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How To Make Software Projects Fail
Bob Abooey writes: "SoftwareMarketSolution has an interesting interview of Joel Spolsky, of Joel on Software fame. Joel, a former programmer at Microsoft, discusses some of the reasons he thinks some very popular software companies or projects fail, including Netscape, Lotus 123, Borland, etc." This interview brings out some mild boiler-room stories which sound like they could be the basis of a good book, along the lines of Soul of a New Machine .
This first post for Ida!
people tell stories in boiler rooms?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Boobies.
up the arse
This is not the first post so you may ignore it.
...a programmer that didn't check whether his ftp library can do passive ftp.
I'm new to linux. I've downloaded staroffice. It is a .bin file. I'm trying to do a network install for multiple users. The manual says to run setup /net. All i have is the .bin file. If i launch it with double click, it launches teh installer, but without the /net arguement. I can't seem to launch it from the command line, even though i've changed the permissions to executable. Anyone know what i'm doing wrong?
Woo hoo!!!!! It's mine!
i beat you to it: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24483&cid=2657 485
I had a boner, so I spanked it right here. Now my boxers are soggy with ejaculate.
Humans rule, Dolphins can suck it!
Bob Abooey is getting stories posted on Slashdot?
Now I've seen everything.
--perdida
He's not a programmer, just a marketing weenie who knows C.
Hmm...seems to have worked so far.
isnt that supposed to be \.? this / is a backslash isnt it? correct me if i'm wrong. thanks.
this is not a troll
and not complain about it. I worked with a guy who took over code from a person whom he had never met and actually learned the code by seemingly getting into the former programmer's head. Sure, he was crazy. He said things to himself while reading the code like "what are you doing here, my clever friend?". Pretty fucking amusing stuff. If you stare at anything long enough you can figure it out.
D1d j00 3v3/\/ r33d m3h (0/\/\/\/\3/\/7?!
Who moderated this weak sack of shit as +4 funny?
then english
Uh... Hello... We don't care.
Most commercial software sucks. My parent company (to remain nameless in this bad economy, lol) makes their software without any user input and it shows. Every client that uses it bitches. Guess how they became successful? Like Cisco they ripped it off of another company and sold it as their own. Then when they marketed the shit out of it they bought all their smaller competitors. Now they have 50% of the market and still are in the red (losing money hand over fist).
This is where my company comes in. Small nimble and sharp as a razor. Sometimes you just have to wait for the 800lbs gorilla to piss people off so much they'll buy the shotgun and shells for you to off it.
Wish me luck, hope I dont get sued.
Normally I don't reply to anonymous idiots, but I'm in a bad mood today, so I'll let you know that one of my programs just happens to be more or less a de facto world standard. And I graduated university two years ago, thank you very much.
Why are you all calling it a scooter? I'd say that's a bit of an understatement.
I think all the people who are saying "electric scooter, big whoop. $3,000, yeah right" are slightly missing the point. Yeah, it's kind of wimpy for the price tag. Yeah, it's kind of expensive, and it's questionable who would want to use it.
But this is just the first model. It's more sort of a proof of concept--a demonstration that the scooter can work, and looks as neat as all get-out in motion. As time goes on, the performance will improve and the price will fall.
Look at the Palm (Pilot). The first model was, what, 128K? With no backlight, no infra-red, or anything? And how high was the price tag? And now the Visor Deluxe, which was at one time the wet dream of anybody who even looked at a Palm, is only $130 brand new.
Look at the DVD player. The original models were expensive enough, the first bunch of discs were glitchy enough, that a lot of people scoffed and made snide remarks. But the DVD went on to become the fastest-adopted new consumer technology ever.
So here we have a relatively slow, electric-powered self-stabilizing scooter, for $3,000. Are very many of us going to buy it? Do very many of us have the money to sink into that sort of gee-gaw? No and no. I know I'm not going to be spending three grand on something like that myself, either. Nor would I be likely to spend two grand, or even one grand for that matter.
Show me a government owned power company in the USA.
OK, I'll mention a few: TVA (i.e., Tennesse Valley Authority, which lifted an entire region out of utter abject poverty during the Depression, SoCal's DWP (which not only distributes water and generates power, but also manages to generate power while distributing water), Sacramento's Municipal Utility District (MUD) which generates and distributes most of the power in north-central CA, and finally the BPA (i.e., Bonneville Power Administration) which built and still operates most of the hydroelectric power generation and transmission in the Columbia watershed. The Northwest has a lower cost of living partly due to low power costs (though it isn't guaranteed and it has been rising) and low water costs (likely to continue given near term global warming effects). Water, Power (and soon, Broadband) are _exactly_ the infrastructure investments that our government does well and should control. Private utilities are very vulnerable to economic fluctuations where their executives' self-interest leads them to try foolish deals and daft accounting tricks in search of short-term performance, while government can weather tough quarters (and years) without worrying about the stock analysts.
In case you hadn't noticed, the major private power utilities in California are in bankruptcy and are desperately beseeching the State to bail them out (and might yet stick the tax and rate paying citizens after all, given how cozy their lobbyists have been with the CA PUC, Legislature, and Executive branch fixers, just about forever). One can only hope that the CA government and regulators now realize that the public is watching with interest and will nail them if they screw it up further, so they might fix it properly.
Of course, private utility executives and board members never do get held accountable, nor do their government co-conspirators, but if things were to be really just, there'd be a few of them hung from lamp-posts in San Francisco before this is over. Screwing the public for private gain is just the sort of thing that deserves "extreme prejudice."
Government utilities are a good thing, mostly (WPPS notwithstanding, but that was a _private_ boondoggle admittedly triggered by a BPA error). Private utilities are simply disasters waiting to ripen, explode, and be discovered, unless they are regulated into castrated quasi-governmental entities. The term "private utility" really is an oxymoron.
That's exactly what capatilism is all about. Cutting corners: how little effort can you put into making the largest profit? How many people can you anally rape in the wages department before no one will work you for? How shitty of an excuse for software can you throw together and still have it look pretty and work for a few hours? Who cares if 36 solder is insufficient to guarantee safety? It works doesn't it? That's where the bottom line is: the almighty buck. Don't kid yourself -- capatilism has always been all about this shit and always will be.
That's why the good people of the Soviet Empire enjoyed high standards of living, reliable high tech products and a great track record of industrial safety then?
Capitalism is about giving the market what it wants - nothing more, and nothing less. If free people, making their own purchasing decisions with their own money want something, the Capitalist system will find a way to sell it to them. If they choose not to buy it, either because it's not a good product, or they don't like the corporation making it, then Capitalism will make sure that this corporation soon ceases to exist.
That's what terrifies Socialists, the concept that the People and not the Party really are in control of the means of production in a Capitalist society.
And if you don't like it, try living in a non-capitalist society for a while... like Afghanistan.
Well, you can also get a disease and die from sex, bad comments won't do that to you... Bad comments are more like a case of herpies.
And if you don't like it, try living in a non-capitalist society for a while...
I did. There's one called Germany that I rather liked. You know, where they have sane laws instead of Anything-Goes Matrial Arts Mammon Worship
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