Information Technology Services Management.

It's what your boss does.

-Rick

Are you sure you're thinking of the Surface Pro? There is no track pad or keyboard (other than the software keyboard). I'll admit, I strongly prefer the Android keyboard/autocomplete to the Microsoft Windows 8.1 digital keyboard.

I'm surprised you note the Surface's battery life, that's one of the weaker aspects in my opinion. My old iPad could pull a full day of active work off the charger. Not sure if I'd trust the SP2 after 4 hours off charger.

Also not sure on your dislike for the charger itself. I strongly prefer the 4-pin magnetic connector over micro USB or that god awful proprietary crap connector that Apple uses on the 4th gen iPads. With the SP2 the plug is reversible, so I don't even have to guess which side is up, and since it's magnetic I don't have to deal with trying to line it up, just get it close and it pops into place.

-Rick

Exactly my point.

When I'm at home, the SP2 is effectively docked, I have a keyboard, a mouse, I'm even thinking about getting a larger monitor for it.

When I'm out running an event, I might bring a keyboard along to enter in player registration, but from there on it's just walking around with it using the touch interface like a tablet.

When I bring it along to a meeting, most of the time it's just for reference, being able to pull up documents, do a quick Google search, take some notes, email a picture of the white board, etc... So typing is limited.

-Rick

"Finally, my hopes include having remote access being more of using Citrix or RDP and having the remote machine be more of a dumb terminal, as opposed to an active VPN, making the remote machine a part of the corporate network."

Either way there are concerns. With Citrix (assuming Citrix Web, since you specifically call out no VPN), you wind up with the exact same issue as what happened here. As soon as someone's username/password is compromised, the would be hacker has full access to what ever is publicly exposed. So any applications or desktops available to the user in Citrix are fair game. You are now counting on the internal security of each of your applications...

For RDP, I am unaware of an RDP clients that are trusted for use NOT coming in over a VPN. The thought of a non-VPN RDP solution on an enterprise network is somewhat frightening to me. Do you have a client in mind? I'd like to read more about it.

As for VPNs, if done well, there is limited risk. For example, the laptop I have with my current employer has a built in software firewall and enterprise class virus prevention solution. I also do not have administrative access (only a small handful of people in the entire agency do and it is not on their standard domain accounts). Additionally, to connect to our VPN, you need not just the VPN software/configuration, and a username/password, but that user account must also be configured to allow for VPN access (again, limited to a subset of employees) on a specific machine (not sure if they use MAC or some other hardware ID tag), and when you connect you are prompted for a rotating security code that you get by checking an RSA dongle that has been issued to you.

So yeah, VPNs can be cracked, especially if they aren't designed to be secure, but when done properly, they can be significantly more secure than just exposing a Citrix/RDP web solution.

-Rick

I am not in the market for a car >right nowin a city I find work in.

This means over the last 10+ years my shortest commute has been just ~25 minutes, and my longest has been ~55 minutes with an average of ~45 minutes. Twice a day for 250 days a year (give or take) over 10+ years.

That's almost 2000 hours of my life I've spent focused on driving a car.

2000 hours not writing code. 2000 hours not reading. 2000 not speaking with my family. 2000 hours not listening intently to pod casts, in depth analysis, or educational programming. It's almost a full year's worth of labor.

So, throw together some IFs here: IF the self driving car can last for 10 years, and IF my job allows me to work while commuting (or I find other means of revenue generation while commuting), and IF my commute remains consistent at 45 minutes, and IF my commute is fully automated, and IF I were to have an hourly of ~$50, the car could cost up to $100,000 MORE than my desired vehicle and still break even.

That's a whole lot of IFs. Now, if you're rocking out Mechanical Turks at an amazing pace while commuting, you can top out at probably $10/hr, so you're looking at a $20,000 premium over 10 years. If you're a new-ish car only kind of person, Turking only gets you a $10,000 premium over 5 years.

So from the consumer side, the premium of the self drive has to get weighed against the value of time. To me, my time is incredibly valuable, I would gladly cough up a nice chunk of change to get a self-drive feature on a car (a $10-20k premium would still be in my price range without resorting to Mechanical Turk on the drive). So I'll wait for prices to come down to that.

From the commercial side though, it could be way better. Imagine being a taxi fleet operator with 2 dozen cars and only 3 drivers that only need to be active in case of vehicular failure or by specific request. Or a freight hauling company that can run trucks 24x7, even when the "driver" is sleeping. Even transit busses and shuttles could be largely driverless.

So you are right, not every consumer is going to buy one, especially not now when supply is short and prices are extremely high. But over the next decade as prices drop, technology improves, and availability increases, we'll see more commercial adoption and a growing consumer market.

-Rick

I have a (don't judge me!) Surface Pro 2. After my last PC got struck by lightning almost 9 months ago, I haven't bothered building a new one.

The Surface Pro has (just) enough processing power to handle most of what I need it to do. All my standard office stuff (word, excel, visio) and as long as I'm not doing anything too crazy, it handles my personal dev projects (VS2013 and some assorted web and .Net apps) including debugging (although I'm not running a local database on it for development).

Yeah, it can do Netflix, hulu, and prime, but it also runs an Android emulator (hurray for Andyroid!) fairly well for apps I need that aren't available on Windows and for my own cross platform development testing.

It's not a gaming rig though. I'm not going to jump in a 40-person WoW raid with the graphics cranked up, nor am I going to jump into a FPS and count on head shots. I still need an actual rig for that fun.

But as far as having a super handy tablet that I can effectively doc to have a solid work machine (I'm in management now, so I don't need to compile that million lines of code assembly), it does quite well.

As for upgrading, I got a great deal on the Surface Pro 2 as the Pro 3s had been on the market and the 2s were getting cleared out. If/When the Pro 4s come out, I might make the jump, but for now, I'm good.

-Rick

"(emphasis mine). Can you explain the difference?"

Sure, it's called 'nuance'. You are inferring that I am making a statement about Republicans, because republicans are more likely to hold conservative ideals than non-republicans. But I am not saying that any specific Republican is racist. I am saying that of a random sampling of self-identifying conservatives, you will find more people with racist opinions than in random samplings of non-self-identifying conservatives.

My entire argument apparently boils down to your woefully inadequate reading comprehension ability and failure to recognize nuance.

"That means that if you take a random sampling of people who identify as having conservative ideologies, they will be statistically more likely to also hold racist beliefs...If you would like some actual scientific reading on the association between ideology, intelligence, and race views, might I recommend:"

This is two sentences. The first is a logical argument, one which you still have not put forth any evidence to counter. The second is a recommendation to read some scientific studies on the matter, which you openly dismissed. You then doubled down by reading mass media summaries of the studies which you completely misinterpreted and have also failed to account for.

The only thing I'm going to look like a moron for is spending my time attempting to debate with you. My bad.

-Rick

Absolutely.

Where I work now there are 4 classifications of employees, progressing in pay level, but all assigned to the same software development services efforts.

My jaw hit the floor when my boss told me that anyone at level 4 is expected to perform project management duties.

So now I have a couple of rock solid level-3 developers that are on track to move into a true software architecture style role. I look at these fine developers and think, you know, it would be great if I could put together a training plan for them to really take their design approach to the next level and put goals together around their technical skill set, technical leadership, and continuing education with a prize at the end of the road of a nice shiny new title and pay bump.

But nope. If I want to promote these guys, I have to send them to project management 101. They need to go back and learn a whole new skillset, change over from dealing with code to dealing with people, and take on a whole new style of work.

What sense does that make? It's like someone is running an experiment to see if the Peter Principle is real.

-Rick

"Again, we're talking about a Democrat who said something racist."

Incorrect. Someone made a ridiculous statement: "EVERYONE WHO SAYS ANYTHING RACIST IS A REPUBLICAN."

Which I rebutted. Pointing out that it was not correct.

"about how Republicans are "statistically more likely to be racist." (You're lying about that by the way.)"

And you're creating an argument where there isn't one. I never said "Republicans are statistically more likely to be racist". What you did there was take my statement, out of context, and wrapped it in your own straw man. This would be what we laymen call "lying". Now, you may disagree with me over the statistics, and that's fine. But to call me a liar because you constructed your own argument to take apart is intellectually dishonest.

"One of the biggest pushers of the second idea in the Democratic Party is Al Sharpton"

In the same way that one of the biggest pushers of the 2nd idea in the GOP is Rush Limbaugh.

In either case, the existence of Rush and Al do not refute my statistic. As individuals, they are accounted for in the minority/majority of each quantification.

"You're lying about the contents of the Furugson study. "

Seeing as how I didn't say ANYTHING about the context of the Furugson study, it's kinda hard to imagine how I would be lying about it.

Also, are you sure you read the links you posted? Including these snippets:

"Hodson and Busseri (2012) found in a correlational study that lower intelligence in childhood is predictive of greater racism in adulthood, with this effect being mediated (partially explained) through conservative ideology."

"Taken together, what do these studies suggest? Excessive exposure to news coverage could be toxic as is avoidance of open-minded attitudes and ideals."

" Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found."

The reason I didn't bother linking to specific news articles about these two studies is because they are so contentious. You can find the summaries of them on Huffpo or Breitbart. LiveScience or Christian Monitor. CNN or FOX. Each with significantly different spins as they attempt to describe the studies in ways that either flatters or infuriates their viewers. So yeah, I recommend reading the articles instead of some ad man's rendition of it looking for some eye bleeding headlines to drive his click-bait.

Seriously though, you are calling me a liar though you've offered no proof. You've built straw men that you have excellently destroyed. You have attempted to switch the topic, and I'm actually expecting a goal post maneuver next.

So, if you would like to debate, lets debate. If you want to parrot talking points you learnt from reading Breitbart, I'll be moving along and you can enjoy the echo chamber.

-Rick

"It's ridiculous that we have to have a conversation premised on "ZOMG Republicans are racist" every time there's a news story about Democrats saying something racist, but I guess we're in to this."

Actually, we weren't, at least, not until you decided to have this conversation.

The only thing I said was that there is a correlation between racism and conservatism. That doesn't mean that every Republican is racist, or that any specific Democrats isn't racist. That means that if you take a random sampling of people who identify as having conservative ideologies, they will be statistically more likely to also hold racist beliefs.

"Thanks to Ben Shapiro at Breitbart.com, whose list of "crazy shit Sharpton has said" I have cribbed from liberally. You can find his original piece here."

Seriously, Ben Shapiro and Breitbart are your best sources? That's like deciding what college to go to based on National Lampoons movies.

If you would like some actual scientific reading on the association between ideology, intelligence, and race views, might I recommend:

Furguson, M.J. & Hassin, R.R. (2007). On the automatic association between American and aggression for news watchers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1632-1647.

And

Hodson, G. & Busseri, M.A. (2012). Bright minds and dark attitudes: Lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice through right-wing ideology and low intergroup contact. Psychological Science, 23, 187-195.

-Rick

"But you also know that when you're in a MS shop you end up--because of support and tools such a VS--end up being a 100% MS shop. It just happens"

Actually, I don't know that. I have worked in 100% MS shops. And I have worked in blended shops. And seeing as how you point out that you haven't worked in a MS shop for over a decade, I'd wager that YOU don't know that either.

"I doubt MSDN is going to give you oodles of pointers on how to configure .NET and solve esoteric problems on Postgres, MySQL or Oracle."

True, If I go to the MSDN I will find information on connecting TO Postgre, MySQL, and Oracle, but I won't find information on solving esoteric problems within those platforms. Just as I wouldn't go to the Oracle knowledge base expecting to find details on the SQL Server query optimizer.

"So, bottom line, the decision to become an MS shop is a higher cost point "

That's a neat statement for which you have offered no proof. VS Pro is more expensive than MEB, but MEB has an annual license where as VS Pro is a 1-time purchase. VS Pro also includes many tools that allow for more rapid development (Entity Framework + LINQ destroys Hibernate for development speed). If using VS saves me even just a handful of hours in a year, it is the cheaper option. Similarly, if you compare the Oracle and SQL Server licensing, it is easy to see that the vast majority of LOB scenarios will have a lower cost using SQL Server's license structure than Oracles, especially with the advent of multiple-core VMs.

That isn't a MS trumps all endorsement, for just as I can point out numerous actual real world examples where MS is cheaper, I can also point out numerous real-world examples where .Net/SQL Server are NOT the best tool for the job.

"fewer and fewer shops are choosing that"

You realize that this statement is factually incorrect, right? I can show you code repository scans, job indexes, market index, education trends, etc... that all show the same thing: .Net has been gaining popularity consistently over the last 14 years while Java has been losing popularity consistently.

"The last product I worked professionally on that came from Microsoft was VB6 and it constantly fucked up."

So you're justifying your choice in cool aide based on a 17 year old platform that has been deprecated for a decade. I hate to break it to you, but 17 years ago Java was just as fucked up. Heck, even just 10 years ago it was incredibly painful to use. Not to mention the half dozen different 'varieties' to navigate.

Listen, Java is a solid platform. But it isn't the end-all-be-all solution. I would seriously recommend spending some time doing some fun projects in C# (there are plenty of open source C# opportunities out there!) with the FREE edition of Visual Studio. It will take some time to learn, and it will take even longer to learn all of the powers that the IDE presents you with, but you will likely walk away from it as a more well informed developer.

-Rick

"Even Microsoft has orphaned you by going with HTML5 and JavaScript for Metro interfaces. "

Microsoft had Silverlight, which was designed to compete against Flash. When the mobile platforms exploded, and both Apple and Google said, "Fsk Flash!" Microsoft saw the writing on the wall. Why continue to invest in a platform that wasn't going to be supported on the fastest growing market segment? If Microsoft had continued with Silverlight/WPF for Metro it would have been a ridiculously dumb technical decision. Going to HTML 5 and JavaScript libraries was the logical choice.

".NET is the Zune "

I believe the Zune platform was primarily C/C++, which currently blows Java out of the water for popular programming languages.

"Java is the iPod"

Lol, no. The iPod is C/Objective-C. Even the new stuff is Objective-C and Swift. Java is nothing to the Apple platform.

"Can't you see the writing on the wall?"

No, but I can see the Tiobe index: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php...

Which sure seems to point out the exact opposite. Java is losing ground, .Net framework languages are gaining. Not 1-for-1 mind you, but the trend is opposite of your bemoaning.

As for the CEO you quoted, he doesn't appear to understand what it is that the .Net framework and the JVM are actually doing. Either that, or he is expressing an opposition to all high level programming languages (.Net and Java included). In either case, it doesn't really make your point for you other than noting that someone has drank the anti-MS coolaide and is making irrational decisions based on it.

-Rick

I'm thinking you may want to take a look in the mirror on accusations of denial.

Java is a good programming language, but seeing as how it has lost almost 50% of it's market penetration over the last 12 years while C# and VB.Net have both increased their market penetration significantly over the same time would imply that factually speaking, Java is not "taking over". If anything, it is being replaced.

Not necessarily by .Net languages, with the transition to mobile platforms Objective-C/Swift are taking the place of what would have historically been Java apps.

And even as you mentioned, PHP and Python are also replacing Java.

The point I would make is that having multiple programming languages available to us is GOOD! I prefer working within Visual Studio, but I am glad that Java exists. Because if Microsoft ever does go belly up, I'm going to need another mainstay to jump to. Likewise, if Java goes through yet another fragmentation, I like knowing that I can drop an increasingly convoluted support structure and switch to the .Net framework.

Options are good. We don't need, nor do we even want a "winner" in this market. If going open source opens another option to compete with Java on the LAMP stack, AWESOME! If Open.Net put's Java at risk, LAME!

Put the coolaide down, go share a beer with your fellow developers, C# and Java alike, and sit there ragging on the Fortran/Cobol programmers :P

-Rick

Most of our problems with MEB have been tied to the WebSphere and SVN integration features. The devs have been working with the tools team to get it worked out, so I'm not in the details on each issue. But I was getting reports of "delayed for 2 hours due to MEB" pretty much daily from multiple projects and teams. The department as a whole, across ~40 developers, has viewed the upgrade as severely negative and it has sparked talks of switching to Eclipse and other tools.

I'd agree with you on the databases being orthogonal. I was just pointing out that the parent's point about .Net requiring SQL Server was factually incorrect. While I strongly prefer SQL Server because the tools that are included, and the 3rd party tools available, make certain aspects of software development, release management, and debugging sooooo much easier. Oracle has many similar tools, but again, the price is a tough pill to swallow, and in my experience, they don't have the same UX polish that MS has put together in the SQL Server tools. When the Free Toad fork went out of active development 10 years ago and it's still considered one of the better tools to work with Oracle through, it kinda says something about the quality of tools available to Oracle.

I believe you are correct on SharePoint, at least I've never implemented it on anything other than SQL Server, and giving it's reliance on in-document searching and the MS text search engine, I'd be very surprised to find out that it could run on a different back end.

There is an affinity as well between IIS and .Net. I believe you can run .Net sites off of Apache on Windows, but I would wager you would have a much lighter support community.

And while Mono and the MS Open initiative are breaking the affinity between .Net and Windows, that relationship will always exist. At this point though, I'm much less interested in WPF. Not because there is anything wrong with it (Honestly, a true vector based layout engine is soooo much better than dealing with flow based layout of HTML), but because the war is over, Web killed the desktop app. There are very few scenarios where a desktop app is still necessary, especially in the LOB environment that the majority of development is involved.

Don't get me wrong, Java is a great language. Not drinking the coolaid here. I'll jump to PHP or C++, or Java as the project requires. But Visual Studio is by far the strongest, most stable, and feature rich IDE available on the market.

-Rick

This is only true in an extremely narrow scope of costs analysis.

Yes, Eclipse is free, unless you are using My Eclipse or any other paid tool for additional functionality. At $150 a year for a subscription license, it's still not as expensive as Visual Studio Pro's $680 price tag.

And across a team of 20 developers, I'm going to blow $10k on licenses (assuming I'm not getting a volume discount or maintaining a Silver/Gold partner status).

But there are other costs. For example, my team just upgraded to the latest version of MEB. To call it a cluster-fuck would be an understatement. All told across the team, between the upgrade itself, and issues with the new IDE we spent 200+ hours of labor. We took 1 guy off of his project and had him become the "MEB issue guy" and he spent 2 weeks just walking around helping other devs when they ran into issues with the IDE and build. Figure it costs the company on average $50+/hr for labor on my team. This one upgrade has cost us even more than the $10k in additional license costs I would have paid for VS2013.

And that's not even getting into the data side of the house. Our Oracle license cost an arm and a leg compared to our SQL Server licenses. And .Net apps have no problem what so ever connecting to any data source you have. If there is a connection driver for it, .Net can connect to it. SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Lotus, almost all of the NoSQL databases. And with Entity Framework I get the power of persistent objects without the hassle of crap fest of Hibernate.

Java is a great tool. And it blow MS/.Net out of the water for cross-platform development, no questions asked. But when it comes to LOB applications, working with the .Net stack is just so much easier.

Now, if you're getting into super high performance stuff, ditch Java and .Net and move back in to the realm of C. Although, I'd still rather use VS2013 for C development ;)

-Rick