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Comment How hard is it to understand? (Score 2, Insightful) 423

Use the appropriate tool. Always. There are tons.

Don't use a relational database to try to represent hierarchical data. Don't try to use LDAP to do analytics. Think of the performance implications before you have more than two users accessing your system. Data storage is a very different animal, you are often (though not always) I/O bound. This is very different from being limited by the amount of instructions you can deal with per unit of time. Don't think otherwise because it will bite you in the ass.

And still I see people making the same stupid mistakes over and over. But it's pretty simple really:

A solution designed to be generic will ALWAYS be slower than a solution that is customized. This shouldn't be surprising. If you have serious performance requirements (ESPECIALLY if they are coupled with huge amounts of data) then a custom solution is definitely something you should look into. At some point you will run into a brick wall and find out that there is stuff you can't do with the solution you have in place. This is natural. Custom solutions to hard problems always lead to restrictions in terms of future features. Always. You will NEVER be able to anticipate all features that you would like to have. (Yes, this is true for Google as well. No they don't have any special kind of magic dust that they sprinkle on their things there, they do the best they can and then they get bitten in the ass too, just like everybody else.)

Comment Go climbing (Score 1) 1354

Loads of geeks climb, it's fun/scary, the f/m ratio is good and there's loads of hanging out and chatting between climbs. I heartily recommend it. Plus you get a whole lot stronger, get the opportunity to learn something new and meet people you certainly would never meet otherwise.

Comment Re:Not a genius? He probably is. (Score 5, Insightful) 648

Our social peers? Allow me to laugh derisively. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Being different in school SUCKS ASS. At least in college people are sufficiently grown up to not be assholes 100 percent of the time.

Social peers is all to often a nice waying of saying "hang out with the half wits". There is a lot of value being put on "functioning well in groups" that for certain people mean they get to learn that they really don't want to be part of any group that they haven't selected for themselves.

Comment Listen (Score 1) 412

You are young. Sell the company. It will be painful but useful and for several reasons. It establishes a track record, it gives you (I would assume since I don't expect you to sell it for peanuts) some well deserved cash that gives you some level of independence and in the process you will learn a lot about how NOT to do things.

Just do it.

Comment Tiresome (Score 2, Insightful) 431

Well, that was the lamest collection of reasons I've ever seen.
It's client-server all over again? Umm. Yeah? So? Most enterprise applications are client-server. Include document and process management and your entire network is a gigantic client-server system. Come on. Is that supposed to scare anyone? Really? Wow. Should every employee have a browser? Hell yeah. If they have a computer they should have a browser. If you have a problem with your employees doing other stuff than work then you have a problem that won't go away because you take away the browser. That should be obvious to anyone who has ever been an employer.

And saying that the web is a place that is dominated by big players is just ludicrous when advocating working on the desktop instead. (I don't think I need to spell this one out for you)

No, this is all crap. There are valid reasons why certain applications shouldn't be web based. But the article lists none of these. Too much load on the datacenter. I mean seriously. Come on!

Comment Re:Me brain hurts (Score 2, Funny) 301

The original crowd? Watch it there you young whippersnapper. I remember back in the old days when I was... I can't remember, I was something or the other. Anyway. Remember that there is no guarantee of getting laid just because you are in a relationship. Just a slightly higher probability. Depending on where you started out on the Bell Curve you just be fractionally better off.

Comment EEG (Score 2, Informative) 58

If they can use this for EEGs that would certainly make life a whole lot less miserable for those of use who have small kids with idiopathic epilepsies where you do a lot of 24 hour EEG sessions. (Yes, it's a hassle to deal with a 18 month old who likes to be everywhere and hates the electrodes that are stuck to his head with some disgusting white paste.)

Comment The old fart response (Score 1) 604

Feel free to ignore this little piece of advice but:

why would you want to do that? Seriously? Sure you could probably pull something better together but you have to dislodge your previoys employer (and even if they would lose in court spending time on a court case is not only costly but pure death to business). Ideas are cheap, the ability to turn ideas into reality is expensive. If you have a group that can build stuff then build new, better and interesting stuff instead. Building a marginally better spoon is not the way to happiness.

Microsoft

Submission + - IAMCP threatens legal action over OOXML (wordpress.com)

dread writes: The swedish section of the IAMCP (International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners) have announced internally that they intend to take legal action against SIS (Swedish Standards Institute) over the OOXML standardisation debacle earlier this fall. And if they didn't look like assholes before they sure do now. First they avoided the democratic process, then they tried to buy the vote and when that was stopped they threaten legal action against SIS. Nice scare tactics.

Feed Climate Change Signal Detected In The Indian Ocean (sciencedaily.com)

The signature of climate change over the past 40 years has been identified in temperatures of the Indian Ocean near Australia. “From ocean measurements and by analysing climate simulations we can see there are changes in features of the ocean that cannot be explained by natural variability,” said CSIRO oceanographer Dr Gael Alory.
Sci-Fi

A Conversation with Cory Doctorow and Hal Stern 41

ChelleChelle writes "In a rare meeting, popular sci-fi writer and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing Cory Doctorow and Sun VP Hal Stern consider the open source approach. The resulting interview deals with the pros and cons of going open source, as well as the issues of security and privacy. From the article: 'It seems to me that one of the big problems with the filters you've just identified is who gets to set policy in the machine. As a science fiction writer, I am offended by sci-fi movies where it turns out that the rocket ship has a self-destruct button, it has been pressed by accident, and now the whole thing is going to explode. ... By the same token, I often wonder whether trusted computing architectures that allow remote parties to enforce policy on your hardware are a good idea. Although we can imagine beneficent examples of this, this is what spyware is, by definition, right? Spyware is remote parties setting policies on your computer against your wishes. Is it ever a good idea?'"

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