I'd remind them that the *point* of a process is to cover for the quality. (That's why McDonald's hamburgers are consistently "OK").
If your company is full of AAA+++ ROCKSTAR DEVELOPER GODS, then who cares what methodology you use? But the real world is full of average, middle of the bell curve coders, who will come and go at arbitrary moments, and the methodology is there to keep things organized when Bob needs to replace Adam.
So... if the methodology isn't getting you there (because it requires above-the-curve people), you've got a niche market, not a save-us-all must-do design.
(I have no illusions that I'm any more than an average coder, myself - I just happen to be the one-eyed king in this office of blind men.)
Where does this idea come from that non-profits are some sort of money-eschewing order of monks?
Easy - because they're "not profit". Right in the title. And if they're not making a profit, they're not bringing in a lot of money, obviously
Seriously - there's a lot of people out there who haven't figured out that you can "not show a profit" by simply raising expenses to match income. It's why NCAA has sponsorships but manages to never show a profit.
I have my objections to Wiki's policies (primarily editorial), but the fact that they have targeted a self-sustaining endowment, I don't fault them for - Quite the opposite, I give them credit for actually having a viable business plan. Yes, "business plan" - Nonprofits still need one of those, like it or not.
I don't fault them either - but I'd rather they sell it that way (as "if we get $X, it's all lollypops and candy from here on out!") rather than "the lights could go out AT ANY MOMENT unless you give us money RIGHT NOW". Because right now, they've got 20 years of bank, and probably longer if they invest it wisely. Not to mention that they're over 80% of the way to their 25x figure, so the lights ain't going out any time soon.
Also worth noting that folks that I know who are 24/7 on call (either for emergencies, or because the job involves a lot of weekend/evening work) are both well compensated and have flexible hours (so if you keep them up all night with your emergency, there's no talk of "why aren't you at your desk at 8am?")
Folks always forget that part of the point of salary is that you're getting paid to get the work done, not to be there X hours. If you want to track my hours, then make me an hourly employee, with the overtime pay that entails.
(And in-before-internet-tough-guy, I have had this exact conversation with a boss in the past who decided that even though I'd stayed til midnight the night before putting out fires, I still had to be at my desk at 8:00. I pointed out the extra hours, he played the salary card. I suggested that we should put me on the time clock, and we'll see in a month who owed who. Never heard about that again.)
Ray Rice is a public figure and as such a public face of the NFL. He as obligations to the NFL in his public persona which are spelled out in his contract.
.. and is compensated accordingly. On the other hand, Mike the equipment manager makes a lot less money, but no-one cares what he does in his off-hours.
But reading the article, they've glossed over one very important point - it's a company-provided phone. Which means the company has a fairly easy defense here - it's their box, they can put whatever they want on it. And she was making 7K a month, so it's not like she couldn't afford to buy a personal phone for off hours.
I think she still has a case, but it's certainly going to be a tougher slog than the summary suggests.
"they have an obligation to their shareholders to make as much ROI as possible."
I get sick to my stomach every time I read this bullcrap. ROI is not simply just cash. ROI can be a lot of things, including the improving of the quality of life for the workers, or the areas in which the company operates. Since nobody has the balls to fight the "it's only the green" mentality, we all get fucked in the end.
Sure, ROI could be a lot of things, but remember that ROI is measured by who gets the returns. The shareholders invested dollars, and they expect their return to be in dollars. Not a lot of investers put money in and are happy to "improve quality of life" (they can donate to charities and get tax deductions and free press).
So, let's back up the problem - you're at work, and your boss brings in a passel of new folks and tells you to train them. Why are you doing this? At the least, unless your job description is "Trainer", you should be chasing the boss for more pay. You may say "but they'll just tell me to shut up" or "they'll fire me". Guess what - they're already planning on firing you. The only leverage you have is your knowledge, so why are you giving it away?
And, if it just sits on top of the berg, who cares? If it's inside the berg, again, who cares?
My read was that he planned to sit on an iceberg while it melted (presumably to draw attention to global warming)? It's a stunt, but sometimes those are fun too.
Personally, I'd take one of those 10-man ones for houseboating. Just pop that sucker in the middle of the lake, and float around for a couple weeks...
The $1.7 mil is how much the companies have invested in those jobs. The state has spent $53 million on this project.
So, New York is getting about 3 cents on the dollar in value here. (Or, to be more perverse, the companies that signed up are getting $31 back for every dollar they invested. Great value for the companies who got in on the deal, less so for the taxpayers.
And a damn good job he did, as much as I love the series, the middle of it was a grind to get through. Seemed like a lot of dress twitching and braid pulling to me. Especially book 10, although the end was awesome getting there was painful (and I took a day off work to read it). But Sanderson brought the series back to vivid spectacular life again.
The middle books grind down because Jordan kept wandering into side plots that would have been better served as standalone books (say, similar to how the Dragonlance books were handled). He knew where the finish line was, just wasn't in a hurry to get there.
Sanderson, on the other hand, was brought in to do the "last" book. (Yes, Jordan had claimed there was only *one* book left). It's pretty easy to see Sanderson picking out the leftover plots, punting them to the curb, and goosing the accelerator to get the plot train home ASAP. Which also made the books way better, since we finally get to the finale.
I think it could make a good mini-series, though - you can consolidate a bunch of points, ditch some of the sideplots that aren't necessary, and keep the plot train moving.
And I've always thought WoT would make a decent mini-series, since all that futz turns into action - it's far less annoying to watch those tics than to read it over and over.
My wife is the real WoT fan in the house, though - not sure if I should tell her this exists...
Not saying it was the wrong software (and the second laptop I tried worked fine out of the box).
My point was intended towards the tendency in the new distros (at least in my experience) to insulate the user from details, even when they're looking for them. For instance, the Network Manager (which cheerfully pre-install found both wired and wireless networks), after install refused to accept that a network card might exist, and didn't expose any method to see that a blacklist existed, much less change it. And installing packages wouldn't help because the package is already there - the install disabled it and didn't tell me.
My daughter is actually enjoying her new Linux box (now that it has a network and runs Minecraft) a great deal - my issue was that the installation has moved a bit too far from the old "OK, I hope the user knows what he's doing because the OS ain't gonna help" to the new "OK, I hope the OS knows what it's doing because we're not going to tell the user anything" model.
What distro, what machine, and did you do a live CD/DVD boot first?
Bet really, being repository based, a working network card is needed for the very install. itself.
Was the current version of Ubuntu, an old Dell, and I booted using a USB key, network worked there, installed from that, no network.
Google seems to say it's a known issue of some sort. Didn't need to install anything, just edit some obscure file and type the usual arcane words into a terminal.
But the take-away is that requiring a network connection doesn't help if your system disables all the network connections. (And worse, the GUI was no help in correcting the problem.)
Why? Except possibly for money, Oliver has a great gig at HBO. Total creative control, no sponsors to piss off, no forced interview to hock some lame movie or book, and only a half-hour to fill each week.
He would be crazy to give that up to go back to the Daily Show.
Not enough mod points in the world for this
Oliver on HBO has it made. Weekly vs. Daily means he has time to really dig into an issue. He can spend ten minutes ripping a particular topic to shreds and that doesn't mess with advertiser time. And having no sponsors or ads to deal with means that he can go for the jugular Each And Every Time.
Going back to CC would mean less time to prep, more oversight, and more restrictions. Unless that came with a *really* big briefcase of money (and really, are we counting on Comedy Central to outbid HBO?), Oliver ain't going nowhere.
Install Linux from iso with peripherals attached. Have ethernet connectivity
Linux installs any drivers needed during installation.
Unless it does what it did to me last weekend, where the step in-between is: Linux blacklists *all* the network-drivers, so on reboot you have a machine that says you don't have a network card. Proceed to spend several hours walking between computers while figuring out that it was blacklisted, and how to fix the blacklist and manually reset the drivers.
I'm all for making things simpler, but I do miss the 90s-era installs where you were asked what components you wanted. (And I'm fine if there's a "shut-up and give me the usual" button - I just want the *ability* to pick and choose, y'know?)
My favorite "scale" was the Penny Arcade Report format, where the game was listed, the names of folks were across the top, and it was a straight "this guy liked it, this guy didn't, this guy hasn't played it yet".
What worked is that you could quickly get a sense of what sort of games each person liked, and that gave you a lot better information - you don't really care what *Everyone* thinks, just people who enjoy the same sorts of games you do.
Of course, if the Knitting Channel isn't profitable, it'll just get rolled back with the Crochet channel and they'll share programming.
Let's face it - the world would be a better place if Discovery, NatGeo, and History (to name three that group nicely) just took their *good* shows and had a single Science Channel, instead of having three channels full of filler.
I've been off-cord for almost five years, and I'm only occasionally thinking of getting an OTA antenna. But Christmas at the in-laws really did reinforce that most days, there is *nothing* on.
I'll agree with point 1 - if you like the work, pay for it. (I do make an exception for works that I can't find for sale for whatever reason. If you can't be arsed to put a copy up for sale, Disney, don't bitch when everyone finds a copy on their own.)
Point 2 is where you lose me - they already have inherited the fruits of the writing - assuming Mom & Dad didn't spend all that money up front. And a world where there's no tax or limitation on inheritance is a world that creates "trust fund babies" - kids who are rich, will continue to be rich, and they became rich by the hard work of being born to someone rich. It always strikes me as notable that the defenders of copyright only worry about the recent stuff. Disney will fight to the death to keep the Mouse in copyright, but happily steals much older public domain sources for free. What would the world look like if someone was still collecting royalties on Shakespeare? Or even James Bond and Sherlock Holmes?
If the cops actually have to do their JOB to get the job done, they aren't so eager to infringe on your rights.
I'll be charitable and say that perhaps because everyone wants to point at "X people charged in $CRIME_OF_DAY ring" headlines, it simply isn't enough of a win for cops to spend the extra time on those cases?
. I have seen people get rejected for reckless driving and DUI as being able to travel and drive to remote facilities was required, let alone a rash of misdemeanors and a felony off the road.
This opens up a good point - I'm all in favor of taking criminal history into account, so long as we're talking relevant history.
Take your example - if I'm hiring you to drive in the company car, then DUI (and worse, reckless driving) are relevant crimes. But if the job was "show up, sit in cubicle, keep servers running", without driving as part of the job? Then what do I care?
Which girl was the positive portrayal? The ditsy airhead who fell in love with an obvious creep about 20 seconds after meeting him, or the ice queen bitch who shut everyone out of her life and went on to live alone in an ice castle. Lucky that ice cutter (prince) guy was there to help the ditsy one or they never would have even made it to the castle.
Sure, these princesses aren't as completely helpless as a whole bunch of other Disney princesses, but they're certainly also not empowered woman providing a good role model.
Honestly, I'll take the fact that they have actual personalities and motivations as a good start. They do stuff, at least. (Yes, vaguely stupid stuff, but apparently Brave didn't do so well, so we're not ready to ditch the mandatory romantic plot just yet. Pity).
(Still impressed they didn't go with the "ice guy hooks up with ice powers lady"..) Disney might be learning...
Have you ever talked to a little girl? Saying that having to Frozen characters involved might interest more little girls is not sexism, it's the most common of sense.
Off the cuff, I'd say if you were going to get my kid into coding, Minecraft would be the better angle. Not only more directly connected (code this, get that in your Favorite Game of all time), it's gender-neutral *and* probably better correlation. (Just gonna guess the Minecraft-programmer overlap is a bit wider than the princess-programmer, based on my daughter's circle of friends).
Even for Disney, I'd have picked Vanellope Von Schweetz (from Wreck-It Ralph). Bit more connectivity there.
I thought it was pretty ridiculous to bet 10 years and more than a billions dollars on simple solar panels.
Well, it depends what you're after. I think we're all a bit spoiled from the Mars Rovers who just kept going long past their best-before date.
They got the probe there, they got it down, they got the data. Yes, it would have been nice to keep it running longer, but I wonder at what point we move from "mission critical" to "nice to have".
Yes, but how much more would it make if all those private servers were monetized?
No doubt Microsoft won't be able to resist the urge to find out.
They already know - Minecraft offers paid servers - Minecraft Realms. If you don't want the time/hassle of doing your own maintenance, throw them a few bucks a month and they set up a server for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd remind them that the *point* of a process is to cover for the quality. (That's why McDonald's hamburgers are consistently "OK").
If your company is full of AAA+++ ROCKSTAR DEVELOPER GODS, then who cares what methodology you use? But the real world is full of average, middle of the bell curve coders, who will come and go at arbitrary moments, and the methodology is there to keep things organized when Bob needs to replace Adam.
So... if the methodology isn't getting you there (because it requires above-the-curve people), you've got a niche market, not a save-us-all must-do design.
(I have no illusions that I'm any more than an average coder, myself - I just happen to be the one-eyed king in this office of blind men.)
Where does this idea come from that non-profits are some sort of money-eschewing order of monks?
Easy - because they're "not profit". Right in the title. And if they're not making a profit, they're not bringing in a lot of money, obviously
Seriously - there's a lot of people out there who haven't figured out that you can "not show a profit" by simply raising expenses to match income. It's why NCAA has sponsorships but manages to never show a profit.
I have my objections to Wiki's policies (primarily editorial), but the fact that they have targeted a self-sustaining endowment, I don't fault them for - Quite the opposite, I give them credit for actually having a viable business plan. Yes, "business plan" - Nonprofits still need one of those, like it or not.
I don't fault them either - but I'd rather they sell it that way (as "if we get $X, it's all lollypops and candy from here on out!") rather than "the lights could go out AT ANY MOMENT unless you give us money RIGHT NOW". Because right now, they've got 20 years of bank, and probably longer if they invest it wisely. Not to mention that they're over 80% of the way to their 25x figure, so the lights ain't going out any time soon.
Also worth noting that folks that I know who are 24/7 on call (either for emergencies, or because the job involves a lot of weekend/evening work) are both well compensated and have flexible hours (so if you keep them up all night with your emergency, there's no talk of "why aren't you at your desk at 8am?")
Folks always forget that part of the point of salary is that you're getting paid to get the work done, not to be there X hours. If you want to track my hours, then make me an hourly employee, with the overtime pay that entails.
(And in-before-internet-tough-guy, I have had this exact conversation with a boss in the past who decided that even though I'd stayed til midnight the night before putting out fires, I still had to be at my desk at 8:00. I pointed out the extra hours, he played the salary card. I suggested that we should put me on the time clock, and we'll see in a month who owed who. Never heard about that again.)
Ray Rice is a public figure and as such a public face of the NFL. He as obligations to the NFL in his public persona which are spelled out in his contract.
.. and is compensated accordingly. On the other hand, Mike the equipment manager makes a lot less money, but no-one cares what he does in his off-hours.
But reading the article, they've glossed over one very important point - it's a company-provided phone. Which means the company has a fairly easy defense here - it's their box, they can put whatever they want on it. And she was making 7K a month, so it's not like she couldn't afford to buy a personal phone for off hours.
I think she still has a case, but it's certainly going to be a tougher slog than the summary suggests.
"they have an obligation to their shareholders to make as much ROI as possible."
I get sick to my stomach every time I read this bullcrap. ROI is not simply just cash. ROI can be a lot of things, including the improving of the quality of life for the workers, or the areas in which the company operates. Since nobody has the balls to fight the "it's only the green" mentality, we all get fucked in the end.
Sure, ROI could be a lot of things, but remember that ROI is measured by who gets the returns. The shareholders invested dollars, and they expect their return to be in dollars. Not a lot of investers put money in and are happy to "improve quality of life" (they can donate to charities and get tax deductions and free press).
So, let's back up the problem - you're at work, and your boss brings in a passel of new folks and tells you to train them. Why are you doing this? At the least, unless your job description is "Trainer", you should be chasing the boss for more pay. You may say "but they'll just tell me to shut up" or "they'll fire me". Guess what - they're already planning on firing you. The only leverage you have is your knowledge, so why are you giving it away?
And, if it just sits on top of the berg, who cares? If it's inside the berg, again, who cares?
My read was that he planned to sit on an iceberg while it melted (presumably to draw attention to global warming)? It's a stunt, but sometimes those are fun too.
Personally, I'd take one of those 10-man ones for houseboating. Just pop that sucker in the middle of the lake, and float around for a couple weeks...
Check the math again.
The $1.7 mil is how much the companies have invested in those jobs. The state has spent $53 million on this project.
So, New York is getting about 3 cents on the dollar in value here. (Or, to be more perverse, the companies that signed up are getting $31 back for every dollar they invested. Great value for the companies who got in on the deal, less so for the taxpayers.
And a damn good job he did, as much as I love the series, the middle of it was a grind to get through. Seemed like a lot of dress twitching and braid pulling to me. Especially book 10, although the end was awesome getting there was painful (and I took a day off work to read it). But Sanderson brought the series back to vivid spectacular life again.
The middle books grind down because Jordan kept wandering into side plots that would have been better served as standalone books (say, similar to how the Dragonlance books were handled). He knew where the finish line was, just wasn't in a hurry to get there.
Sanderson, on the other hand, was brought in to do the "last" book. (Yes, Jordan had claimed there was only *one* book left). It's pretty easy to see Sanderson picking out the leftover plots, punting them to the curb, and goosing the accelerator to get the plot train home ASAP. Which also made the books way better, since we finally get to the finale.
I think it could make a good mini-series, though - you can consolidate a bunch of points, ditch some of the sideplots that aren't necessary, and keep the plot train moving.
And I've always thought WoT would make a decent mini-series, since all that futz turns into action - it's far less annoying to watch those tics than to read it over and over.
My wife is the real WoT fan in the house, though - not sure if I should tell her this exists...
Not saying it was the wrong software (and the second laptop I tried worked fine out of the box).
My point was intended towards the tendency in the new distros (at least in my experience) to insulate the user from details, even when they're looking for them. For instance, the Network Manager (which cheerfully pre-install found both wired and wireless networks), after install refused to accept that a network card might exist, and didn't expose any method to see that a blacklist existed, much less change it. And installing packages wouldn't help because the package is already there - the install disabled it and didn't tell me.
My daughter is actually enjoying her new Linux box (now that it has a network and runs Minecraft) a great deal - my issue was that the installation has moved a bit too far from the old "OK, I hope the user knows what he's doing because the OS ain't gonna help" to the new "OK, I hope the OS knows what it's doing because we're not going to tell the user anything" model.
What distro, what machine, and did you do a live CD/DVD boot first?
Bet really, being repository based, a working network card is needed for the very install. itself.
Was the current version of Ubuntu, an old Dell, and I booted using a USB key, network worked there, installed from that, no network.
Google seems to say it's a known issue of some sort. Didn't need to install anything, just edit some obscure file and type the usual arcane words into a terminal.
But the take-away is that requiring a network connection doesn't help if your system disables all the network connections. (And worse, the GUI was no help in correcting the problem.)
Why? Except possibly for money, Oliver has a great gig at HBO. Total creative control, no sponsors to piss off, no forced interview to hock some lame movie or book, and only a half-hour to fill each week.
He would be crazy to give that up to go back to the Daily Show.
Not enough mod points in the world for this
Oliver on HBO has it made. Weekly vs. Daily means he has time to really dig into an issue. He can spend ten minutes ripping a particular topic to shreds and that doesn't mess with advertiser time. And having no sponsors or ads to deal with means that he can go for the jugular Each And Every Time.
Going back to CC would mean less time to prep, more oversight, and more restrictions. Unless that came with a *really* big briefcase of money (and really, are we counting on Comedy Central to outbid HBO?), Oliver ain't going nowhere.
I use this method:
Install Linux from iso with peripherals attached. Have ethernet connectivity
Linux installs any drivers needed during installation.
Unless it does what it did to me last weekend, where the step in-between is: Linux blacklists *all* the network-drivers, so on reboot you have a machine that says you don't have a network card. Proceed to spend several hours walking between computers while figuring out that it was blacklisted, and how to fix the blacklist and manually reset the drivers.
I'm all for making things simpler, but I do miss the 90s-era installs where you were asked what components you wanted. (And I'm fine if there's a "shut-up and give me the usual" button - I just want the *ability* to pick and choose, y'know?)
My favorite "scale" was the Penny Arcade Report format, where the game was listed, the names of folks were across the top, and it was a straight "this guy liked it, this guy didn't, this guy hasn't played it yet".
What worked is that you could quickly get a sense of what sort of games each person liked, and that gave you a lot better information - you don't really care what *Everyone* thinks, just people who enjoy the same sorts of games you do.
Of course, if the Knitting Channel isn't profitable, it'll just get rolled back with the Crochet channel and they'll share programming.
Let's face it - the world would be a better place if Discovery, NatGeo, and History (to name three that group nicely) just took their *good* shows and had a single Science Channel, instead of having three channels full of filler.
I've been off-cord for almost five years, and I'm only occasionally thinking of getting an OTA antenna. But Christmas at the in-laws really did reinforce that most days, there is *nothing* on.
I'll agree with point 1 - if you like the work, pay for it. (I do make an exception for works that I can't find for sale for whatever reason. If you can't be arsed to put a copy up for sale, Disney, don't bitch when everyone finds a copy on their own.)
Point 2 is where you lose me - they already have inherited the fruits of the writing - assuming Mom & Dad didn't spend all that money up front. And a world where there's no tax or limitation on inheritance is a world that creates "trust fund babies" - kids who are rich, will continue to be rich, and they became rich by the hard work of being born to someone rich. It always strikes me as notable that the defenders of copyright only worry about the recent stuff. Disney will fight to the death to keep the Mouse in copyright, but happily steals much older public domain sources for free. What would the world look like if someone was still collecting royalties on Shakespeare? Or even James Bond and Sherlock Holmes?
If the tweet had referenced Karl Rove instead (another Dec 25 birthday), would they be as upset?
Or more generally - do the hard-core Christians seriously think that no-one else has ever been born on this day?
If the cops actually have to do their JOB to get the job done, they aren't so eager to infringe on your rights.
I'll be charitable and say that perhaps because everyone wants to point at "X people charged in $CRIME_OF_DAY ring" headlines, it simply isn't enough of a win for cops to spend the extra time on those cases?
. I have seen people get rejected for reckless driving and DUI as being able to travel and drive to remote facilities was required, let alone a rash of misdemeanors and a felony off the road.
This opens up a good point - I'm all in favor of taking criminal history into account, so long as we're talking relevant history.
Take your example - if I'm hiring you to drive in the company car, then DUI (and worse, reckless driving) are relevant crimes. But if the job was "show up, sit in cubicle, keep servers running", without driving as part of the job? Then what do I care?
OK, now you've sold me.
Which girl was the positive portrayal? The ditsy airhead who fell in love with an obvious creep about 20 seconds after meeting him, or the ice queen bitch who shut everyone out of her life and went on to live alone in an ice castle. Lucky that ice cutter (prince) guy was there to help the ditsy one or they never would have even made it to the castle.
Sure, these princesses aren't as completely helpless as a whole bunch of other Disney princesses, but they're certainly also not empowered woman providing a good role model.
Honestly, I'll take the fact that they have actual personalities and motivations as a good start. They do stuff, at least. (Yes, vaguely stupid stuff, but apparently Brave didn't do so well, so we're not ready to ditch the mandatory romantic plot just yet. Pity).
(Still impressed they didn't go with the "ice guy hooks up with ice powers lady"..) Disney might be learning...
Have you ever talked to a little girl? Saying that having to Frozen characters involved might interest more little girls is not sexism, it's the most common of sense.
Off the cuff, I'd say if you were going to get my kid into coding, Minecraft would be the better angle. Not only more directly connected (code this, get that in your Favorite Game of all time), it's gender-neutral *and* probably better correlation. (Just gonna guess the Minecraft-programmer overlap is a bit wider than the princess-programmer, based on my daughter's circle of friends).
Even for Disney, I'd have picked Vanellope Von Schweetz (from Wreck-It Ralph). Bit more connectivity there.
I thought it was pretty ridiculous to bet 10 years and more than a billions dollars on simple solar panels.
Well, it depends what you're after. I think we're all a bit spoiled from the Mars Rovers who just kept going long past their best-before date.
They got the probe there, they got it down, they got the data. Yes, it would have been nice to keep it running longer, but I wonder at what point we move from "mission critical" to "nice to have".
Yes, but how much more would it make if all those private servers were monetized?
No doubt Microsoft won't be able to resist the urge to find out.
They already know - Minecraft offers paid servers - Minecraft Realms. If you don't want the time/hassle of doing your own maintenance, throw them a few bucks a month and they set up a server for you.