I see a big problem here. If the govt just took people's W-2s, had charities report electronically, require brokerages to track cost basis, 99% of people could just click "accept" and be done with filing taxes.
I had to file a 2" thick pile of paper last year. After 6 months, the government sent me mail saying I was off by a factor of 4E-9 percent, and they had credited that to my next years return.
That's pretty much the way we do things at my firm.
1. Given there is always more work requested than can be achieved, we (a tech group) just prioritorize by revenuesOfRequestor/effortRequired. Then we make those projects work and take our cut. If a project fails, we get nothing. 2. We try to match speed of delivery vs operational risk to those of the business we are working with. So, some get software that changes several times a day with frequent short-term blowups versus others who get more stable software with less responsiveness. 3. If you can achieve 1 and 2, your accountants will not be controlling things.
Pretty much, yes. So, just lay it out as it is: respect the copyright, it's "as is," and no endorsement is to be implied; please read the actual text for the legal term; if you want anything more, that will cost real money.
1. Is the software you want to provide all yours, or a mix of peoples' work? If it's a mix, probably it's best to just give up and move on. 2. Ok, it's all yours. Congratulations! Call the person who wants to buy/use it:
2a. Explain how the BSD license works in three sentences or less. 2b. Ask if the sticking point is liability, copyright risk, ownership rights, or other. 2c. Explain you don't have the time, expertise, or money to negotiate a contract, esp given the BSD contract already spells things out. 2d. Point out that 2b issues can be resolved, but it's going to be $10K at a minimum for your time + legal fees. 2e. If they still want to do it, ask for a letter of understanding that lays out the $amount for a non-exclusive right to use/copy/modify, etc. 2f. Run the letter by a lawyer. 2g. Profit.
Wow, I'd fire anyone in my group who could not explain quicksort. It's about the most basic "partition and recurse" algorithm known to man. If quicksort isn't in your mental cache, you are nothing more than an HTML monkey.
I'm currently having a pretty good experience at a big (100k+ worker) corporation.
I am lucky to have a good relationship with my boss: he tells me what problems he wants solved, and I solve them or explain why I can't; I listen to his proposed technical solutions, implement if feasible, else do it some other way and then explain why the alternate plan was implemented.
Meetings: I just ignore these. Maybe did one big face-to-face meeting and four phone-confs in the past year. Policies: I mostly ignore these too. Apparently, I work 40 hours a week because my PA just enters info into some random system.
All requests for work are handled the same way: find the person who made the request; decide if they are a loser or not, give losers advice on what they need to do, ensure non-losers get what they need; repeat. After a few years, you have good relationships with many people in the firm.
Yep, that's why most serious companies have rules along the lines of "accept no gift of any kind greater than $50/yr from anyone you are or might be doing business with." Exceptions are granted, but we deal with them case by case. Oh, and it applies in spirit, not letter, so if your wife accepts a gift from your client, we figure that counts.
That's why we have a simple set of rules that everyone knows and follows on pain of firing/legal action (e.g. don't steal, don't hit your cow-orkers, don't make the workplace unpleasant.) We even give you numbers to call (our HR, legal, compliance depts) so you can check up if you are unsure about something you might want to do. We give you a credit card w/ a big limit (don't abuse it, and if you mistakenly charge a lapdance to it, just talk to your PA, and she'll move it to your personal card.)
Now, is someone in this situation really gonna ask for a porn site to be unblocked?
I read your post, but it came across as snarky. I treat IT (and legal, audit, FO, MO, etc) with complete respect: I need something done, I explain why, and try to give them enough info to ensure they do what is needed and won't get in any trouble if they do it. I respect their professionalism and desire to do a good job. I go for dinner and out for drinks with these groups at times: that's when we hash out philosophy and the like; work is where we are doing operational stuff as quickly and safely as we can.
Your accounting dept analogy is a non-issue: obviously getting costs allocated is not a real-time issue. My group has often called accounting when a number is wrong: we get it fixed, but know it will take a month. A simple mail explaining the problem, and asking for a CC once it's resolved is generally all it takes.
Yes we love your little additional notes like "The block is costing us money". Also using the word "fix", as if something is broken scores you bonus points. If I got a request like that I'd jump right on it.
I don't much care if IT loves my mail or not.
"Costing us money" is the business reason you need to get on the case. "Please fix" is the request that you unblock the site, rather than, say, write a white paper on the topic or go back to playing games.
If you want to rate text, you should have majored in English Literature. If you want to get paid, you might try helping the business.
I've worked at a few big banks, and getting sites unblocked only takes a few minutes: just a quick email to IT help saying "information on site XXX is important to our business. The block is costing us money. Please fix."
The less "reasoning" added, the better. Make it a business issue, not a free information issue.
Yeah, especially if you are selling a "framework" and not a game that works with some valuable infrastructure behind it.
Find one of those guys who gets funding for "zero point energy" or some other voodoo. That's your only hope. Oh, an "Enterprise Java 5GL cloud-based compute fabric" salesdude might work too.
Yep. I've spent the last four years getting ex-Java programmers (retooled for Python,) to write less comments. Don't explain, just do. And do in a clear fashion without pointless abstraction, design pattern fluff, interfaces and other enterprisy stuff.
You basically need to bring the temperature of a small amount up to combustion temperature before the rest decomposes/deflagrates due to the heat. This is why a detonator/rifle cartridge primer works.
Ok, I'm just the one-time owner of a federal explosives license, so you probably understand much more than me, but...
First, even going with 80g, an untamped pile of HiEx is very different from 50g placed in a controlled test.
Second, you basically need a blasting cap to detonate it correctly (given it is a small quantity, so heat from burning is a non-issue.)
Had it ignited properly, it would not have killed several people. Fragmentation grenades mostly kill people from the metal bits flying around: the old throw yourself on the grenade trick is adequate to render it mostly non-lethal for bystanders. A loose, unshaped charge in some guy's pant is just going to mess up the guy and give the people nearby a bad day.
Note that this was all of 50 grams of untamped PETN, i.e. about a third the energy of a grenade. In a man's pants, enough to volley his penis into the passenger next to him, but not much more. No way would this have seriously damaged a commercial jet (no, they don't fall out of the sky from a little hole in the fuselage.)
But the main point being, do not throw him right away to the nerdy shit that programming is. Get him started with the more easy programming languages first. There's a lot more such now a days too. Hell, don't except him to get to c++ programming ever. It's a limited area in work sense. Sure it's good to know it, but it isn't the best language or answer to everything.
Damn straight - avoid C++ like the plague. It's a 20 year old POS mess that teaches bad habits from the get-go. Sort of like Fortran for the new generation.
Half of software engineering is concerned with trying to fix the poison that is C++: design patterns? pointers? header files? linkers? partial template instantiation? raw datatypes?
Sheesh, if fucking space aliens wanted to destroy our planet, lacking an FTL drive, they would have just sent us the C++ spec via radio.
Yeah, Bjarne, I'm talking about you, you fucking traitor to the entire human race.
I saw a project that this once: consultants figured that converting a 7M LOC application written in a scripting language (time to deploy a bug fix to prod = 1 hour,) would be a good thing. Three years, $300M later, they deployed a buggy version of the same app (time to deploy a bug fix = 1 month.) But, hey, it's Java and modern and enterprisy.
Nice way to save $5M in hardware costs guys. Oh, bummer about being basically out of business now, but thanks for all the fish.
Slashdot Mirror
I see a big problem here. If the govt just took people's W-2s, had charities report electronically, require brokerages to track cost basis, 99% of people could just click "accept" and be done with filing taxes.
I had to file a 2" thick pile of paper last year. After 6 months, the government sent me mail saying I was off by a factor of 4E-9 percent, and they had credited that to my next years return.
That's pretty much the way we do things at my firm.
1. Given there is always more work requested than can be achieved, we (a tech group) just prioritorize by revenuesOfRequestor/effortRequired. Then we make those projects work and take our cut. If a project fails, we get nothing.
2. We try to match speed of delivery vs operational risk to those of the business we are working with. So, some get software that changes several times a day with frequent short-term blowups versus others who get more stable software with less responsiveness.
3. If you can achieve 1 and 2, your accountants will not be controlling things.
Pretty much, yes. So, just lay it out as it is: respect the copyright, it's "as is," and no endorsement is to be implied; please read the actual text for the legal term; if you want anything more, that will cost real money.
1. Is the software you want to provide all yours, or a mix of peoples' work? If it's a mix, probably it's best to just give up and move on.
2. Ok, it's all yours. Congratulations! Call the person who wants to buy/use it:
2a. Explain how the BSD license works in three sentences or less.
2b. Ask if the sticking point is liability, copyright risk, ownership rights, or other.
2c. Explain you don't have the time, expertise, or money to negotiate a contract, esp given the BSD contract already spells things out.
2d. Point out that 2b issues can be resolved, but it's going to be $10K at a minimum for your time + legal fees.
2e. If they still want to do it, ask for a letter of understanding that lays out the $amount for a non-exclusive right to use/copy/modify, etc.
2f. Run the letter by a lawyer.
2g. Profit.
Yeah, but when you're paying $1/second for flight time, the costs of getting a waiver or finding a friendly source airport don't seem that bad.
Wow, I'd fire anyone in my group who could not explain quicksort. It's about the most basic "partition and recurse" algorithm known to man. If quicksort isn't in your mental cache, you are nothing more than an HTML monkey.
Hedge fund?
I'm currently having a pretty good experience at a big (100k+ worker) corporation.
I am lucky to have a good relationship with my boss: he tells me what problems he wants solved, and I solve them or explain why I can't; I listen to his proposed technical solutions, implement if feasible, else do it some other way and then explain why the alternate plan was implemented.
Meetings: I just ignore these. Maybe did one big face-to-face meeting and four phone-confs in the past year.
Policies: I mostly ignore these too. Apparently, I work 40 hours a week because my PA just enters info into some random system.
All requests for work are handled the same way: find the person who made the request; decide if they are a loser or not, give losers advice on what they need to do, ensure non-losers get what they need; repeat. After a few years, you have good relationships with many people in the firm.
Yep, you don't get to be an effective senior exec without serious hard work.
I logged on to our system this last New Years Day at 9am. The only people on and working were the senior guys.
Yep, that's why most serious companies have rules along the lines of "accept no gift of any kind greater than $50/yr from anyone you are or might be doing business with." Exceptions are granted, but we deal with them case by case. Oh, and it applies in spirit, not letter, so if your wife accepts a gift from your client, we figure that counts.
That's why we have a simple set of rules that everyone knows and follows on pain of firing/legal action (e.g. don't steal, don't hit your cow-orkers, don't make the workplace unpleasant.) We even give you numbers to call (our HR, legal, compliance depts) so you can check up if you are unsure about something you might want to do. We give you a credit card w/ a big limit (don't abuse it, and if you mistakenly charge a lapdance to it, just talk to your PA, and she'll move it to your personal card.)
Now, is someone in this situation really gonna ask for a porn site to be unblocked?
Interesting, what kind of site is that?
All our users earn six-figures plus, and there's minimal management, so perhaps the corporate structure is a bit different?
I read your post, but it came across as snarky. I treat IT (and legal, audit, FO, MO, etc) with complete respect: I need something done, I explain why, and try to give them enough info to ensure they do what is needed and won't get in any trouble if they do it. I respect their professionalism and desire to do a good job. I go for dinner and out for drinks with these groups at times: that's when we hash out philosophy and the like; work is where we are doing operational stuff as quickly and safely as we can.
Your accounting dept analogy is a non-issue: obviously getting costs allocated is not a real-time issue. My group has often called accounting when a number is wrong: we get it fixed, but know it will take a month. A simple mail explaining the problem, and asking for a CC once it's resolved is generally all it takes.
NOTHING takes "a few minutes" at a big bank or any big company really.
That's why they hire guys like me to fix things. Checks logs... ah, 5 changes hit production system today, low even for a Sunday.
The change control manager should be having fits and seizures over that sort of behavior.
Doubtful, we fired him once it was clear he lacked the technical expertise to understand the risks of various changes.
Yes we love your little additional notes like "The block is costing us money". Also using the word "fix", as if something is broken scores you bonus points. If I got a request like that I'd jump right on it.
I don't much care if IT loves my mail or not.
"Costing us money" is the business reason you need to get on the case.
"Please fix" is the request that you unblock the site, rather than, say, write a white paper on the topic or go back to playing games.
If you want to rate text, you should have majored in English Literature. If you want to get paid, you might try helping the business.
I've worked at a few big banks, and getting sites unblocked only takes a few minutes: just a quick email to IT help saying "information on site XXX is important to our business. The block is costing us money. Please fix."
The less "reasoning" added, the better. Make it a business issue, not a free information issue.
No dial tone, no incoming calls.
Had to reset the internal datetimes back to 2007, then they started working again. Nice job, Panasonic.
Yeah, especially if you are selling a "framework" and not a game that works with some valuable infrastructure behind it.
Find one of those guys who gets funding for "zero point energy" or some other voodoo. That's your only hope. Oh, an "Enterprise Java 5GL cloud-based compute fabric" salesdude might work too.
Yep. I've spent the last four years getting ex-Java programmers (retooled for Python,) to write less comments. Don't explain, just do. And do in a clear fashion without pointless abstraction, design pattern fluff, interfaces and other enterprisy stuff.
You basically need to bring the temperature of a small amount up to combustion temperature before the rest decomposes/deflagrates due to the heat. This is why a detonator/rifle cartridge primer works.
Ok, I'm just the one-time owner of a federal explosives license, so you probably understand much more than me, but...
First, even going with 80g, an untamped pile of HiEx is very different from 50g placed in a controlled test.
Second, you basically need a blasting cap to detonate it correctly (given it is a small quantity, so heat from burning is a non-issue.)
Had it ignited properly, it would not have killed several people. Fragmentation grenades mostly kill people from the metal bits flying around: the old throw yourself on the grenade trick is adequate to render it mostly non-lethal for bystanders. A loose, unshaped charge in some guy's pant is just going to mess up the guy and give the people nearby a bad day.
Note that this was all of 50 grams of untamped PETN, i.e. about a third the energy of a grenade. In a man's pants, enough to volley his penis into the passenger next to him, but not much more. No way would this have seriously damaged a commercial jet (no, they don't fall out of the sky from a little hole in the fuselage.)
But the main point being, do not throw him right away to the nerdy shit that programming is. Get him started with the more easy programming languages first. There's a lot more such now a days too. Hell, don't except him to get to c++ programming ever. It's a limited area in work sense. Sure it's good to know it, but it isn't the best language or answer to everything.
Damn straight - avoid C++ like the plague. It's a 20 year old POS mess that teaches bad habits from the get-go. Sort of like Fortran for the new generation.
Half of software engineering is concerned with trying to fix the poison that is C++: design patterns? pointers? header files? linkers? partial template instantiation? raw datatypes?
Sheesh, if fucking space aliens wanted to destroy our planet, lacking an FTL drive, they would have just sent us the C++ spec via radio.
Yeah, Bjarne, I'm talking about you, you fucking traitor to the entire human race.
I saw a project that this once: consultants figured that converting a 7M LOC application written in a scripting language (time to deploy a bug fix to prod = 1 hour,) would be a good thing. Three years, $300M later, they deployed a buggy version of the same app (time to deploy a bug fix = 1 month.) But, hey, it's Java and modern and enterprisy.
Nice way to save $5M in hardware costs guys. Oh, bummer about being basically out of business now, but thanks for all the fish.
Um, I write software for an investment house. Where do I fall on your libertarian scale of social value?