Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[alchemist at darkcanvas.com (Kevin Sonney)]

On Sun, Feb 16, 2003 at 10:06:44PM -0500, zman spoke thusly:
> Been having trouble posting. So this is a test. But while we're all here
> is everyone's power still holding out? Seems the power co.s are ready this
> time.

It's all good down here in P'boro. I half expected power to go out
arround nightfall, and I still don't trust it to stay on overnight. 

Getting to work tomorrow should be...interesting. I expect the
driveway and cul-de-sac will be iced over at least a day more than the
rest of the Triangle. Neither one gets no direct sunlight from October
until about April. 

And it's a wonder more farmers didn't go crazy in those long hard
winters...

-- 
----------------------------------
--         Kevin Sonney         --
--  ICQ: 4855069  AIM: ksonney  --
----------------------------------
320C 0336 3BC4 13EC 4AEC  6AF2 525F CED7 7BB6 12C9
 "It burns! It burns like hygiene!" - Geekboy
 (http://www.somethingpositive.ney/)
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>From ses at unc.edu  Mon Feb 17 11:00:25 2003
From: ses at unc.edu (Simon Spero)
Date: Mon Feb 17 10:59:18 2003
Subject: [internetworkers] Software Development Nightmares
In-Reply-To: <00d001c2d612$23230c10$0200a8c0@mdthomas>
References: <00d001c2d612$23230c10$0200a8c0@mdthomas>
Message-ID: <3E510719.1080301 AT unc.edu>

Michael D. Thomas wrote:

>less choices, I'm seeing more and more friends and peers stuck on death march
>projects from which they have no reasonable escape. With the mortgage to pay,
>why risk pointing out the wrongness of a decision that will chew months of
>development time and cost millions of dollars? Just how far do you stick your
>neck out? How do you decline yet another invitation to work all weekend?
>
Ed Yourdon wrote a book on this:

"Death March: The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving 
'Mission Impossible' Projects "
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0130146595/103-2086416-6533443?vi=glance

Just ask yourself WWHD - what would Hunter do?

 "As your attorney I advise you to take two tablets from the brown 
bottle in my shaving kit" -  http://www.provigil.com/ .

 Provigil is currently only  approved by the FDA for the treatment of 
Narcolepsy, but Cephalon is in the middle of trials aimed at getting it 
approved for general sleepiness;  it's not an amphetamine, and is 
considered to have a lower abuse potential (schedule IV vs schedule II).

 I don't know anyone who's used it, but the reports I've seen are 
interesting.  According to reports, lots of sleep researchers use 
provigil when they're at conferences, or  need to finish a paper.
-----
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-10/ns-dbs103002.php [new 
scientist reprint]


  Drug beats sleep?

A DRUG designed to help people with a particular sleep disorder to stay 
awake could soon be licensed to perk up sleepy shift workers and others 
affected by drowsiness. The prospect is stirring up a debate about the 
dangers of popping a pill to counter a sleep-deprived lifestyle.

Provigil, as the drug is known in the US and Britain, is approved for 
treating the daytime sleepiness associated with the rare condition 
called narcolepsy, which makes people fall asleep involuntarily. But 
last week, the drug's manufacturer, Cephalon of West Chester, 
Pennsylvania, announced results from a clinical trial of 209 shift 
workers that showed it helps those with "shift work sleep disorder"- 
excessive sleepiness caused by odd working hours.

The trial is part of Cephalon's attempt to expand the range of 
conditions Provigil can be used for. Ultimately, the company hopes it 
can be prescribed to treat sleepiness that results from any medical 
condition, and plans to submit data from this and other trials for 
approval for such use to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this 
year.

But critics fear that this could lead to the use of Provigil being 
extended from those with sleep disorders to healthy people who are 
simply sleep-deprived. While experts differ as to whether shift work 
sleep disorder is a real medical condition, it is clearly caused by 
lifestyle. Police, hospital staff, pilots and people who work at 
all-night stores are among the countless groups of workers likely to be 
affected. Get the drug approved to treat such people and the decision 
whether to treat those who are simply working or playing too hard 
becomes a distinctly grey area.

Some fear there would then be little to stop Provigil becoming the 
elixir of choice for the 24/7 generation. Several sleep researchers told 
New Scientist that patients with demanding careers and lifestyles are 
beginning to ask for Provigil to help them stay alert as they burn the 
midnight oil. "It's happening already," says Thomas Scammell, a sleep 
expert at the Beth Israel Deaconess sleep disorders clinic in Boston.

The clinical trial on shift workers is the latest of a string of studies 
showing how Provigil could benefit different groups of people. One study 
of military helicopter pilots showed that the drug helped them stay 
alert and capable of performing complex tasks for almost two days 
without sleep. Other studies have shown the drug seems to help patients 
with multiple sclerosis cope with fatigue. Ongoing trials are now 
looking at the drug's effect on tired truck drivers, medical staff and 
soldiers.

That the drug works so well is no surprise, as previous studies have 
shown it to be a potent stimulant. How it produces prolonged alertness 
is not well understood, but it is thought to act specifically in the 
brain's pre-frontal cortex. This is one of the most active areas of the 
brain in people who are awake, governing planning, memory and what we 
pay attention to.

The drug's localised effect may explain why it increases wakefulness 
without triggering the "wired" feeling of stimulants such as coffee and 
amphetamines. Surprisingly, tests also found that when the drug wore 
off, there was no noticeable need for an extended sleep to recover.

Critics of more widespread use of Provigil fear that the drug might give 
people a false sense that they can cheat their need for sleep, while in 
reality they may be accumulating a sleep debt that will ultimately harm 
them. Sleep deprivation leads to cognitive impairment, as well as 
seriously disrupting the immune and hormone systems, although it is not 
known how long these effects last. And Paul Blake of Cephalon 
acknowledges Provigil's limitations: "The drug isn't a replacement for 
sleep," he says.

On the other hand, Provigil could help prevent accidents common among 
shift workers, and make a big difference to soldiers on sustained 
operations or rescue workers at a major emergency. "It's an interesting 
challenge for society and for the FDA," says Neil B. Kavey, director of 
the Sleep Disorders Center at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in 
New York. "We have to make sure nobody's going to get hurt," he says.

-------
[ http://www.modafinil.com/aviators.html , or if you're on campus, 
http://link.springer-ny.com/link/service/journals/00213/contents/00/00450/paper/s002130000450ch000.html
 
]


      A double-blind, placebo-controlled investigation of the efficacy
      of modafinil for sustaining the alertness and performance of
      aviators: a helicopter simulator study
      by
      Caldwell JA Jr, Caldwell JL, Smythe NK 3rd, Hall KK
      Aeromedical Research Laboratory,
      Fort Rucker,
      AL 36362-0577, USA.
      John.Caldwell AT se.amedd.army.mil
      /Psychopharmacology (Berl)/ 2000 Jun; 150(3):272-82

      ABSTRACT

RATIONALE: In 1998, the FDA approved modafinil for treating excessive 
daytime sleepiness in narcoleptics, and this has raised questions about 
the appropriateness of this compound for enhancing alertness in 
sleep-deprived controls. This study explored the efficacy of modafinil 
for maintaining the performance of volunteers required to accomplish 
highly demanding tasks despite sleep loss. OBJECTIVE: The principal 
objective was to determine whether prophylactic doses of modafinil would 
attenuate decrements in aviator performance and arousal throughout 2 
days and 1 night without sleep. METHODS: Six pilots were exposed to two 
40-h periods of continuous wakefulness. In one, three 200-mg doses of 
modafinil were given and in the other, matching placebos were 
administered. Helicopter simulator flights, resting EEGs, and Profile of 
Mood States (POMS) questionnaires were evaluated. RESULTS: Modafinil 
attenuated sleep deprivation effects on four of six flight maneuvers, 
reduced slow-wave EEG activity, and lessened self-reported problems with 
mood and alertness in comparison to placebo. The most noticeable 
benefits occurred between 0330 and 1130 hours, when the combined impact 
of sleep loss and the circadian trough was most severe. The most 
frequently observed drug side effects were vertigo, nausea, and 
dizziness. These could have been related to: 1) the motion-based 
testing, 2) the use of a simulator rather than an actual aircraft (i.e., 
"simulator sickness"), and/or 3) the administration of more than 400 mg 
modafinil. CONCLUSIONS: Modafinil is a promising countermeasure for 
sleep loss in normals; however, additional studies aimed at reducing 
side effects are needed before it should be used in aviators.


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>From mdthomas at mindspring.com  Mon Feb 17 11:38:04 2003
From: mdthomas at mindspring.com (Michael D. Thomas)
Date: Mon Feb 17 11:37:16 2003
Subject: [internetworkers] Software Development Nightmares
References: <00d001c2d612$23230c10$0200a8c0@mdthomas>
        <3E510719.1080301 AT unc.edu>
Message-ID: <023801c2d6a2$f1eb2240$0200a8c0@mdthomas>

>Ed Yourdon wrote a book on this: 

>"Death March: The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving 'Mission 
>Impossible' 
Projects "
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0130146595/103-2086416-6533443?vi=glance

I actually bought this book in the midst of a death march project and quickly 
discovered that I shouldn't be reading it... not only b/c I didn't have the 
time.

One piece of advice that Yourdon gives is that one should just refuse the 
death march invitation, on the assumption that collective bargaining could 
wish the death march away. Unfortunately, I think that there will always be 
enough programmers willing to say, "The whole enterprise-wide messaging 
subsystem by Friday? No problem! Just give me Joe and Elle to help out and 
we'll get it done." It's often hard for Joe and Elle to refuse.

Yourdon talks a lot about the confluence of unreasonable deadlines with silly 
bureaucratic goals, but I don't see him speaking a lot about "Hero Culture," 
which seems to be endemic of most organizations that routinely death march 
their people.

In a true hero culture, the heroes -- and only the heroes -- get rewarded. 
Now, when Superman saves planet earth, we want to reward him. But heroes need 
adversity. In a world where everything works well, Superman fades from the 
public eye much in the way that Goetz lost his limited support as a vigilante 
when NYC's crime rate started to drop. 

When an organization only rewards those that are able to react to adversity, 
and never focuses on the skills required to prevent it, you can be guaranteed 
that there will be more adversity to come. The organization has created an 
economy of adversity.




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>From dave at matusiak.org  Mon Feb 17 15:55:32 2003
From: dave at matusiak.org (David R. Matusiak)
Date: Mon Feb 17 15:54:24 2003
Subject: [internetworkers] Career Crisis?
Message-ID: <277929F0-42BA-11D7-A4E1-00039357DED0 AT matusiak.org>

hey, remember back in the day when there was all that hullabaloo about 
everyone being unemployed and losing their jobs and never getting 
another one and all that?

never fear, internet user, because the Micro$oft Network is looking out 
for you:

http://editorial.careers.msn.com/articles/sexyjobs/

one tiny transition and suddenly you are gainfully employed again!
cheers!
/drm