Discussions

Sabot wrote:

... and he has the money!

Perhaps this thread should be in the tech off section, but it's just not technical.

My business doesn't like technology. Spending £12 million a year for the last five to be locked into IBM and what do we have to show for it, a HUGE mainframe app, which we can't sell, that costs a fortunate to expand, takes forever to change on an operating system that isn't supported any more ... and thats just the server side ... we have ONLY just got off Novell, OS2 and Windows 95! Its an expensive mess and IBM have now walked away saying 'thanks suckers!'

I'm finding it hard to convince the money men that Web Services and SOA aren't all Hyperbole and it's a real evolution this time not a scary revolution.

The problem is in the IT industry we have cried wolf so often, that no one is going to listen even when it's a good idea and can save cash.

Perhaps I should leave copies of this article around, what do you think ?

http://roadmap.cbdiforum.com/reports/roi/

What I really want to hear is real developers experiences, what do you guys think ?

-Sabot

Convincing the boss is never easy, requires some serious work. However, SOA tempts any developer. Web services sound interesting and attractive to developers, so the business owner has to be careful.

The best reason to use web services and SOA I can think of is the use of mobile devices. Sooner or later, when you deploy mobile devices you would need SOA. Another reason could be when you develop something in perl, another thing in java, and something else in .net. You need SOA to be able to develop those applications. SOA gives a lot of flexibility in the long run.

I would go with these two strong reasons to convert to SOA.

Of course, if you have partners who want to interoperate with your architecture, SOA is a must-have too.

The article is good but some of the reasons mentione there won't sound interesting to a boss, I think.

scobleizer wrote:

Thought you'd enjoy this one -- http://pics.scripting.com/0045/0030.jpg.


Seen at Seattle's Pike Place market today (picture by Dave Winer as we were walking around the market).

Dave's other pictures from the day -- http://davetravel.scripting.com/2004/09/18#a69.

Employee of the century would be better or employee of the decade.

Does Microsoft have an employee of the month program? Probably not, I guess.

Sabot wrote:

KesKos, you can't really blame programmers or system designers for the ills of IT. I believe that no one was more surprised by the popularity of the Internet then those in IT. Lets be honest, the Internet was truly never design to handle the amount of users it currently has. Narrow sighted? Perhaps, but I believe that the Internet will be replaced by another Internet in our life time, and it will be a rapid evolution, more of a scramble!

Yeah, but when you design something destined to fail, you can't blame the users entirely either. When you write a network program, you can't just say you are going to omit all the errors. You have to figure out how to recover from those errors. If you write a program which doesn't recover from the errors properly, you can't say users should learn what error messages may mean and how to fix them. It is you, engineers who are supposed to figure that out.

Internet is not expected to scale to this number of users, but once it become obvious nobody did anything to change it either. We are yet to migrate to Ipv6 and the prediction is that we are not going to move yet.

Jeremy W. wrote:

Wow, did I ever misread that, eh? Sorry Deviate, and anyone reading

Let me try to get the discussion back on track. Apache 2.0 is also a rewrite actually. I am not sure how complete it is, but it is completely incompatible with the old architecture. But it is true that Apache is not more secure than IIS. Almost each new version has security fixes.

Jeremey let's keep on topic?

Sabot wrote:

P.S. Keskos, ManicKernel, Karim, Manip, et al, lets  try and avoid turning this thread into mush please, many thanks.

Sabot, please remove me from that list in the future Oh Add egle instead.

eagle wrote:

Parents should be required to have a license before having a child.   Look at poor Alex here, early childhood traumas have left him with so many needs that will never be fulfilled.  Can anybody help him?

Manip wrote:

eagle wrote:Parents should be required to have a license before having a child.  Look at poor Alex here, early childhood traumas have left him with so many needs that will never be fulfilled.  Can anybody help him?

I'm sorry to tell you this eagle, but he has gone past the point of no return. [Loads Shotgun]

You can judge better than me though.

Manip wrote:

It is a fair point to make. I could say Mac sucks and Windows is a 'super-system' because I simply am able to use Windows to better effect. The results and productivity I would get from a Windows system would be a reflection of my experience with it; therefore we can assume that if your inexperienced with Apache would lead to poor productivity and implementation and knowing IIS well you would get better results with IIS.

Don't worry about Manip.

Apache doesn't scale as good as IIS. That's for sure. Nobody who has  credibility would say that Apache is faster than IIS or can scale better than IIS. Some just like to say something is better because they read that it is open source.

For your needs, probably IIS or another server is better. There are servers which probably scale even better than IIS.

Perl and PHP are jokes compared to Asp.net or J2EE today of course, because as you mentioned there is no debugging, tracing and many more other important features. But still PHP and Perl have values, lots of tutorials, easy to learn, start developing.... Learning ASP.Net and J2EE requires more initial investment then PHP. PHP, ASP, Perl are the old development methodologies, but those old methodologies have lots of legacy code around.

But still for many, Apache is a good choice. You have so many options, modules, and tutorials on the web. All of these also add a lot of value to Apache. Overall IIS seems to be a better solution for your case.

Sabot wrote:

I would agree with you Sk4rlath !

Basically it boils down to respect.

Agree or Disagree, thats fine, but debate, listen and understand.

... and use your language as a tool ... not a weapon.

-Sabot

I agree, a good way to solve disrespect is to tell people to watch http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=74 video one more time. If they are normal they would understand what this site is all about.

But for those who use vulgar language and disrespect admins, I don't think there is any hope.

Sabot wrote:

Recently, on channel 9 I viewed Dan Applemans Video on Security and one of his points stuck home and that was about education.

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=17363

(by the way more non-MS people is fine by me!)

'The more people we teach about computers and security the better it will be for us all'. As Eagle so rightly put it on the same thread, "... we are only as strong as our weekest link".

I had read on ZDNET.co.uk sometime ago about the European Union introducing a 'Driving Licence' which is an 'internationally recognised qualification which enables people to demonstrate their competence in computer skills'

http://www.ecdl.co.uk/ecdl.php?style=scn

So this led me to think, should individuals have to pass a computer driving test before they can use a computer unsupervised, in much the same fashion as we already do with cars?

I'm beginning to believe as computing does become more complex, this wouldn't be such a bad idea? or is it just overkill?

How would you feel as an IT professional that someday in the future you may have to get one of these licences to 'continue' to do your job? Would it come down to that?

Allot to debate, should be interesting to see your views ...

-Sabot

P.S. Keskos, ManicKernel, Karim, Manip, et al, lets  try and avoid turning this thread into mush please, many thanks.

I see your point, but I think computer programmers also share some responsibility here. Computers are still not easy to use. Many people still struggle for using them, they don't understand many of the concepts.

For example, many of the viruses spread  through email, and the fundemental reason for that was the spoofed from email address. We should first blame people who designed the email protocol, not people who use them, beause naturally when you learn how to use email program, nobody tells you that from means nothing actually because it can be spoofed. They say from means the person who send you that message.

I don't think computers are overly complex to require a license, but security is something lacking on the internet. People still can scan ports for malicious reasons, they can DDoS sites, computers and so on. We don't have solutions to these problems, because initially nobody thought about security. So users bear some responsibility, but equally engineers and programmers bear the same responsibility.

Manip wrote:

I think your right to an extent. Excluding all other servers -

Web-Applications - IIS (PHP and Perl are too resource intensive)
 
Static Pages - Apache (More hackable, can reduce the size of the server etc)

Ease of use - IIS

Cluster - Apache

Speed [Static] - Both/Equal

Customizability - Apache

Inter-portability- Apache

As a person who knows that Apache is GPLed let me correct some of them.

Ease of use - IIS (out of the box, but there are also GUI tools for Apache)

Static Pages - What is this for? Speed?

Web-Applications - Apache or IIS (depends on what you use)
-- perl : Apache (with mod_perl)
-- php: Apache (more tested with)
-- .net: IIS
With Apache you can run almost any web app, including .net apps, with IIS you have less choice.

Cluster : nothin what is this for? IIS and Apache can be both clustered

Speed [Static] - IIS (Apache is a joke here)

Customizability - Apache (IIS is a joke here)

Inter-portability- What is this?

Portability: Apache

Addons: Apache (IIS is a joke here)

Loadsgood wrote:

Jeff, thanks but my content advisor isn't on.
Also, Marco, sorry but your solution didn't work either. And I know its a problem with my IE not everyone's IE. I've easily gotten into and logged in to GMail on someone else's IE.
I don't know what to do. Maybe this is a reason to use another browser...

Why don't you use firefox?

Don't hurt me please, or my relatives or my friends.