I take slight issue with your wording. There most certainly is an economic explanation that will include the psychological/ego factors. It may not be entirely quantitative, but qualitative considerations aren't totally absent from mainline economic theory.
IANAL, but doesn't this mean that they're the only ones who should legally be allowed to serve banner ads to multiple sites that can vaguely be classified as newspaper sites? This one included? Can we get a lawyer out there in the/. community to translate the patent into english?
Actually, I for one am quite concerned about the computer's efficiency. When you have 10,000 concurrent users, those minute speed improvements will pay huge gains.
Well...if the product isn't what the customer wanted, then the blame can fall one of two ways:
a) Either the customer didn't communicate what they wanted correctly...in which case the programmer bears very little responsibility for the problems. The burden for getting a clear picture of what the client wants rests upon the client and the internal client-liason...generally the sales staff and the project staff. (If the programmer is a client-liason, then they do bear some of the responsibility here.)
- or -
b) The client communicated it effectively but the big picture was never fully realized by the TEAM. In this case, the fault lies both in the project manager and the programmer...probably the result of poor communication.
The problem with the statement "then I have someone to blame if my programming takes longer than I thought, or the product isn't what the customer wanted" is that it sets up a naturally adversarial relationship between project managers and programmers. Everyone needs to take part of the blame when projects fail. The non-technical project manager should be involved in a project deeply enough to understand what stages of development the product is in, understand the implementation of the feature set, and help to plan an appropriate testing/staged release schedule with the programming staff.
If that's happening, and the project manager and programming staff have a clear idea of what the client needs, then what excuse is there to have a project fail? If the project fails at this point, it's usually a breakdown in the TEAM. What is gained by trying to point a finger at some single person or group...at that point???
The further problem is...if this isn't realized and communicated at some level by the company...in a "post mortem" dissection of the project's successes and failures...it means the company does not have the necessary mentality required to learn from its mistakes and take steps to prevent history from repeating itself....not an environment I would keep myself in for very long.
Some of the most professionally valuable projects I have been involved in have been ones where we completely dropped the ball...for one reason or another...and then had a constructive meeting after the fact to implement change in process flow. It takes a project that may have lost $ for the company and turns that loss into an experience that should help us make more $ in the future...by streamlining project process flow.
I agree. The real barrier to working with non-technical people as project managers is the lack of communication - not their lack of technical understanding. And, I'm sorry guys, but the burden for effective communication falls equally on all members of a project. As technical people, we need to know how to translate our knowledge and experience into statements that our project managers can grasp.
I, too, work for a medium sized company with non-technical people as project directors. We have had tremendous success with this arrangement...and we have had tremendous failures. Communication has almost always been the cause of success or failure. You need to learn how to manage your project managers' expectations of the technology, its implementation, and your time. The only way to do this is through effective communication.
I do feel that on very LARGE projects, a technical project manager working hand-in-hand with a non-technical project manager is a necessity...but those two people perform two completely different tasks. On smaller projects, that person would be overkill...and would likely be doing much of what you - as a programmer - should be doing.
We contemplated getting this service from Qwest, as well. It sounds interesting, but since Qwest is one of the companies actively selling our phone number and personal information to other companies, we decided not to allow them to profit doubly off of us.
As a programmer who often has to deal with the ill-conceived security policies that my company dreams up, I agree - that is definitely the funniest thing I've ever read here.
...and, in the same breath, it's easier to find news and entertainment that does NOT fit your worldview, potentially increasing intolerance/hostility.
Ignorance is bliss...and it's not terribly easy to be completely ignorant (by mistake) these days. To be completely ignorant, you usually need to put in some effort...;)
exactly - my personal browsing habits fall in line with the original poster in this thread...but I think we (geeks) are now the minority on the web...my mom, for example, is what I would consider the typical eConsumer...and I once asked her to type in an address of a website I was working on...she didn't know where to type it...I was amazed to find out that her browsing habits were mainly directed by links on her home page (set by her ISP) that she follows and makes bookmarks...links are key.
Isn't this a decision that really only dictates that the government use MS technologies? As far as I'm aware, there's nothing about Passport that says I need to use MS technologies on the client side to log in/log out. I admit, I haven't read up on it a lot b/c my company won't be authenticating users using passport anytime soon...
I guess it also means that the government is going to be more likely to be purchasing MS complementary products to interact with their authentication system...that's a decision the gov't may regret one day.
why spend ANY time doing that when so many other people/companies do it better...check out jedit if you want a really good, free one. (Java required.)
Besides, Windows development (for better or for worse) is all about the IDE. I doubt MS sees the need to throw any effort into developing notepad. And look at what they're doing w/"Computer Management" using their management console...GREAT idea, IMHO, to provide a standardized interface for configuration. We don't need notepad to edit win.ini anymore like we did back in the 3.1 days.
...shivers, yes...but I know what he was talking about...I just think it probably could have been put a little better.
I think the phenomenon he's describing is part of the "When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail" syndrome. How many of us can't admit to - at least once or twice - learning something new and being totally consumed by it? When I'm learning something new, I try to force myself to use it for solutions to familiarize myself with it...that way, I figure out through experience what it works well for, what it kinda works for, and what it doesn't work at all for. I never take anyone's word on the usability of solutions in different scenarios. Then, in the long run, I pull back and balance my usage based on my experience.
I just wouldn't use the term "brainwashed"...if it is brainwashing, then it's self-induced in my case...and it's brainwashing that I am able to snap myself out of eventually...
right...probably related to "muscle memory"... ever try to type at a new keyboard...where the keys might be just slightly misaligned compared to your ol' betsy that you've been using for years?
Singers also have a type of muscle memory that helps them approximate accurate pitches. I'm not talking about perfect pitch, but perfect relative pitch...it seems logical that, after years of catching a ball in earth's gravity, you continue to react as you had been conditioned to on earth.
Just from a customer service perspective, it sounded like my telco has some serious internal organization issues...during one of my many calls, I found out that they have 3 regions, and 4 different applications that they need to use for each region. Info can appear in one system but not another...get changed in one system but not another. As a result, the customer (me) and the customer service agent (the person on the phone with me) does not know that install dates are automatically changed...or that phone numbers for provision are automatically changed to correct for "human error"...human error that didn't exist, but the system thought it did because of a failure in one of their other 3 applications!!!
I don't blame the poor schmucks on the phone who have to deal with me all day...just the poor schmuck at the company who failed to upgrade their software accordingly when their business expanded so severely. I have noticed some difference in competence with the 10-20 cust service reps I've spoken with this past month...but none of them sounded like total idiots. They're working with crap for software.
Qwest...I see we're in the same boat;) They pretty much totally suck in a really really big way. And you're right about the local copies of stuff...which I do have...the problem is that I need connectivity to our database servers in NY for much of what I do...all of what I've been doing for the past 3 months...
I have yet to get the computer recording apologizing to me;) But the profanity, the yelling...all of it has come out...my wife is a pastor at a church here and even she has dropped the f-bomb one or two times while on the phone w/them...we take turns making the calls...and I guess her profanity is fine as long as she really feels bad about it;) (Personally, I think that even God would be just a trifle annoyed at this point...you know, She created the universe in 6 days and yet Qwest took twice that long to connect a phone line...and then ended up provisioning the wrong line...)
...I find it somewhat amusing that a number of posters (not just those limited to this thread) assume that because I moved from New Jersey to the Midwest it means that I moved to a more rural area. The opposite is true, actually.
In Jersey, we lived in Mt. Arlington, a tiny town on Lake Hopatcong, not too far from the Delaware Water Gap (a fairly rural area). Here in Minnesota, we live just a few minutes north of Minneapolis.
And, for the record, I am relieved that I am no longer in New Jersey;) I liked it there for the time I was there, but this was a good move.
right on...I can no more quickly put up a dish than I can a basketball hoop in my driveway...I own the townhome, but I own the insides...the external features (siding, windows, landscaping, snow removal, etc) are the responsibility of the association...they are well within their rights to disallow satellite dishes on our roofs.
Thanks for the well-thought-out suggestions. I was as equally unprepared for this as my company was, apparently. While we are a worldwide company (which means we have a remote reporting structure already in place), we don't have many programmers working from home. This is new for me and for them. I wasn't really posting to gripe as much as I was posting to get some honest suggestions (some people have been pretty unforgiving in their responses;) )
I'm 2 months into this arrangement, and I'd like to make the necessary changes to my service sooner, rather than later. I had not considered the cost implications that some other posters mentioned, either...I had initially discounted the additional cost of a business line in my home, but I hadn't considered the additional costs that my company is saving by my *not* occupying an office in NYC.
I do have redundant access (business class DSL and dialup), but both are dependant upon the telephone lines (residential class for now). Satellite is a solution that will not work for me due to my townhome association's rules about external structures on the home. Cable is not offered in my area...although I had been told that it was by the cable company. They apparently offer it in my town, but not on all streets in my town. I will be investigating upgrading my telephone line to business class next week. I initially didn't believe the difference in service would be significant enough to warrant the extra cost. Some posters seem to agree with that, but I will upgrade nonetheless.
(And, just some more background on the issue that I didn't feel was relevant to my submission to Ask Slashdot: I was dealing with my telephone company's complete incompetence and inability to escalate repetitive problems internally. They kept on sending the same moronic installation guy out and he kept on saying that he couldn't find our house...which is, of course, right on the street and well-marked. And of course every time he tried to find the house, he never picked up a phone and called my cell# (which I made sure they had on record after the first failed attempt). Everytime they missed an appointment, they told me I would have to wait 3 days to get another installation dude out here b/c of company policy...that there was no way they could speed it up...this happened 3 or 4 times. In Jersey, they have laws protecting consumers from that type of behavior. MN has no such laws. (It only resulted in downtime once...the day after I had checked out of that local hotel you suggested but was expecting to have service.))
I don't think I was quite as clueless as I may have sounded in my submission...but in the areas that I was clueless, I have been more than adequately clued in. Thanks!
Am I being screwed by my local provider? Check out the painful swelling around my... nevermind...I wish I could shop around, though. In this part of the country, you have *one* choice for telephone service.
Slashdot Mirror
I take slight issue with your wording. There most certainly is an economic explanation that will include the psychological/ego factors. It may not be entirely quantitative, but qualitative considerations aren't totally absent from mainline economic theory.
IANAL, but doesn't this mean that they're the only ones who should legally be allowed to serve banner ads to multiple sites that can vaguely be classified as newspaper sites? This one included? Can we get a lawyer out there in the /. community to translate the patent into english?
Exactly - and if this guy thinks Auburn is rural, he needs to come out here to the Midwest and pay us a visit...
Actually, I for one am quite concerned about the computer's efficiency. When you have 10,000 concurrent users, those minute speed improvements will pay huge gains.
Well...if the product isn't what the customer wanted, then the blame can fall one of two ways:
...not an environment I would keep myself in for very long.
a) Either the customer didn't communicate what they wanted correctly...in which case the programmer bears very little responsibility for the problems. The burden for getting a clear picture of what the client wants rests upon the client and the internal client-liason...generally the sales staff and the project staff. (If the programmer is a client-liason, then they do bear some of the responsibility here.)
- or -
b) The client communicated it effectively but the big picture was never fully realized by the TEAM. In this case, the fault lies both in the project manager and the programmer...probably the result of poor communication.
The problem with the statement "then I have someone to blame if my programming takes longer than I thought, or the product isn't what the customer wanted" is that it sets up a naturally adversarial relationship between project managers and programmers. Everyone needs to take part of the blame when projects fail. The non-technical project manager should be involved in a project deeply enough to understand what stages of development the product is in, understand the implementation of the feature set, and help to plan an appropriate testing/staged release schedule with the programming staff.
If that's happening, and the project manager and programming staff have a clear idea of what the client needs, then what excuse is there to have a project fail? If the project fails at this point, it's usually a breakdown in the TEAM. What is gained by trying to point a finger at some single person or group...at that point???
The further problem is...if this isn't realized and communicated at some level by the company...in a "post mortem" dissection of the project's successes and failures...it means the company does not have the necessary mentality required to learn from its mistakes and take steps to prevent history from repeating itself.
Some of the most professionally valuable projects I have been involved in have been ones where we completely dropped the ball...for one reason or another...and then had a constructive meeting after the fact to implement change in process flow. It takes a project that may have lost $ for the company and turns that loss into an experience that should help us make more $ in the future...by streamlining project process flow.
I agree. The real barrier to working with non-technical people as project managers is the lack of communication - not their lack of technical understanding. And, I'm sorry guys, but the burden for effective communication falls equally on all members of a project. As technical people, we need to know how to translate our knowledge and experience into statements that our project managers can grasp.
I, too, work for a medium sized company with non-technical people as project directors. We have had tremendous success with this arrangement...and we have had tremendous failures. Communication has almost always been the cause of success or failure. You need to learn how to manage your project managers' expectations of the technology, its implementation, and your time. The only way to do this is through effective communication.
I do feel that on very LARGE projects, a technical project manager working hand-in-hand with a non-technical project manager is a necessity...but those two people perform two completely different tasks. On smaller projects, that person would be overkill...and would likely be doing much of what you - as a programmer - should be doing.
We contemplated getting this service from Qwest, as well. It sounds interesting, but since Qwest is one of the companies actively selling our phone number and personal information to other companies, we decided not to allow them to profit doubly off of us.
As a programmer who often has to deal with the ill-conceived security policies that my company dreams up, I agree - that is definitely the funniest thing I've ever read here.
(Anybody see my wings anywhere?)
You say tomAYto, I say tomAHto
You say obstinate, I say configurable
You say bug, I say feature
(And yes, to be totally serious, I do see your point...but to me, the fault is in the package management software and not the OS itself.)
Hm. I always thought he spoke with some sort of alien accent.
If I had mod points today, you'd get them...
...and, in the same breath, it's easier to find news and entertainment that does NOT fit your worldview, potentially increasing intolerance/hostility.
;)
Ignorance is bliss...and it's not terribly easy to be completely ignorant (by mistake) these days. To be completely ignorant, you usually need to put in some effort...
exactly - my personal browsing habits fall in line with the original poster in this thread...but I think we (geeks) are now the minority on the web...my mom, for example, is what I would consider the typical eConsumer...and I once asked her to type in an address of a website I was working on...she didn't know where to type it...I was amazed to find out that her browsing habits were mainly directed by links on her home page (set by her ISP) that she follows and makes bookmarks...links are key.
Isn't this a decision that really only dictates that the government use MS technologies? As far as I'm aware, there's nothing about Passport that says I need to use MS technologies on the client side to log in/log out. I admit, I haven't read up on it a lot b/c my company won't be authenticating users using passport anytime soon...
I guess it also means that the government is going to be more likely to be purchasing MS complementary products to interact with their authentication system...that's a decision the gov't may regret one day.
why spend ANY time doing that when so many other people/companies do it better...check out jedit if you want a really good, free one. (Java required.)
Besides, Windows development (for better or for worse) is all about the IDE. I doubt MS sees the need to throw any effort into developing notepad. And look at what they're doing w/"Computer Management" using their management console...GREAT idea, IMHO, to provide a standardized interface for configuration. We don't need notepad to edit win.ini anymore like we did back in the 3.1 days.
...shivers, yes...but I know what he was talking about...I just think it probably could have been put a little better.
I think the phenomenon he's describing is part of the "When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail" syndrome. How many of us can't admit to - at least once or twice - learning something new and being totally consumed by it? When I'm learning something new, I try to force myself to use it for solutions to familiarize myself with it...that way, I figure out through experience what it works well for, what it kinda works for, and what it doesn't work at all for. I never take anyone's word on the usability of solutions in different scenarios. Then, in the long run, I pull back and balance my usage based on my experience.
I just wouldn't use the term "brainwashed"...if it is brainwashing, then it's self-induced in my case...and it's brainwashing that I am able to snap myself out of eventually...
right...probably related to "muscle memory"... ever try to type at a new keyboard...where the keys might be just slightly misaligned compared to your ol' betsy that you've been using for years?
Singers also have a type of muscle memory that helps them approximate accurate pitches. I'm not talking about perfect pitch, but perfect relative pitch...it seems logical that, after years of catching a ball in earth's gravity, you continue to react as you had been conditioned to on earth.
Right! NaN...seems like it described their cash flow, as well as their company...
nope - not Ameritech - sounds similar, though
Just from a customer service perspective, it sounded like my telco has some serious internal organization issues...during one of my many calls, I found out that they have 3 regions, and 4 different applications that they need to use for each region. Info can appear in one system but not another...get changed in one system but not another. As a result, the customer (me) and the customer service agent (the person on the phone with me) does not know that install dates are automatically changed...or that phone numbers for provision are automatically changed to correct for "human error"...human error that didn't exist, but the system thought it did because of a failure in one of their other 3 applications!!!
I don't blame the poor schmucks on the phone who have to deal with me all day...just the poor schmuck at the company who failed to upgrade their software accordingly when their business expanded so severely. I have noticed some difference in competence with the 10-20 cust service reps I've spoken with this past month...but none of them sounded like total idiots. They're working with crap for software.
Qwest...I see we're in the same boat ;) They pretty much totally suck in a really really big way. And you're right about the local copies of stuff...which I do have...the problem is that I need connectivity to our database servers in NY for much of what I do...all of what I've been doing for the past 3 months...
;) But the profanity, the yelling...all of it has come out...my wife is a pastor at a church here and even she has dropped the f-bomb one or two times while on the phone w/them...we take turns making the calls...and I guess her profanity is fine as long as she really feels bad about it ;) (Personally, I think that even God would be just a trifle annoyed at this point...you know, She created the universe in 6 days and yet Qwest took twice that long to connect a phone line...and then ended up provisioning the wrong line...)
I have yet to get the computer recording apologizing to me
...I find it somewhat amusing that a number of posters (not just those limited to this thread) assume that because I moved from New Jersey to the Midwest it means that I moved to a more rural area. The opposite is true, actually.
;) I liked it there for the time I was there, but this was a good move.
In Jersey, we lived in Mt. Arlington, a tiny town on Lake Hopatcong, not too far from the Delaware Water Gap (a fairly rural area). Here in Minnesota, we live just a few minutes north of Minneapolis.
And, for the record, I am relieved that I am no longer in New Jersey
right on...I can no more quickly put up a dish than I can a basketball hoop in my driveway...I own the townhome, but I own the insides...the external features (siding, windows, landscaping, snow removal, etc) are the responsibility of the association...they are well within their rights to disallow satellite dishes on our roofs.
thanks for the non-flaming response
Thanks for the well-thought-out suggestions. I was as equally unprepared for this as my company was, apparently. While we are a worldwide company (which means we have a remote reporting structure already in place), we don't have many programmers working from home. This is new for me and for them. I wasn't really posting to gripe as much as I was posting to get some honest suggestions (some people have been pretty unforgiving in their responses ;) )
I'm 2 months into this arrangement, and I'd like to make the necessary changes to my service sooner, rather than later. I had not considered the cost implications that some other posters mentioned, either...I had initially discounted the additional cost of a business line in my home, but I hadn't considered the additional costs that my company is saving by my *not* occupying an office in NYC.
I do have redundant access (business class DSL and dialup), but both are dependant upon the telephone lines (residential class for now). Satellite is a solution that will not work for me due to my townhome association's rules about external structures on the home. Cable is not offered in my area...although I had been told that it was by the cable company. They apparently offer it in my town, but not on all streets in my town. I will be investigating upgrading my telephone line to business class next week. I initially didn't believe the difference in service would be significant enough to warrant the extra cost. Some posters seem to agree with that, but I will upgrade nonetheless.
(And, just some more background on the issue that I didn't feel was relevant to my submission to Ask Slashdot: I was dealing with my telephone company's complete incompetence and inability to escalate repetitive problems internally. They kept on sending the same moronic installation guy out and he kept on saying that he couldn't find our house...which is, of course, right on the street and well-marked. And of course every time he tried to find the house, he never picked up a phone and called my cell# (which I made sure they had on record after the first failed attempt). Everytime they missed an appointment, they told me I would have to wait 3 days to get another installation dude out here b/c of company policy...that there was no way they could speed it up...this happened 3 or 4 times. In Jersey, they have laws protecting consumers from that type of behavior. MN has no such laws. (It only resulted in downtime once...the day after I had checked out of that local hotel you suggested but was expecting to have service.))
I don't think I was quite as clueless as I may have sounded in my submission...but in the areas that I was clueless, I have been more than adequately clued in. Thanks!
Am I being screwed by my local provider? Check out the painful swelling around my... nevermind...I wish I could shop around, though. In this part of the country, you have *one* choice for telephone service.