Lady First 專欄(48)


User perceptions (and expectations) of backups

One of the reasons I think we can go with our planned backup schedule is how I think that users will perceiveit. This matters because unless you're lucky enough to have a specificbackup schedule mandated from high, part of setting up your backupsystem is managing user expectations of what you can deliver and makingsure that they feel that it's reasonable.

(Let us take it as given that you cannot just ask the users what theywant and then deliver all of it. Users don't want


How we're planning our backup storage capacity needs

Part of the fun of backups is trying to work out how much backup storageyou need in order to do a decent job of recovering from mistakes. Unlessyou are lucky, you will not have a specific mandate about how much tosave for how long, which means that it is up to you to figure out ascheme that you can afford, that provides enough coverage, and thatpeople will be happy with; there are no one size fits all answers.

We didn't do anything sophisticated for our old


Communication

One of the great boons of working with administrators in a big organization is the chance to learn from them. The fact is, administrators always seem to be miraculous eye-openers. Just asking for something that requires money is usually crime enough under their draconian policy. They don't always turn you down – that depends on how you define it.

I have found numerous such eye-opening examples in the Yes Minister series, and – believe me – they are undeniably fascinating and entertaining. One of the stories goes

真係堅過石堅

六月四日
著名演員石堅先生逝世
奸人堅的角色深入民心
他的名字也被老一輩用來變成日常生活的用語
真係堅過石堅
他的最強演出
我想是在"龍爭虎鬥"中與李小龍的大戰
雖然兩人都已仙遊
但也真的型到爆呀


引以為傲

Source: NYTimes – Thousands Gather in Hong Kong for Tiananmen Vigil

New Monday 專欄 - 食在巴黎


一個簡單問題

如果一個人出了家門, 從此沒有再回來.

他的親人可以當任何事都沒有發生過?

他的親人可以相安無事, 如常地過日子?

如果他的親人有以上反應, 試問他該如何自處?

如果他的親人有以上反應, 而他又認為理所當然,

這個人,

Another irritation with Gnome's gconf settings system

As if the first irritation wasn't enough,there's another problem with the Gnome settings stuff. It is this:modern Gnome applications keep all of their settings locked up insidegconf, even things that you enter and that in another, simpler erawould have been stuck in dotfiles somewhere.

This has a practical issue that I have been running into after learningabout convenient ssh in Gnome ; it's hard tomove settings for something from machine to machine. Consider themini-commander applet macros, which


可以做的小事

與其咀咒黑暗,不如點起燭光