead of having to submit my patches via bugzilla and wait for them to filter through their support network.
In addition, fine-grained access control based on various criteria (such as IP addresses and arbitrary LDAP/other searches) for regulatory compliance or other purposes. Right now, I've implemented limited access control for kickstarts and up2date requests using mod_python handlers parsing URLs, but it's very hackish.. hopefully I can now add the appropriate hooks to Satellite itself!
I wholeheartedly believe that online communities - be they social, technical, or business - are best served with tools that help build a sense of community. I believe there's a mostly forgotten but very effective tool - for several years now I've been part of a small MUD community. We're all technical people - some programmers, some not. None of us use the MUD for gameplaying, but rather for the social aspects. The ability to implement tools in code and give them physical characteristics through descriptions and interactive commands makes (eg. notes, loggers, rooms) adds another dimension to a space. Something that IRC, Instant Messaging, and certainly email lacks. The idea of being "present" with someone else in a room helps to develop personal relationships between participants. I've never had that with email or instant messaging, and have felt it with IRC, but it never lasts. Being able to exclude people from rooms, gag them, ignore them, or virtually stab them in the face and have them bleed for several hours are added benefits. The great "Web 2.0" collaboration doesn't quite meet expectations either, but it's aiming for something similar.
Larger communities even have types of Governments and democracy. A well managed MUD can cope with many thousands of people. Look at LambdaMOO.
A member of the MUD has used it as the primary point for collaborating development of a large software project, and it was quite effective. They didn't go so far as interfacing bug tracking (not that many developers & testers), but they could have.
I could see a MUD being used in a multinational organisation to enable easy group collaboration and bonding. When I was working for a multinational in Europe, the American guys didn't feel like part of my team, no matter how many conference calls we shared. I think being able to be part of their musings in a less formal atmosphere would've made a big difference.
The big problem with MUDs? If you're not careful, they can be time-wasters.
When I was working at an Aussie Telco, I wrote an IP Management Database. It was designed to provide an easy-to-manage overview of the IP space, but allow automated allocation. After I left the company, I wrote a new one from scratch based on the original design.. this isn't complete (lacking some features), but it's quite usable. I was going to market it commercially (and still might) but I got distracted with life, and it's been sitting around doing nothing. I'd like to see it used and further developed, so if you're interested, we can reach an arrangement. http://spinnesoft.com/products/ipdatabase/
You can contact me via jabber at rmt@jabber.freenet.de, or via the email addresses on the website.
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But, as far as cities go, Amsterdam does have something if you want an active and diverse city. The Hague (Den Haag) is a good place to have a quiet beer with you and your friends, but it's not really a party town, and there are far too many guys for girls, due to the nature of expat demographics. Delft is boring. Leiden is nice if you want a small main-street city with everything you need, plus it also has more women thanks to the University's soft subject focus. Rotterdam is big and lively but has no old-city, thanks to the War. Whatever you do, live in the Randstadt (between Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam, & Utrecht) or you'll be out in the sticks.
As the locals say, the best beer in the Netherlands comes from Belgium. Heineken is not beer by most peoples' standards, even though it's almost universally available. I recommend Americans drink small glasses though, as almost all beers (and beer-like drinks) in Europe tends to have a higher alcohol percentage.
In my organisation, we also have multiple environments (dev, test, prod) and need to migrate config channels between them. I also had to hack together a way to automatically upload config files to the override channel for individual systems, because the API lacks support for this.
I eagerly look forward to being able to simply send patches upstream, instead of having to submit my patches via bugzilla and wait for them to filter through their support network.
In addition, fine-grained access control based on various criteria (such as IP addresses and arbitrary LDAP/other searches) for regulatory compliance or other purposes. Right now, I've implemented limited access control for kickstarts and up2date requests using mod_python handlers parsing URLs, but it's very hackish.. hopefully I can now add the appropriate hooks to Satellite itself!
I wholeheartedly believe that online communities - be they social, technical, or business - are best served with tools that help build a sense of community. I believe there's a mostly forgotten but very effective tool - for several years now I've been part of a small MUD community. We're all technical people - some programmers, some not. None of us use the MUD for gameplaying, but rather for the social aspects. The ability to implement tools in code and give them physical characteristics through descriptions and interactive commands makes (eg. notes, loggers, rooms) adds another dimension to a space. Something that IRC, Instant Messaging, and certainly email lacks. The idea of being "present" with someone else in a room helps to develop personal relationships between participants. I've never had that with email or instant messaging, and have felt it with IRC, but it never lasts. Being able to exclude people from rooms, gag them, ignore them, or virtually stab them in the face and have them bleed for several hours are added benefits. The great "Web 2.0" collaboration doesn't quite meet expectations either, but it's aiming for something similar.
Larger communities even have types of Governments and democracy. A well managed MUD can cope with many thousands of people. Look at LambdaMOO.
A member of the MUD has used it as the primary point for collaborating development of a large software project, and it was quite effective. They didn't go so far as interfacing bug tracking (not that many developers & testers), but they could have.
I could see a MUD being used in a multinational organisation to enable easy group collaboration and bonding. When I was working for a multinational in Europe, the American guys didn't feel like part of my team, no matter how many conference calls we shared. I think being able to be part of their musings in a less formal atmosphere would've made a big difference.
The big problem with MUDs? If you're not careful, they can be time-wasters.
When I was working at an Aussie Telco, I wrote an IP Management Database. It was designed to provide an easy-to-manage overview of the IP space, but allow automated allocation. After I left the company, I wrote a new one from scratch based on the original design.. this isn't complete (lacking some features), but it's quite usable. I was going to market it commercially (and still might) but I got distracted with life, and it's been sitting around doing nothing. I'd like to see it used and further developed, so if you're interested, we can reach an arrangement. http://spinnesoft.com/products/ipdatabase/
You can contact me via jabber at rmt@jabber.freenet.de, or via the email addresses on the website.