Robert Jordan's books redefined the level of crazy that I will accept from an author. They're fantastic writing, a wonderful, deep, involved storyline, but come ON, the length is way too self-indulgent and unnecessary. The story is nowhere near as complicated (or worthy) as, say, FOUR Lord of the Rings trilogies, but it's substantially longer. The sadness is that it is comparably well written -- length notwithstanding.

I'm currently using four of the books as monitor stands (I actually won't go so far as to use them as doorstops).

More importantly, though, this has changed the way I'll read connected books or watch TV shows. I fear the abandoned story line too much now, and I blame Robert Jordan. "Heroes", the TV show, was a similar letdown... I waited until "Lost" was finished, for fear of it falling into the same pit as "Heroes", and nearly did the same thing with "Battlestar Galactica".

Is there a name for this? Can we call it the "Robert Jordan" effect? -- the situation where you get too involved with an author or storyline and they just go on forever or (no disrespect) die?

And the expanding-storyline theme is amazing. Eight Harry Potter Movies? Really? Five Twilight movies? I love a good trilogy, and (other than the quality of the prequels) appreciate that the Star Wars trilogies are built so that you can watch the original without needing the rest to complete the story. Many authors have interwoven stories and worlds... How many books did Terry Pratchett write? Many of which made reference to one another, but at least they each had an individual story arc. The Ender's Game series is similar... Terry Brooks' series can be read in myriad configurations of trilogies and tetralogies.

ugh... the Jordan series is fantastic in many ways and I'm very glad to see it completed -- I hope the finale lives up to the series -- but please noone ever do this again, or at least give good warning so that we can avoid going down the path until it's complete.

I like the UI the way it has been. For one thing it works better with multiple monitors IMO -- I can pull my toolbars off of the main editing window and take up the full screen with the image unabated. Further, I like being able to move things wherever I want and still be able to see whatever I put behind it; the workspace can be spread out without all the grey area taken up by the useless space between MDI child windows and toolbars and such. I get that people like uniform UIs, but I never really understood why people hated the GIMP's so much except that it wasn't familiar.

Does anyone remember Fractal Painter's old UI? Noone liked that either. *sigh* Of course, I think they had things like icons which would slowly fade and disappear if you never used them... or was that some other piece of software? Brilliant idea in any case -- we should get the GIMP to do that.

Agreed. Training on new technology is both the employer and employee's responsibility, and neither is fulfilling their social contract if they don't keep up.

The last point, though, is way more important. Good developers are way more than just a coder that knows a particular technology or tool.

Paying a premium might make sense for someone that has experience with the new hotness, but only if the rest of their experience is commensurate. Knowing how to communicate well, cooperate on requirements, think efficiently, provide useful documentation, manage bugs, manage your time, maintain client relationships, and just work well as part of a team are all at least as important as any specific tool. A college grad may or may not have those skills, even good interviews can't tell you everything about how a new hire will interact with a team or a client. If you've got a developer you know and trust and that done good work for a long time then it's unlikely the new-hot-skill is worth a premium above years of experience. A new grad isn't likely to have any depth of experience, even in a new technology, so it seems like simple math to justify training up an existing skilled competent asset rather than spending a premium on an unknown quantity.

If we're comparing against a developer that hasn't kept up, and isn't doing those things well, then that's another story.

Still, each case is unique, and the ability to negotiate a salary is almost an unrelated skill to your actual competence as a developer.

I think giving multiple people root access is the opposite direction the original question intended. I think the idea is that you don't want ANY one person to have the ability to bring down, corrupt, or steal from a single system. Considering the recent madness around congressional data, passwords, credit card databases, and thousands of other examples this sort of security seems more and more reasonable.

I work on some unclassified Department of Defense machines, and even to get root access to those machines our admins have to get Top Secret clearances. Of course, this does nothing to ward off incompetence and is only useful for providing increased trust in your single point of failure, (but that trust is important). I assume you're looking for assurances beyond this sort of social-engineering aspect.

The two-key (nuclear) option mentioned is probably workable for a reasonably administered production system. There are several ways to implement a two-person system that could work.

First, routine tasks, or tasks which can be pre-planned (i.e. non-emergency situations) could be scripted on backup environments without the sensitivity or criticality of the production system. This should be standard practice anyway. Once a working tested script is prepared (and that can be a script in the programming sense a la .ksh/.perl or a script in the user-documentation meaning). The production system can require dual authentication for logon before the script could be executed. In a fully automated setting this is a completely technological solution (although I admit that I don't know of a working implementation that is publicly available), but even if there are some manual steps required, holding both key holders responsible and requiring at least over-the-shoulder confirmation is a useful policy.

For more complex tasks, such as recovering physically corrupted data, which really can't be simulated and scripted, dividing responsibilities and ensuring multiple people are in attendance at all times can significantly reduce risk exposure with minimal impact (it doubles your staffing requirement, but only for the hopefully brief periods when this is required). Again, this is not a technical solution, other than having lock boxes or rooms with multiple keys.

It's important to realize of course that you'd have to apply this solution not just to your sysadmin role, but to your physical infrastructure (no one person can access the power button, the fuse box, etc. by themselves), and to each application running on the system, at least for any role that has access to protected areas. This is nigh impossible in a usable system, so the problem gets pretty complicated, but if you really need the security then it may be worth the effort.

I picked up the Epson 2480 when it came out; kind of an earlier version of the 3590. It's fantastic for large volume home-quality photo archiving, but wasn't up to scale for "professional" scans; film, print, or otherwise. I don't know if the 3590 has improved much, but a few tidbits of advice:

• I had a lot of photos of varying sizes; even slightly varying, as if from different photo labs, but the same "size". A stack needs to pretty much be exactly the same width or the feeder gets confused.
  
• Keeping the stack in the feeder filled is important. It would be nice if they could increase the capacity, but generally I was feeding 20-30 photos every, well, 15-20 minutes, or longer on higher quality scans.
  
• I improved the quality of scans much better by simply wiping off each print with a lint-free cloth before scanning than I did by changing any settings on the scanner. In fact, the default "Home" mode on Epson's software was very good. Other than removing dust, wiping the photos makes sure none of the photos are stuck together, which makes things go much more smoothly.
  

Really, tho, great products -- HP had come out with something similar a year or so before the 2480; I forget the product, but it had trouble with scratching the photos that scanned through it. Ouchie. The Epson didn't cause any such trouble.

Enjoy the scanning!