Social Commentary

How do you know when it’s time to refactor that database design?

Software developers love re-factoring code.  And why shouldn’t they.  It’s quick (sometimes) and when done correctly it’ll reduce the amount of code, and speed up application response time.  DBAs like re-factoring code as well.  We get the same benefits when done correctly.  Re-factoring the database schema on the other hand, is a frigging nightmare.

Changing around code is easy, moving 100,000,000 records from one table to another in a timely fashion isn’t.  It sucks, big time. Continued »

No, I will not do your homework for you

If you are a computer science major, or taking a computer class of some sort, then by all means use the Internet for research.  That’s what it’s there for.  If you’ve written some code and it’s just not working correctly then by app means post your question on a forum (with the code) and ask what you are doing wrong.  Someone will be more than happy to point you in the right direction. Continued »

Me and Twitter

Personally I don’t get most of the social networking sites / products / whatever you want to call them. Continued »

Did you know?

Hopefully you have seen one of the “Did you know” videos that are on the web.  If you haven’t I highly recommend that you do.  I’ve included the four versions which I’ve found below.

I’ve found these videos quite interesting to watch, especially as you watch the different versions and see the numbers being updated and changing over time.  After you watch theses I invite you to talk with people about the message that you got from these videos.  I look forward to your comments either here, on Twitter, via email, or in person.

For those that don’t know the first of these videos was created by Karl Fisch for use at a beginning of the school year meeting.  You can read up more about Karl on his site and more about Shift Happens.

The original (which I uploaded to YouTube to make it easier to view).  In this video he refers to AHS which is the school he teaches at, or at least he did at that time.

To this 4 minute and 55 second version.

To this 2007 version which is 8 minutes and 19 seconds long.

To the most recent 2008 version which is 5 minutes and 16 seconds long.

UPDATE: (Yeah I know 4 minutes after I published the origional)

Some other video’s by the same group of teachers.  The first is What If

And the second is 2020 Vision

What the hell is wrong with people?

I ran across the post A Culture of (Potential) Assholes: Sexual Harassment in IT on twitter today, and all I could think was “What the hell is wrong with people?”

Before I go on, I’d like to go on the record with a few things.  I’m a guy, and have on occasion been called a pig (I try and keep these occasions as few and far between as I can).  So I’m not above treating people like crap, but this is just so far beyond acceptable.

They story which is given on the thread is that a drunk “douche bag” (my words not his) walked up to a woman (which I assume he didn’t know) and gave her his room key telling her that she better he up to his room later.

I just can’t imagine doing this to someone.  Now maybe I’m a more evolved form of caveman, I don’t know.  Now, the original poster didn’t say which conference this was in his post, but I will because I think that it makes it even more pathetic that the creep said what he said to this woman.  This was the MVP Summit in Seattle.  For those that don’t know what the MVP Summit is, this is when Microsoft invites all the members of the MVP program for that year up to Seattle and show them all the shinny new things that they are working on.

Now I know that this is the first year that I’ve been an MVP, so some may think that I’m talking out of turn here, but too bad. I’m pretty sure that someone being an ass at the hotel isn’t covered by the NDA.

Why do I mention that this is the MVP Summit?  Because we were all invited by Microsoft to come meet our peers in the program, and the product groups.  One of the many things that you have to agree to when you become an MVP is a code of conduct.  While this code of conduct is pretty basic, and hard to enforce in the real world, when you are at the Microsoft Summit, its pretty easy for Microsoft to enforce it.  Rule #1 on the code of conduct is “No disrespectful behavior”.  There’s a breakdown which I won’t bother to go into, since that is pretty self explanatory.  (Don’t get me wrong I don’t think this sort of poor behavior would fly at any other event or time either.)

Everyone at the Summit is an MVP or a Microsoft Employee, so one would assume that the level of peer respect would be high.  Don’t get me wrong, there is a health banter between MVPs of different products.  The members of my product group (SQL Server) like to pick on the FoxPro and Access but we certainly have a respect for the MVPs of those products.

Becoming an MVP is hard work, no matter the product you represent.  Some of the MVPs catch a lot of crap for the products that the represent (XBox, Zune and Office probably catch the most crap from people).  Everyone who is an MVP got there for the same reason, they support their respective community and user base.  Without knowing any of the Zune MVPs (as an example) I know that they got to be a Zune MVP by providing steller support to the Zune user base.

I think that its just horrible to speak like this to anyone, especially someone you should be considering a peer.

I think, I’ve gotten off point, and I’m starting to ramble so I’ll wrap up with this.  The person who gave her his room key should be ashamed of himself.  And the guy who was sitting next to her who tried to make a funny comment and ended up WAY over the line should also be ashamed of himself.

I’ll leave you with this though.  If you can’t be bothered to respect people in public, then don’t show up.  If you insist on showing up, then consider this before you make an ass out of your self; someone who saw you may be a customer of yours, or a future customer of yous, or a future boss of yours.  Wouldn’t that suck to loose a big sale, or your that promotion because of some dumb ass thing you did when you were drunk on a company trip.  And no being drunk isn’t an excuse.  If you act like that when you are drunk, then you shouldn’t be drunk in public.

Denny

A response to a response to my post about Open Source Software

Shortly after I posted about a /. article on getting open source software to replace Microsoft software I got a few responses on Twitter, as well as a response from a fellow blogger here on the IT Knowledge Exchange John Little.

John posed a few questions in his post, which I wanted to address, as well as clarify my own statements a little bit. Continued »

Why are some open source people so adamant about doing a discervice to their users?

This isn’t a rant about open source software itself; please note the difference BEFORE bashing me in the comments or on the net.

However I recently saw a post on /. about how a university network admin wanted to start switching the university over to open source.

The only thing that came to mind was why on earth would you want to do such a disservice to your students?  While open source is great, most large companies (which is where most university students want to end up) don’t use much if any open source applications.  In the article he’s talking about replacing Office 2007 with Open Office.  Which is a fine idea for home, or for a business; however an educational institution should be more concerned with making sure that the students have access to what they will be using in the real world when they get into the job market.

Ideally I think that these students should have access to both applications, but they definitely shouldn’t be taking away access to the propriety software which the student will need to know how to use in the job market.  For example a student who is majoring in Business will probably need to know how to use PowerPoint, and the differences between PowerPoint and the open source equivalent.  However if all they are taught in school is the open source version, and they are asked to bring a presentation to an interview and give it, and the presentation doesn’t work in PowerPoint they will not be getting that job.

Many open source fans need to remember something.  While you may not like Microsoft and other close source companies (but lets be realistic, for the most part you don’t like Microsoft) these companies software are the tools that over 95% of companies use.  And while it’s great that you want to teach people that there is an alternative out there, if your role is to educate users you have to show them all the options.  If you choose to only show people the open source option, and not the propriety option then how is what you are doing any better than what you feel Microsoft does?  But if users don’t know how to use the tools which companies are providing then the users won’t be able to get jobs.  If people can’t get jobs then they can’t buy computers to run open source software.

And don’t think that if all the job applicants can’t use Office this will force companies to switch to an Open Source version.  This will simply give the companies more ammunition to send more jobs overseas where people are still being taught Microsoft products.

I guess the summary of this post is this.  If you want to teach open source, then be open about it.  Teach both ideas, and give your students a fighting chance to get that good job they were promised when they went to college.

Denny