Jeez, it's the guy's HOBBY. There doesn't HAVE to be a point to it. He's been doing it for a long time, and until very recently, it drew almost no attention.
For any hobby you can think of, there will people who think it's pathetic, or that they're doing it for some ulterior motive other than "because it's there". No matter. He doesn't need anyone's permission to do this, and it's not hurting anything, so why get your panties in a twist?
He's getting more press these days. There's an article in
Fortune about him.
Also, the name he goes by is simply "Winter". The only reason he has the "John Smith" in his name is because too many things (like the DMV) break when presented with a single name.
He is also a fairly good tournament Scrabble player. Because the National Scrabble Association's database can't handle single names either, he's registered as "Winter ZXQKJ".
"Capitolism": The tendency to put golden domes on buildings.
Seriously, avoiding certain purchases only goes so far. If action isn't taken to proactively stop clothing manufacturers from using sweatshop child labor, then they'll keep doind so, forcing everyone else to do the same thing or get priced out of the market. When it's all made that way, what do you do then, build a loom and start farming sheep and cotton?
My wife has a bachelor's degree in chemistry, and used to do discovery and NMR spectroscopy in agricultural research.
At her company, anyone without a PhD was a permanent second-class citizen no matter how long they had been working or how good they were. Also, a master's degree was useless--you were better off keeping your bachelor's or taking the plunge and going for the PhD.
Her theory was that the eight years of indentured servitude required for a PhD was another example of "we had to do it so you have to do it".
Yeah, like the ENTIRE construction industry. For them to move to metric would be like forcing every computer installation everywhere to go to Linux: In most cases a Good Thing, in some not, but an EXTREMELY painful transition that would take many years.
Most of us can switch back and forth between English and Metric like inhaling an exhaling. "Add 1 cup milk" vs. "Add 250ml milk"--turn the measuring cup around, no big deal.
But ask anyone in the auto industry (where there's a large incentive to standardize on metric parts) how much fun their transition has been. Now, see how much the construction industry, whose sessile products are not intended for sale on the world market, would want to go through that for almost no benefit.
CM is not synonymous with version control (and version control is not synonymous with CVS). Testers need to be able to verify that they're getting exactly what they're supposed to test, no more, no less. Release engineers (the folks that prepare the final distribution media) have to be sure that all the right parts are in all the right place before they start burning CDs. System engineers need to be able to verify that developers haven't given in to feature creep.
But developers naturally don't want to have to deal with any of that. They want to write their code then move on to the next thing. Checkins, checkouts, bug tracking, requirements tracing, 100% reproducibility forever, these are things that developers tend to see as impediments. This can be especially true if your development staff, while good coders, are not conversant in the accepted practices of software engineering (as you'll often find with new graduates).
Ideally, for your first CM job, you shouldn't have to fight these battles. Go into an organization that already accepts that CM is a necessary part of software development. Even better, try to join an existing CM team that already has a good process in place. Then, you can learn what CM really is, how to do it right and keep the most people happy in the process. After that you'll be better prepared to establish good CM in a company with an immature process and headstrong developer-kings.
You're right. There's actually a check box on the 1040 that asks, "Are you claiming a home-office deduction?" It might as well say, "Would you like to be audited?"
The tax reform act of 1986, IIRC (IANATA), severely restricted the conditions under which you could claim a home office deduction, because you could claim a percentage of your housing costs, based on what proportion of your living space was dedicated to your home office. The kicker was that you could claim either percentage of square footage, or percentage of "rooms", so people with studio apartments could store a pencil in the closet, call it an "office", and claim that 50% of their living space was deductible.
In typical fashion, the IRS went too far in the other direction.
Most sales, marketing, executive and other customer facing jobs have been like this for years. Also, things like "hoteling" of office space predicted this a long time ago.
Commercial square footage is expensive, and employees who want window offices instead of internal cubes are more likely to get them in their own homes.
But good luck getting that home-office tax deduction...
Actually, they do talk occasionally about bringing vrave back up, but I hope they don't--my productivity went way down every afternoon while it was still active.
True story: My (now) wife and I set our wedding date on vrave.
It is WAY too early to be telling Sun to close up shop. This would orphan their very large installed base, a huge number of customers who aren't willing to fix what isn't broken.
And not everyone has the know-how to build huge networks of cheap PCs a la Google. For that matter not a lot of companies have the know-how to do ANYTHING that Google does.
Until everybody does, there's always going to be a need for large amounts of data processing power inside a self-contained box that doesn't take a room full of postdocs to run. Yes, Sun may stagnate, but the high-end servers from Sun, IBM, HP et al will have a market for quite a long time to come.
I agree. I was at AT&T in 1984, just after divestiture, and most of the company was wandering around in a daze trying to figure out how to operate as anything but a regulated monopoly. It took many years for the old "phone company" monoculture to fade, but there was never anything dynamic to take its place. Every time they'd get into some new business, it was always to grab a piece of an existing pie, never to actually create something new that peple would pay money for.
Bellcore-later-Telcordia was even worse. Because of legacy contracts with the Baby Bells, they were able to hold on to their biggest cash cows longer than AT&T was. Think about it: Which came first, intense competition in the long-distance market, or intense competition in local service billing software? They were as dead as AT&T, but it took them several more years to fall over. And I won't even get into the cultural train wreck that occurred when SAIC bought Telcordia.
And people wonder why I took a job with a Big Evil Defense Contractor.
I think what the parent was referring to is the analog side of a CD or DVD player.
Sure, you could take any digitized waveform from DC to the Nyquist limit and feed it to the DACs, but that doesn't mean that the (cheap consumer-grade) DACs could necessarily recreate the analog waveform, nor that any of the downstream electronics could reproduce the analog either. And even if you could, some parts of the system, like the speaker coils, will likely burn out if you run DC or near-DC (at a significant nonzero voltage) through them.
Remember the classic mantra of OSS: "When you've got an itch," scratch it."
Good UI design/implementation is difficult, laborious and time consuming. It's not fun, it's drudgery. That's why people generally won't do it unless they're getting paid to do it. Same with documentation.
But I still agree with you. McDonald's has jobs, and if you're qualified to work as a developer, you're qualified to flip burgers.
But will they hire you? Probably not. Unless you're a really good actor, at the interview they'll immediately see that you'll be out the door whenever the next real job comes along, and the response, "I don't care, exploit me, I need to feed my kids TONIGHT," doesn't save you.
The last time I was involved in a massive layoff (site closure at a very large company), this is exactly how it was done. People were either let go or offered relocation to another site. We could not discern any logical pattern in the list of people who were or were not offered relocation. The only conclusion we could draw was that the lists preserved the gender, age and ethnicity proportions of the organization. Beyond that it was entirely random.
Some good people were kept, and some good people were let go. Some people in critical job functions were kept, and some people in critical job functions were let go. Some dead weight was kept, and some dead weight was let go. Of course, about half the staff were let go, yet all the managers but one were kept.
It was clear that they were doing everything in their power to keep from getting sued, and the work being done by the organization, as well as its collective skill set, were irrelevant. The list of people being let go was prepared by managers high enough up that they didn't know any of us personally.
The only reason this isn't (-1) bitter, is that we were offered generous severance packages (for most of us, four months' salary plus very good outplacement).
No, it's ternary, since the pauses between dits and dahs are significant. But it's still digital communication.
Back in my ham days, I was taught that the canonical ratios are derived from the length of a dit. A dah is three dits long. The gap between dits and dahs within a character is one dit long, the gap between characters is three dits long, and the gap between words is five dits long.
...in an attempt to look for evidence of water on Mars. Engineers had hoped the rover would travel 164 feet, but Spirit didn't cover the full distance...
Because you're trying to trap the interviewees into saying something bad about themselves.
In fact, that's how I answer that question: "Well, Mr. Lumbergh, my greatest weakness is that I have a very hard time giving people reasons not to hire me."
A better question: "How do you think this job would help your career development?" That will get them to tell you about something they can't necessarily do now but would like to learn. The answer can give you a lot of insight as to how they'll fit in over the long term.
Slashdot Mirror
Jeez, it's the guy's HOBBY. There doesn't HAVE to be a point to it. He's been doing it for a long time, and until very recently, it drew almost no attention.
For any hobby you can think of, there will people who think it's pathetic, or that they're doing it for some ulterior motive other than "because it's there". No matter. He doesn't need anyone's permission to do this, and it's not hurting anything, so why get your panties in a twist?
Whoops, my bad.
Also, the name he goes by is simply "Winter". The only reason he has the "John Smith" in his name is because too many things (like the DMV) break when presented with a single name.
He is also a fairly good tournament Scrabble player. Because the National Scrabble Association's database can't handle single names either, he's registered as "Winter ZXQKJ".
"Capitolism": The tendency to put golden domes on buildings.
Seriously, avoiding certain purchases only goes so far. If action isn't taken to proactively stop clothing manufacturers from using sweatshop child labor, then they'll keep doind so, forcing everyone else to do the same thing or get priced out of the market. When it's all made that way, what do you do then, build a loom and start farming sheep and cotton?
I suspect it's a few clanking and crunching sounds followed by static...
My wife has a bachelor's degree in chemistry, and used to do discovery and NMR spectroscopy in agricultural research.
At her company, anyone without a PhD was a permanent second-class citizen no matter how long they had been working or how good they were. Also, a master's degree was useless--you were better off keeping your bachelor's or taking the plunge and going for the PhD.
Her theory was that the eight years of indentured servitude required for a PhD was another example of "we had to do it so you have to do it".
...then I will consider it an unsolicited gift from you, with which I will do whatever I want.
IOW, tacking a too-bad-if-you-looked legal threat to the end of your email does not establish any sort of contract between us.
I will fix your computer in return for one of these.
"Powerful interests with incentive"
Yeah, like the ENTIRE construction industry. For them to move to metric would be like forcing every computer installation everywhere to go to Linux: In most cases a Good Thing, in some not, but an EXTREMELY painful transition that would take many years.
Most of us can switch back and forth between English and Metric like inhaling an exhaling. "Add 1 cup milk" vs. "Add 250ml milk"--turn the measuring cup around, no big deal.
But ask anyone in the auto industry (where there's a large incentive to standardize on metric parts) how much fun their transition has been. Now, see how much the construction industry, whose sessile products are not intended for sale on the world market, would want to go through that for almost no benefit.
I've been a CM engineer for a bit over 10 years.
CM is not synonymous with version control (and version control is not synonymous with CVS). Testers need to be able to verify that they're getting exactly what they're supposed to test, no more, no less. Release engineers (the folks that prepare the final distribution media) have to be sure that all the right parts are in all the right place before they start burning CDs. System engineers need to be able to verify that developers haven't given in to feature creep.
But developers naturally don't want to have to deal with any of that. They want to write their code then move on to the next thing. Checkins, checkouts, bug tracking, requirements tracing, 100% reproducibility forever, these are things that developers tend to see as impediments. This can be especially true if your development staff, while good coders, are not conversant in the accepted practices of software engineering (as you'll often find with new graduates).
Ideally, for your first CM job, you shouldn't have to fight these battles. Go into an organization that already accepts that CM is a necessary part of software development. Even better, try to join an existing CM team that already has a good process in place. Then, you can learn what CM really is, how to do it right and keep the most people happy in the process. After that you'll be better prepared to establish good CM in a company with an immature process and headstrong developer-kings.
Now, if there were a trick to blocking banner ads whose URLs refer to the same server as the site's actual graphic content...
You're right. There's actually a check box on the 1040 that asks, "Are you claiming a home-office deduction?" It might as well say, "Would you like to be audited?"
The tax reform act of 1986, IIRC (IANATA), severely restricted the conditions under which you could claim a home office deduction, because you could claim a percentage of your housing costs, based on what proportion of your living space was dedicated to your home office. The kicker was that you could claim either percentage of square footage, or percentage of "rooms", so people with studio apartments could store a pencil in the closet, call it an "office", and claim that 50% of their living space was deductible.
In typical fashion, the IRS went too far in the other direction.
Most sales, marketing, executive and other customer facing jobs have been like this for years. Also, things like "hoteling" of office space predicted this a long time ago.
Commercial square footage is expensive, and employees who want window offices instead of internal cubes are more likely to get them in their own homes.
But good luck getting that home-office tax deduction...
And the Weber-weenies with it? :)
Actually, they do talk occasionally about bringing vrave back up, but I hope they don't--my productivity went way down every afternoon while it was still active.
True story: My (now) wife and I set our wedding date on vrave.
It is WAY too early to be telling Sun to close up shop. This would orphan their very large installed base, a huge number of customers who aren't willing to fix what isn't broken.
And not everyone has the know-how to build huge networks of cheap PCs a la Google. For that matter not a lot of companies have the know-how to do ANYTHING that Google does.
Until everybody does, there's always going to be a need for large amounts of data processing power inside a self-contained box that doesn't take a room full of postdocs to run. Yes, Sun may stagnate, but the high-end servers from Sun, IBM, HP et al will have a market for quite a long time to come.
I agree. I was at AT&T in 1984, just after divestiture, and most of the company was wandering around in a daze trying to figure out how to operate as anything but a regulated monopoly. It took many years for the old "phone company" monoculture to fade, but there was never anything dynamic to take its place. Every time they'd get into some new business, it was always to grab a piece of an existing pie, never to actually create something new that peple would pay money for.
Bellcore-later-Telcordia was even worse. Because of legacy contracts with the Baby Bells, they were able to hold on to their biggest cash cows longer than AT&T was. Think about it: Which came first, intense competition in the long-distance market, or intense competition in local service billing software? They were as dead as AT&T, but it took them several more years to fall over. And I won't even get into the cultural train wreck that occurred when SAIC bought Telcordia.
And people wonder why I took a job with a Big Evil Defense Contractor.
Sure, you could take any digitized waveform from DC to the Nyquist limit and feed it to the DACs, but that doesn't mean that the (cheap consumer-grade) DACs could necessarily recreate the analog waveform, nor that any of the downstream electronics could reproduce the analog either. And even if you could, some parts of the system, like the speaker coils, will likely burn out if you run DC or near-DC (at a significant nonzero voltage) through them.
Remember the classic mantra of OSS: "When you've got an itch," scratch it."
Good UI design/implementation is difficult, laborious and time consuming. It's not fun, it's drudgery. That's why people generally won't do it unless they're getting paid to do it. Same with documentation.
It's a good living but a lousy hobby.
But will they hire you? Probably not. Unless you're a really good actor, at the interview they'll immediately see that you'll be out the door whenever the next real job comes along, and the response, "I don't care, exploit me, I need to feed my kids TONIGHT," doesn't save you.
DEPLOYING UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE
ACQUIRING TARGET
LOCATION: LINDON, UTAH, USA
TARGET DESTROYED
SEND NOTIFICATION
TO: LEGAL DEFENSE TEAM
CONTENT: It's Miller time!
The last time I was involved in a massive layoff (site closure at a very large company), this is exactly how it was done. People were either let go or offered relocation to another site. We could not discern any logical pattern in the list of people who were or were not offered relocation. The only conclusion we could draw was that the lists preserved the gender, age and ethnicity proportions of the organization. Beyond that it was entirely random.
Some good people were kept, and some good people were let go. Some people in critical job functions were kept, and some people in critical job functions were let go. Some dead weight was kept, and some dead weight was let go. Of course, about half the staff were let go, yet all the managers but one were kept.
It was clear that they were doing everything in their power to keep from getting sued, and the work being done by the organization, as well as its collective skill set, were irrelevant. The list of people being let go was prepared by managers high enough up that they didn't know any of us personally.
The only reason this isn't (-1) bitter, is that we were offered generous severance packages (for most of us, four months' salary plus very good outplacement).
No, it's ternary, since the pauses between dits and dahs are significant. But it's still digital communication.
Back in my ham days, I was taught that the canonical ratios are derived from the length of a dit. A dah is three dits long. The gap between dits and dahs within a character is one dit long, the gap between characters is three dits long, and the gap between words is five dits long.
QLF: "Send with other foot"
Provider 116526 bids five quatloos for Provider 34014's provider number.
Because you're trying to trap the interviewees into saying something bad about themselves.
In fact, that's how I answer that question: "Well, Mr. Lumbergh, my greatest weakness is that I have a very hard time giving people reasons not to hire me."
A better question: "How do you think this job would help your career development?" That will get them to tell you about something they can't necessarily do now but would like to learn. The answer can give you a lot of insight as to how they'll fit in over the long term.