Mmmmno. Hybrid drives are convenient, I give you that, but they are very limited in what sort of information they have about the data and its uses and if/when a new filesystem format comes around which the drive's firmware doesn't understand the drive falls back to dumb block-based caching. Cache done on OS-side of things have access to things like frequency of use, what sort of situations are the files used, expected ranges of reads and writes in the various aforementioned situations, new, improved filesystems, actual content-type, which user or users are logged on and so on. The hybrid drive, for example, cannot know who is logged in or that the user likes to e.g. listen to certain playlist while doing image-manipulation -- it doesn't know how to predict these situations and preload/cache things accordingly.

I assume you have various individuals/groups who have an interest in the systems you administrate. Users, developers, etc. Also regulators. Don't forget the utility of a good documentation system when the auditors come around*. So you need a process to keep them informed of the upcomming system changes. So they can ensure that their product or process isn't going to be broken by a change.

If you have relatively few of thes interested parties, the communications could be mandles manually and by you. If that community is large, the procedures need to be formalized and possibly automated. Having a CAB to represent your user community can offload the communications task from you. At the expense of some paperwork.

On the other hand, I've worked in organizations where the CAB was a make-work task for a few layers of management. People whos only other job prospects are standing by an off-ramp with a cardboard sign*.

*At one of my previous jobs, this was the acid test of the utility of our CAB. I had to fill out stacks of paperwork and await their blessing to make a change. But strangely enough, whenever the FAA came around, they were nowhere to be found. I had to walk the auditors through our systems myself.

To me the point when HL2 shit the bed is when they pulled a Bioshock Infinite and fell in love with a gimmick...the gravity gun. In HL2 the GG was just another weapon, used in a couple of spots but other than those spots it really wasn't required. What did we get for EP 1? Gravitypaloza. By the time I was being forced to shoot basketballs at striders I was just sick of the stupid gravity gun, just as I got sick of infinite shoving that damned skyhook under my nose going "Isn't this neato"? Sure it was, before you BECAME ANNOYING ABOUT IT!!

As for so many games not played? Bundles, simple as that. You can get so many bundles on Steam that you soon end up with dozens of games and you only have so many hours in the day so...there ya go. Between the big Steam sales and Humble Bundles I probably got a good 50 games in a couple months, just not enough time to play them all before the next killer bundle comes along.

Finally as for Steam being "bloated" on OSX.....ever stop to think that OSX simply isn't very well suited as a gaming platform? Because on Windows you are looking at maybe 60Mb (I have Raptr AND Steam running and barely am using 100Mb) and from what I understand the Steam for Linux also runs quite well, which leaves OSX looking as the culprit from where I sit.

That particular outage cost several million given what the server did.

The problem is not the admin actions it's "what the server did"

The application the business was dependant on to generate millions of dollars was designed in such a fragile way, that it could fail as a result of whatever happened to just one server....

You see... this is bad architecture. Servers are prone to failure, even when designed with redundant components.

It is improper for a business application that generates revenue to be sensitive to a single or double server failure. Critical applications should be architected with a level of robustness that reflects their level of importance.

The auditor does not care if the patch may cause a work stoppage, if they are not fully patched, they are not in compliance, if they are not in compliance they get written up

Sounds like they need to fire and hire new auditors.

like this will just make you look stupid and change averse to your employer.

No... it's obviously just aversity to excessive, unnecessary and crippling micromanagement. It's obviously some idiots in suits who are change averse and feel they need to justify their existence by "approving" or "disapproving" of each and every required security update or patch or system admin action.

Which involves real costs. With this kind of bullshit, they need to hire additional system admins for systems to approach proper management just to deal with the reduced time efficiency and increased waste caused by bureaucracy.

Yes, I know how they are thinking and the pain you are feeling. To accomplish the implementation of this change management process you will need a lot of people working for you. Use this to your advantage. Quickly study up on the subject so your experience with the systems will not leave you with a dog pile of new bosses to tell you how to do your job. Instead insist that you need to hire more people to manage the overhead.

In the end that probably won't work and you'll be kept "at the bottom" where you are now.

These changes are going to be enormously expensive and despite all you have done, it will be perceived that you created this mess by not having a change management system in place to begin with. Of course, they will also see that you don't know about change management and will prefer to hire someone who already knows about it.

Now I'm not going to down change management processes. They can prevent problems and identify people who would otherwise deflect blame and hide in the shadows. But from what I have seen, you're just getting the beginning of the tsunami of changes.

Push for testing systems and additional hardware to support it. Of course it will also require more space and other resources. Try to get ahead of this beast.

And this is different from what Google is doing with Android....how exactly? In case you missed the memo Google has been taking bog standard X86 laptops and locking them down worse than cellphones and as far as EEE? Google is already moved into the third phase by making more and more apps simply not work without GooglePlay API.

I find it hilarious how many are cheering because "Android has gots teh Linux" when in reality Google is about to make them its bitch. Have fun with that laptop that won't run 90% of the distros on distrowatch thanks to DRM or that latest version of AOSP that won't run half the apps in the playstore because its all tied to Google APIs, but "its teh Linux" so it can't be locked right?....oh wait

I thought this was something we could use to exterminate all those smug bastards yakking on phones while driving or in line at Starbucks.

The least they could have done was to pony up for some Google Glass.

At least the homeless could have pawned them for some spending money.

Thank goodness that never came to be, #37809.

As a developer, what do you think your job is?

We may be suffering from a terminology problem here. I think developers produce code as their work product. Which is turned over to a build environment for subsequent testing and finally installation.

If you have a different job description for a developer, I'd like to hear it. I wouldn't hire it, but I always get a chuckle out of projects that are so deeply layered that there are people which we don't really know what they do.

If you produce anything that affects the configuration of the final product, it had damned well better be under configuration control. And that means your administrative 'privilege' is restricted by some processes and procedures. If you have them at all. That's the way its done in avionics, medical, financial and a lot of other software houses. If you are just hacking out games, then who cares? Fiddle with your development environment all you want.

No one can do that reliably. It's luck.

That's not true. There are people who can do that. You need enough money to be allowed to freely invest in private firms and such though.

And you need to have not so much money, as well. Too little money OR too much money, and you cannot make good returns. It is not as if your potential return is independent from the amount of money you have, there, so it is a bit meaningless to throw around numbers such as 18%.

If you have too little money -- then you don't get access to investments (except ones that have already become public companies, which suck) ---- if you have too much money, then you actually exhaust what good options are available.

which is stopping people feel sympathy towards people living on the street as it's easier to have 'less feelings when you're typing something' than looking at them in the eye"

If you are not looking them in the eye, then you are not experiencing the Identifiable Victim effect.

When someone else controls your stuff, it's not your stuff. Look at Germany's gold! Where is it? It's in the US. They want it back, it's supposed to be on its way over... slowly. Net result, it's not Germany's gold. And if this tech makes it into our phones? Yeah, same thing. We "give up" our phones in order to prevent them from being stolen. Nice trade.