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Slack
Summary: A highly entertaining, and informative survey of the state of the high-tech and software industries today, which suggests that companies have been taking exactly the wrong actions under pressure and further decreasing their ability to handle rapid change. The book is peppered with interesting asides and examples, but is always informed by the central thesis that companies need more Slack built back into their structures.
Check your sources. Tom DeMarco is an established industry management guru who has the respect of many of the technical community. He's written several previous titles, including the notable Peopleware and the collection, Why does software cost so much?. I'm not normally keen on any books in this genre, but have always found DeMarco's writing very readable and though-provoking -- most importantly for me, he has a habit of trying to find NUMBERS to back up any claims.
What's this book about? This is a 2001 title, and I find it slightly shocking that, in a maturing industry, we still need a book on this topic (from the blurb):
"To most companies, efficiency means profits and growth. But what if your 'efficient' company - the one with the reduced headcount and the 'stretch' goals -- is actually slowing down and losing money? What if your employees are burning out doing the work of two or more people, leaving them no time for planning, prioritizing, or even lunch? What if your super-efficient company is suddenly falling behind?"
So far we're just talking about the state of the modern software industry right? What's he proposing we do about it?
"[...] what you need is not more efficiency, but more slack. What is 'slack'? Slack is the degree of freedom in a company that allows it to change."
It seems a very simple concept to me, but then I'm an engineer, his writing is persuasive, and I have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight when reading. How can he get a 220 page book out of such a simple concept? After all, all we programmers know that your general purpose solutions always sacrifice speed for flexibility right?
What he discusses is a business model where you keep people, say, 70% busy. This leaves time for unexpected business, for reflection on why X takes so long and how to fix it, for self-training, for discussion about how things are done. These are all good things -- but the winner is that when people are stressed by sudden change or a deluge of new work, they have some slack to take in. Things change, you suffer a reduction in productivity, but hey, you had some slack to take in so the week's work is still getting done, you've just dropped that Ruby book for a week or two. You're swamped by a rush on finishing Product X before a competitors Product hits the market first -- just drop that tinkering with a novel memory pooling thingy you were considering slotting in to replace the adequate-but-inelegant solution in your product. I'm simplifying and reducing his argument here, but that's the idea. The other corollary to the 70% busyness level is that the system is responsive -- some nodes are 100%, some are 20%, but overall things are flowing. A system where most nodes are at 100% means some nodes are hanging waiting for other nodes to catch up -- total throughput drops. This'll make more sense reading his version ('underworked but responsive secretary' vs '100% busy, cannot help until Friday secretary'), but it's a good central topic -- simple, but not trivial.
220 pages isn't much -- he states that the book should be comfortable reading for a business trip -- and the bulk of the space is taken up by rationale for his suggestion, and discussion of the consequences. What I found valuable about the book was the description and subsequent debunking of several management techniques -- for example, he has a severe go at management-by-objective. I recognise it. I suspect you too will recognise it, and several other common variations.
Let's have a quick skim of the contents -- this isn't a technical book, more one massive opinion column, so the section titles aren't that useful, but I feel like I'm cheating if I don't do this in a review ...
- Slack
Madmen in the halls, busyness vs business, the myth of fungible resources. This section sets up the case by setting out the assumptions, and describing what actually happened to most businesses when put under pressure in the last 10 years. I loved the word "fungible" too -- describes a resource that can be freely interchanged -- like paperclips are and software designers aren't. - Lost, but making good time
The cost of pressure, aggressive schedules, overtime, culture of fear, quality, management by objective. This is a meaty section and basically describes how the heck things got to be this way, what practices were adopted, and how they made things worse... - Change and growth
Vision, leadership, fear and safety, trust, what middle management is there for, change management. This section talks about change, specially why a lot of the measures adopted to prepare for it help make things worse, and how we should instead consider other approaches. - Risk and risk management
Working at breakneck speed, learning to live with risk. This seems like a short section from the contents, but it's reasonably long. There's less to discuss here for what we have is a 2-by-4 to head of businesses who refuse to plan for failure. A discussion then follows of the classic problem -- scheduling -- and why you'll never do a decent job of that without risk management. This is the only section where the tone is hectoring rather than persuasive -- or else that was my own frustration at the experiences I've had coming into play!
Target audience It's aimed at a particular segment according to the cover: "A handbook for managers, entrepreneurs, and CEOs." Well, I'm none of those, but I enjoyed it and found it useful. I'd prefer that my bosses were reading this than most of the other pap from the same shelf, but let's face it, change comes from all levels in the organisation, and if you can't spot mistakes being made within your team then you can't plan for your own career either. Read this book, it'll come in useful either when your managers start going awry and making you suffer, or it'll come in useful when you float up the org chart and have to start dealing with a team of your own.
What's good? Most of it. This is a highly entertaining read, and does present some genuinely useful ideas. It's also great as a collection of management anti-patterns. I think any career programmer in a medium-sized or above business would find this book interesting. Actually, come to that, anyone who enjoys Dilbert will enjoy this book.
What's bad? Not much. There were a couple of areas where I would have liked more case studies or evidence. As I said above, the recourse to surveys for the truth is something of a trademark of DeMarco -- he certainly references quite a lot of material in this book, but doesn't produce any solid evidence to back his ideas. Granted, probably hard to experiment on this scale!
You can purchase Slack from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
bn.com has the book listed for $18.40. Amazon has it for $16.10.
Save yourself some money.
And a history of corporate suits ignoring what he says. If you do read and implement what he says it will save you time and make you money.
These are the great books of Software Engineering written by people who know, and can prove it. headed by The Mythical Man Month and Peopleware everytime I re-read them it depresses me. Another year on, and still the same mistakes as 30 years ago.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Am I the only one who thought this was a broadway show?
Marge: You know, when I was a little girl I always dreamed of being in a Broadway audience.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Give yourself to Bob Dobbs, and ye shall have slack.
Hmmm, I thought the true way to obtain Slack was through Bob Dobbs.
And the book have a link to the Church of the SubGenius? Will Bob sue?
As usual, this book is a couple of bucks less at Amazon, or even more than a couple if you don't mind a used copy.
And moderators, this isn't redundant. A lot of people actually think Slashdot links the cheapest site.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
bn.com has the book listed for $18.40. Amazon has it for $16.10
That's $32.20 after you've given an equal amount to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to counter the amount that you give to Amazon to retain a lawyer to enforce the dubious patent on "one-click shopping", or sending a personal identifier along with a request to buy a product.
I give $65 annually to EFF. I don't spend more than $65 annually on products of the nine members of MPAA union RIAA. It works out
Will I retire or break 10K?
If only my boss had read this book already, but the review appears slightly more than a week too late to prevent my submitting two-weeks' notice. The concepts in this book appear to be just what my tech-ignorant, conflict-phobic, soon-to-be-ex-boss needs (apart from a swift kick in the butt).
[Word to the wise geek: never work in a public library if you will be the only geek on staff--you'll thank me for this advice]
That said, this book seems destined to be purchased by managers nationwide, only to collect dust on their shelf, next to the One-Minute Manager and Dummies Guide to Management.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
...that everytime I heard the words 'guru' or 'consultant' I get the overwhelming urge to reach for my gun?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I have first-hand experience with this kind of work environment at my University job. It has really helped me produce much higher quality work (I'm a Web Designer and Developer using Perl, PHP, and MySQL). Of course, in my case it's somewhat accidental, but nevertheless I see a lot of this at the University.
The culture here is such that people are hired to handle a set of responsibilities rather than to produce 40 hours of solid work every week. Because there is no one clear goal in most University departments, you find a wide disparity of workloads.
I think there is one crucial distinction between people that needs to be judged before such a management is widely deployed, however. There are some people, when given spare time, will increase the quality of their work. Others however, will simply waste their extra time. I'm inclined to say that techies, being generally more interested in their work than the average full-time employee would fit into the first category. Upon reflection, however, I do not believe this is true. I think it just boils down to personal work ethic. I've seen people in what I consider to be dreadfully dull positions (retail management, facilities) coming up with all kinds of great ideas to further the goals of the organization. As with many things in business, hiring seems to make all the difference.
This is the original book about slack... and its even cheeeaper.
And it also puts more bull in your bulldada.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/067
Yeah, hiring 3 people to cover a department that should have 10 people is monetarily cheaper since you only have to cover salary and benefits for 3, the overtime and burnout will bite you in the butt in the longrun.
Where I now work we have exactly THREE people to cover a backlog of tickets (some going back almost SIX MONTHS) along with the current issues of a 10 building, 250+ computer WAN. They wonder why we get stuck working a bit of OT (average of 1hr/week - and that's usually divided between the 3 of us), but they also expect us to get the department totally caught up (hey - there's 3 of you now instead of the just 2 of last year).
The world really needs to kick a few of those highly paid corporate officers out of their palaces and make them work a week or 2. I bet that would let us start seeing a change in working conditions (or at least pay).
I don't mind WORKING but this whole "we're going to cut your department, and your pay but you sill have to get everything done on time without overtime" idea is nuts.
Chapters (aka Indigo) has it for $21.00 CDN (for those in the iRewards program it drops an additional $2.10, to $18.90 CDN), which is equal to about $13.20 US. Amazon.ca has it for $23.10 CDN.
... would be "Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry-And Made Himself the Richest Man in America". Microsoft is, surprisingly, everything the reviewer is looking for in a company.
We didn't get it from any book. My boss is just a laid-back guy. Hell, until business was picking up to the point that it is, people were drinking every day... he offered me a beer at 3:00 on my second day!
Now, business has picked up, and before our last two large projects, he's hired somebody to help me with them. Now, I've got a close-knit team of 3, and I'm still doing the same amount of work as always. I get a little stresed about busy weeks, but a "busy" week usually means cutting the hour of Unreal Tournament, coming early and leaving a little late -- not working 80 hours a week. As a result, I'm always "on". I don't feel burnt out. I even enjoy my work most of the time, though it can be monotonous. (web scripts are all the same after you've written too many)
If there are some people in my company working at 20%, then I guess I am doing the jobs of 5 people....
This is a dangerous book to hype during a time of layoffs and cutbacks. I've seen alot of folks that were tinkering with skunkworks projects lose their jobs because they were viewed as non-essential.
-nd
Speaking of Slack(ers), where in the world is the uber-wannabe-cyber-journalist-reporter-author-v ante-garde-critic Jon Katz?
a
In all likelihood, he is probably looking for bin
Laden who was declared wanted (dead or alive) by
none other than:
The Chump-In-Charge
Be Patriotic: Smoke Amerikan Grown Marijuana !!
No. My immediate reaction was "Let's write software BROADWAY STYLE!"
Don't forget Half.com. Get a better deal on a slightly used book and boost your eBay karma to boot!
you may already be an expert on slack.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
The Tattered Cover has it listed for $14.00 -- if you remember the Tattered Cover was the bookstore which did not turn over a the list of people who bought a particular book in an effort to protect free speech.
I think this books sounds interesting, perhaps echoing the Theory of Constraints and similar ideas. My only concern is (and this may be addressed in the book) - what is done to combat boredom, malaise, etc. in underutilized employees? This can very easily lead to undisciplined and less efficient employees when/if things are under the gun...seems to me it's a pretty fine balance.
Please don't click on this RedWolves2 guy's link to Amazon. He's embedded his Amazon.com affiliate code into the link without telling anyone, and it would be a shame to see profit from such sleazy behavior. Slashdot should have a policy allowing moderators to discard posts from people who pull this kind of crap.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I went to a workshop he ran with Tim Lister and the Atlantic Systems Guild. Well worth the time and money.
Also check out "The Deadline" - a novel about project management. Really.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
Support the Tattered Cover who supported our free speech.
ACLU on Tattered Cover Decision
Free Expression.Com on the tattered cover case
Interview with Tattered Cover's owner.
The world really needs to kick a few of those highly paid corporate officers out of their palaces and make them work a week or 2. I bet that would let us start seeing a change in working conditions (or at least pay).
Grow up. That kind of class baiting doesn't accomplish anything. You are a replacable monkey, a dime a dozen -- if you were GOOD, you wouldn't be in an entry level position like you are. If you ARE good, you'll soon find it distasteful and move up to where you really belong. If NOT, the company saves a few bucks by working you harder. It isn't like you are bricklaying in 100 degree heat or even standing all day asking people if they want fries with that. You have a cushy chair, a collection of empty soda cans at your desk and you get to play with computers -- which you love. How many people get to do something they love?
But, I guess you know how those "highly paid corporate officers in their palaces" should do their jobs better than they do.
Excuse me while I smirk.
Where I now work we have exactly THREE people to cover a backlog of tickets (some going back almost SIX MONTHS) along with the current issues of a 10 building, 250+ computer WAN. They wonder why we get stuck working a bit of OT (average of 1hr/week - and that's usually divided between the 3 of us), but they also expect us to get the department totally caught up (hey - there's 3 of you now instead of the just 2 of last year).
PS -- They don't "expect" you to get caught up. They have a constant backlog so the three of you are constantly busy and not playing tetris or reading your PERL in a Nutshell book on the company's dime.
Posting anonymously so I don't undo the moderation I did earlier...
... and I agree with the basic premise. This is a great "new" look at the problem of stressing effectiveness over efficiency, especially in the design house. However, most career managers have little incentive to rock the good ship status quo, and the majority of business contexts are production-oriented, not design-oriented, so efficiency over effectiveness is the name of the game.
Slip it into your boss' carry-on luggage before a big trip. Maybe you'll luck out.
[
(web scripts are all the same after you've written too many)
;-)
This is a big hint from the universe that you need to abstract further. Spend some time factoring out the similarities, and you can make those drudgery scripts more quickly, with fewer bugs, and move on to more interesting problems. Plus, the challenge of factoring the functionality is itself an interesting problem.
Just trying to be helpful; I have no vested interest in you listening or otherwise
This fantastic book is $14.00 at an independent bookstore who values freedom. If you remember, about one year ago there was a big case in Colorado where the Tattered Cover bookstore refused to give up records of customers who purchased particular books to the authorities on grounds of free speech. This is detailed here,here, and here. Big chains like BN and Amazon don't take stands like this.
Have you really nothing better to waste your mod points on?
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
There's no business like code business, like no business I know.
...prone to confusing motion with progress for several reasons -
1. Assigning staff to "Special Projects" is often done with the idea that you must have a manager directing staff and keeping them busy at all times. Clearly, the staff involved couldn't come up with any productive use of their own time, so they have to be given a project.
2. These projects tend to have a very low code to documentation ratio. In fact, they often only produce a lot of documentation (usually of processes). Morello notes in Slack that processes often standardize the simple parts of application development and ignore the subtler and more difficult aspects.
3. Staff working on a "special project" aren't spending time creatively improving existing applications. This goes back to point one - management assumes that the technical staff won't have good ideas.
I certainly thought it was a Broadway play or musical. Actually, that's what got me to read the story. The name "Slack" seemed to have been an apt name for a drama based on the years of dot.com slavery.
;)
I was curious how they managed to integrate an educational theme like the subtitle suggested, "Getting past burnout, busywork, and the myth of total efficiency" into the narrative. I figured it was some neo-educational-broadway-drama-storytelling production. But a book isn't that bad.
I picked up this book for about $10 at a super-mega-uber-discount bookstore in San Francisco earlier on this year. Boy, what a bargain.
This book absofuckinglutely rocks. After I was about 50 pages into it, I started evangelizing it to all my game programmer and IT friends. I wish that every manager and project manager would read this book. There are some amazing ideas and concepts in that book that are no big surprise, but you'd think that these concepts would be impossibilities looking at how people manage!
There are some "amazing" ideas like: (paraphrased)
* 'If a project fails to meet a deadline, it's not the fault of the employees doing the work, it was the responsibility of the project manager to make a realistic project plan'
* 'No matter how many hours you force your knowledge employees to work, they'll still only be as productive as they would have been in 8 hours of work.'
* 'Interrupt your knowledge workers often, and it reduces their productivity'
* '100% efficient means no flexibility'
* 'Constant meetings make managers not able to manage'
* 'It costs money and time ($$$) to train a new person, so keep your old people happy if they're doing their jobs.'
The scenarios presented in this book rang so very true with the dotcom paradigm and the game industry. I couldn't believe how well everything applied. That whole book should be applied.
Most of these ideas aren't big surprises, but damned if people don't listen. I reiterate: I wish that every manager of knowledge workers would read this book, and that members of upper management would take time off from their busy meeting schedules and read it too. I think that it could make some kind of difference and even a tiny one would be amazing.
Us dotcommers burned out and used that severance period to get our lives back, but a good number of companies are still behaving like they did back then, and currently employed people are burnt out and/or burning out.
As someone who was an IT manager and still intends to be an IT manager, it was an excellent read. I just wish that my manager and the the COO would have read that damn book.
Burnt out employees is a bad thing. This book in the hands of managers is a very good thing.
Remember people, those deck chairs should be neat and orderly, we need to look good when we are sinking (- someone on the RMS Titanic)
Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I worked at a place that had recently gotten a new CEO. All of a sudden, everyone started getting those Daytimer notebooks. When asked why I didn't have one yet, I replied that I didn't like being so busy; it interfered with my daydreaming. People looked at me funny. Then I got a Newton (yes, it was a long time ago) and started to log my work time. I got depressed after finding out that I was working 13 months for every 12 month period. I quit using the Newton and felt much happier, until I got laid off during the Asian Flu thing in '98. Then I went back to being a contractor and was happy until the dotcom crash. Now I've had 18 months of slack time. Too much of a good thing is as bad as too little.
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil." -Knuth
Companies, especially in the cut-throat US market, consistently choose immediate gains over long term gains. This is why we can have billion-dollar corporations just crumbling within days. At some point you can no longer borrow from Peter to pay Paul, and it all falls apart. Companies should be looking not only 1 or 5 years (or god forbid, just months!) into the future, but 10 or 20...not only with respect to human resources, but all the other resources and strategies available. Unfortunately, when you are surrounded with competition which will gladly eat your lunch if you attempt to forego immediate efficiencies for long term efficiencies, this can be very hard. Somehow this premature optimization needs to be disincentivized, but I'm not sure how that can be done. Also, with such "premature optimizations" the damage is long done before the long court process can resolve any wrong doing (HOW many years has the MS trial been going on without any ramifications or reparations so far?) Perhaps corporations should be forced to submit long term business strategy documents or have their charter revoked (maybe make this public record, so that companies cannot eat each other's lunch?) Who knows. But it a larger issue than just human resources. The free market optimizes very locally (and while some may argue the failure of those that optimize too locally, and the subsequent emergence of other companies support, not detract, from the free market - remember, big giants make BIG fucking holes when they fall...maybe we should be wary of letting the giants get that big without looking where they are going)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Another important aspect of slack pops up in Repenning, Understanding Fire Fighting In New Product Development; without it, the system is unstable against transients that tend to draw resources from upstream development (where they are more efficient) into downstream firefighting (where their benefit is more timely). A death spiral results.
Decent paper. Yes, he tends to belabor points the reader should see coming, and the model is clearly simplistic - but these very points might make it accessible for managers, particularly those still enamored of their MBA degrees.
I decided that behaving ethically was the most nihilistic thing I could do. - Paul Pavel
I personally try to keep my maximum loading on any given day at or below 70%, but I also have a tendency to do some work on the weekends. It's no accident that 5/7ths is about 70%, so scaling a 5 day workweek to 7 days gives 100%. At least in theory. In the position I'm in, there's an infinite amount of work I could be doing. I work in bursts, get lots done, and then coast until the next burst. It works out great, because there are usually a lot of 'fires' that erupt during my coasting periods, and if I were working slavishly, I wouldn't be able to 'firefight.'
Ultimately, I think I do a better job of serving the company, as I'm able to work on projects and activities that are orthogonal to my "critical path tasks", and that helps out the productivity of everyone around me. I can spend the 10 minutes to look at someone elses code and spot a silly bug, or float an idea past someone about some project they're working on and so on. I love it.
I actually spend probably 1/2 of my day hopping between email, browsing websites to keep up on the news, avoiding conference calls, and generally ruminating about the state of the universe as it applies to our group. The other half of the day, I'm slacking off. And then on the weekend, I churn out code. ;-) For some reason, they keep promoting me. (It sometimes has an Office Space feel to it -- "You're firing Michael and Samir, and you're giving me a raise?" -- but really, I'm not that bad.)
Ok, I'm not *quite* that slacked all the time. But when I'm coasting, it's not too different. It balances the occasional mania-induced 14hr days and code-a-thons. I much prefer the work-in-bursts sprinting to sustained drudgery. It keeps it more interesting in the long run. And I am more likely to maintain a healthy reserve of slack.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
For the last 15 years, I've always told my boss that I am 2-3 days behind where I'm really are in my work. So, whenever the shit hitts the fan, I am always able to slither out unscathed...
Perhaps the book already addresses the issue, but it sounds like it is taking a manufacturing view to tech productivity. Sure, extra margin/slack might be useful if the widgets are interchangeable, but we are talking about people here. A new warm body brought into the project needs to be brought up to speed, slowing other developers down. So we have that famous axiom from "The Mythical Man-Month" that adding a new programmer to a late project makes it later. How exactly does DeMarco (who is no dummy) handle reallocation of human "slack"?
i predict this book will be popular with those who do the work, and they will highly recommend it to those who schedule the work, who will find its arguments less persuasive.
-- p
This "Slack" sounds like a luxery of a boom economy. In this world of cutbacks, layoffs, and rescoping, how many companies are ever going to have employees that remain only 70% utilized.
The truth is that you don't need slack, you need good managers. Should a business opportunity arise, good managers reprioritize and shift the focus of their employees, not complain that they have too few resources.
If you goto http://www.addall.com/ you can search for it in hardcover and electronic form also. They search some 24 different sites and give you the lowest price. That is what the internet is about - enforcing competition.
Why pay more,... or amazon and RedWolves2...
I am not associated with addall.com, I like cheap books.
We have the best government that money can buy.
What really differentiates people is the level of confidence they need to have in their own idea before they disobey their manager to do it. People with a low threshhold implement a lot of things ... good or bad, depending if they're smarter than their manager.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
What happens if a group of engineers have a boat (or butt) load of tasks but with no priority attached, no tracking of progress or changes, or no version control to avoid stepping on other's work? Sound like a poorly run internet project run by kids? Nope, this is by a part of a multi-billion international company. The engineers are obviously not motivated and morale is subterranian. There is no trust or respect of the management as it is obvious that they don't really care about anything but their paychecks. How do you get around this? Some teams find ways of doing the collaboration and coordination work on their own. They proactively track requirements, changes and all, along side implementation and meet with QA (after they proactively put a QA system together) and handle the change management themselves. However this is not exactly efficient as if they are doing the jobs of management then they are doing that less of their own jobs (plus the resources that are going towards the do nothing managers). However in really bad organizations that proactive caring will actually be met with scorn and malevolence. The ones that are bailing the ship out are labled as telling the emperor that they see that 'special' birthmark.
How do you get around this? Should you just quit? When do you know to quit caring and instead give up and move on?
There are a lot of writers out there who have been talking about this concept for years.
Tom Heuerman calls the "slack" concept Organizational Mindfulness.
Not as snappy as "Slack," but essentially the same idea.
BTW, is somebody looking into grabbing the domain slackdot.org?
Read any good sonnets lately?
Believe me... I try -- its the only pleasure I get out of my job anymore. Just got into a fight with my co-workers about just that, actually. They know that simpler is better, but somehow won't accept that abstraction can mean simplicity. I abstract small things and they're happy. I want to abstract the entire database and all the pages built from it, and they bitch. I see a tiny little kernel of code that can build and run almost any complex website in a speedy, secure way (static files from templates)... but they don't like the idea of making the modularity so fine-grained.
And if anyone is ever visiting Denver and you have some spare time, you owe it to yourself to spend an afternoon at the Tattered Cover bookstore. Absolutely fabulous place, literally four floors of 1/4 city block, wall to wall with books, with lots of very comfy chairs to do your perusing in....keep an eye out too for the old guy reading a newspaper that seems to be sitting just a little bit too still...
...and IN SOVIET RUSSIA, beowulf clusters imagine 1, 2, 3 profit!!!! jokes made out of YOU!!!
I turfed on the html. Sorry. The message #'s are right, though...
you're right, take my guns and raise my taxes
I had this vision of a chorus line of "Bob" Dobbs's puffing on their pipes ...
I thought he was talking of slackware. Thus, the following picture occured to me:
... thus the article defeated itself.
slack = 70% of time spent busy
debian = 5% of time spent busy
Granted, I know this isn't what it's talking about, but the idea of someone writing of - or even thinking - that slackware is a time-efficient distro is quite humorous.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers