Institutional Memory
Knowledge is a slippery thing. If we don’t take care we can lose it. Organizations loose it when members leave or retire without passing it on to their replacements. Suddenly the organization does not know how to do part of its job and has to spend time and money finding out again. Sure, sometimes new blood brings fresh ideas which work better, but more often the organization just makes painful mistakes until the lost experience can be regained.
Human societies experience the loss of Institutional Memory when one generation fails to pass enough of what it has learned on to the next.
As a child in the 1970’s I watched family dramas on TV. By “family” I mean that they showed children growing up, having adventures, and dealing with situations in life which were new for them. I particularly remember The Swiss Family Robinson. The children often approached difficult situations by doing what they had seen their parents do. When things did not work out they often discussed the problem with their parents and then tried again.
These shows were entertainment, not instructional films. The writers were not primarily conveying lessons to children. They were creating dramatic tension and having their characters resolve it in the tradition of the Western story arch. Getting advice from persons with more experience (often parents) was a natural part of the story.
Fire Dogs
The following story is from Lev Tolstoy’s First Russian Reader of 1875. This is my translation. As far as I know it has never before appeared in English.
Electrical Power and Power Loss
Basic Electrical Units
A volt is a unit of electrical potential. Electrical potential in turn is the force which a power source (such as a battery) applies to a connected device in order to push electrons through it. Electrical potential (voltage) is comperable to the presure which a pump applies to a plumbing system in order to push water through the pipes.
Communicating Clearly About Computing
Those of use who work in IT are frequently called upon to explain our work to people who are less familiar with computers than we are. It should be our goal to speak and write as clearly as possible. To do that we must avoid jargon, slang and expressions which are easily misunderstood. We should not write to be understood. We should write so as not to be misunderstood.
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Waiting to Bite: BIND and Invalid Zone Files
It looks like Webmin lets you create DNS entries which BIND 9 does not like. When it sees one it refuses to load the whole zone and keeps what it has in RAM. This may go unnoticed for months until the server is rebooted. BIND then restarts with that zone completely empty!
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Draco’s Policies were Draconian
Have you every wondered why we call a harsh policy “draconian”? This is one of those words which comes from the name of a famous person.
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Flowroute
I have been grieving ever since Voicepulse canceled its flexrate program and been looking for a new low-price provider with good quality.
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Reducing Echo in Telephone Handsets
A common source of echo in VoIP phone systems is the telephone handsets. Of course, non-VoIP phone systems have this source of echo too, but it often is not so evident because without the buffering the echo delay is not as long.
Old Bell 500 series telephones have a wad of cotton wool in the handset to prevent sound from traveling from the receiver, through the hollow handset body, to the transmitter. But, many modern telephone handsets lack this important component. Here I show how I added cotton wool to the handset of a Linksys SPA-841 in order to reduce echo.
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How to be a Good VoIP Provider for Asterisk Users
There is more to being a good VoIP telephony provider for Asterisk users than simply offering the best balance of price and reliability. Usability is also very important. Here are some things which make for a service more convenient for Asterisk users.
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Is open source telephony a serious option?
I was recently asked whether anyone would every really consider replacing a tired old PBX with an open source system and whether we had any experience with Asterisk. Here is the answer I wrote, based on our experience here at Trinity College.
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