Slashdot Mirror


User: agibson57

agibson57's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
6
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 6

  1. Open Spaces Suck on America's Cubicles Are Shrinking · · Score: 1

    You Asperger cases who love open floor plans and cramped work spaces haven't read Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister's Peopleware, have you? You probably hate Joel Spolsky too. Go pick your noses and giggle somewhere else. Give me some space to concentrate and think about my work.

  2. Re:Craziness on Telco Sues Municipality For Laying Their Own Fiber · · Score: 0
    What's really crazy is the number of smaller towns across the midwest who get suckered into forming a municipal telecommunications utility by some Harold Hill types who promise "fiber to the home" at dirt cheap rates, "more jobs" and other snakeoil.

    Many of you seem to ignore the fact that Monticello only has around 12,000 residents and yet a small fraction of voters approved the $25 million in bonds to pay for the muni telecom. That's several thousand dollars per household on the hook, you know. And not everybody is going to sign up. Some people are happy with their satellite dish, DSL, rabbit ears, or, gosh by golly, don't even have a computer!

    So what happens when not enough people sign up for Fiber To The Home to cover the nut? Eh???? Did you ever think about that?

    I'll tell you what will happen. Expenses will mount up, costs will be more than projected, and the city will cajole residents into signing up for service OR ELSE taxes will have to be raised. And raised they will be, whether or not you have the service.

    Oh, and who is running that fiber backbone to the city? Do you know who that is? It's a FOR PROFIT company, not some non-profit ma-and-pa muni telecom. They are going to get paid because the city SIGNED A CONTRACT. First with the bond money, and then after the property taxes are raised when not enough people sign up and when expenses mount and equipment needs to be upgraded down the line. Oh, and who runs the FOR PROFIT? Why, gee, it's by the same people who lobbied the town to pony up for Fiber To The Home, said it would bring more jobs, rain gold, and other bullshit.

    Seriously, the knee jerk reactions by some of you is outstanding. It is clear that most of you don't know the first thing about the gigantic scam that is "fiber to the home" and the abuse of local bonding going on in order to finance it. You think that this other company is big bad and evil? No, THEY REALLY ARE trying to save the taxpayers money! Maybe you ought to do some research on the subject before typing away. I've been watching this issue since 2004. Several years down the road there is going to be small towns all over the place that will be in big fucking financial trouble because a small number of idiots drank the Kool Aid.

  3. The nano is so small.... on Japan Demands Probe of iPod Nano Flameouts · · Score: 2, Funny

    How big could the fires really be?

  4. Re:You need someone with this experience on Guide For Small Team Programming? · · Score: 1

    Maybe Agile and Scrum works for some, but mostly I've seen it do nothing but enrich the pockets of consultants who leech off of dumb PHBs. That, and the fact that the creators of "Agile Manifesto" based it on a massively failed project. They are all frauds as far as I'm concerned. If I want Amway, I'll buy Amway.

  5. Re:Not so bad. on The Worst Workspaces In Tech · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Low or little walls encourage collaboration... No, they don't.

    Quit reading those trendy Agile books.

    Low or little walls encourage noise and distractions, especially when you're doing complicated and intensely-focused work.

    One would think companies would be a little smarter, but then they're mostly run by dime-a-dozen recent MBA night school grads with little technical experience and who parrot that Jack Welch BS and whose only non-original idea is to outsource everything to India in order to get a bigger bonus check and then move on to another company to wreck.

    A cube farm is vastly superior to the "open" floorplan, which is a disaster. Evil.

    Walls are not that expensive to build and power outlets are not that difficult to install, unless you have a bunch of union Facilities guys at your company who work maybe 15 minutes a day and control everybody's aesthetics.

  6. How quickly do you want to make enemies? on Best Practices For Process Documentation? · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Several factors to consider:

    1. You're a new hire and not the CEO. Proceed carefully.
    2. The non-profit's management may be perfectly content with what they have now.
    3. Non-profits usually don't have time or money to burn.
    4. Getting many non-IT people to contribute to a wiki or to use Sharepoint to document their stuff may instantly make you the most hated person in the office.

    I used to work for a company that had a rather big department devoted solely to processing the IT docs we authored into an incredibly strict format. I got used to the insanity of it all. I can't tell you the number of times we needed to refer to these documents, likely never.

    Then, a few years ago, I switched to a big company that descended from "oral or unorganized documentation" crowd but which had different factions who did things their own way depending on the individual in charge. At first I was pissed at the lax and fractured way I perceived them to be doing things. My career would have ended very quickly if I tried to manhandle everybody into what I thought was a "Is This Good For The Company?" type of philosophy. I learned to adapt.

    Oddly enough, there is a new layer of bloat within my company (record profits + 2% raises = more bureaucracy) trying to get the IT crowd on the same page, so-to-speak, about everything. To say they're hated and despised is to put it mildly. What do they say? Those who can't teach, teach gym. Well, the IT equivalent of that go into this sort of job.

    Be careful, man. Tread lightly.