The salesforce.com plan allows the employees to direct their efforts. Compare this to the normal company where the CEO decides to write a big check to his favorite charity. Salesforce.com basically allows you to direct your contribution to the philanthropy pool of cash toward whatever you want.
Surely I can't be the only one who has sat at a corporate meeting and been told how great a job we did for xyz non-profit organization. This meeting is supposed to encourage us but we're not the ones receiving the tickets to the booth at Pebble Beach or the playoff tickets or the plaque on the wall.
Back to what I said about greed. I'm greedy. I want that 1% of my time to go toward something I want. Greed is good.
The real reason is because a $16.99 album download is not properly compared to a $16.99 cd. The *real* comparison is between a $16.99 cd and a $.99 download of the single track that is worth a damn.
People might be willing to jump straight to full cd price if the single track costs $2.50.
Personally, I'm liking the radio more and more. Go WRR!
Everyone seems to be assuming a constant width. How about a a straw with a greater width up near the top? I'd make it so the water would be drained before reaching the wider part.
A real tall bucket.
Several places to sip from.
A sealed bucket, pressurized.
A straw that goes all the way to the top then back to the bottom. Suck from the bottom and bleed it out at the top.
How about an old fashion pneuatic tube that sucks a whole liter bottle up from the bottom?
Numerous ways to do it depending on how you want to interpret the wordings.
Your assignment is to compare two authors. The lesson is on how to do the research. While in this particular case the internet was faster, you have passed up the learning experiences the library has to offer. Basically, the professor was asking you to not use a calculator.
I'm convinced that my ability to find what I want on the web was greatly honed by my time spent in the stacks. I also miss a bit of the serendipity of where the card catalog could lead but that is just nostalgia that doesn't recall all the dead ends.
A lot of runners have at least 2 pairs of shoes. This serves two purposes. One, it allows the shoes rest to return to their normal shape. Second, the nuances of each shoe are slightly different and will strain the foot differently, giving the strained spots rest every other day (note that the shoes should be different styles). If you don't use two different styles already, try it, it does make a noticeable difference over time.
Shoes are typically good for 500-1000 miles. So two pair of shoes would be good for around 6 months.
I said a 'good sense of when his numbers add up', not 'is good at adding up numbers'.
It is exactly that skill with proofs that is so beneficial. I notice myself thinking that way sometimes when I 'sense' the numbers to be wrong. I end up proving my code is wrong by setting up an example that is clearly wrong.
Sure we can't count, but we know what "f(x) is less than f(y) for all values of x less than y" implies. Those sorts of things are second nature.
A good example of something like that would be "we're taking in less money than we're spending". Accountants have all sorts of rules to avoid just that statement but it won't change the reality of the numbers.
There is math in carpentry too, but you don't need to attend college to be a brilliant carpenter.
SQL is all about learning the constraints of data i/o and organization. Claiming it is steeped in Set Theory makes it sound a lot more complicated than it is. Sure there are aspects of it that will help, but you could learn all of Set Theory or just learn the one specific instance of that database. Practical experience and common sense will help you more than Set Theory.
Of course, I'm talking about SQL from a programmer's point of view. This usually assumes the database is already made. In this situation I'll take the person with industry experience and SQL skills over the person with SQL skills and Set Theory (Learning Set Theory does have an opportunity cost, you know).
Anyhow, my point was that there are vast areas where very mundane programming is done that don't require real math (good math skills always help though). So much of business programming fits into the business way of doing things. Like running something once a day that looks up a list of data and sends notifications to the people on that list. Simple, simple stuff that needs tobe done and can be done well by a plain coder. It is the coder that understands the business logic (hey, they don't need a notification *every* day, except in California where it is required by law, unless they are a private entity) that will excel. There are numerous positions for whole careers for these kinds of programmers. I tend to think of this kind of position as a translator, where his foreign language is "computer".
One little caveat to what I'm saying. I'm saying there is room for programmers who don't have formal math skills. I'm not saying having no math skills is beneficial. The fact is that the people who have what it takes to be good at programming tend to gravitate toward college and formal math. This means that it is uncommon for a really skilled person not to have pursued math. There is a glut of people without a clue doing the job right now that would disprove my point, if my point was "people without math skills make good programmers".
Business programming - This involves moving regular data between buckets. Math isn't so important as common sense. Both seem to be in short supply.
It's been my experience that CS majors can perform well doing either. But there are other skills necessary for business programming that will allow a mediocre programmer to produce excellent work (such as knowing the business or being a wiz with SQL).
I speak from the perspective of a math major who does business programming. I work with a lot of other people who do just great but occasionally run into a brick wall when some strange math comes up. These tasks come up only rarely. The most common place to see a math weakness manifest itself is when they foolishly matrix a couple sets of data and everything grinds to a stop. Even that is easily fixed (as long as they tested full sets of data before going into production). The only time I've *had* to be involved was implementing some probability and statistics packages.
All things being equal, I'd take the guy with math. It means he can think, comprehend written works and probably has a good sense of when his numbers add up (very useful in business programming).
Which investor of $50 million would you consider to be disadvantaged?
In this case, we're only talking about people that can buy at least 10% of a company. They all possess virtually the same advantages.
The small investor doesn't even have to fill out this paperwork.
Now, if he had dumped the stock on smaller investors without observing the reporting requirements and waiting periods that would be a different story entirely. Also, if he had done any of the trading with insider knowledge that would be a different situation as well. This is not what happened. This is a purchase that was perfectly legal except some missing reporting he was going to own more than 10%.
What allowances? There are rules, he missed some filings and paid the appropriate fine, yet on slashdot are screaming for chunks of his wealth (not even calling for parts of his income which would be vaguely appropriate).
He paid a fine that was a decent proportion to the amount invested. Are you saying that a billionaire should be liable for billions upon investing just a few million? That'd be a wonderful way to drive all the successful people out of the market.
How much money he has is completely irrelevant. He's interested enough in investing $50 million. Compared to that amount, $800,000 is significant. What indication is there he would want to do this again? He's got two choices: $50 million in stock, or $50 million in stock minus $800k cash. It doesn't matter how rich he is, he's going to choose not to do that again.
All right, let's assume this is a punitive fine instead of a procedural one. Should he have to pay a percentage of income or of wealth? What percentage should it be?
There is only one major reason to do what he did on purpose. That would be to get a head start accumulating stock before all the other bozos that just buy whatever he buys. Warren Buffet (through Berkshire Hathaway) have this problem in a major way. People buy whatever they buy and drive the cost of acquisition way up compared to a regular individual. In this sense Bill Gates competes at a severe disadvantage compared to others acquiring large positions.
Accountants, Doctors and Lawyers are three places the mega-rich tend *not* to be tightwads. They do tend to be very cost sensitive in other areas like new cars, clothing and jewelry.
Let's say he does his taxes and is off by a dollar. Should he have to send in a dollar plus a few more for penalties/interest, or should he have to send in $2billion because he's that rich?
If you want to argue about "in the eyes of the law" then the term you are looking to use with Martha Stewart is "felon".
Had she just come forward and admitted there was an improper trade she'd have paid a fine and everyone would have moved along.
Bill Gates position is more like filling out your taxes wrong. It is common and just owning up to it means you pay your fees/penalties and everyone gets back to business. For those people screaming that he's worth more so he should be fined more, get a life. This is a financial problem and the fine is in direct proportion to business being conducted.
Never sign something unless you get signatures from all concerned parties.
My wife is a teacher and they have to administer state tests every year. She tells me they have to sign something stating they'll abide by the rules with possible punishments including stripping the license to teach of the offending teacher. I try to point out to her that she's engaging in a contract that only has terms written for one party. She and every other teachers fails to see my point saying that they "have to" sign it. If it is something required by your previous employment, then it is already covered by previous contracts.
Lots of employers do stuff like this. They have you sign things to show that you've been informed of company policy. What is actually happening is that their legal department thinks the changes are significant enough that they are changes in your job, and they want to make them unilaterally. I'm not advising digging in your heals at every little issue, just be aware of what is happening when you sign your name.
Also, you shouldn't apologize for something that, given the opportunity, you would do again.
Whenever I here complaints like this I think of an audiophile describing how faithfully the sound from Top Gun is reproduced on his home system. It doesn't matter, it's still a crap movie.
GIMP provides utilities that far exceed the abilities of most people to produce graphics.
A list of things I own that cost less than their professional counterparts but work for me: Saturn vs Ferrari $200 no name bike vs $6000 Trek Some kind of camera vs $$$$$some other kind of camera
If all you want to do is type a letter, use notepad. I won't blast you about how bad notepad sucks compared to vim. I won't say that the proprietary model has utterly failed because you can't get all the features of emacs.
Let's check out a professional webisite like, uh, Slashdot. Could the graphics on here have been done in GIMP? I'm betting it could be done like that, and without too much lost productivity.
There are lot more small business out there where people just want to make a few images and GIMP works just fine.
GIMP isn't better than PhotoShop, it's just as good for what I need though and comes at a much better price.
I hear lots of complaints about GIMP's floating windows. Which major program is primarly responsible for this style of floating window?
I've always hated those windows but I was told by some graphics guy how great they were and how I didn't know how things worked. Years later those same graphics guys seem to hate the multiple windows.
Serious question, who got the ball rolling on that horrible style?
Michael Moore is a sensationalist putz. His "documentary" was nothing more than a series of moments where he prepares for a conversation and ambushes someone who is unprepared for his rhetoric. I say this completely aside from whether his points are irrelevant.
His style reminds me of the kind of college professor who would have stats and citations for a class discussion and bully the students with his viewpoint. Sure the students may have a valid point in there somewhere but they haven't prepared for the unknown discussion that is coming up.
His only value is for those that already agree with him and enjoy poking fun at the people he targets.
The statement is utter crap. A fair comparison would be between an open source program that has something ugly bolted on and a closed source program that doesn't have that feature at all because it's not released and you have no option to get it.
Most open source software does what it's creators want it to do. Should they take the time to design an extensible system for everyone in the world to use for any possible use? Probably not, they just wanted it to do something. The fact that they make it available is a benefit and needs to be compared to the in house proprietary tools that aren't made available and are probably *at least* as ugly.
I'd believe your comment more if I'd seen more specced out project succeed, but that really hasn't been my experience.
This has been my experience:
Seat of the pants style project have a certain success rate. No specs are blamed on the failures.
Specced out project have about the same success rate only they blame poor specs on their failures and lump all their failures into the first group.
I'll believe in software engineering when you can show me some business engineers who can write up the specs. Until then all the project management theory seems to do is show where the lost money went.
And before you respond, "you obviously haven't worked in an enterprise environment" or some other bullshit, I'll tell you that I have. Further, I've been witness to many rewrites of ad hoc systems which had wild success and needed to be done "right". The results are usuall disappointing.
As to the topic of foreign development, I've noticed that companies seem willing to deliver specs to offshore development houses that they would never deliver to in house teams. Also, they are perfectly willing to put up with the mindless implementation of things that are plain wrong. Sure, it's a matter of cost, but it seems like a blind adherance to bad specs has actually trained people to delivering better specs. Anyone else notice this?
Slashdot Mirror
What if a game were broadcast with 7 camera angles:
press booth
sideline
overhead
downfield
quarterback helmet
referee
cheerleaders
Ok, how about integrating it with Notes instead?
Greed isn't bad. What you're greedy for might be.
The salesforce.com plan allows the employees to direct their efforts. Compare this to the normal company where the CEO decides to write a big check to his favorite charity. Salesforce.com basically allows you to direct your contribution to the philanthropy pool of cash toward whatever you want.
Surely I can't be the only one who has sat at a corporate meeting and been told how great a job we did for xyz non-profit organization. This meeting is supposed to encourage us but we're not the ones receiving the tickets to the booth at Pebble Beach or the playoff tickets or the plaque on the wall.
Back to what I said about greed. I'm greedy. I want that 1% of my time to go toward something I want. Greed is good.
They are dorms, not barracks.
They make it up on volume.
The real reason is because a $16.99 album download is not properly compared to a $16.99 cd. The *real* comparison is between a $16.99 cd and a $.99 download of the single track that is worth a damn.
People might be willing to jump straight to full cd price if the single track costs $2.50.
Personally, I'm liking the radio more and more. Go WRR!
Everyone seems to be assuming a constant width. How about a a straw with a greater width up near the top? I'd make it so the water would be drained before reaching the wider part.
A real tall bucket.
Several places to sip from.
A sealed bucket, pressurized.
A straw that goes all the way to the top then back to the bottom. Suck from the bottom and bleed it out at the top.
How about an old fashion pneuatic tube that sucks a whole liter bottle up from the bottom?
Numerous ways to do it depending on how you want to interpret the wordings.
Your assignment is to compare two authors. The lesson is on how to do the research. While in this particular case the internet was faster, you have passed up the learning experiences the library has to offer. Basically, the professor was asking you to not use a calculator.
I'm convinced that my ability to find what I want on the web was greatly honed by my time spent in the stacks. I also miss a bit of the serendipity of where the card catalog could lead but that is just nostalgia that doesn't recall all the dead ends.
A lot of runners have at least 2 pairs of shoes. This serves two purposes. One, it allows the shoes rest to return to their normal shape. Second, the nuances of each shoe are slightly different and will strain the foot differently, giving the strained spots rest every other day (note that the shoes should be different styles). If you don't use two different styles already, try it, it does make a noticeable difference over time.
Shoes are typically good for 500-1000 miles. So two pair of shoes would be good for around 6 months.
I said a 'good sense of when his numbers add up', not 'is good at adding up numbers'.
It is exactly that skill with proofs that is so beneficial. I notice myself thinking that way sometimes when I 'sense' the numbers to be wrong. I end up proving my code is wrong by setting up an example that is clearly wrong.
Sure we can't count, but we know what "f(x) is less than f(y) for all values of x less than y" implies. Those sorts of things are second nature.
A good example of something like that would be "we're taking in less money than we're spending". Accountants have all sorts of rules to avoid just that statement but it won't change the reality of the numbers.
No, I think he's talking about their air force after a weekend of heavy drinking.
Sure.
There is math in carpentry too, but you don't need to attend college to be a brilliant carpenter.
SQL is all about learning the constraints of data i/o and organization. Claiming it is steeped in Set Theory makes it sound a lot more complicated than it is. Sure there are aspects of it that will help, but you could learn all of Set Theory or just learn the one specific instance of that database. Practical experience and common sense will help you more than Set Theory.
Of course, I'm talking about SQL from a programmer's point of view. This usually assumes the database is already made. In this situation I'll take the person with industry experience and SQL skills over the person with SQL skills and Set Theory (Learning Set Theory does have an opportunity cost, you know).
Anyhow, my point was that there are vast areas where very mundane programming is done that don't require real math (good math skills always help though). So much of business programming fits into the business way of doing things. Like running something once a day that looks up a list of data and sends notifications to the people on that list. Simple, simple stuff that needs tobe done and can be done well by a plain coder. It is the coder that understands the business logic (hey, they don't need a notification *every* day, except in California where it is required by law, unless they are a private entity) that will excel. There are numerous positions for whole careers for these kinds of programmers. I tend to think of this kind of position as a translator, where his foreign language is "computer".
One little caveat to what I'm saying. I'm saying there is room for programmers who don't have formal math skills. I'm not saying having no math skills is beneficial. The fact is that the people who have what it takes to be good at programming tend to gravitate toward college and formal math. This means that it is uncommon for a really skilled person not to have pursued math. There is a glut of people without a clue doing the job right now that would disprove my point, if my point was "people without math skills make good programmers".
It really depends on what you're doing. I tend to think of programming as split into two groups:
Computer Science programming - embedded, drivers, algorithms, etc...
Business programming - This involves moving regular data between buckets. Math isn't so important as common sense. Both seem to be in short supply.
It's been my experience that CS majors can perform well doing either. But there are other skills necessary for business programming that will allow a mediocre programmer to produce excellent work (such as knowing the business or being a wiz with SQL).
I speak from the perspective of a math major who does business programming. I work with a lot of other people who do just great but occasionally run into a brick wall when some strange math comes up. These tasks come up only rarely. The most common place to see a math weakness manifest itself is when they foolishly matrix a couple sets of data and everything grinds to a stop. Even that is easily fixed (as long as they tested full sets of data before going into production). The only time I've *had* to be involved was implementing some probability and statistics packages.
All things being equal, I'd take the guy with math. It means he can think, comprehend written works and probably has a good sense of when his numbers add up (very useful in business programming).
Which investor of $50 million would you consider to be disadvantaged?
In this case, we're only talking about people that can buy at least 10% of a company. They all possess virtually the same advantages.
The small investor doesn't even have to fill out this paperwork.
Now, if he had dumped the stock on smaller investors without observing the reporting requirements and waiting periods that would be a different story entirely. Also, if he had done any of the trading with insider knowledge that would be a different situation as well. This is not what happened. This is a purchase that was perfectly legal except some missing reporting he was going to own more than 10%.
What allowances? There are rules, he missed some filings and paid the appropriate fine, yet on slashdot are screaming for chunks of his wealth (not even calling for parts of his income which would be vaguely appropriate).
He paid a fine that was a decent proportion to the amount invested. Are you saying that a billionaire should be liable for billions upon investing just a few million? That'd be a wonderful way to drive all the successful people out of the market.
How much money he has is completely irrelevant. He's interested enough in investing $50 million. Compared to that amount, $800,000 is significant. What indication is there he would want to do this again? He's got two choices: $50 million in stock, or $50 million in stock minus $800k cash. It doesn't matter how rich he is, he's going to choose not to do that again.
All right, let's assume this is a punitive fine instead of a procedural one. Should he have to pay a percentage of income or of wealth? What percentage should it be?
There is only one major reason to do what he did on purpose. That would be to get a head start accumulating stock before all the other bozos that just buy whatever he buys. Warren Buffet (through Berkshire Hathaway) have this problem in a major way. People buy whatever they buy and drive the cost of acquisition way up compared to a regular individual. In this sense Bill Gates competes at a severe disadvantage compared to others acquiring large positions.
Accountants, Doctors and Lawyers are three places the mega-rich tend *not* to be tightwads. They do tend to be very cost sensitive in other areas like new cars, clothing and jewelry.
Let's say he does his taxes and is off by a dollar. Should he have to send in a dollar plus a few more for penalties/interest, or should he have to send in $2billion because he's that rich?
You confuse "innocent" with "not convicted".
If you want to argue about "in the eyes of the law" then the term you are looking to use with Martha Stewart is "felon".
Had she just come forward and admitted there was an improper trade she'd have paid a fine and everyone would have moved along.
Bill Gates position is more like filling out your taxes wrong. It is common and just owning up to it means you pay your fees/penalties and everyone gets back to business. For those people screaming that he's worth more so he should be fined more, get a life. This is a financial problem and the fine is in direct proportion to business being conducted.
Never sign something unless you get signatures from all concerned parties.
My wife is a teacher and they have to administer state tests every year. She tells me they have to sign something stating they'll abide by the rules with possible punishments including stripping the license to teach of the offending teacher. I try to point out to her that she's engaging in a contract that only has terms written for one party. She and every other teachers fails to see my point saying that they "have to" sign it. If it is something required by your previous employment, then it is already covered by previous contracts.
Lots of employers do stuff like this. They have you sign things to show that you've been informed of company policy. What is actually happening is that their legal department thinks the changes are significant enough that they are changes in your job, and they want to make them unilaterally. I'm not advising digging in your heals at every little issue, just be aware of what is happening when you sign your name.
Also, you shouldn't apologize for something that, given the opportunity, you would do again.
Whenever I here complaints like this I think of an audiophile describing how faithfully the sound from Top Gun is reproduced on his home system. It doesn't matter, it's still a crap movie.
GIMP provides utilities that far exceed the abilities of most people to produce graphics.
A list of things I own that cost less than their professional counterparts but work for me:
Saturn vs Ferrari
$200 no name bike vs $6000 Trek
Some kind of camera vs $$$$$some other kind of camera
If all you want to do is type a letter, use notepad. I won't blast you about how bad notepad sucks compared to vim. I won't say that the proprietary model has utterly failed because you can't get all the features of emacs.
Let's check out a professional webisite like, uh, Slashdot. Could the graphics on here have been done in GIMP? I'm betting it could be done like that, and without too much lost productivity.
There are lot more small business out there where people just want to make a few images and GIMP works just fine.
GIMP isn't better than PhotoShop, it's just as good for what I need though and comes at a much better price.
I hear lots of complaints about GIMP's floating windows. Which major program is primarly responsible for this style of floating window?
I've always hated those windows but I was told by some graphics guy how great they were and how I didn't know how things worked. Years later those same graphics guys seem to hate the multiple windows.
Serious question, who got the ball rolling on that horrible style?
Michael Moore is a sensationalist putz. His "documentary" was nothing more than a series of moments where he prepares for a conversation and ambushes someone who is unprepared for his rhetoric. I say this completely aside from whether his points are irrelevant.
His style reminds me of the kind of college professor who would have stats and citations for a class discussion and bully the students with his viewpoint. Sure the students may have a valid point in there somewhere but they haven't prepared for the unknown discussion that is coming up.
His only value is for those that already agree with him and enjoy poking fun at the people he targets.
Insightful?
The statement is utter crap. A fair comparison would be between an open source program that has something ugly bolted on and a closed source program that doesn't have that feature at all because it's not released and you have no option to get it.
Most open source software does what it's creators want it to do. Should they take the time to design an extensible system for everyone in the world to use for any possible use? Probably not, they just wanted it to do something. The fact that they make it available is a benefit and needs to be compared to the in house proprietary tools that aren't made available and are probably *at least* as ugly.
I'd believe your comment more if I'd seen more specced out project succeed, but that really hasn't been my experience.
This has been my experience:
Seat of the pants style project have a certain success rate. No specs are blamed on the failures.
Specced out project have about the same success rate only they blame poor specs on their failures and lump all their failures into the first group.
I'll believe in software engineering when you can show me some business engineers who can write up the specs. Until then all the project management theory seems to do is show where the lost money went.
And before you respond, "you obviously haven't worked in an enterprise environment" or some other bullshit, I'll tell you that I have. Further, I've been witness to many rewrites of ad hoc systems which had wild success and needed to be done "right". The results are usuall disappointing.
As to the topic of foreign development, I've noticed that companies seem willing to deliver specs to offshore development houses that they would never deliver to in house teams. Also, they are perfectly willing to put up with the mindless implementation of things that are plain wrong. Sure, it's a matter of cost, but it seems like a blind adherance to bad specs has actually trained people to delivering better specs. Anyone else notice this?