This should not be suitable commentary for "Perth residents". ALL global citizens will be affected by such a project, and the premier's office had better be damned prepared to hear MY views on it.
I assume you mean not *just* Perth residents. Fair enough, though our local goverment barely listens to Australian citizens on topics of science, so good luck. Now, if it was a sports-related comment...
For any Perth people that want to get involved, there's now a forum at www.e3.com.au (a website about Perth's free/community wireless network). A big thanks to Jason at that site. I've also made a tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/5xy2 for signatures, etc.
Any local Perth residents that want anything to happen with this project should send a message to the Premier's office using this page. Be polite. (I'm fairly sure this isn't redirected to/dev/null.)
Cynical trick that project managers do to make all their projects technically "on time". Sit down with them and get a full set of specifications agreed on. Signatures are good. Tell them that whenever they change anything (and they will) the deadline will have to be renegotiated. Overestimate the amount of time any given change will add. After three or four major (or even minor changes) you'll have the time you need any they'll stop coming to you with new ideas.
Much as emulators have their place, they are a very poor substitute for the real thing. Sure, I could just run Atari 2600 games on Stella, but I don't for a moment regret the US$100+postage I spent on my CuttleCart. Nor do I regret howevermuch I paid for a SIO2PC cable that allows me to run old Atari 8-bit programs on my 800XL. When my Catweasel MK3 arrives I'll be able to load C64 disk images onto real disks and use them on my C64.
I've gotten into classic computers via classic gaming. My non-console collection includes:
Atari 800XL
Two Atari XEGSes
A C64
A non-working Commodore 128D
Amiga 500
Amstrad PPC640 (getting PSU details)
Another Amstrad PC compatible in a keyboard profile (like the Amiga 500)
Does and Intellivision with a keyboard add-on count?
To compliment these computers I've been purchasing stuff like the SIO2PC cable adapter (connect a PC to an Atari 8-bit) and I've just ordered the Catweasel MK3 (read/write pretty much any floppy format ever). I salvaged a nice supply of DD disks (including a lot of interesting-looking original software) a week or so ago.
Maybe what you describe works if you separate R&D from product development, but I can't believe that the person you reference was able to consistently break the "Pick two from: On Time, On Budget or Right" rule. Purely based on (bad) luck one of their projects should have hit a speed bump that ran it over budget or over time, unless every variable had been sorted out by some prior project.
The least they can do is hire a competent project manager to slap those ho's back on track.
Project management is a complete waste of time when you don't know how you're going to create the finished product. When you're doing a whole heap of things for the first time you really can't know how long it's going to take.
If, however, all the technical issues have been solved and you just need to put it all together (often a huge task in itself), then you can get a project manager on the payroll.
The actual problem is not poor project management, but out of control marketing. When the programmer says that they don't know how they're going to solve all the anticipated problems (never mind the unexpected ones) don't start hyping the final product. Wait until the technical people actually agree that the project is possible.
That's me, but far from my earliest post. My earliest is May 6, '92.
Are you sure you vetted each and every one to make sure you didn't give away anything unintentionally ?
I seriously doubt it given that there's near 1,000 posts just using that address, but searching through my @yahoo years so far I'm pretty proud of my efforts. I quite like:
"Shane Charleson" wrote:
> What is group policy on killing spammers????
Challenge to illustrate a point.
on
Googling For Dates?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
10 points to the first person to find my first usenet post (which I have found and confirmed in the Google Groups cache). I'll even spot you my name; Chris Johnson.
With such a common name I have no idea how people think they can find out anything about a person on-line unless they've specifically made it available.
What I need is a way to use the nearly 650 Gig of wasted space across our student lab PCs as student storage. Plenty of room for enough redundancy to not even need a backup (students are told to keep their own backups anyway). Currently our nearly 1,000 students share 6Gig on one server.
As IT support in a small-medium organisation it can sometimes be politically impossible to say no to a personal request to do private consulting. By the same token, it has significantly negative tax implications. Not to mention that repairing some dodgy PC the staff members thinks is just as good as the work PC you've personally chosen and maintained since it came in the door can drive you up the wall. To risk being fired on top of all this is just too much. It's a no-win situation.
Let the lawyers turn into politicians, then simply toss all the politicians through the Stargate to that prison planet without a DHD. It's like Australia was, but a lot further away.
Slashdot Mirror
Upgrades are a fun loophole. You could upgrade the same PC forever thanks to the efforts of www.powerleap.com and www.evertech.com.
Do electronics instead of french.
For any Perth people that want to get involved, there's now a forum at www.e3.com.au (a website about Perth's free/community wireless network). A big thanks to Jason at that site. I've also made a tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/5xy2 for signatures, etc.
Any local Perth residents that want anything to happen with this project should send a message to the Premier's office using this page. Be polite. (I'm fairly sure this isn't redirected to /dev/null.)
(Maybe you can get a bulk discount?)
The only Nintendo watch I've ever seen is the Starfox one and the shop wanted A$90 for it. To what are you referring?
How about the Matchbox version of Lockheed-Martin's X-33 "Venture Star"? Unfortunately they don't do much other aerospace (if any).
Cynical trick that project managers do to make all their projects technically "on time". Sit down with them and get a full set of specifications agreed on. Signatures are good. Tell them that whenever they change anything (and they will) the deadline will have to be renegotiated. Overestimate the amount of time any given change will add. After three or four major (or even minor changes) you'll have the time you need any they'll stop coming to you with new ideas.
- It's a journal or log
- It's on the web
- It's a web log
- Therefore, what do we do when we maintain a web log? We blog
web log, we blog -- not that hard.Nah, how about two printers chatting:
P1: Damn humans, take forever and sometimes your job never appears
P2: "PC Load Letter" -- what the hell does that mean?
I'm sure I had a point...
- Atari 800XL
- Two Atari XEGSes
- A C64
- A non-working Commodore 128D
- Amiga 500
- Amstrad PPC640 (getting PSU details)
- Another Amstrad PC compatible in a keyboard profile (like the Amiga 500)
- Does and Intellivision with a keyboard add-on count?
To compliment these computers I've been purchasing stuff like the SIO2PC cable adapter (connect a PC to an Atari 8-bit) and I've just ordered the Catweasel MK3 (read/write pretty much any floppy format ever). I salvaged a nice supply of DD disks (including a lot of interesting-looking original software) a week or so ago.Maybe what you describe works if you separate R&D from product development, but I can't believe that the person you reference was able to consistently break the "Pick two from: On Time, On Budget or Right" rule. Purely based on (bad) luck one of their projects should have hit a speed bump that ran it over budget or over time, unless every variable had been sorted out by some prior project.
If, however, all the technical issues have been solved and you just need to put it all together (often a huge task in itself), then you can get a project manager on the payroll.
The actual problem is not poor project management, but out of control marketing. When the programmer says that they don't know how they're going to solve all the anticipated problems (never mind the unexpected ones) don't start hyping the final product. Wait until the technical people actually agree that the project is possible.
Nup, not me.
With such a common name I have no idea how people think they can find out anything about a person on-line unless they've specifically made it available.
What I need is a way to use the nearly 650 Gig of wasted space across our student lab PCs as student storage. Plenty of room for enough redundancy to not even need a backup (students are told to keep their own backups anyway). Currently our nearly 1,000 students share 6Gig on one server.
Please. Justdon't. Go. Tha-air. Spock.
As IT support in a small-medium organisation it can sometimes be politically impossible to say no to a personal request to do private consulting. By the same token, it has significantly negative tax implications. Not to mention that repairing some dodgy PC the staff members thinks is just as good as the work PC you've personally chosen and maintained since it came in the door can drive you up the wall. To risk being fired on top of all this is just too much. It's a no-win situation.
Let the lawyers turn into politicians, then simply toss all the politicians through the Stargate to that prison planet without a DHD. It's like Australia was, but a lot further away.