True - kind of. Hulu can't compete with torrents, Hulu is US only! While in US, I actually did like Hulu - now, as most other "services", useless! I even didn't know / understand why the pirating is a big deal until moved out of US! No wonder - the movie, etc companies are not even trying to sell outside US so how else you can watch series, movies, and so on? It's funny (maybe?) how they try to limit even Dish and other satellite service for US only - do they really think that all the money is in US and all the people who like to watch Hollywood series and movies live in US? No wonder - etc!!!

Yes, they are selling half a million videoconferencing rooms, but the government, after latest cuts in budgets, is only paying $3 million of them - LOL! So Cisco needs something else to make money.

It is so true - IT in itself is not stressing, busy sometimes but stressing? How could it be? Except, of course, maybe everyone means the company or the management is stressing - even then it's no different of any other work, every workplace and profession can be stressing if it's for profits for someone who are not up to the work! Or you start taking your job too personally when you can't have no influence how it goes - except to walk away! It happens.

Over 40 years I have been working hard, sometimes means long, sometimes just interesting but hard to solve problems - but only when in younger days took the job personally - got an ulcer, took a couple of years away from my life! After meeting our CEO who told me straight that I'm no use in that condition, better take two months vacation (company paid, real vacation with family!), think hard and not let it happen again. One of the best advices ever - yeah, slipped a couple of times since then but never, ever anymore let it get too bad. The same CEO said if anyone except I is causing the problem, to tell him and they will be gone because they are worse than anything for company - no problem makers allowed. Well, he was an old-fashioned corporate dictator, very successful in very successful (huge) company, so you better believe - LOL!

Maybe misleading summary but what you just said is old, old, old - part of my job when started -71, and old already then! The problem today seems to be - add a couple of words, like WEB or Internet, to some old idea and , voilà, you can have a patent.

Seriously - is the USPO the only government office which, when not skilled on the issue, is supposed and/or allowed to make bad decisions anyway? Doesn't sound good or even very useful?

"Predictive process" has been used in any kind of business forever "to change pricing based upon expected future .. whatever" - especially what I did, combining insurance profits with having, charging and selling computer resources. It's very interesting and much what the patent describes is really out of the textbooks - maybe just too old textbooks, not any more in libraries, even in universities? Will be big again - you have to charge in cloud? Maybe that's why they really did go after a patent. Of course it can't hold - even abstracts as WEB are either defined as "interlinked documents" or not really defined at all, just needs a couple of million $$ to fight the patent and then you are free to do what you / most large sw/hw/cloud/etc service corporations have been doing 40+ years! If you still have any money left to do anything - LOL!

Besides, the mistake often is the load - you have to look much more than bits, bytes, seconds, etc - someone else is charging your resoures, be they hw, electircity, taxes, and so on - so, "It's complicated", sometimes changing daily - think currencies and almost any business today!

No, because there is not yet a tool to do that. What I'm afraid, again - see this : "It will focus on hands-on use of applications"!

Instead of teaching how to think, maybe how and why to create these applications, they will teach how to use tools and toys? IMHO that's a real problem today, especially in IT - all these courses how to use tools and toys, operators, certified to push a button! What has happened to teaching how to think, how to create? At least a long time ago, business analysis needed a good background on statistics, business knowledge, IT (actually IS, a little more than just IT) experience and knowledge of business / customer history, risks and issues, and so on. What now - a certificate to use a tool and you are a pro?

Hm, in Mexico! I get a cup of real Illy $20 (pesos!), real cup - not paper, free Internet, many but best (today) from corner ice-cream shop, nice outside patio, no rush or hurry, etc. To be honest, it is almost as good in Seattle / Ballard, many small, nice cafes with free Internet and excellent coffee in real cup, yes - Seattle coffee and beer, have to try to believe! S.F. much the same so Starbucks is not the first or only one. I hate paper cups!

A cheap way out, blame the slave, worker, whatever who was instructed to do the work! You mean that the lowest layer in chain has to fix the problems caused from top? And you don't call that finger pointing?

As you say - whoever made the decision to use for ex. SQL scripts fed from unchecked sources to unprotected environment is to blame, not SQL itself. It's as "Mordac the Preventer (36096)" a little earlier says, "It would be the fault of the eejit that set it up like that. Locks, doors and houses have no free will - it's not "the door's fault" that it works as designed."

Programmers, developers, administrators and ilk don't make these decisions - managers, CIOs, CTOs, etc make those decision! Maybe instead of "root cause" we should start looking "tree top" problems?

Yes, of course any and all environments can be made safe and secure (technically), some are just much easier and less costly than others. But even IIS, Windows, etc can be made very safe but it will cost (a lot) and needs knowledge (a lot), not just some paper "certified" people and marketing manuals. And keeping those environments safe without security architecture will be a nightmare, probably impossible on long run!

Right! That's what the article was. Now, of course, we could ask is that even important? Help one company to make a lot of money or many companies to make a lot of money, which one seems more fun?

Unfortunately, at least I don't see the world going that way. Computers and computer usage is becoming more and more commodity, buy cheap, proprietary "solutions", even if they are not optimal, don't always work, are not very beneficial for user on long run, etc instead of using own skills and knowledge (sorry, what are those??)

Maybe that's the way in future? Make things unnecessarily complicated, tell users / customer that it's for their benefit and sooner or later they start believing it - profit! They will not waste their small brains on these very difficult and complicated issues, they buy those.

Workers, no - slaves, yes!

Let me fix it - As much as I dislike M$ they have 90% of the market share for business, and EVERY STUPID employer requires M$ Office experience, others require the knowledge of word processing. Or - maybe they also require three years experience how to use Bic pens, not just any pens? And I'm not even going to who makes most toilet seats used in business buildings, how many years experience needed?

Well, you got me started, maybe I have too much time now? And I don't want to get you feel more desperate - it doesn't help. And even I haven't given up yet finding people who really, really love the life and learning - it's just hard and frustrating sometimes.

Now, half retired, in a foreign country with some(!) expats I can tell that opposing learning is not age depend! But so isn't learning - some over 80 (some way over!) know more and learn faster than some of my developers over years, and they were 1/3th that age! But these people seem to live long, have fun, don't worry, eat, dance, drink, etc as much as they like. Unlike some, yes we have those here, 20-30 years younger, just don't like to learn anything anymore - I gave up helping them, it's like stealing money from kids! Just wonder, did they ever learn / know anything but they had to - they made fortunes and now just wait the death, or drink themselves to death? Strange?

Heh, heh - actually I did! We had to make our own ink in a very small elementary school, it was fun! I still can make ink! Well, pens had steel nibs but we tried quill pens also - not good!

About requiring Apple - two reasons possible, they are offering service, programs, etc and want just one platform. And, seriously, after 40+ years with computers, long before laptops, looking companies, corporations and governments with portable computing devices, laptops included, MacBook's last longer than same priced "PC's" and that makes them more economical (for price - of course Toughbook and even more (military)rugged are totally different story). And, as many have said, nothing against running almost any x86 based OS on those - I run Windows, Linux, Solaris and BSD, and of course MVS & VM (heh!) in my MacBooks! My PCs are for Windows and Linux mainly, just servers.

$20 to $25 / month lease? OK - I know that money is a scarce resource today but maybe dropping a couple of channels from TV program (really need 2x52" latests model TVs?), skipping one six pack, skipping one game (and the beer again!), skipping one impulse buy, maybe thinking is that one or maybe even two huge cars more necessary than school for kids, stop smoking, whatever can save that needed $20-$25 / month? Skip the lawn moving one month - money saved! But no, we have to have all that and more, otherwise what would the neighbors think?

Of course, I would go with Linux - it makes most sense in communities. The hardware is same as with any other OS and the operating system is most common! I said OS, the Linux is kernel (with basic file systems, etc), not any distribution. A common mistake, especially from people who really should learn a little more to call themselves "geeks" or whatever. How to select the distribution is up to negotiations, none is over others very much but there are differences. The great side on Linux is that almost any kid can (and will happily) support it in normal cases and real problems can be solved fast with developers, no waiting some release or vendor even admitting there is a problem!

All true, but we didn't publish books in sanskrit or any other proprietary language! So, the information should be in open format, available for all, not just for some with a, usually very expensive, proprietary tool or toy!

Yep, probably very long time ago, not that it was easy even in mainframes but very useful, no overhead to measure, as you maybe know - a mainframe is happy when 101% busy - the measurement overhead is very often a bad thing! It was fun, really, but reading the results wasn't always easy - is anything? Later on 80's / 90's simulating, estimating, measuring, etc file / disk / network systems the heat maps created with our hardware people on channels, controllers, disks, caches, DMA, etc timings / sizes / rates were indispensable - accurate within microsecond (memory nanoseconds) / no overhead / all the measure points you can dream. Common in all large software / system development - I wonder how it is done today, how many could use these devices / read the results correctly? Sometimes just wondering - have we lost some skills over years? Actually same heat maps can be used in networks very well - very useful! In wireless (and wireline but wireless usually has much more variations) networks you can see the latency, other problems and the performance easily with one look on a nice "heat map", maybe displayed on a 42" screen today.

Yes, if you do "That's because in the time it takes to optimize everything .." - that wasn't the case some time ago, developers and designers created optimized systems from start, programmers of course needed years and years to get to that level. To level which very, very few are even aiming today - strange? Optimized design and development was and is very agile, has same characteristics as secure / safe design and development.

Another strange fallacy is that the language has much effect to such as adding functionality? A well designed interface really doesn't care what language is used - and over years I won many bets coding faster, easier to read (documented), much less bugs, no library problems, whatever assembler programs and even whole (small) systems than someone else in 'C', thank you! Of course you have to know the language, not syntax but how and why it behaves - same happened when we needed a large system in Windows, this time the dev. group (8) worked a year in C# and a month before delivery the group just gave up - guess what, they now have a clustered system written in Delphi V4 - LOL, three weeks and 6 days and it works (huh, I was tired after that - that was near!). It's not the language and often not even the OS but to know what is needed and how to do it!

More about optimization - in mainframe environments the tuning of applications and systems were an art, still could be but very difficult anymore to find anyone who really understands the relations between (long term!) requirements, designs, development, OS, languages, current and future technology, allocated and estimated gains / budgets, risks, resources, and so on - to really optimize your systems and environment all that has to be counted. Yeah - optimization is a little more than a piece of code but a (mostly) forgotten art!

A good time to be born, LOL. Don't take seriously the replies from other youngsters, they know maybe less than you how it was before. Cell phones size of briefcase were actually in use already -82, well, cell is a strong word, they were NMT phones but the size is correct. I had one to carry with me and one in car, ouch! Yes, the hardware efficiency has gone up a lot, the problem, the waste in software has grown even faster so in many ways we are still on same level. Fun, games, beautiful(?) pictures, etc are now everywhere but real business transactions, information handling / using / whatever is not much faster or efficient than it was in 70's. Relatively compared to resources and cost it's actually worse - not amazing when quantity and greed meets quality something has to give!

Anyway - leaving games and other waste aside, computer systems today are fun to play, every day even more - as has been since I started late 60's. Unfortunately software / systems development is a commodity today - amazing that even Cobol application developers who I was always yelling at that time knew more about computers, OS's, file and database systems, etc than 98% highly certified developers today? You will see how the computer world stabilizes to same as any manufacturing - a couple of designers, a bunch of engineers, a lot of floor workers.

You definitely will see more and more amazing stuff, and faster, but it really is up to each individual in IT/computer field to keep up. If you don't innovate / create or own yourself, you will be just a worker and they usually are not even allowed to know too much. Think and look around, how many companies / corporations / enterprises educate or even train (not same but!) any more? It's one of the modern wonders you are seeing.