Posts by Jonathan Schwatrz 152 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Oct 2008
".....That's how Trump got elected....." No, Trumpet got elected because Shrillay's team failed to understand the very basic concept of the Electoral College. And Shrillary's team and backers massively out-spent Trumpet's when it came to propaganda - sorry, I meant to say "informing the public".
This article - like many developers - completely fails to understand the business outside the development team.
".....Project managers, previously beset with putting together complex status reports that no one seems to ever actually read, find much more meaning in their work....." You fail to understand on of the big reasons all those reports are required - because if something goes seriously (as in "we're getting sued/criminally-charged") wrong it is those reports that will help apportion blame. And I'm not talking about "how we fix the problem", it's usually long past that in real projects (one's that are not Apple/Google Store geegaws), we're talking about where a company's reputation gets trashed, who will pay the fine, or who will go to prison.
Secondly, the Ops "wall" is there for a very good reason - it is a last line of defence that protects the business from unwanted operational failures THAT COST THE COMPANY MONEY. Even after decades in the IT industry I still cannot understand why so many supposedly smart developers just simply cannot grasp the fact that the majority of businesses do not write code as a business. Most businesses are usually selling a product or a service, and a failure of code in production will often mean they lose money directly, and probably more money in the long-term through bad publicity and upset customers going elsewhere. The checks put in place by proper change management and Ops are vital as they stop the risk that the business will grind to a halt just because a developer thinks the greeting page to an app will look better after a (botched) re-write in the latest language-du-jour.
IMHO, Agile is great for tiny projects (the geegaw apps mentioned) but is not suited to anything bigger without a proper waterfall process wrapped around it.
".....They do not give a damn about what their losses....." You mean the current inhabitants of the Kremlin have zero qualms about letting the peasants be massacred as long as the inhabitants of the Kremlin are safe. Not much changed there from the days of Stalin then.
Your whataboutism has nothing to do with possible censorship of the DNS, but simply highlights another valid point from Trump - should "news" outlets that don't report news unless it fits with a biased opinion still be allowed to call themselves news? And that includes pro-Right Fox as much as the pro-Left media outlets listed by Trump. In my view, all the US's major news outlets are equally bad at reporting real news due to bias. Just because Trump raised the point (or, more likely, because the majority of "news" outlets fit with your anti-Trump viewpoint) doesn't make the point on bias any less valid, especially when the "news" outlets also pretend to be impartial. So, all you did was highlight your TDS even more.
"....anti-Muslim videos...." And here you willingly fall into the shoot-the-messenger trap. Was that a burning issue for you because you don't believe that gays are persecuted in Islamic countries - often violently - or simply because you just wanted to attack Trump? Did you spit equal venom at CNN when they reported on how the LGBT community in Egypt lives in fear? I bet you didn't, but then I bet you also weren't even aware of the persecution of homosexuality in Egypt because you hadn't been led by the nose to shriek about it in the same way you have been with Trump.
You were doing fine until your Trump Derangement Syndrome kicked in. Trump loves the open Internet, it allows him to do an end-run round the "mainstream media" with such tools as Twitter, and allows his "deplorables" to rally and rapidly exchange information/propaganda, so he has absolutely no desire to break it.
My own view is that this is Putin's attempt to control what Russians can see on the Internet - make their PDNS (Putin's DNS) only list Putin-approved sites, make use of PDNS mandatory for Russians and use of foreign DNS illegal, then pick up your political opponents by watching for DNS requests to foreign DNS servers.
".....When the automated test fails, we aren't sure whether it is the aircraft system under test, the test hardware, software, test requirements or whatever. So everyone gets paged....." LOL, that rings a bell! had an "agile" project where the developers had to deliver to fortnightly sprints, then they would go home on Friday evening and switch off their phones prior to the latest release being loaded into production - and falling over - at 2am Sunday morning. They simply got so far on the Friday afternoon and then couldn't be arsed to fix anything else, so simply fudged their testing to get the release out the door in the knowledge it would be Ops problem after 5pm Friday. Quality of code increased massively when I insisted ALL developers had to be available to help troubleshooting at 2am every Sunday. That was several years before "DevOps" suddenly became the fad of the week.
"If you were a private Bitcoin investor/speculator and you cashed in all or part of your wallet, would the money be taxed as capital gains or some other form of taxation?...." Wrong question. Right question - could Uncle Sam's taxbods present a case in court that makes it look like you intended to avoid paying tax by using Bitcoins? If so, you are screwed even if your intentions were otherwise. The taxbods work on the basis "you didn't ask us if you needed to pay tax on that, therefore we think you were trying to avoid paying tax (and are probably a criminal anyway)". And remember - Bitcoins are not anonymous!
Indeed, I did chuckle at the part in the article ".....His apparent commitment to transparency and willingness to stand up to GCHQ indicates that the new body might have more teeth than previous oversight bodies....." - GCHQ just made their new watchdog look good and independent at no real cost to themselves.
"....Effectively, this is not true..... Google enhances Google's domination." So you missed all the visits to the Obama WH? Google makes sure that Google's plans dovetail neatly with what the US authorities require as they know any administration would rather work with them than confront them. Even Trump's is starting to bend as Google carefully alters their approach to match the Trump administration's requirements. Even Trump would rather deal with Google than have say a Chinese company holding all the cards.
For the simple reason that Google et al are American companies, and if they got broken up it would mean the US would lose real dominance of the Internet. Sure, different Whitehouse administrations may throw the odd grumble in their direction, but they'd be terrified that breaking up a company like Google would give a chance to foreign companies - do you think the NSA/FBI/DEA/CIA would be happier with Baidu in Google's place?
"....Comcast..... we support net neutrality and we won't block, slow or throttle your internet, we promise...." Seriously, having suffered Comcast's appallingly patchy "high-speed" internet service, I'm curious as to how they could actually make it slower!?! Not unless they intend to make non-premium users suffer by making them call the infamous Comcast customer (dis)service lines.
As to the idea that the new incumbent of the Whitehouse is going to favour the telecoms, you must have missed Trump's sticking his oar in over AT&T's purchase of Time (because the deal includes CNN, aka The Clinton News Network), nor his bile for MSNBC (owned by the very Liberal-minded Comcast). Indeed, Trump recently went to bat for Google and Facebook in the EU, which suggests the opposite.
Stopped reading at that point - it's never worth asking a marketing droid about any tech, not unless you're looking for something to perk up your rosebushes. Always, always, always corner one of their techies, far from the protections of his/her sales team or marketing interference, and talk tech to them - you'll learn more in five minutes than you will from five weeks of marketing male bovine manure.
".....But I confess I am still deeply sceptical...." A more sceptical mind might note the presence of Airbus and jump to the conclusion this is more EU protectionism/funding being passed off as "scientific investment". Personally, I'd be a lot more impressed if the wings and upper fuselage had embedded solar panels to help generate cruising power, but that might be the next planned stage of illegal EU subsidization - sorry, I meant scientific development!
"The problem is they called themselves "Privacy International", which means they're something to do with foreigners!....." That would be a lot funnier if Privacy International weren't getting a shed load of their "donations" from George Soros's Open Society Foundations. If you think Russia spending a $100k on Facebook ads really affected an election, you might be worried if you consider Soros has been accused of spending $18 billion on messing with European politics....
"Cameras and monitors..." Pro still said no. Actually, first he just laughed at that idea, then he said an emphatic no. He explained that, when a driver is looking over his shoulder to judge where his "tandems" (trailer wheels) are, he is actually doing a complex 3D problem involving looking where the tandems are in relation to the "reference point" (the point he has to turn round to get into the spot, usually about ten feet out from the closest side of the parking space), where the tandems are in relation to each side of the "gate" (the entry to the parking space), the angle of the trailer direction relative to the sides of the parking space, and the angle of the cab to the trailer (and probably also forward and down to check which way his front wheels are pointed). That's not going to work on cameras.
Decided to ask a contact who actually runs a truck fleet, would he buy the Tesla truck? Surprisingly, he didn't have a problem with the short range, they run many "day cab" routes which are under 500 miles, but he said he wouldn't buy a truck with a central seat as it was dangerous. He explained that half his fleet's accidents are backing accidents, and the way they train their drivers is to back with the cab at an angle to the trailer, to the left (US), so they can see where the trailer wheels are. A central seat would make this impossible. He said to look on YouTube for "45-45 backing" to see what he meant. It seems Musk really didn't check with a trucking pro.
In the US, a CDL driver can be on-duty for 14 hours, of which then can drive 11 hours, before they have to take a break of 10 hours minimum (that's ignoring the 30 min break after the first 8 hours on-duty and such games as 8-3 shifts with teams). So, for solo routes, the Tesla truck could make sense if it can charge 100% in ten hours. But for long haul OTR, when the trucks run 2000+ miles day and night from say California to Pennsylvania, with two drivers working in shifts, the Tesla truck is a non-starter.
"....Bollocks - most of the time brakes barely get warm which is an indication of how much energy there is to be recovered...." Er, no. A lot of truck fires are started by the brakes getting so hot that they set light to trailer. This is why truck drivers are trained on "stab" braking and the use of Jacobs brakes (engine braking through making a number of the engine's cylinders act as air compressors to slow the truck). Big hint - a loaded semi is 40 tons!
"....And I can't see any urban area letting truckers run a genset at 50 kW full tilt for 12 hours...." Refrigerated trailers already have a separate diesel tank and a diesel-powered refrigeration unit that are very noisy. But they add a lot to the cost of the trailer and put 2000Lb of weight high on the headboard, which affects stability.
The bigger problem I see is that typical over-the-road haulage requires two drivers who drive in shifts so that the truck can run for thousands of miles with only ten minute breaks to switch driver and refuel (fifteen minutes in the USA for pre- and post-trip inspections). An electric truck that has to stop every eight hours (or less) and stand for hours to recharge simply won't compete.
"Definitely not in organisations that centrally manage everyone's desktop and tell them what they will be using...." Actually works great as a virtual Linux desktop pushed out from a VM on a blade to a thin client. The problem is the application availability, not the OS. You can even make the desktop look so much like Windows that 99% of users won't even notice it's Linux.
".....Here's a chart of the changes....." Ooh, look, another "hockey stick" chart, again with zero demonstration of causality. True, at least this one does have some funny cartoons, but still with just as much bad statistical analysis as the original.
One of the amusing inconsistencies of the whole CAGW-renamed-as-Climate-Change schpiel is how the global climate reacted to massive natural pollution events, such as the 1783 Laki eruption, which pushed roughly three times the 2006 global industrial production of "greenhouse gas" sulphur-dioxide pollution into the atmosphere, but somehow reacted much more severely to the much milder and gradual polluting of early industrial development. Of course, the other elephant in the "climate change" room is that such natural polluting events usually caused brief rises in temperature followed by more severe dips in global average temperatures, not the persistent rises the CAGW-CC crowd insist man is somehow creating. But you go on waving your hockey stick around if it keeps you happy.
".....old Exchange box....." One trick that seemed to be in vogue a few years back was to give a "monitoring function" to a server. In essence, many monitoring tools allowed you to dump reports out as HTML, so it was easy to write a C program to get the unformatted HTML file from the real monitoring server, format the HTML into a webpage file, and then have this read from your internal webserver. Getting reports and monitoring data online was all the rage. Then, simply give any server under review the formatting program for a vital service, such as Exchange. When the beancounters started asking if you really needed server X (which just happened to be your Counterstrike server and illicit MPEG storage), you could say; "Well, it runs our Exchange monitoring function, and email is a critical business service, and I'm not sure we want to run the risk of losing visibility of a critical business service....."
Of course, an added benefit was if you were ever seriously pushed to make cuts in your server estate (and after the obligatory stonewalling and emphasis on how hard a task that would be, as in requiring overtime), you could simply collapse a few "monitoring function servers" into one and claim "significant server estate reduction".
"..... it’d be nice if people actually wanted to work at your company because the culture was welcoming....." Only last week, whilst visiting an industry marketing company - "We have a big problem recruiting, and high turn-over of staff". A quick glance round the office saw many stressed faces, not one happy person in the whole building. Our second meeting I witnessed the sight of two employees - a project manager and a "creative developer" (someone that hacks HTML, apparently) - having a screaming match in the middle of the office and no-one else even missing a beat! If your office is a stress factory then don't be surprised if it really limits the number of people who want to work for you. If you're walking into an interview then always try and get a look behind the scenes and count the happy faces.
But, did Trump actually threaten violence? He could argue that he meant Kim and chums would be forced to abandon Norkland for China because UN sanctions are going to make the Norkies rise up in rebellion. Stop sniggering at the back! The UN is serious! They're just getting one of Hans Blix's old letters out to send to Kim.
"....Their failed mobile strategy will probably be taught in business schools in 2030 as a cautionary tale about hubris." Yeah, maybe. You see, people said the same when Intel slipped behind in the graphics cards wars (anyone still running a Voodoo card now?), and the again when Intel didn't dominate the first wave of SSDs (remember OCZ?). And many shouted it with glee when AMD's Opteron brought us extended 64-bit computing in white box servers, convinced it meant the death of Intel. Even Apple ended up putting Intel CPUs into Macs. Intel are not only still here, they have done almost as well as Me!
"Meanwhile AMD is having 7nm taped out....." Yeah, you do remember when everyone was saying the original Core series were dead because AMD's Bulldozer had more cores, right? The truth is it's the whole CPU package, it's integration with good motherboards and peripherals, that actually makes a difference.
Besides, everyone knows SPARC is better!
Yours with Omnipotent Powers Of Industry Insight,
Johnathan Schwartz.
Ha! Everyone knows real desktops will be running My Latest SPARC CPUs, The Almost As Awesome As I Am SPARC M8! The M8 will of course power all the servers in the World and make coffee and toast to feed the hungry. Twice daily.
Bow down before me, lesser beings!
I would say "yours in a god-like manner" but gods should really be trying to be more to be like Me,
Johnathan Schwartz.
PS: I would like to make it clear that it is a vicious rumour from The Scum Of Redmond that "CPU" at Oracle refers only to Critical Patch Updates rather than silicon. They will pay for their lies!
This really is a brilliant bit of advertising for The Zuckster! Hillary Clinton and chums spent $1.2 BILLION on her election campaign, but she tells us it was defeated by just $100K of Facebook ads!
Did no-one in the DNC think to buy some Facebook ads? Heck, they could have got it for free seeing as Facebook employees donated over a $100K to Hillary's campaign. Didn't Dustin Moskovitz (the other and slightly less gruesome Facebook founder) give them any hints when he pledged $20m for Hillary? Come on, she needed ideas, not money - she'd already got plenty of money from foreign "donations" from her time as Sec of State!
Obviously, the truth is really that it was because Zucky just copied My Excellent Marketing Skills. Did I tell you about The Time I Beat Intel And Dominated The Server Market Forever?
".....so the deal won't be nailed until the day before Brexit" It is very obvious the majority of the EUSSR has no intention of making any deal with the UK unless it is so punitive as to make the current Nork sanctions a dream option. Which means we need two systems - one for the very unlikely event there actually is a deal, and a second for the much more likely WTO rules and reversion to our pre-EU import/export laws.
"....Juncker, Barnier, Guy vanWhatsisname etc aren't actually supranational dictators." They just believe they are.
On a more positive note (yes, Remoaners, there is one), the problem is not having a system, it's of having a fast and effective one. In the worst case, we will simply revert to the paper systems of pre-EU times and let the European imports stack up, rust and rot on our docks.
Dear Unworthies,
I would just like to say that I fully support Ms Bees graceful and intelligent foray into selective censorship. SUN under My Inspired Leadership has often used such measures to squash similar attempts at blaspemous thoughts in My Crusade to spread The Sunshine. Soon I will start the Conversion of our new recruits at Oracle so that they too can share in the Wonder of My Sunshine!
Blessings (and $millions) be upon Me,
Jonathan Schwartz - that's GOD to you!
Peasants!
I am OUTRAGED that one of the Faithful should mention God and NOT state that I am The Only God! Know that Amber Road is a success that will grow and grow purely because I GAVE BIRTH TO IT in a miracle of Immaculate Conception. Pay no heed to the rumours that Fallen Angel McNealy was the Father and I played Mommie. Since I have taken it upon Myself to take the reformed sinner Larry Ellison under My Guidance, so he can turn his faltering company around and make it the outstanding success that I have made Sun, soon the whole World will have an Amber Road system, three Rock servers, and unlimited MySQL licences, and that's just in the bedroom! As soon as I have indoctrinated Saint Larry in the correct way to run a software business, and as soon as he has grown a fittingly similar ponytail, I will send him out to do My Bidding! Rise up, Sunshiners, your time is now! Now kiss my feet in reverance or burn in RHell.
Yours bombasticly,
Jonathan I Schwartz.
Why is time being wasted on this upstart "networking" company? Only My SUN can provide The True Path to Computing Happiness! What would this... - Pisco? - know about computing? After all, everyone knows the computer is the network... or was it the network is the computer? Anyway, as long as it's a SUN server it is both a computer and a network... and maybe a toaster too. And they all make great coffee, virtual coffee... because SUN made Java, the island. Or was it code? Who cares! Just buy SUN, especially our blade servers.... Or you could buy those nice ProLiant blades now I jave Blessed them with Solaris. Anyway, back to work, peons, I have a tennis match with Jake! And he better let me win again.....
You may kiss My Heinie,
Yahdah, yahdah, yahdah,
Yours Overlordingly,
Jonathan I Schwartz
(that's GOD to you!).
Dear plebs,
Once again it pains Me that I have to take time out from My Work To Make The World A Better Place to explain to you undeserving cretins that My Acolytes must not be mocked! Bill is one of the Chosen, he has seen The Light and the greatness of My Ponytail. From now on you will accept all his utterrences as though they are My Own! Well, actually they are My Own seeing as he has had the unneccessary ability of objective thought removed to allow him to understand My Plan. Nevertheless, just accept My Word that all Sun servers are infintaley superior, much cheaper and make cinnamon toast, and that Solaris is The One True OS that leads to Salvation! Forget this foolish prattle of benchmarking, shoot-outs and comparisons, they are the talk of The Devils hp and IBM! Now, get on with My Bidding.
Yours Heavenly,
Jonathon I Schwartz.
<Snip>Sun's largest share holder - Southeastern Asset Management - has secured two new independent directors on Sun's board as part of a move to "realize the company's true economic value."<Snip>
I would just like to take time to inform you peons that have not yet grasped the Greatness of My Plan that my allowing Southeastern Asset Management the honour of contributing to My Company is being misconstrued by some less-knowledgeable journalists. I have indeed invited two of their number to join My Board in basking in My Proximity and the Splendour of My Ponytail. Said muck-raking wannabe-journos have spread vile lies and innuendo that SAM's statement of "realize the company's true economic value" is a prelude to an asset-stripping venture, which is plainly untrue as they - like everyone else given the Great Fortune to meet me - are in rightful and respectful awe of my every utterence.
Bow down before Me, dogs!
Yours Greatly,
Jonathan I Schwartz.
As a Sunshiner you should know better than to compare our Objects Of Heveanly Conputing to lesser vendors' "kit". You should know that a 2TB 7110 at $10,995 is expensive when compared to a 2TB HP DL160 G5 Storage Server which is £1995 list price in the UK as customers will then fail to realise that our Object of Heavenly Computing comes with my blessing, compared to the HP system coming with the Devil's Windows Storage Server 2003 x64 Edition OS. Customers should not be fooled into thinking they can also use the DL160 with other standard Windows applications when our OOHC is an appliance only (even if they were blessed with Solaris skills), much like those heretical NetApp systems we deigned to borrow WAFL from to use in our Holy ZFS. Instead, should a customer ask why Sun OOHCs are so expensive and question their flexibility, you should simply raise an eyebrow disdainfully and remind them they are buying SALVATION!, not just a NAS.
Now, back to making me suitably rich, peon!
Yours divinely,
Jonathan I Schwartz.
Thanks for your vote of blind obedience in my bold strategy to make no money from software by giving it away for free. Please ignore all those nasty Gartner magic quadrants for RDBMS and BI that never mention any Sun or MySQL products, and so what if they always have Microsoft and Oracle in the upper-right quadrants, who cares about an integrated solution when all I want to talk about is the base database product. And we don't talk to those Oracle guys anyway seeing as they won't give Solaris preference - something to do with shrinking market share, the heretics! Anyway, so what if customers actually prefer to pay for Oracle's or MS' database software rather than take ours for free, I'm sure that will change as the recession bites and they will be forced to use Solaris and MySQL. Oh, hold on a sec, we charge for the version of MySQL with the real tools needed. Maybe I'll have to start giving that away for free too.... You see, my "give software away for free" strategy is really a "generate more hardware and services revenue by giving away software" strategy, and when the recession bites we can expect people to take our free software and buy our expensive SPARC64 and Niagara servers. And if they don't have enough money for the SPARC stuff, then they can buy our x86 servers. Never mind the fact that the other top three vendors all ship much more x86 kit than we do, I'm sure they're just lying about their sales figures because they're jealous of my ponytail. And ignore the fact that we ship four times as many Linux x86 servers as Solaris x86 servers, that's just because our customers are too stupid to take free Solaris, but when The Great Realistaion dawns they will flock to worship at The Altar of Sun! Ha! You may prostrate yourself now.
The One (I'm the real One, Obama is just copying me),
Jonathan I Schwartz.
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