I'm sorry (and bye-bye karma), but I do really find all this quite humorous. Modulo any resultant deaths, I think that this serves everybody right in using Microsoft software anywhere near critical apps, or letting Microsoft machines onto their critical LANs.
As Ann Landers would say, "Wake up and smell the coffee!"
As Homer Simpson would say, "D'oh!"
As O.J. Simpson's lawyers would say, "If the software ain't fit, you can't acquit!"
But I've got to tell you, I couldn't have built my business without Microsoft, so I thank them. Now that I'm not so bitter, I'm glad I'm in the position I'm in. They made that possible, and I thank them.
I'll take that to mean that when he needed the software that Open Source wasn't around yet. But I wonder if we'll see that quote used by Microsoft anyway.
If Microsoft lost, like it "lost" with the DOJ, then it could just keep going on doing what it's doing, telling everyone it'll get around to the penalty for losing, and nothing will change.
On the other hand, Microsoft has truly never lost anything when you think about it (modulo Bob),... so I think it's time to buy me some more Microsoft stock!
Okay, let me get this straight: more jobs are being exported overseas to save companies money. Now, that means that there's going to be less disposable income for the middle class whose jobs are being shipped overseas. Alrighty. So, now, when are the middle class people in the U.S. going to start spending more money to jump-start the enconomy when their jobs keep getting exported overseas?
I had a friend who came from a job where they used the CLH ("Code Like Hell") methodology to get stuff out the door as fast as possible. The code looked like crap, but it was used as proof-of-concept and to show off to potential investors. I also heard that it was a partial offshoot of WIJC ("Why Isn't Johnny Coding") methodology since computational results were always expected, especially since the SME used a WYSIWYG HTML editor to mock up the web page, so of course it should be a Simple Matter Of Programming to get it to work in the backend, right?
Of course, when it came time to modify the back end, an appeal was made by staff to refactor the existing code, but the project manager said that unless it could be proved quantitatively that it would save development time to refactor than to just modify the current code, refactoring was out of the question. There's motivation for you. So of course they went ahead and bolted on the new functionality rather than waste the time that they didn't have to analyze whether it would be more efficient.
This reminds me of a time when I had a project manager tell us to do a job as fast as possible and to customize our current methodology for the situation. But of course, when there were the inevitable quality issues with the release, he declared that the root cause was because the company's methodology was not followed by the development staff, leaving us hanging in the wind.
A famous saying on a co-worker's sig was "Quality and Time-to-Market are everything." Too bad you can't have both.
So, like, why are you in software development anyway?
I had an interesting experience with O'Reilly's Safari bookshelf: because they go through an offshore (Netherlands, I believe) clearinghouse, my card company refused the charge. We had the usual back-and-forth he-said-she-said calls between O'Reilly, my card company, and me, until we finally had it straightened out. I had to set it up with the card company so that they wouldn't block the recurring charge.
While I really do appreciate their efforts to reduce fraud, it didn't hit home until I hit me (of course, duh). It'd be nice if there was a way to pre-approve offshore charges, say, on the card web site so that I don't have to go through the Keystone Cops routine again. But consider that the most I can do on the website is pay my bill, allowing such functionality might further imperil my card number. Can't win.
I half expect the next month's charge to be flagged. At least O'Reilly sends me email about it instead of freezing the service for me.
OTOH, to show off my ugly-American side, why does O'Reilly, ostensibly a USA company, use an offshore clearinghouse if there's going to be difficulty with charge companies? (Obvious answer: because it's cheaper!!!)
I think that it's time that some other country besides the ol' USA got in some dominance in something constructive. The way the US is heading with shipping jobs, possibly yours, overseas and worshipping the almighty dollar in everything it does, it's about time it gets its butt kicked in a worthwhile measure of productivity, other than the aforementioned shifting of money from the poor to the rich and doing whatever possible to "increase shareholder value". I guess that just leaves the US as a tourist attraction as the administration sells off the national parks and turns the country into a giant service-industry-based theme park.
It could also mean that political prisoners of China, Russia, or whoever would get shipped off to the moon; and we'd get our products made on Luna even cheaper than in China now.
Okay, yet another marketing ploy to make people thing that Redmond's serious about cleaning up. The last one didn't do any good. This one won't do any good, either. Second (or third or fourth) verse, same as the first: "Oh, hey, everybody, look at us. We care!. So buy more Microsoft... Oops, how'd that break?"
Thing is, they have no business reason to do so. The only reason they'd do this would be if security and quality issues lowered their market share and/or their stock price. And I haven't heard that it has. Well, perhaps announcing this will raise both?
I've proposed cleaning up code before in previous lives (um, not with Microsoft), but my project manager / CTO would look at me and say, "Does it make business sense to do this? Will we see tangible savings by cleaning up the code? Can you prove that by spending X hours refactoring or redesigning our foundation that we can recover X+ hours of productivity?" Of course I couldn't, or at least I didn't want to spend the time doing the analysis while getting futher behind in the project. Yeah, you can say that this is dangerous thinking, but this guy had to cover his ass, and if his boss found out that we were making the code "prettier", he'd get his butt chewed.
In this regard, there not being a business reason for Microsoft to clean up their code, my preference would be that Microsoft would just keep quiet, sit back, and let the bucks roll in as usual. Money's not a totally bad thing, you know. Especially when you own the world.
A letter to me from the friendly Intuit people (my comments and emphasis interspersed):
Dear Valued Customer:
In response to your comments on the implementation of product activation technology in tax year 2002 TurboTax(R) software, I wanted to let you know that Intuit will discontinue product activation in next year's TurboTax desktop products purchased at retail or direct from Intuit.
We are absolutely committed to listening and learning from our customers. We clearly need to better understand all of our customers' tax preparation needs and how they use TurboTax.
Okay, here comes the fun part:
While we remain committed to protecting our intellectual property, going forward, we will only introduce digital rights management technologies that maximize customer experience and preserve customer satisfaction.
Sounds like this still leaves them the option of going with another form of DRM. Doesn't sound like a total retraction to me.
Again, thanks for your feedback.
Regards,
Tom Allanson, Sr. Vice President
TurboTax
So, I wonder what parasite program we can expect to see for the 2003 tax year program? I can hardly wait (...to buy Tax Cut again).
I'm waiting for the other half of this story: did you marry her? Take her to the prom? Uh, get a cold turn-down to the popular pick-up line of that era?
At this long excerpt, Poundstone notes that interview decisions tend to be made in the first two seconds, and, "Only rarely does anything that happens after the first two seconds cause the judger to revise that first impression significantly." So, you almost want to ask: what's the point of the book? Unless the rest of the time spent in the interview is for the interviewer to ask questions to bolster their position, and this will help you iff their answer is positive.
Almost makes you want to stop the interview after you've shaken hands and say, "Now that you've already made your decision, how about handing me off to the next person?" and cite the quoted study. Though it would save everybody's time, maybe that shows too much creativity, .
What the above poster forgets is that, IMHO of course, is that Ma and Pa Kettle from middle-American will more-than-likely take whatever's dished out to them. MaPK won't see any sort of key exchange going on underneath the covers. MaPK won't see any software that Open Source geeks wrote running on their boxes. All of their media and software, which they paid for of course, work, and they'll work just fine. Else Bill wouldn't have let it out of Redmond. Moore's Law will ensure that the horsepower will be there to waste the cycles on DRM while the fraction left over will be sufficient to actually play the dang movie or CD.
I still get glazed eyes when I talk to mundanes about Linux and other Open Source software. They can't understand why I can't go to their favorite Site Enhanced for Internet Explorer and see jumping Saddams frolicking about. They just know that their stuff works fine, in between software crashes.
So it'll be an invisible battle that will require education of the mundanes before it gets the attention of the well-fed-on-corporate-money American legislators. The mundanes will be in their comfy chair, hands on remotes, watching whatever Mariah Carey clone shake whatever body part is popular that decade. They're not going to want to get up in arms over something they can't see, and that may get in trouble with their kids if the security system gets turned off.
Besides, by then it'll be illegal. Better stock up on unfettered mobos today!
I'd like to LART some managers who come by every 10 or 15 minutes while I'm working on a project with a very tight deadline, and ask 'Is it done yet?'
Reminds me of one time I was a project manager "under the gun" for a past-due project deadline, and my manager and his boss and various other PHBs would come around at nondeterministic intervals to ask what the status was (essentially it was done as soon as the developers had a V-8 moment), so as an experiment, and a total waste of time on my part but the developers understood what was going on and that I was being a very effective filter between them and the PHBs, I would continuously round-robin visit the developers getting continuous status updates, and at the end of each cycle, I would pop my head into the PHBs' offices and let them know what was going on. This kept me from getting interrupted at random moments, and the guys kinda figured out when to expect me, and could give one-syllable grunts to convey status with minimal context switch.
I think my approval rating went up that period. Of course, I never did it again.
Perhaps we need an article about the psychology of PHBs. Or project managers. Still can't believe I did it....
If you were raised on the Apple ][ 16K Scott Adams Adventure games (Adventureland, Pirate Adventure, Mission Impossible), you can relive (and download) those days at his site.
There's also the iFiction site, too, to play his and other text adventure games online.
Slashdot Mirror
As Ann Landers would say, "Wake up and smell the coffee!"
As Homer Simpson would say, "D'oh!"
As O.J. Simpson's lawyers would say, "If the software ain't fit, you can't acquit!"
DT
But I've got to tell you, I couldn't have built my business without Microsoft, so I thank them. Now that I'm not so bitter, I'm glad I'm in the position I'm in. They made that possible, and I thank them.
I'll take that to mean that when he needed the software that Open Source wasn't around yet. But I wonder if we'll see that quote used by Microsoft anyway.
DT
The ad was in Chinese, of course.
DT
had to be said... sorry.
DT
On the other hand, Microsoft has truly never lost anything when you think about it (modulo Bob), ... so I think it's time to buy me some more Microsoft stock!
DT
Hmmm....
DT
Of course, when it came time to modify the back end, an appeal was made by staff to refactor the existing code, but the project manager said that unless it could be proved quantitatively that it would save development time to refactor than to just modify the current code, refactoring was out of the question. There's motivation for you. So of course they went ahead and bolted on the new functionality rather than waste the time that they didn't have to analyze whether it would be more efficient.
This reminds me of a time when I had a project manager tell us to do a job as fast as possible and to customize our current methodology for the situation. But of course, when there were the inevitable quality issues with the release, he declared that the root cause was because the company's methodology was not followed by the development staff, leaving us hanging in the wind.
A famous saying on a co-worker's sig was "Quality and Time-to-Market are everything." Too bad you can't have both.
So, like, why are you in software development anyway?
DT
While I really do appreciate their efforts to reduce fraud, it didn't hit home until I hit me (of course, duh). It'd be nice if there was a way to pre-approve offshore charges, say, on the card web site so that I don't have to go through the Keystone Cops routine again. But consider that the most I can do on the website is pay my bill, allowing such functionality might further imperil my card number. Can't win.
I half expect the next month's charge to be flagged. At least O'Reilly sends me email about it instead of freezing the service for me.
OTOH, to show off my ugly-American side, why does O'Reilly, ostensibly a USA company, use an offshore clearinghouse if there's going to be difficulty with charge companies? (Obvious answer: because it's cheaper!!!)
DT
It could also mean that political prisoners of China, Russia, or whoever would get shipped off to the moon; and we'd get our products made on Luna even cheaper than in China now.
I can hardly wait.
DT
Some parts are edible.
(hopefully Euell get it)
DT
Thing is, they have no business reason to do so. The only reason they'd do this would be if security and quality issues lowered their market share and/or their stock price. And I haven't heard that it has. Well, perhaps announcing this will raise both?
I've proposed cleaning up code before in previous lives (um, not with Microsoft), but my project manager / CTO would look at me and say, "Does it make business sense to do this? Will we see tangible savings by cleaning up the code? Can you prove that by spending X hours refactoring or redesigning our foundation that we can recover X+ hours of productivity?" Of course I couldn't, or at least I didn't want to spend the time doing the analysis while getting futher behind in the project. Yeah, you can say that this is dangerous thinking, but this guy had to cover his ass, and if his boss found out that we were making the code "prettier", he'd get his butt chewed.
In this regard, there not being a business reason for Microsoft to clean up their code, my preference would be that Microsoft would just keep quiet, sit back, and let the bucks roll in as usual. Money's not a totally bad thing, you know. Especially when you own the world.
DT
DT
You: Anything? : Would you...
...paint my house?
Her: ANYthing!
You (in a whisper, close to her ear)
(Pause. Look nervously around for observers.)
DT
Dear Valued Customer:
In response to your comments on the implementation of product activation technology in tax year 2002 TurboTax(R) software, I wanted to let you know that Intuit will discontinue product activation in next year's TurboTax desktop products purchased at retail or direct from Intuit.
We are absolutely committed to listening and learning from our customers. We clearly need to better understand all of our customers' tax preparation needs and how they use TurboTax.
Okay, here comes the fun part:
While we remain committed to protecting our intellectual property, going forward, we will only introduce digital rights management technologies that maximize customer experience and preserve customer satisfaction.
Sounds like this still leaves them the option of going with another form of DRM. Doesn't sound like a total retraction to me.
Again, thanks for your feedback.
Regards,
Tom Allanson, Sr. Vice President
TurboTax
So, I wonder what parasite program we can expect to see for the 2003 tax year program? I can hardly wait (...to buy Tax Cut again).
DT
Nope, I'm just through buying CDs for the time being. But I can only listen to Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods so many times.
DT
DT
Switch to BSD.
DT
DT
Almost makes you want to stop the interview after you've shaken hands and say, "Now that you've already made your decision, how about handing me off to the next person?" and cite the quoted study. Though it would save everybody's time, maybe that shows too much creativity, .
Nope...still gotta go through the motions.
DT
I still get glazed eyes when I talk to mundanes about Linux and other Open Source software. They can't understand why I can't go to their favorite Site Enhanced for Internet Explorer and see jumping Saddams frolicking about. They just know that their stuff works fine, in between software crashes.
So it'll be an invisible battle that will require education of the mundanes before it gets the attention of the well-fed-on-corporate-money American legislators. The mundanes will be in their comfy chair, hands on remotes, watching whatever Mariah Carey clone shake whatever body part is popular that decade. They're not going to want to get up in arms over something they can't see, and that may get in trouble with their kids if the security system gets turned off.
Besides, by then it'll be illegal. Better stock up on unfettered mobos today!
DT
Well, gee, d00d, as a consultant/contractor/outsider you're going to be the scapegoat anyway regardless of paperwork. Duh.
Reminds me of one time I was a project manager "under the gun" for a past-due project deadline, and my manager and his boss and various other PHBs would come around at nondeterministic intervals to ask what the status was (essentially it was done as soon as the developers had a V-8 moment), so as an experiment, and a total waste of time on my part but the developers understood what was going on and that I was being a very effective filter between them and the PHBs, I would continuously round-robin visit the developers getting continuous status updates, and at the end of each cycle, I would pop my head into the PHBs' offices and let them know what was going on. This kept me from getting interrupted at random moments, and the guys kinda figured out when to expect me, and could give one-syllable grunts to convey status with minimal context switch.
I think my approval rating went up that period. Of course, I never did it again.
Perhaps we need an article about the psychology of PHBs. Or project managers. Still can't believe I did it....
DT
There's also the iFiction site, too, to play his and other text adventure games online.
Enjoy!
Surely you've heard of... GoreTeX
TANSTAAFL, buddy.