13 Aug
2006
13 Aug
'06
8:07 a.m.
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Why it's getting steadily worse, I don't know.
I'm tempted to lay the blame at
the feet of faster and more widespread communications; if people can
communicate more quickly and further afield then there'll be more pressure to
get a job done as quickly as possible and with an eye to short-term savings only.
I was tempted to think that in the 2000 era we had gotten past the hump
of "buy more hardware because it's cheap" stage. In fact
the collapse of many sectors of domestic telecom/computer hardware
industry in the 2000/2001/2002 timeframe made me think that
perhaps we had gotten past that. But... no. It continues, and seems
to have spread into the Peoplesoft/Oracle/Microsoft licensing
stage ("oh heck, just buy a few thousand more licenses").
Had modern communications existed without computers,
and the computer only
invented now, I expect we would have seen a raft of giant inefficient systems
springing up almost overnight and the specialised machines of past decades
just wouldn't have happened.
Some of the more interesting computers of the 60's and 70's are in fact
telecom switches and the computers that controlled them, and as far as
I can see these were built/bought/deployed entirely with good
economic justification (reduced maintenance/ease of reprovisioning)
rather than just industry buzzwords as
justification. Maybe I'm looking at that era with rose-colored glasses :-).
Tim.