KenCrandall - Slashdot User

Comment Patience! (Score 5, Insightful) 902

by KenCrandall on Wednesday June 10, 2009 @12:18AM (#28275121) Attached to: How Do IT Guys Get Respect and Not Become BOFHs?

Unfortunately, IT is viewed a lot like the phones by most users. It's "invisible" when it does work, and is only a priority to them when it doesn't work (or they need something!)

I've found that the best way to make people happy is to effectively communicate with them -- especially when it comes to deadlines. Now I'm not saying to sandbag :-) but if you can over-deliver some things and/or get them done earlier than promised, then you set an expectation of success and partnership with your user base. As difficult as it is, sometimes, you MUST remain non-cranky or bitchy, or you will get stereotyped as the "grumpy IT guy" faster than you can think.

If it's really burning you out after only 1 1/2 years, then you should really look at (a) your workload (b) your choice of career and (c) your work/life balance.

Cisco Introduces Rackmount Servers 93

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 03, 2009 @10:21PM from the rack-'em-up dept.

1sockchuck writes "After shaking up the market for blade servers, Cisco Systems is launching a line of rackmount servers. But the company says its ambitions are more targeted than a full-scale 'all your racks are belong to us' assault on the volume server market. Cisco says it sees its 1U and 2U C-Series rackmount servers as offering an entry point to its Unified Computing System vision for companies who've built their data centers using rackmount servers instead of blades. But it thinks many customers will like the expanded memory capacity Cisco has built into the Xeon 5500/Nehalem EP processor."

Splash, Splatter, Sploosh, and Bloop! 100

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 03, 2009 @08:33PM from the wouold-you-like-some-ottamottapia-with-that dept.

Acoustic Bubble writes "Researchers at Cornell University have developed the first algorithm for synthesizing familiar bubble-based fluid sounds automatically from 3D fluid simulations, e.g, for future virtual environments. The research (entitled 'Harmonic Fluids') will appear at ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans in August 2009. Check out some videos of falling, pouring, splashing and babbling water simulations (computed on a Linux cluster)."

AvantGo Shutting Down, Changing Markets 36

Posted by timothy on Wednesday June 03, 2009 @03:09PM from the oh-fickle-fate dept.

codebudo writes "AvantGo, the once ubiquitous application for all PDAs, is shutting down its web sync service. Users of the service have just begun to see banners stating, 'Starting June 30, Avantgo will no longer offer mobile web content.' According to parent company Sybase, AvantGo will transition from a mobile web service, to an SMS advertising and content delivery system."

Man Arrested For Taking Photo of Open ATM 1232

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 12, 2009 @07:38PM from the i-will-tackle-you dept.

net_shaman writes in with word of a Seattle man who was arrested for taking a photo of an ATM being serviced. "Today I was shopping at the downtown Seattle REI. I was about to buy a Thule hitch mount bike rack. They were out of the piece that locks the bike rack into the hitch. So I was in the customer service line to special order one. It was a long line and while I was waiting, I saw two of guys (employees of Loomis, as I later learned) refilling the ATM. I walked over and took a picture with my iPhone of them and more interestingly of the open ATM. I took the picture because I'm fascinated by the insides of things that we don't normally get to see. ... That was when Officer GE Abed (#6270) spun me around and put handcuffs on me."

How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks 123

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday May 08, 2009 @05:04PM from the or-maybe-not dept.

schwit1 submitted a story telling the strange tale of how in 2002, rogue NASA interns stole millions of dollars in moon rocks from a building designed not to let that happen. I'd suggest taking the whole thing with a little bit of salt.

Comment It depends on the company (and maybe the product) (Score 1) 693

by KenCrandall on Wednesday October 15, 2008 @06:43PM (#25391539) Attached to: Do Software Versions Really Matter?

It is really going to depend on the track record of your company (and, eventually of your new product itself.)

For some companies, people won't deploy ANY .0 product until there's a .1 or SP1 release. For others, they want the latest-greatest stuff regardless of the release number.

Since you're in the position of having a new product, now is the time to set the track record for it and make your 1.0 release work as perfectly as possible. If it is slow/buggy/crashy/bad, then being versioned 6.2 isn't going to help it at all.

Why Apple Should Acquire AMD 340

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @09:23AM from the what-else-do-you-do-with-mad-ipod-money dept.

slashdotLIKES writes "CoolTechZone.com columnist Gundeep Hora has a new column up that discusses why Apple should acquire AMD and how both companies would be a good fit for each other. From the article, "After private equity groups, let's look at a more strategic acquisition. For that, Apple is the best bet. Yes, I know it sounds way too radical to be taken seriously. However, Apple could drop Intel altogether and adopt AMD for its Macintosh PCs. Sure, the transition is going to take sometime, and it would probably make Apple announce a brand new line of PCs. However, it will be well worth it. We know Steve Jobs is ruthless when it comes to making interesting deals with powerful companies. This makes AMD a perfect match. Obviously Intel isn't going to be too delighted, but other companies don't bother Jobs. We all know he's the type of executive who crafts deals on his own terms. If Intel wants to be associated with Apple, then they won't really have much of a choice."

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