[First of all I'm amused that this book has been out for so long and it rated a review now, but at least it's a book I've read, so I can somewhat comment intelligently on it.]
One of the more interesting stories in this book was that while he was on a plane on his way to being extradited, or I guess during the actual extradition, he went to the plane's toilet/head right after landing and then used his (by then) intimate knowledge of the plane to lift out the toilet and escape to the runway out the back access hatch of the plane, which he knew sometimes popped open upon landing, so that the pilots would ignore the warning indication. Of course he got away, but this was also in the days before really tight security, too. I had actually heard this story in the news that someone had escaped from a plane through the toilet, and was pleasantly surprised when I picked up the book years later.
Another thing his escapades with the checks did was to prompt instructing tellers about how to detect suspect checks. If a check is from a local company, one of the codes at the bottom of the check should reflect that it should get cleared through a regional reserve bank. The codes he put on extended his "float" by sending them off to BFE so that by the time someone got around to noticing that it was phony, he was loooong gone.
Interesting read. If you like this one, also check out Hacksaw by Edward R. Jones. Unfortunately Amazon says its out of print. This story is a little more blue collar than Abagnale's, but it tells the tale of someone the law just couldn't pin down even while in prison (but he just kept getting caught).
When our company moved from an older building with dropped ceilings to a new one that had high hard ceilings that reflected just about any noise, they installed white noise generators. These generators sounded more like escaping HP air or steam than just any random noise. They hadn't initially turned them on on our floor, and when they did, I complained to facilities that there was something wrong with the A/C units or something similar. Yeah, I guess it did do something to mask the noise from adjacent cubes, but I think that it was more irritating than helpful. I still got to hear about coworkers' personal lives.
(and why do companies keep insisting on cube villages instead of offices when their people work so much more efficiently in offices? -- another question for another time)
Confession: I'm in my mid-40s and just started in a startup company. I work 60+ hours each week, and this will go on until about 3Q.
Like the guy said, it really depends upon what position you're going for. Even more, it really depends upon what position the employer really, really wants to fill. And they're sometimes not the same, and you'll never know the difference until after the interview.
I interviewed at a company where they said that they wanted Java developers. In reality, they wanted Java hackers that could, pardon the cliche, hit the ground running without touching a book. A couple of the questions included: - What compiler error messages will this Java code generate? - What was deprecated in 1.2? - What container class will solve this general problem? (their preferred answer was: "it depends")
Another question from another company: would I be able to tell what code is yours without seeing a name? The correct answer: there is no correct answer -- you lose either way. If you say you're a conscientious coder who comments your code and/or makes it self-commenting, you gold-plate. If you say you would adhere to their coding standard, you show no initiative.
Nowhere in either interview did they ask me to talk about model-view-controller, when to use adaptors, O-O concepts & design, software engineering, or database normalization.
But I guess the nice thing about such interviews is that they tell you what the shop values most: in this last case, quick hack-and-slash coding that you can go back and clean up in a later release (uh-huh).
Another thing to watch out for: I've gotten into the habit of putting my most oft-used routines and code snippets in files I drag with me wherever I go. Unfortunately, I tend not to remember the details of what's in those files, and the contents invariably turn into interview questions. E.g., "What is on the first line of a XML file?" Hell if I know what exactly it is... I just copy and paste it, or use it in a skeleton file. So before you go into an interview, bone up on your bag of tricks.
Another little tidbit for the geriatrics (27+ years-old): if you want to be a developer, do not under any circumstances take a project management position. Or at least if you do, do not put it on your resume when you want to go back to development. I have spent so many interviews trying to convince a prospective employer that I really didn't want to be a manager, and a couple of them rejected me with the reasoning that it sounded like I really wanted a management position. If you have to, tell them you tried selling used cars or that you joined a cult. Just don't let them know you did project management.
I've come to realize that no matter how good you are, you're never going to really know what a prospective employer is looking for until you hear back from them after the interview. And us oldsters have a few things going against us: - perceived higher medical costs and sick days off - higher salary requirements due to experience that an employer doesn't think they need - time wanted to spend with family
Bottom line: would I have gone into software if I knew what I know now? Considering the late nights, missed vacations, prima donna MBA grads, prima donna MIT grads, bonehead managers, bonehead customers, bonehead requirements, bonehead office managers, bonehead sysadmins....
Probably not. But it's hard to pass up the six-figure income and stock options. Party on, Wayne.
...turn in your buddies for Kwik Kash!!! Sounds like it would make for a good revenge tactic, too. Someone pisses you off, turn 'em in for being dangerous, and get paid to boot.
I thought that I heard somewhere that M$ didn't really care about the ruling becuz all of the friendly folks in the appeals court were M$'s buddies and would be more than happy to rule in Bill's favor.
And besides, folks, do you think that all that M$ cash is going to just sit there? You can buy quite a few senators and judges with that kinda dough.
I have to agree with the above post that you really have to watch what you're making your artifacts for: just to satisfy an upper-level requirement or to actually put together some good code. I know some PHBs that will want you to take shortcut after shortcut to get code done on time, but hide behind the process when the going gets tough, and will say, "you didn't follow the process" when things go awry. Of course nobody notices when things go fine and you deliver on time and on budget, but that's for another day.
I'm currently experiencing the pendulum swinging the other way. I just joined a sales tool project as the architect about 2/3 the way though the life cycle. Unfortunately there was no architect on board when the project went through requirements and design, so, of course, the requirements are totally inadequete, and the design is best described as a spaghetti-code VB hack; we're currently in an endless cycle of rework where we fix things, the (internal) customer tests the software against how they think it should act, they find problems that they don't like, they submit the issues on our defect tracking tool, and we start the cycle over again. We're on at least our 4th fix release cycle.
Of course, shortly after I was brought in, I was expected to save the project and release us from this endless rework cycle. I attempted to at least document the design by reverse-engineering the (non-existent) design document from the code. Alas, 'twas a meaningless exercise in futility, and I gave up. I've recommended to the PHBs that we continue with the rework cycle on the present code base, but adding some software engineering practices like design review on changes; and then scrap and reengineer the project once the dust settles. Well, thats's not what they wanted to hear.
A lot of this could have been prevented from happening if we would have followed a formal process and if I would have been on-hand during the design time. Even without me, having the other architects in the department take a look during design review would have saved the company thousands of dollars. So instead we have this monolithic piece of VB crap that will never truly work correctly. This is the result of a "programmer" who knows every trick in the VB book, but was inadequately trained to do anything else than to throw up a bunch of forms and hide an amazing amount of non-modular code behind them.
That is why we need software engineering and software architects.
I think that if geeks expect that they will be able to find romance at work, there's nothing like an engineering company for that not to come true. Yeah, I guess it'd be nerdvana to have someone that actually understands what you do, but from my experience, that's probably not going to happen due to the abysmal M/F ratio.
But even more important, IMHO, is that you don't want to find romance at work. If something goes wrong, not only will you have the usual pressures at work, but now you've got that former someone there to just make life harder.
Not to mention that if you have a spectacular breakup, especially if the third party also works there, you'll be providing immense gossip fodder and other amusements for the rest of your coworkers. Well, OTOH, if it keeps morale up, why not?
My experience with girls related to computing hasn't been that great. Before there was an "online" (back in the 70s), I was goofing off in the computer lab at a BigTime CS school (think cornfields), when this rather, um, shapely gal walks into the terminal room. All geek eyes on her since she's wearing those hotpants (I told you it was the 70s) and she's obviously going to have back problems really soon, if you get my drift. So anyway, I keep banging away at this, um, Commodore Pet that C'dore put in the lab to entice geeks with, and this gal is RIGHT BEHIND ME STARING AT MY SCREEN where I'm really not doing anything productive... okay, I'm playing. She asks me what I'm doing, and I start mumbling about something inconsequential, when the geek in me kicks in and I blurt out, "Do I know you?" Turns out that she's the grad student house mom of my sister's University co-op house who I had met a couple weeks earlier. So we walk back to the co-op since we're both done anyway; she's "safe" (rats) since she's a house mom and she's going out with some guy that has a Camaro, so I can talk to her without falling down.
Cut to a few years later (after a few years respite from the university), and I see a gal at the computer room who I'd been worshiping from afar in my class, and she asks me about one of our lab problems. At this point in my life I've learned to stare at THEIR shoes when I talk to girls, so I was able to mutter something close to what could be considered English, and she invites me out to eat with her at a Denny's. Hey, the kid is gonna score (or at least get into tryouts)... turns out that she's got a HTH, so again, I find myself with someone "safe", and so she wastes my time for the remainder of the summer (in the middle of shorts season!) being good "friends" on the weekdays, while she goes back to the HTH on the weekends.
But it's progress.
Cut to the fall semester where she brings in one of the two lab chicks at the school into our little friendship, and I'm kinda miffed that there's an interloper into this Relationship That's Going Nowhere, but little by little the interloper and I warm up and end up excluding the HTH gal. But after a longish relationship, she dumps me with no notice for an ubergeek coworker (who was married by the way, but that's another story).
So the score is: no luck with any computer-related romances.
So I go out and reacquaint myself with Mr. Sun and all that there is outdoors, and I meet this gal quite innocently while sailing. And we're still married to this day.
Moral of the story: well there really isn't one, but it is kinda nice not being married to a(nother) geek.
Have any of those 12 galaxies started anti-Monopoly (I'll be the car, thank you) proceedings against MS? DOJ may want to leverage their work. The fact that there are many hungry mouths to feed on planet Xorthnanc in the X12R34 galaxy and no decent software programmer can make a living writing Xorthanc-OS, despite the fact that no Redmond programmers have tentacles and can taste blue, may have some bearing on the DOJ case.
I would bet money that we won't see anything close to a correction from Jack regarding this in his column. Or if there is one, it won't be anywhere where mere mortals can find it -- I'm thinking of those errata links we see hiding in tiny print at the bottom of pages.
The damage is done, since what is printed is de facto truth. Big sigh.
Oh, I didn't know that there was another kernel around... okay, let me know where I can find it. Wait, you say that HURD -- I'm sorry, GNU/HURD -- isn't ready yet? Um, so I guess I'm stuck with a 70s style kernel until GNU/HURD comes out? So lemmie get this straight, a kernel that is already out and working is stunting the development of GNU/HURD?
I guess I really don't understand this movement, then. *sigh*
Um, if you've been following the whole GNU/Linux thingy, it's not that we're being asked to call it GNU/Linux, it's that we're being told to call it GNU/Linux. GNU/Stallman has held up panels until the errant miscreant corrects his/her way and calls it GNU/Linux.
Perhaps we should call it RMS/Linux or EGO/Linux. I like RMS/Linux because it puts the blame^H^H^H^H^Hcredit where the credit is due.
DT -- Free Pittsburgh!
how soon before we have to call it...
on
*BSD News
·
· Score: 0
How soon until RMS makes us call it GNU/FreeBSD? Or just GNU/BSD?
Gwyneth hurled herself onto the brass bed in the middle of the Captain's cabin in the two-masted schooner.
"Your bodice," heaved the Captain, "seems to be ripped."
"Oh take me, you fine specimen of a 90s stereotype of a desirable hunky member of an oppressive, male-dominated society!" she groaned. "I'll do anything you want!"
"Paint my house," he snarled, his lips curled in a Billy-Idolesque sneer....
Slashdot Mirror
One of the more interesting stories in this book was that while he was on a plane on his way to being extradited, or I guess during the actual extradition, he went to the plane's toilet/head right after landing and then used his (by then) intimate knowledge of the plane to lift out the toilet and escape to the runway out the back access hatch of the plane, which he knew sometimes popped open upon landing, so that the pilots would ignore the warning indication. Of course he got away, but this was also in the days before really tight security, too. I had actually heard this story in the news that someone had escaped from a plane through the toilet, and was pleasantly surprised when I picked up the book years later.
Another thing his escapades with the checks did was to prompt instructing tellers about how to detect suspect checks. If a check is from a local company, one of the codes at the bottom of the check should reflect that it should get cleared through a regional reserve bank. The codes he put on extended his "float" by sending them off to BFE so that by the time someone got around to noticing that it was phony, he was loooong gone.
Interesting read. If you like this one, also check out Hacksaw by Edward R. Jones. Unfortunately Amazon says its out of print. This story is a little more blue collar than Abagnale's, but it tells the tale of someone the law just couldn't pin down even while in prison (but he just kept getting caught).
DT
--
(and why do companies keep insisting on cube villages instead of offices when their people work so much more efficiently in offices? -- another question for another time)
DT
--
Oh, that's right, this isn't Netpliance. Sorry. Carry on....
You forgot:
Microsoft then embraces, and extends, and finally proprietizes it when they include it in the next version of Windows.
Like the guy said, it really depends upon what position you're going for. Even more, it really depends upon what position the employer really, really wants to fill. And they're sometimes not the same, and you'll never know the difference until after the interview.
I interviewed at a company where they said that they wanted Java developers. In reality, they wanted Java hackers that could, pardon the cliche, hit the ground running without touching a book. A couple of the questions included:
- What compiler error messages will this Java code generate?
- What was deprecated in 1.2?
- What container class will solve this general problem? (their preferred answer was: "it depends")
Another question from another company: would I be able to tell what code is yours without seeing a name? The correct answer: there is no correct answer -- you lose either way. If you say you're a conscientious coder who comments your code and/or makes it self-commenting, you gold-plate. If you say you would adhere to their coding standard, you show no initiative.
Nowhere in either interview did they ask me to talk about model-view-controller, when to use adaptors, O-O concepts & design, software engineering, or database normalization.
But I guess the nice thing about such interviews is that they tell you what the shop values most: in this last case, quick hack-and-slash coding that you can go back and clean up in a later release (uh-huh).
Another thing to watch out for: I've gotten into the habit of putting my most oft-used routines and code snippets in files I drag with me wherever I go. Unfortunately, I tend not to remember the details of what's in those files, and the contents invariably turn into interview questions. E.g., "What is on the first line of a XML file?" Hell if I know what exactly it is... I just copy and paste it, or use it in a skeleton file. So before you go into an interview, bone up on your bag of tricks.
Another little tidbit for the geriatrics (27+ years-old): if you want to be a developer, do not under any circumstances take a project management position. Or at least if you do, do not put it on your resume when you want to go back to development. I have spent so many interviews trying to convince a prospective employer that I really didn't want to be a manager, and a couple of them rejected me with the reasoning that it sounded like I really wanted a management position. If you have to, tell them you tried selling used cars or that you joined a cult. Just don't let them know you did project management.
I've come to realize that no matter how good you are, you're never going to really know what a prospective employer is looking for until you hear back from them after the interview. And us oldsters have a few things going against us:
- perceived higher medical costs and sick days off
- higher salary requirements due to experience that an employer doesn't think they need
- time wanted to spend with family
Bottom line: would I have gone into software if I knew what I know now? Considering the late nights, missed vacations, prima donna MBA grads, prima donna MIT grads, bonehead managers, bonehead customers, bonehead requirements, bonehead office managers, bonehead sysadmins....
Probably not. But it's hard to pass up the six-figure income and stock options. Party on, Wayne.
DT
I love this country!
DT
And besides, folks, do you think that all that M$ cash is going to just sit there? You can buy quite a few senators and judges with that kinda dough.
DT
I have to agree with the above post that you really have to watch what you're making your artifacts for: just to satisfy an upper-level requirement or to actually put together some good code. I know some PHBs that will want you to take shortcut after shortcut to get code done on time, but hide behind the process when the going gets tough, and will say, "you didn't follow the process" when things go awry. Of course nobody notices when things go fine and you deliver on time and on budget, but that's for another day.
I'm currently experiencing the pendulum swinging the other way. I just joined a sales tool project as the architect about 2/3 the way though the life cycle. Unfortunately there was no architect on board when the project went through requirements and design, so, of course, the requirements are totally inadequete, and the design is best described as a spaghetti-code VB hack; we're currently in an endless cycle of rework where we fix things, the (internal) customer tests the software against how they think it should act, they find problems that they don't like, they submit the issues on our defect tracking tool, and we start the cycle over again. We're on at least our 4th fix release cycle.
Of course, shortly after I was brought in, I was expected to save the project and release us from this endless rework cycle. I attempted to at least document the design by reverse-engineering the (non-existent) design document from the code. Alas, 'twas a meaningless exercise in futility, and I gave up. I've recommended to the PHBs that we continue with the rework cycle on the present code base, but adding some software engineering practices like design review on changes; and then scrap and reengineer the project once the dust settles. Well, thats's not what they wanted to hear.
A lot of this could have been prevented from happening if we would have followed a formal process and if I would have been on-hand during the design time. Even without me, having the other architects in the department take a look during design review would have saved the company thousands of dollars. So instead we have this monolithic piece of VB crap that will never truly work correctly. This is the result of a "programmer" who knows every trick in the VB book, but was inadequately trained to do anything else than to throw up a bunch of forms and hide an amazing amount of non-modular code behind them.
That is why we need software engineering and software architects.
DT
I think that if geeks expect that they will be able to find romance at work, there's nothing like an engineering company for that not to come true. Yeah, I guess it'd be nerdvana to have someone that actually understands what you do, but from my experience, that's probably not going to happen due to the abysmal M/F ratio.
But even more important, IMHO, is that you don't want to find romance at work. If something goes wrong, not only will you have the usual pressures at work, but now you've got that former someone there to just make life harder.
Not to mention that if you have a spectacular breakup, especially if the third party also works there, you'll be providing immense gossip fodder and other amusements for the rest of your coworkers. Well, OTOH, if it keeps morale up, why not?
You need to be a Microsoft Certified Professional in order to have an account to order the action figures in the first place.
Another plan foiled again!!!
DT
--
Free Pittsburgh!
My experience with girls related to computing hasn't been that great. Before there was an "online" (back in the 70s), I was goofing off in the computer lab at a BigTime CS school (think cornfields), when this rather, um, shapely gal walks into the terminal room. All geek eyes on her since she's wearing those hotpants (I told you it was the 70s) and she's obviously going to have back problems really soon, if you get my drift. So anyway, I keep banging away at this, um, Commodore Pet that C'dore put in the lab to entice geeks with, and this gal is RIGHT BEHIND ME STARING AT MY SCREEN where I'm really not doing anything productive... okay, I'm playing. She asks me what I'm doing, and I start mumbling about something inconsequential, when the geek in me kicks in and I blurt out, "Do I know you?" Turns out that she's the grad student house mom of my sister's University co-op house who I had met a couple weeks earlier. So we walk back to the co-op since we're both done anyway; she's "safe" (rats) since she's a house mom and she's going out with some guy that has a Camaro, so I can talk to her without falling down.
Cut to a few years later (after a few years respite from the university), and I see a gal at the computer room who I'd been worshiping from afar in my class, and she asks me about one of our lab problems. At this point in my life I've learned to stare at THEIR shoes when I talk to girls, so I was able to mutter something close to what could be considered English, and she invites me out to eat with her at a Denny's. Hey, the kid is gonna score (or at least get into tryouts)... turns out that she's got a HTH, so again, I find myself with someone "safe", and so she wastes my time for the remainder of the summer (in the middle of shorts season!) being good "friends" on the weekdays, while she goes back to the HTH on the weekends.
But it's progress.
Cut to the fall semester where she brings in one of the two lab chicks at the school into our little friendship, and I'm kinda miffed that there's an interloper into this Relationship That's Going Nowhere, but little by little the interloper and I warm up and end up excluding the HTH gal. But after a longish relationship, she dumps me with no notice for an ubergeek coworker (who was married by the way, but that's another story).
So the score is: no luck with any computer-related romances.
So I go out and reacquaint myself with Mr. Sun and all that there is outdoors, and I meet this gal quite innocently while sailing. And we're still married to this day.
Moral of the story: well there really isn't one, but it is kinda nice not being married to a(nother) geek.
DT
--
Free Pittsburgh!
Have any of those 12 galaxies started anti-Monopoly (I'll be the car, thank you) proceedings against MS? DOJ may want to leverage their work. The fact that there are many hungry mouths to feed on planet Xorthnanc in the X12R34 galaxy and no decent software programmer can make a living writing Xorthanc-OS, despite the fact that no Redmond programmers have tentacles and can taste blue, may have some bearing on the DOJ case.
Maybe...
I would bet money that we won't see anything close to a correction from Jack regarding this in his column. Or if there is one, it won't be anywhere where mere mortals can find it -- I'm thinking of those errata links we see hiding in tiny print at the bottom of pages.
The damage is done, since what is printed is de facto truth. Big sigh.
DT
--
Free Pittsburgh!
I'll be waiting for the Mindcraft study that shows that WinCE devices outperform Palm devices by at least 2-to-1.
DT
--
Free Pittsburgh!
Oh, I didn't know that there was another kernel around... okay, let me know where I can find it. Wait, you say that HURD -- I'm sorry, GNU/HURD -- isn't ready yet? Um, so I guess I'm stuck with a 70s style kernel until GNU/HURD comes out? So lemmie get this straight, a kernel that is already out and working is stunting the development of GNU /HURD?
I guess I really don't understand this movement, then. *sigh*
DT
--
Free Pittsburgh!
Um, if you've been following the whole GNU/Linux thingy, it's not that we're being asked to call it GNU/Linux, it's that we're being told to call it GNU/Linux. GNU/Stallman has held up panels until the errant miscreant corrects his/her way and calls it GNU/Linux.
Perhaps we should call it RMS/Linux or EGO/Linux. I like RMS/Linux because it puts the blame^H^H^H^H^Hcredit where the credit is due.
DT
--
Free Pittsburgh!
How soon until RMS makes us call it GNU/FreeBSD? Or just GNU/BSD?
I'm getting so confused with these proclamations!
DT
--
Free Pittsburgh!
And considering how much "innovation" goes on over at Microsoft, I'd say that Bill is the biggest middleman around. IMHO, of course.
Gwyneth hurled herself onto the brass bed in the middle of the Captain's cabin in the two-masted schooner.
"Your bodice," heaved the Captain, "seems to be ripped."
"Oh take me, you fine specimen of a 90s stereotype of a desirable hunky member of an oppressive, male-dominated society!" she groaned. "I'll do anything you want!"
"Paint my house," he snarled, his lips curled in a Billy-Idolesque sneer....
Yeah, we can do this.
DT