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You're right -- as long as a company with a shop full of high-school kids can get into the same business as a shop of SEs and not feel the pain, we have no basis for licensing.

Don't we wish we could practice our craft with the rigor and discipline it deserves, rather than being dragged down to the lowest levels. Until we can correctly pin the blame on business management, who are willing to hire high-school kids and college dropouts and give them the same responsibilities and tasks as certified degree-holding professionals, the industry will stay in the hole it's in. What other profession does management blame the professional for not being able to get the job done "as quickly as that guy who stays up all night on Mountain Dew"? Those of us with the skill and experience to know the real effort and cost of building software that makes business run are not doing enough to make managers feel the hurt when they choose to take shortcuts and accept shoddy work.

It know this is crazy talk, but if the managers and users shouldered the burden of responsibility for squeezing schedules and ballooning requirements that make it impossible for a skilled developer to do careful, quality work, you bet there'd be a lot more heat on bad managers when things go wrong.

There are ways to quickly deliver working software that meets requirements but isn't half-baked buggy, security-hole-ridden patched crap, but companies refuse to pay for that. I only support licensing programmers as software engineers if 1) companies could hire un-licensed programmers at management's own risk, and 2) the process of developing software is controlled by the engineering people, not marketing.

On 1), we'll never get anywhere as long as EULAs literally absolve the vendor from any responsibility, and before we can get to 2), however, there is the little matter of having all the software engineers agree on what the process is.

We need views. While much of my work can be done in MySQL, until there are views I cannot switch completely from SQL Server 2K. Too many PHB's that need features like views to be overcome. Must control fist-of-death!

aren't looking hard enough.

And this online repository is useful too. Look at its archive section.

When i wake up in the morning, I crack open the daily newspapaper and.... wait that's not true. Lets start again. When I wake up in the morning I turn on my computer, and check out... webcomics.

Angst Technology, Ctrl Alt Del, Dilbert, Errant Story, Force Monkeys, Fox Trot, goats, Life of Riley, Mac Hall, Megatokyo, Misfire, Penny Arcade!, Sinfest, Something Positive, and finally Wendy.

Then, after my daily webcomic barage (not to say that these all update on a daily basis. Some are good [ like ctrl alt del, and penny arcade ] and update regularly. others... well...) I frequent other sites, for information.

Slashdot of course (not linking it...)
Gamespot
Games workshop,
and
Unconventional Conformity.

Other than that, I have a few sites i goto every so often. Or ones which i check throughout the day. But they become less important than the comics.
-Gharbad

FOXNews
Drudge
Rush
InstaPundit
The Bleat
Dilbert
Blue's
jwz
Davezilla

OK, the sites I visit every day are:

Slashdot - my home page, visited several times per day.

The Register - also several times per day.

Amiga news sites, each visited once per day:
Amiga.org
AmigArt
Czech Amiga News

Online comics, each visited once per day:
Dilbert
Peanuts

That's all folks!

And I forgot those:

Daily Dilbert (though I get the newsletter)
Userfriendly - the other famous comic strip :)
Nicht lustig - cool German comics, soon to be expected an a daily basis because the author signed a contract. Currently he's busy with his book, though.

After testing, Sensei took a bunch of us out for beer and wings. Nice guy. Very loud, very smart in a Buddha-meets-Jim-Belushi kind of way. One of the junior students, who is kind of a sanctimonious, attention-seeking little guy, said something to the effect of "I don't think I should go to the advanced classes. I feel like I'm holding everyone back. I... I... I..." Sensei put down his beer, and said, "You think you're being humble, you think you're making yourself more worthy of attention by saying this. Fact is, this is your ego talking. You become so concerned with how inferior you are that your training suffers as a result. In fact, you become inferior because you think you are. So go to the advanced classes. Feel stupid. Screw up. Transcend your ego, and get down to business. Forget about 'you'. Think about what needs to be done and do it."

And this, friends, is how we all must be. We need to stop martyring ourselves to the lions of popularity and public opinion. We shouldn't "apply our intellects to playing the game." If we do that, we become the calculating, soulless PUA's and PHB's. We need to learn that the people who seem to cross social boundaries effortlessly do so beacuse they act as if those bounds do not exist.

Think about the last time someone, say, bumped you in the hallway. Did you brush it off, thinking, "maybe they were in a hurry"? Or did your ego take over, spinning the incident into a larger tapestry of us-vs-them, nerds-vs-jocks social conspiracy, all directed at keeping YOU down? If it was the latter, you need to reexamine how you relate to the world, and find a healthier way to do it.

...or techie office drones in general is still pretty well done by Scott Adams' Dilbert cartoon.

I know Dilbert has lost its buzz a bit but I still can relate to a lot of the scenarios.

Today's flex-time definition was on the money...

Ahh... the old promote them out of harm's way dealing problems.

Surprisingly, this seems to work - look at many Dilbert cartoons (dilbert.com), most of which are based on true stories sent to the author.

Scott Adams occasionally publishes the Dogbert New Ruling Class newsletter. Each newsletter seems to contain a dozen or more of these little treats: the latest uglified jargon directly from the mouths of Induhviduals. Subscribe, or read them from the web.

This is a great question. It reminds me of some particularly moving comments made by Scott Adams in his newsletter shortly after September 11, 2001. I often wonder how humourists manage to make us smile even in the darkest times.

What would Dilbert do?

Here and here!

What would Dilbert do?

Here and here!

Uh, yeah, right. I've only been a consultant in this field for years.

Consultant, eh? What do you think of this week's Dilbert? But honestly, Windows CE, Windows, PalmOS and Unix are not RTOSes. If you'd mentioned VxWorks, pSOS, OS-9, ThreadX or QNX, I wouldn't have doubted your mad skillz. WinCE has pretensions on being an RTOS, but people wanting "an RTOS" simply don't use it. It's an OS for a general purpose but small scale consumer computing device. It's really no use if all you want is bare bones (ie. scheduler, allocator, timers, mutexes and the odd device driver). It costs too much and is too bulky for what it does. People buy it because "it's Microsoft Windows, but on a small scale!" -- they want it purely for the GUI which looks and feels like Windows, or they want it because Windows programmers can port their applications to it. They certainly don't buy it on its merits as an RTOS, because it's the worst of them all. IMHO, PalmOS is a better OS for handheld PCs and Symbian is a better OS for phones.

Never used a PIC, but there are degrees between PIC and a Pentium.

Sure. 8 bit CPUs, 16 bit CPUs and 32 bit CPUs :) When you say "microcontroller", don't you mean "generic microprocessor core with on-board extras like I/O controllers, etc". Have you seen the PowerQUICC? It's a PowerPC core (yes, really, as in the IBM/Motorola/Apple CPU that graces many an Apple Mac) with an extra onboard coprocessor for doing Q.921/Ethernet/etc framing and control. It usually comes in at about 500 MIPS. You'll find these in these super new telecom to ATM gateway switches.

If there isn't a fancy GUI, a microcontroller can *probably* do it.

Yeah, and you can make a microcontroller based web server that does HTTP and SLIP and fits in a matchbox. Would you want to? My ADSL router is running a TCP/IP stack, does ADSL line attenuation and handles a variety of different modulation standards, ATM framing, handles the PPPoE protocol, acts as a 4 port ethernet hub, USB connectivity, does ingress/egress packet filtering and rewriting, runs an internal web server so I can configure it and run diagnostics tests, and an FTP server so I can reflash it. It runs on a single chip, the CX82310, which includes an embedded ARM940T running, as I said before, VxWorks. It does so much, it's really not feasible to have a single execution thread whose route is only changed by external interrupts. It would be a ridiculously complex (and therefore bug-prone) state machine needed to track and serve out each fragment of the diagnostic test web page as each incoming ethernet packet arrived asking for it. Discrete tasks is the only sane solution in this device. Now, do you really think Conexant would write their own timers, interrupt handlers, task schedulers and TCP/IP stack? Why should they when they can buy in an existing solution?

So, as I'm sure you mentioned, you can pick different powers of PICs / microcontrollers / embedded processors to suit your needs. These all have varying processing capabilities. Some tasks will only need a very simple 8 bit CPU programmed entirely in assembler. But as the complexity of the task increases, the more useful it is to buy in an existing RTOS rather than write your own code to do the same things as the RTOS provides. After all, most CPUs I know only have 7 (or less) external interrupts. If you need more than that, you have to multiplex them by having some sort of "true interrupt source" value available to the CPU, and that makes the hardware more expensive. It's easier to use a task scheduler which guarantees certain fractions of the CPU time and/or guarantees priority over lesser tasks and interrupts. And timers are much simpler to implement in software as discrete multiples of a single timing source (either internally from the CPU as the PowerPC allows, or an external timer, or even from the same crystal that's clocking the CPU), rather than have 20 timing crystals wired to the interrupt pins because you need 20 different timers. And even if you only used a fixed amount of RAM, it's easier to use an allocator at runtime than it is to hard-code RAM addresses. It also makes changing code easier. These things are all useful. These things are all OS services in a RTOS. Using an RTOS in your device in no way implies that you can use your device as a general purpose computer or drive a GUI, any more than using an 8 bit microcontroller with an EPROM does. Hey kids, watch me reflash my ethernet controller to make it play tetris!

I've been asked to assist a consultant on a project using VMS and basically have four days to figure out enough that I'm actually of some use.

I seriously doubt that you will learn enough in 4 days to be of any use. You will probably slow down the others who do know what they're doing. I would just admit that I didn't know anything about the OS, but would like to work along with the others to learn.

I've always thought consultants were overpaid. This proves it. See this week's Dilbert strip for proof.

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday

I've been asked to assist a consultant on a project using VMS and basically have four days to figure out enough that I'm actually of some use.

I seriously doubt that you will learn enough in 4 days to be of any use. You will probably slow down the others who do know what they're doing. I would just admit that I didn't know anything about the OS, but would like to work along with the others to learn.

I've always thought consultants were overpaid. This proves it. See this week's Dilbert strip for proof.

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday

I've been asked to assist a consultant on a project using VMS and basically have four days to figure out enough that I'm actually of some use.

I seriously doubt that you will learn enough in 4 days to be of any use. You will probably slow down the others who do know what they're doing. I would just admit that I didn't know anything about the OS, but would like to work along with the others to learn.

I've always thought consultants were overpaid. This proves it. See this week's Dilbert strip for proof.

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday

I've been asked to assist a consultant on a project using VMS and basically have four days to figure out enough that I'm actually of some use.

I seriously doubt that you will learn enough in 4 days to be of any use. You will probably slow down the others who do know what they're doing. I would just admit that I didn't know anything about the OS, but would like to work along with the others to learn.

I've always thought consultants were overpaid. This proves it. See this week's Dilbert strip for proof.

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday

It's just about corporate stupidity and pride. Some suit found the website and went crazy, no business plan, no money to be made, it's just about pride, envy and stupidity. And by the way, what else has PCI-SIG to do except surfing the web all day long and bragging about how great they are?

For a better understanding look here, large organizations really work that way.

PCI-SGI may be stupid, but they are not so stupid to really believe they can make serious money on selling such a service.

It'd probably be safer to have your networks secured by MS Wally, instead.

dilbert

Would this be proof that Scott Adams reads slashdot?

Dow said, in their complaint that

"The violation of Dow' s invaluable copyrights is causing and will continue to cause Dow to suffer irreparable damage as long as the website remains operational."

Put it this way: if the same material had appeared in The Onion, would it have stung Dow so badly? Would they have even cared? If not then it wouldn't have been worth doing.

Plus, of course, there are the questions: what would you think if your family had lost two or three members and been given 3000 dollars each for your trouble while the people responsible had just gone home and were living in luxury on a pension generated by the same company that killed so many of your friends and relations? What if you had had to bury children in unnamed graves because their entire families had been wiped out leaving no one that knew their names? Would you give a toss about Dow's silly little copyright?

TWW

what does "PHB" mean?

Pointy-Haired-Boss, as in Dilbert. Refers to dumb bosses who don't know how to manage their people

"Pointy Haired Boss". It arose from the Dilbert comic strip.

Well, that just feeds into my real master plan....

Sterilize and Enslave the Stupid of the World!!!!!! DNRC unite!! Muahahahahah!

But, seriously, the parties can only lie to you if you let them. It's your choice to believe something without checking on it yourself. Unfortunately, most people believe whatever they hear and the only ones talking and are the parties and those in power.

And that just feeds back into my original point. If people would stand up, get the facts, and make their own opinion known, then maybe the "party lines" wouldn't be the only voices out there.

And that might be what makes a difference. Hell, it might even force the parties to listen to what the people really think instead of what they think the people think.

It's called a Dogbert complex.

(With apologies to Scott Adams) dilbert.com

"Theoretically, if I reduce the number of employees and simultaneously increase the productivity, we'll have the smallest payroll around and still be a market-leader!

...

...

I wonder how they get the floppy bits inside the floppy disk?"

See: http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert- 20021014.html

My major plan is to build a satellite and eventually put it in my living room (encased in some material of course), and eventually get off my butt and launch it. I'm already working on a giant slingshot (old-school Dilbert fans will know what I'm talking about). But hey, I can also use it to build some other crap such as my own bootleg Pentium IV's from my basement!

I wonder if Scott Adams wrote today's Dilbert with Microsoft in mind?

Dogbert the attorney: 'Your Honor, is it too late to change sides? '
[next panel]'After hearing the evidence I want to punish my client. ---No?'
[last panel - to client]I expect some awkward silences during the next break.'

My bank isn't online yet you insensitive clod.

Sounds like it's time for you to leave Elbonia...

Dilbert once clicked on a Microsoft EULA to later discover that he had agreed to become a towel boy at Bill Gates house. When he served, he got towels snapped at him.

As usual, Dilbert has already solved this problem.

there is absolutly no reason to upgrade other than to throw your money away.

No one has ever defined what exactly encapsulates ".NET"

Are you sure about that?

Yes, thank you.

No one has ever defined what exactly encapsulates ".NET"

Are you sure about that?

Yes, thank you.

Dilbert may hold the answer

actually, today's dilbert sums up my thoughts about this space tourism thing quite well.

In one fell swoop, every citizen in the entire country of Elbonia would suddenly have broadband access... if only they had computers.

~Philly

You can either look at the sceenshots or read this to learn that engineers should never create user interfaces.

The fact that my and your sense of humour did not intersect. :) To me, it seemed that the clip was like straight from Dilbert mission statement generator. Anyway, the description is very good, but to one like me, who does not use math terms actively, it takes some time to understand what it means in practise and how to use the information. And at first sight it seems like the recipe for Energy Bolt spell. But then again, I am mathematic moron :)

This product is not targeted at techies nor for photographers...

This is targeted at PHBs who need to show off their "cool" gear to other PHBs and to make a talking point at the next company party.

Move along people.... Nothing here...

That quote is misleading if you don't read what he writes after that; he finds ways that an eye could indeed evolve incrementally.

BTW: Have you been reading Dilbert lately?

reminds me of a Dilbert strip.

http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert- 20020819.html

Shhh! They might hear!
dilbert.com

In the eyes of a business (or its PHB, at least), cost is seen as directly proportional to the quality of a product.

This isn't just true in terms of software, but extends to all industries and products. Take a regular cup of coffee as an example:

You walk into a shop and pay $3.00 for a cup of coffee. You'd expect it to be a pretty decent cup of coffee, right? What if you bought a cup of coffee for $1.00? Would you expect it to be more or less good than the $3.00 cup of coffee? The majority of people would expect the $3.00 cup of coffee to be nicer than the $1.00 cup of coffee, but until they taste them both, they don't know.

If a business asks for quotes for a project, and someone is outbidding you 3:1, then they are likely to perceive your project as being underdeveloped, whether or not this is true. :-(

If a project needs to be completed within a certain timescale, it stands to reason that the company will pay over the odds, rather than going with the cheaper option and running the risk of having to pay for someone to take over a project if it goes tits-up, along with the added time that situation implies.

Today is a Dilbert mission statement day, clearly. Alternatively, our IT world is falling into a bubble again.

If that Adobe e-book is protected by industry-standard level cryptography, then that industry is in deep trouble.

Why does everyone have to try to do their own "industry-standard" there would have been many valid INDUSTRY-STANDARD cryptography tools with which these problems would not have never even surfaced.

Tell congress to love your kid."

Sheesh, that almost beats the Dilbert.com mission statement generator in saying nothing and sounding fancy... but sstill not quite:

"Our challenge is to proactively enhance mission-critical services as well as to seamlessly disseminate world-class data "