Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Another Plagiarizer

    I received a note today about someone else that is plagiarizing content from SQLServerCentral. It’s a blog on Windows Live Spaces by 岩松 in Peking. I won’t link it here, since it’s not important.

    There are any number of articles copied, with no attribution listed whatsoever. This person is from Peking, and lists their occupation as SE, which I am guessing is software engineer.

    I did try to contact them, as I usually do, but their privacy settings prevented me. So I sent a copyright violation to MSN.

    I read Brent Ozar’s post yesterday on plagiarism, and I somewhat agree, somewhat not. On one hand I get that cultures view this stuff differently, and laws are viewed/enforced differently. However leaving aside all the legal stuff, what about this:

    Do you ever feel that it’s moral for you to take credit for someone else’s work?

    I can’t imagine any culture supporting this. Does anyone want to tell their kids they can copy someone else’s work so they don’t have to learn in school? If your neighbor’s kid cut someone’s grass or performed a chore, would you send your kid out to the person’s house to get paid and take credit for the work?

    I don’t think most people would. But that’s what they’re doing when there’s no attribution or credit. I get that you might want to “share” information, but why not link back to the first site? At the very least it would raise both your search engine ratings and spread the information further.

    Why else would you blog? To get a job? That’s immoral. You’re implying you know how to a) do the task and b) communicate well. At least one of which you haven’t done, and you’re deceiving the person reading it.

    Make money from Google ads? Again, you’re implying you deserve the results from work you didn’t create.

    There’s no good excuse for re-posting someone else’s work and saying that you deserve credit for it. At least Cook’s Source gave people credit, and just violated copyright law.

  • Career Advice – Play Your Own Game

    I get asked this question fairly often. How do I find time to write so much, work on SQL Server, have a family, a ranch, etc. It seems that people often want to blog as much as me, or speak, or something else.

    It’s natural, I often look at others and think, why can’t I do what he does, or think that I should do what someone does.

    I don’t really want to be like someone, however. I don’t want to live another person’s life. I like my life. What I really would like to do is improve my life in some way.

    It’s easy to get caught up in trying to emulate someone that’s successful, but that’s the wrong thing. Really you want to take a piece of what someone else does and incorporate it into your life. We all look at the world differently and what might seem to work for someone else, or make them successful isn’t what wil work for you.

    Or work in your life.

    I try to stress with the Modern Resume that you want to find what works in your life, what you can handle, and what won’t become another stressor. Learn to do what works for you, in your life, and incorporate that.

    Don’t try to blog like me, or speak as often as I do, or write a book because someone you admire in this business has done it. Do it because it’s something that will work for you, and work at the appropriate time in your life.

    Play your own game.

  • How I like to work

    This is a great sign. I see if every time I go to Brother’s BBQ in Denver and it never fails to make me smile.

    brothers

    I snapped a quick picture last week, and in case you can’t see it because of the sun, the sign says:

    OPEN EVERYDAY

    FROM AROUND 10AM

    TO AT LEAST 10PM

    Those are great hours, especially for restaurant. A little flexibility is good, especially if business is good. Why knock off if things are going well, but why commit to longer hours if there’s no business.

    It’s also fun, and fun should be a little more part of our lives.

  • SQL Rally Pre-Cons

    The SQL Rally pre-conference sessions were announced today, and congratulations to the winners. They are:

    • Business Intelligence Workshop – Patrick LeBlanc, Devin Knight, Mike Davis, & Adam Jorgensen
    • Query Performance Tuning, Start to Finish – Grant Fritchey
    • Maximize Your SQL Server 2008 Coding Skills – Plamen Ratchev
    • Leadership and Team Management Skills for the Database Professional – Kevin Kline

    You can read more about each session here.

    These are all great sessions, and no matter who was selected, there wasn’t a chance you’d see a bad session. Of these, I’d be likely to attend Grant’s session or the BI ones since I think those have the best chance for me to learn something that I could start to use quickly.

    The voting was sent to all applicants and I was a little surprised by the results. I don’t know if I can disclose anything, so I won’t, but there was quite a disparity from first to second place in each category. I’m not sure if that’s due to much better marketing from the winners or if it reflects interest. I’d love to know more.

    I’m slightly disappointed that I wasn’t selected, but I wasn’t sure how many people would really want to invest in a half day seminar for about $100 that would  help them find a new job. I’m sure their bosses wouldn’t. However the PD session from Kevin Kline is a good one, and I think it’s a better topic for many companies, who desperately need some leadership in the IT space.