As a gamer, I agree with most people around here that machine-damaging DRM is what's holding me off from getting this game. I've literally stood on a store, with this game on my hands ready to buy it when I saw the SecuROM symbol and just took it back to the aisle were I got it from: No game is worth the risk of having my machine stop to work properly.
As a developer (not games though), a lot of their problems in their list of what went wrong sound very much a case of not having a really senior techie guy around (I'm thinking senior developer/technical architect type). Things like naming conventions for the scripting language, streamlined build process and adequate logging are very much the kind of thing a senior designer will help get right from the start. My impression up to now is that game development is mostly a (very) young man's game...
Judging from the amounts I've been offered for game development positions (yes, I can code C/C++ and several variants of Assembly like the best), beyond a certain level of experience game development pays crap and there are plenty of places out there outside that industry which have decent-sized working weeks that are willing to pay a lot more for experience.
All we know for sure is that the city was hit by artillery rounds of the kind used by the Georgian army. Beyond that starts the realm of propaganda.
That said, i hardly find the current Georgian administration to be as white as the whitest snow.
However, the Russian administration is worse: more corrupt, prone to state sanctioned killings - even in foreign soil *cough* Litvinenko *chough*, barely democratic, and worse of all, trying to force their will on everybody else.
Now, I don't really mind if the Russians fuck each other up - it's a sovereign nation, Russian citizens are responsible for their own shit. The problem is that the current high energy prices have empowered the (energy rich) Russians to start trying to fuck everybody else up.
Hopefully the current high oil and gas prices will continue (or even better, get higher) accelerating the move in the West away from hydrocarbons and towards energy sources which are not connected to untrustworthy nations. In 10 or 20 years time, Russia will be back on the path to be a "normal" modern society instead of a 1930's style of nation with imperialist designs on their neighbors.
a) I have yet to see an independent report on that number. Maybe that's because the Russians don't let independent experts in South Ossetia...
b) The vast majority of "Russian" citizens in South Ossetia were given Russian passports in the last couple of years. The same technique use by a certain little man with a funny mustache from the 1940's whose name I won't mention to avoid the Goodwin Law...
But hey, don't let the those small details detract from your spreading of Russian propaganda.
I'm sure we're not seeing an attempt at a revival of the old Soviet power block by Russia.
I'm sure the whole giving away of passports to ethnic russians living in a sovereign nation was not an attempt at a soft coup.
I'm sure that having the Russian supported South Ossetian "freedom fighters" attack targets in the main parts of Georgia was not a provocation to get the Georgian government to respond in kind.
Clearly Putin is just a softie and his hearth was crying in pain when those "several hundred Russian civilians" where horribly murdered (did I say hundred? I meant thousands, millions) and he sent down his nicest, kindest soldiers with instructions to use their kindest, most friendly manners (so no shelling of cities with artillery) to persuade those evil, evil Georgians to stop being naughty.
Actually what happened is that due to the increased wealth in (mostly) Asian economies (such as China and India), a lot more people are buying cars and more energy is being used ('cause more factories are being operated).
This has significantly increased demand for Oil. It's also significantly increased demand for gas and most metals. (just check the evolution of market prices for Iron, Aluminum, Zinc, etc in the last 10 years and you'll see what I mean)
So what we have here is a good ol' demand driven price increase (same or slowly growing supply, fast growing demand). This is the consensus amongst most economists.
But hey, don't let my logic spoil your ignorant partisan driven rant about how Al Gore caused oil prices to go up...
For a long time Russia has been giving Russian passports to ethnic russian citizens living in South Ossetia. It has also been supporting separatist groups in South Ossetia and providing them protection in the form of Russian "peacekeepers" stationed in South Ossetia to "protected Russian citizens" (said "Russian citizens" being the people living in South Ossetia that have been given Russian passports by the Russians).
The South Ossetian separatist groups have recently conducted attacks in Georgia, outside South Ossetia...
Also, Russia has been complaining out loud about countries in their "sphere of influence" joining NATO... Georgia has recently tried to join NATO but was refused entry...
And then there is the pipeline in Georgia bringing Caspian oil to Turkey, transporting in 3% of the oil consumed in Europe and which was build through Georgia, purposely bypassing Russia because the Russians charge extra high "transport tariffs" on oil flowing through pipelines in their country (and have a nasty habit of turning the tap off for political reasons).
And let's not even get started on the fact that the Russian government plays the nationalistic flag heavily in Russia and that the recent oil and gas prices have boosted Russian economy (which nowadays is highly reliant on oil and gas) to a level where the Russians feel confident to try and reclaim "past glories" (read, the Soviet times territorial influence if not outright possession)
So this game has been running for a lot longer than the last couple of days and the play book starts long before Georgia "invaded" South Ossetia.
(by the way, latest news have Russian tanks continuing to go deeper into Georgia proper... even after the Russian announced cease-fire)
This morning when I was exiting from the destination tube station (the system crashed while I was traveling) there was both one guy shouting and announcements through the information system telling us not to "touch out your card" (meaning, don't have it read by the reader).
If there is no risk of the cards being corrupted, why where they giving us those instructions?
To quote myself "my pet peeve with SUVs (or for that mater any tall car which is not meant for work)". (emphasis added).
Keep in mind that I live in Europe, were "American cars" are considered large, so SUVs are taller and wider than most cars. In that situation, an SUV (or, for example, a pick-up truck) is a significant hindrance to most driver's situational awareness (it's this tall, large block of steel in front of you with no way to see through or around it).
Being a contractor in the forefront of the economic downturn in the UK (meaning I'm in Finance) i second that, with a "but".
Contracting rates have already gone down for new contracts (10-15% down last I checked). Even in existing contracts, the rates are being forcefully renegotiated downwards ("forcefully" as in "accept the new rate by date X or we will give you notice of termination of your contract") at around the 10% mark (some banks more, some banks less).
In terms of offer-vs-demand ratios things are worse for contractors now than a year ago. However, permanent employees are suffering just as much and maybe even more than contractors.
This being the second significant downturn I go through (I started contracting at the end of the last downturn), my experience is that the picture is a bit muddled: - On one side companies are trying to convert their "long term" contractors (of which there are many in finance) into permanent employees. They are also firing everybody like crazy (here in UK, permies just as much as contractors - in Holland where I was during the last downturn "long term" contractors went first) - At the same time companies are refraining from taking in new permanent employees but still need people for specific projects, so they get contractors. Also, I know of at least one company which is getting rid of temps placed by an outsourcing company and replacing them with contractors since the later are cheaper and just as easy to move around or let go.
Were i am at the moment (a well known Investment Bank) they've done most of this: - First a hiring freeze across all geographical units (except India) - Then a "strong suggestion" to all contractors to become permies. - Then a downsizing that affected contractors just as much as permanent employees. - The last one was the forceful rate renegotiation.
As with everything, a balance must be achieved. The reasons you list for your SUV are just as valid for a Tour Bus (large, mobile and having all the comforts you can think of).
Mostly, those that choose an SUV versus a smaller car did so because:
They could afford it
They could afford the fuel and maintenance costs
They wanted the extra comfort and space
Depending of the point in time when they choose to get a SUV, awareness of the negative effects of burning large amounts of fossil fuels was not yet widespread or already widespread. If it was the first, then negative environmental effects were not considered, if it was the last then they were considered and discarded as unimportant
If at the time of your choice for a SUV you were not aware of the negative environmental effects then indeed nobody should think bad of you for getting a SUV.
If however, you were aware of the negative environmental effects and still choose an SUV then, since environmental problems affect all of us, you made a conscientious choice that the extra comfort and space you and your family get from an SUV is more important than the environmental problems that might affect everybody else. In other words, your SUV is pretty much one big "Fu*k you all" sign.
If yours is the second case then you choose to get something that's good for you and bad for everybody else. If you get shunned by society for you choice you only have yourself to blame.
PS: Personally my pet peeve with SUVs (or for that mater any tall car which is not meant for work) is that they make driving more dangerous for everybody else. Mostly the problem is that they block the forward view to anybody behind them in a car where the driver is lower: - Usually, if you can see beyond the car in front of you (commonly through the car windows) you get advanced notice of traffic problems ahead and can even guess when the driver in front of you is going to brake before they actually do it. The extra time to react makes it safer for you and even for the guy in front of you. If however, the car in front of you is tall and wide, you do not have any advanced notice thus reducing your safety margin.
I would love to see some statistics about the numbers of collisions to the rear of SUVs versus other kinds of cars - it should neatly prove (or disprove) my theory.
... it would give even more power to the European Commission.
They're a bunch of unelected bureaucrats which do not in any way consider the interests of the EU citizens but instead bend over backwards to serve the interests of those corporation which will give them well paid jobs once they've done their time in the European Commission.
(notice how all help-the-industry-f**k-the-consumers proposals of late have come from the commission)
Good thing the Irish brought down the sham attempt at bringing back the EU constitution through the back door that was the Lisbon Treaty.
The funny part is that I'm actual pro-EU and actually feel European. The concept is good, it's just that some EU institutions are degraded and corrupt and need to be eliminated or thoroughly remade.
We need elected legislators instead of these puppets.
Internationally, the number of patents issued in a country is often cited as a proxy for Innovation.
Thus there are even political reasons to keep issuing patents to ideas - it means that the US is praised as the most "innovative" country on Earth since more patents are issued in the US than anywhere else.
I've just recently started selling on eBay and an interesting thing I found is that the majority of my buyers are sellers themselves.
If indeed eBay is loosing sellers (I myself am looking at listing my company's products in other venues, since eBay is expensive and has too many listings in the categories I sell in) then they are also loosing buyers.
The networking effects (sellers go to where most buyers are, buyers go to where most sellers are) are what propelled eBay to success and form a large barrier to entry for it's competitors. When those which are simultaneously sellers and buyers leave they remove people from both sides of the equation - a perfect counter to the networking effects that had helped eBay.
I'm currently working for a large financial company which has an Indian division to which they send a large chunk of the IT work (and there is internal pressure to send more work that way).
My experience working with my colleagues in India is similar: - Most are not very good. They lack initiative, require a lot of hand-holding from us, do not test their changes thoroughly unless pressured to do so (this in a financial environment, where if some systems are down lots of $$$ can be lost) and have some really poor coding skills (hello copy-n-paste hell). - There is quite a bit of turnover in our Indian operations
The feeling I have is that India is experiencing the equivalent of the Internet bubble, only localized. Certainly the same kind of effects as I saw during the Internet bubble (high turnaround, people getting into IT without the necessary skills or inclination) seem to be happening in IT in India at the moment.
This is not that unexpected: - IT workers in India earn a lot more than the average Indian worker, so IT attracts a lot of people just for the money - Universities in India can train enough IT professionals for the needs of India (and more), but not enough people for the needs of India, Great Britain and the USA combined (to name just the 2 biggest countries outsourcing to India)
It's not a case of Indians being better or worse than other people at IT, it's a case of, currently in India, anybody that knows the right side of the keyboard to type in is hired and sold as a "senior developer"
Unfortunately, most employers who are not up-front with their requirements for out-of-office-hours work, not willing to pay above average salaries to compensate for the overnight support and do not have reduced intraday workloads.
Often enough the first you hear about the need for out of hours support is after you're in and they gave you a Blackberry.
You buy a second fileserver and set it up in a redundant configuration.
What do you mean "that's too expensive?" - you just pointed the potential risk for the whole company if the fileserver is down for half-a-day...
Oh, you mean "too expensive compared to unpaid 24/7 support from our IT people", I see.
---
Any (and I do mean, ANY) IT infrastructure risk can be pretty much eliminated by using redundancy - fail-over fileservers, databases, application servers, web-servers, switches, backup sites, DR instances, even duplicate network infrastructures - you name it, it's available. The reason why many companies won't invest in the needed HW and SW and instead try and get their IT people to be on call 24/7 for free is because HW and SW cost money while free time from suckers is... well... free.
I'm a freelancer in the UK and i got one in a previous assignment with an Investment Bank.
From day one, unless i was on overnight call for that day, I would turn it on when I arrived at work, turn it off when I left work.
Never did check my e-mails on the thing outside work.
Never heard a single negative comment about it.
Blackberries should be treated as tools to help with doing your work - you use the tools when you are working, you don't work all the time just because you happen to have one of the work tools with you.
If you are 100% working during work hours and when it comes to work related things it is as if you don't exist outside working hours, then nobody will have any expectations that you will reply to their e-mails after 6:00 PM and before 9:00 AM the next day.
By creating in people an expectation of an almost instant response at any time, you create an incentive for them to come to you with non-urgent issues at any time.
If CNN is left-wing, then when compared to Europe you guys in the US don't have a left-wing in your political spectrum.
Clearly, most Americans have been brainwashed to such an extent by the almost uniform (with just a slight hint of variety) mainstream politics and press coverage that they actually believe that the Democrats and the Republicans are opposite points in a wide range of the political spectrum.
In fact, as it has been pointed out by others here in./ the Democratic party in the US is actually more right-wing than many right-wing parties in Europe.
When compared to French, Dutch, Belgian or even British press, most of the US' "liberal" media is just a bunch of navel gazing, narrow minded, US-centric, unworldly, brain-washing, mainstream-party line toeing puppets.
There is more world news, and truly unbiased content in 1h of news coverage in BBC that in 6h of news coverage in CNN US (CNN international is a bit better). Fox News is not even worth mentioning when it comes to real news except maybe to point out that they are the most glaring example of "political advertising" disguised as news in the whole of Western press.
Clearly McCartism is alive and well when some people resort to labelling others as Communists to discredit their ideas and get modded insightful for it.
Obviously it is too hard to actually try use logic and reason to make your point instead of shrill political labeling and attacking straw men ("abolishment of private property rights", wtf!???)
Still, the usage of bullshit by the parent poster to try and win the argument is not what disgusts me the most (he is not the first and won't be the last), it's the brainless modders that gave him +4 Insightful that really keep me from believing there is still hope for Mankind...
I'll go even a step further - use echo "[next code line]" > myfile.c to write your code, do your builds by hand (who needs make) and stick with writing code in binary: that way there is no way you will paint yourself into a corner.
PS: I've worked with the GCC + Make + Emacs combo for many years while doing C coding in Unix and love all 3. I've also tried it for Java development and quickly left them behind as soon as i could: - The Gnu compiler for Java is not 100% compatible and never was - Make is utter crap for Java since it cannot determine cross-dependencies in Java (Java doesn't use header files) - Emacs is not too bad (i kept using it with Java long after I dumped the other 2), but it's not quite as good as a specialized IDE (although i known people that still used Emacs for Java coding).
The point is, there is no single solution for all things. As multiple people pointed above, the option is to standardize to a reduced set of options, not just one but also not many.
Car designers are not a small team all working for one company, but are a lead designer co-ordinating the input of possibly 1000s of designers across 100s of companies. The aircon comes from one company, the mirrors from another, seats, wires, plugs, belts, carpets, radios, locks, all from smaller companies.
The overall design of the car is done and the sub-assemblies are defined and specified. Sub-assemblies will then, if need, be designed by by separate teams according to the specifications.
Different teams might use different tools, but within the teams the tools are standardized.
I would expect that all teams within a company designing the same kind of sub-assembly (say, a motor) all use the same tools across projects - is it really logical to not reuse a perfectly good camshaft design from an older project because you've felt like using a different CAD tool this time around?
In the same way, big software projects (involving multiple systems, multiple platforms and multiple vendors) are not developed using a "one size fits all" approach: you can hardly expect your teams doing the Linux hosted distributed calculation modules to use C#.NET or your teams doing the Windows GUI to use GCC.
Even in smaller projects, you can hardly expect that all your libraries from all the vendors where developed using the same IDE - and as long as the vendor fixes any problems with their libraries you don't really care what tools their teams use.
BTW, your central 'top down' approach is in direct contradiction with the approach used by Toyota and other successful car companies, which is the manufacturing equivalent of Agile Development.
Any form of Agile Development is heavily reliant on standardization: - You can't quickly change what you are producing if you go through a full retool for every new project.
Just like you don't change the robots that paint the cars when you're doing a new variant on a model, you don't change your language, version control or continuous build setup when you start a new project.
It has been proved again and again that a well coordinated team of average developers is a lot more productive that an equal number of crack lone wolf coders each going their own ways. For a team to work, each member has to let go of a bit of his/her independence (for example, in the choice of version control system or in the design of a subsystem).
In the same way, bigger team-like groups (say, Unix groups in an IT consultancy) often work better if they make some effort to make it easier to work together (for example, by creating shared libraries, which in turn is only possible if you use the same language).
However There is no such thing as a "silver bullet" or a "one solution fits all" in IT. Standardization can bring some improvements up to a point, but if taken too far it just becomes a straight-jacket - you don't want to be in the situation where what you have is a round hole and all that you're allowed to use is a square peg. The challenge is always to find the right balance between flexibility and efficiency: it's neither smart to do a project using Ruby on Rails because the single person in the company that knows it finds it "cool", nor is it smart to design and develop a distributed computing platform requiring hundreds of machines using Windows instead of Linux because "we're a Windows software house".
Standardization of software development tools and languages has to do with optimizing the process at a higher level than most developers are used to.
The point here is to optimize the way a whole company (or at least a whole division) produces software:
Standardized support tools (build tools, version control, etc) mean that there will be things like shared project templates and a higher average level of expertise with the tools being used (if everybody uses the same tools, there will be more experts with those tools around).
Standardized languages mean that in-house developed libraries and frameworks are feasible and can be reused all across the company in many of the projects being developed.
Standardization in tools and languages also increases predictability of results - everybody, including managers, gains a better grasp on how long it takes to do something since they have a lot more experience using that set of tools and languages.
Standardization also means that it's a lot easier to find and train replacements for those that leave or (even more important if you're a developer) those that progress in their career to new tasks and responsibilities and don't want to be stuck "maintaining the software I did 4 years ago".
When you are working as a part of a team you work with the team and don't just go away and do your own thing 'cause you know best and everybody else is an asshole.
To use your automotive metaphor (this is./ after all): - If you work in a garage you get many different cars with many different problems so you use whatever tools are appropriate for the task at hand. - If you work in a car factory (say Porsche), you use the specialized tools you are assigned to use for the tasks you're supposed to do. This applies even if you're one of the designers of a new car - you don't just go out using your own CAD application 'cause you think you know best.
I've worked in a situation where behind the scenes tools where standardized but not IDEs.
There are a couple of issues when everybody has their own IDE, mostly to do with being able to help each other out (when you have to go help a colleague with a piece of coding or debugging but you have trouble working with their IDE) and with setting up the project or new project features (5 IDEs means 6 places to change - each IDE plus the main build - and thus 6 different sets of possible problems and there's always somebody that has trouble setting up a specific feature in their IDE). Also often enough you don't want multiple sets of (possibly conflicting) project configuration files in your source control, which in turn might means that a lot of time is wasted when somebody looses their configuration.
Your point is indeed correct that standardizing your build tools, version control and other behind the scenes tools is THE most important thing, not IDEs.
However, standardizing IDE does bring visible benefits and any half-competent developer which is not a prima donna is capable of adjusting him/herself to work with whatever tools are available.
And so do sales people: it's called big client accounts.
Not to mention opening "new markets", targeting "different market segments", analyzing sales patters, etc...
Even though my main occupation is in technology, I do own a small company that sells electronic goods. I can tell you from experience that, if you try to do more than just sell the same things as everybody else day in and day out, it's not easy.
You either have only talked to incompetent sales people (the equivalent of a below average programmer in a state job) or you're just ignorant and formed a negative opinion out of thin air (or your vague idea of how selling works, whatever is thiner).
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As a gamer, I agree with most people around here that machine-damaging DRM is what's holding me off from getting this game. I've literally stood on a store, with this game on my hands ready to buy it when I saw the SecuROM symbol and just took it back to the aisle were I got it from: No game is worth the risk of having my machine stop to work properly.
As a developer (not games though), a lot of their problems in their list of what went wrong sound very much a case of not having a really senior techie guy around (I'm thinking senior developer/technical architect type). Things like naming conventions for the scripting language, streamlined build process and adequate logging are very much the kind of thing a senior designer will help get right from the start. My impression up to now is that game development is mostly a (very) young man's game ...
Judging from the amounts I've been offered for game development positions (yes, I can code C/C++ and several variants of Assembly like the best), beyond a certain level of experience game development pays crap and there are plenty of places out there outside that industry which have decent-sized working weeks that are willing to pay a lot more for experience.
All we know for sure is that the city was hit by artillery rounds of the kind used by the Georgian army. Beyond that starts the realm of propaganda.
That said, i hardly find the current Georgian administration to be as white as the whitest snow.
However, the Russian administration is worse: more corrupt, prone to state sanctioned killings - even in foreign soil *cough* Litvinenko *chough*, barely democratic, and worse of all, trying to force their will on everybody else.
Now, I don't really mind if the Russians fuck each other up - it's a sovereign nation, Russian citizens are responsible for their own shit. The problem is that the current high energy prices have empowered the (energy rich) Russians to start trying to fuck everybody else up.
Hopefully the current high oil and gas prices will continue (or even better, get higher) accelerating the move in the West away from hydrocarbons and towards energy sources which are not connected to untrustworthy nations. In 10 or 20 years time, Russia will be back on the path to be a "normal" modern society instead of a 1930's style of nation with imperialist designs on their neighbors.
a) I have yet to see an independent report on that number. Maybe that's because the Russians don't let independent experts in South Ossetia ...
b) The vast majority of "Russian" citizens in South Ossetia were given Russian passports in the last couple of years. The same technique use by a certain little man with a funny mustache from the 1940's whose name I won't mention to avoid the Goodwin Law ...
But hey, don't let the those small details detract from your spreading of Russian propaganda.
I'm sure we're not seeing an attempt at a revival of the old Soviet power block by Russia.
I'm sure the whole giving away of passports to ethnic russians living in a sovereign nation was not an attempt at a soft coup.
I'm sure that having the Russian supported South Ossetian "freedom fighters" attack targets in the main parts of Georgia was not a provocation to get the Georgian government to respond in kind.
Clearly Putin is just a softie and his hearth was crying in pain when those "several hundred Russian civilians" where horribly murdered (did I say hundred? I meant thousands, millions) and he sent down his nicest, kindest soldiers with instructions to use their kindest, most friendly manners (so no shelling of cities with artillery) to persuade those evil, evil Georgians to stop being naughty.
Yes, I'm sure that's the whole story!
Actually it's El Niño.
As in, "the little boy".
This is a reference to the birth of Christ, since El Niño usually occurs around Christmas time.
La Niña actually means "the little girl"
Actually what happened is that due to the increased wealth in (mostly) Asian economies (such as China and India), a lot more people are buying cars and more energy is being used ('cause more factories are being operated).
This has significantly increased demand for Oil. It's also significantly increased demand for gas and most metals. (just check the evolution of market prices for Iron, Aluminum, Zinc, etc in the last 10 years and you'll see what I mean)
So what we have here is a good ol' demand driven price increase (same or slowly growing supply, fast growing demand).
This is the consensus amongst most economists.
But hey, don't let my logic spoil your ignorant partisan driven rant about how Al Gore caused oil prices to go up ...
The situation is a lot more complex than that.
For a long time Russia has been giving Russian passports to ethnic russian citizens living in South Ossetia. It has also been supporting separatist groups in South Ossetia and providing them protection in the form of Russian "peacekeepers" stationed in South Ossetia to "protected Russian citizens" (said "Russian citizens" being the people living in South Ossetia that have been given Russian passports by the Russians).
The South Ossetian separatist groups have recently conducted attacks in Georgia, outside South Ossetia ...
Also, Russia has been complaining out loud about countries in their "sphere of influence" joining NATO ... Georgia has recently tried to join NATO but was refused entry ...
And then there is the pipeline in Georgia bringing Caspian oil to Turkey, transporting in 3% of the oil consumed in Europe and which was build through Georgia, purposely bypassing Russia because the Russians charge extra high "transport tariffs" on oil flowing through pipelines in their country (and have a nasty habit of turning the tap off for political reasons).
And let's not even get started on the fact that the Russian government plays the nationalistic flag heavily in Russia and that the recent oil and gas prices have boosted Russian economy (which nowadays is highly reliant on oil and gas) to a level where the Russians feel confident to try and reclaim "past glories" (read, the Soviet times territorial influence if not outright possession)
So this game has been running for a lot longer than the last couple of days and the play book starts long before Georgia "invaded" South Ossetia.
(by the way, latest news have Russian tanks continuing to go deeper into Georgia proper ... even after the Russian announced cease-fire)
... bullshit.
This morning when I was exiting from the destination tube station (the system crashed while I was traveling) there was both one guy shouting and announcements through the information system telling us not to "touch out your card" (meaning, don't have it read by the reader).
If there is no risk of the cards being corrupted, why where they giving us those instructions?
To quote myself "my pet peeve with SUVs (or for that mater any tall car which is not meant for work)". (emphasis added).
Keep in mind that I live in Europe, were "American cars" are considered large, so SUVs are taller and wider than most cars. In that situation, an SUV (or, for example, a pick-up truck) is a significant hindrance to most driver's situational awareness (it's this tall, large block of steel in front of you with no way to see through or around it).
Being a contractor in the forefront of the economic downturn in the UK (meaning I'm in Finance) i second that, with a "but".
Contracting rates have already gone down for new contracts (10-15% down last I checked). Even in existing contracts, the rates are being forcefully renegotiated downwards ("forcefully" as in "accept the new rate by date X or we will give you notice of termination of your contract") at around the 10% mark (some banks more, some banks less).
In terms of offer-vs-demand ratios things are worse for contractors now than a year ago. However, permanent employees are suffering just as much and maybe even more than contractors.
This being the second significant downturn I go through (I started contracting at the end of the last downturn), my experience is that the picture is a bit muddled:
- On one side companies are trying to convert their "long term" contractors (of which there are many in finance) into permanent employees. They are also firing everybody like crazy (here in UK, permies just as much as contractors - in Holland where I was during the last downturn "long term" contractors went first)
- At the same time companies are refraining from taking in new permanent employees but still need people for specific projects, so they get contractors. Also, I know of at least one company which is getting rid of temps placed by an outsourcing company and replacing them with contractors since the later are cheaper and just as easy to move around or let go.
Were i am at the moment (a well known Investment Bank) they've done most of this:
- First a hiring freeze across all geographical units (except India)
- Then a "strong suggestion" to all contractors to become permies.
- Then a downsizing that affected contractors just as much as permanent employees.
- The last one was the forceful rate renegotiation.
As with everything, a balance must be achieved. The reasons you list for your SUV are just as valid for a Tour Bus (large, mobile and having all the comforts you can think of).
Mostly, those that choose an SUV versus a smaller car did so because:
If at the time of your choice for a SUV you were not aware of the negative environmental effects then indeed nobody should think bad of you for getting a SUV.
If however, you were aware of the negative environmental effects and still choose an SUV then, since environmental problems affect all of us, you made a conscientious choice that the extra comfort and space you and your family get from an SUV is more important than the environmental problems that might affect everybody else. In other words, your SUV is pretty much one big "Fu*k you all" sign.
If yours is the second case then you choose to get something that's good for you and bad for everybody else. If you get shunned by society for you choice you only have yourself to blame.
PS: Personally my pet peeve with SUVs (or for that mater any tall car which is not meant for work) is that they make driving more dangerous for everybody else. Mostly the problem is that they block the forward view to anybody behind them in a car where the driver is lower:
- Usually, if you can see beyond the car in front of you (commonly through the car windows) you get advanced notice of traffic problems ahead and can even guess when the driver in front of you is going to brake before they actually do it. The extra time to react makes it safer for you and even for the guy in front of you. If however, the car in front of you is tall and wide, you do not have any advanced notice thus reducing your safety margin.
I would love to see some statistics about the numbers of collisions to the rear of SUVs versus other kinds of cars - it should neatly prove (or disprove) my theory.
... it would give even more power to the European Commission.
They're a bunch of unelected bureaucrats which do not in any way consider the interests of the EU citizens but instead bend over backwards to serve the interests of those corporation which will give them well paid jobs once they've done their time in the European Commission.
(notice how all help-the-industry-f**k-the-consumers proposals of late have come from the commission)
Good thing the Irish brought down the sham attempt at bringing back the EU constitution through the back door that was the Lisbon Treaty.
The funny part is that I'm actual pro-EU and actually feel European. The concept is good, it's just that some EU institutions are degraded and corrupt and need to be eliminated or thoroughly remade.
We need elected legislators instead of these puppets.
Internationally, the number of patents issued in a country is often cited as a proxy for Innovation.
Thus there are even political reasons to keep issuing patents to ideas - it means that the US is praised as the most "innovative" country on Earth since more patents are issued in the US than anywhere else.
In eBay most sellers are also buyers: if the sellers leave then eBay looses both sellers and buyers.
I've just recently started selling on eBay and an interesting thing I found is that the majority of my buyers are sellers themselves.
If indeed eBay is loosing sellers (I myself am looking at listing my company's products in other venues, since eBay is expensive and has too many listings in the categories I sell in) then they are also loosing buyers.
The networking effects (sellers go to where most buyers are, buyers go to where most sellers are) are what propelled eBay to success and form a large barrier to entry for it's competitors. When those which are simultaneously sellers and buyers leave they remove people from both sides of the equation - a perfect counter to the networking effects that had helped eBay.
I second that:
I'm currently working for a large financial company which has an Indian division to which they send a large chunk of the IT work (and there is internal pressure to send more work that way).
My experience working with my colleagues in India is similar:
- Most are not very good. They lack initiative, require a lot of hand-holding from us, do not test their changes thoroughly unless pressured to do so (this in a financial environment, where if some systems are down lots of $$$ can be lost) and have some really poor coding skills (hello copy-n-paste hell).
- There is quite a bit of turnover in our Indian operations
The feeling I have is that India is experiencing the equivalent of the Internet bubble, only localized. Certainly the same kind of effects as I saw during the Internet bubble (high turnaround, people getting into IT without the necessary skills or inclination) seem to be happening in IT in India at the moment.
This is not that unexpected:
- IT workers in India earn a lot more than the average Indian worker, so IT attracts a lot of people just for the money
- Universities in India can train enough IT professionals for the needs of India (and more), but not enough people for the needs of India, Great Britain and the USA combined (to name just the 2 biggest countries outsourcing to India)
It's not a case of Indians being better or worse than other people at IT, it's a case of, currently in India, anybody that knows the right side of the keyboard to type in is hired and sold as a "senior developer"
Good for you - it means you're not a sucker.
Unfortunately, most employers who are not up-front with their requirements for out-of-office-hours work, not willing to pay above average salaries to compensate for the overnight support and do not have reduced intraday workloads.
Often enough the first you hear about the need for out of hours support is after you're in and they gave you a Blackberry.
You buy a second fileserver and set it up in a redundant configuration.
What do you mean "that's too expensive?" - you just pointed the potential risk for the whole company if the fileserver is down for half-a-day ...
Oh, you mean "too expensive compared to unpaid 24/7 support from our IT people", I see.
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Any (and I do mean, ANY) IT infrastructure risk can be pretty much eliminated by using redundancy - fail-over fileservers, databases, application servers, web-servers, switches, backup sites, DR instances, even duplicate network infrastructures - you name it, it's available. The reason why many companies won't invest in the needed HW and SW and instead try and get their IT people to be on call 24/7 for free is because HW and SW cost money while free time from suckers is ... well ... free.
I'm a freelancer in the UK and i got one in a previous assignment with an Investment Bank.
From day one, unless i was on overnight call for that day, I would turn it on when I arrived at work, turn it off when I left work.
Never did check my e-mails on the thing outside work.
Never heard a single negative comment about it.
Blackberries should be treated as tools to help with doing your work - you use the tools when you are working, you don't work all the time just because you happen to have one of the work tools with you.
If you are 100% working during work hours and when it comes to work related things it is as if you don't exist outside working hours, then nobody will have any expectations that you will reply to their e-mails after 6:00 PM and before 9:00 AM the next day.
By creating in people an expectation of an almost instant response at any time, you create an incentive for them to come to you with non-urgent issues at any time.
If CNN is left-wing, then when compared to Europe you guys in the US don't have a left-wing in your political spectrum.
Clearly, most Americans have been brainwashed to such an extent by the almost uniform (with just a slight hint of variety) mainstream politics and press coverage that they actually believe that the Democrats and the Republicans are opposite points in a wide range of the political spectrum.
In fact, as it has been pointed out by others here in ./ the Democratic party in the US is actually more right-wing than many right-wing parties in Europe.
When compared to French, Dutch, Belgian or even British press, most of the US' "liberal" media is just a bunch of navel gazing, narrow minded, US-centric, unworldly, brain-washing, mainstream-party line toeing puppets.
There is more world news, and truly unbiased content in 1h of news coverage in BBC that in 6h of news coverage in CNN US (CNN international is a bit better). Fox News is not even worth mentioning when it comes to real news except maybe to point out that they are the most glaring example of "political advertising" disguised as news in the whole of Western press.
Clearly McCartism is alive and well when some people resort to labelling others as Communists to discredit their ideas and get modded insightful for it.
Obviously it is too hard to actually try use logic and reason to make your point instead of shrill political labeling and attacking straw men ("abolishment of private property rights", wtf!???)
Still, the usage of bullshit by the parent poster to try and win the argument is not what disgusts me the most (he is not the first and won't be the last), it's the brainless modders that gave him +4 Insightful that really keep me from believing there is still hope for Mankind ...
I'll go even a step further - use echo "[next code line]" > myfile.c to write your code, do your builds by hand (who needs make) and stick with writing code in binary: that way there is no way you will paint yourself into a corner.
PS: I've worked with the GCC + Make + Emacs combo for many years while doing C coding in Unix and love all 3. I've also tried it for Java development and quickly left them behind as soon as i could:
- The Gnu compiler for Java is not 100% compatible and never was
- Make is utter crap for Java since it cannot determine cross-dependencies in Java (Java doesn't use header files)
- Emacs is not too bad (i kept using it with Java long after I dumped the other 2), but it's not quite as good as a specialized IDE (although i known people that still used Emacs for Java coding).
The point is, there is no single solution for all things. As multiple people pointed above, the option is to standardize to a reduced set of options, not just one but also not many.
The overall design of the car is done and the sub-assemblies are defined and specified. Sub-assemblies will then, if need, be designed by by separate teams according to the specifications.
Different teams might use different tools, but within the teams the tools are standardized.
I would expect that all teams within a company designing the same kind of sub-assembly (say, a motor) all use the same tools across projects - is it really logical to not reuse a perfectly good camshaft design from an older project because you've felt like using a different CAD tool this time around?
In the same way, big software projects (involving multiple systems, multiple platforms and multiple vendors) are not developed using a "one size fits all" approach: you can hardly expect your teams doing the Linux hosted distributed calculation modules to use C#.NET or your teams doing the Windows GUI to use GCC.
Even in smaller projects, you can hardly expect that all your libraries from all the vendors where developed using the same IDE - and as long as the vendor fixes any problems with their libraries you don't really care what tools their teams use.
Any form of Agile Development is heavily reliant on standardization:
- You can't quickly change what you are producing if you go through a full retool for every new project.
Just like you don't change the robots that paint the cars when you're doing a new variant on a model, you don't change your language, version control or continuous build setup when you start a new project.
It has been proved again and again that a well coordinated team of average developers is a lot more productive that an equal number of crack lone wolf coders each going their own ways. For a team to work, each member has to let go of a bit of his/her independence (for example, in the choice of version control system or in the design of a subsystem).
In the same way, bigger team-like groups (say, Unix groups in an IT consultancy) often work better if they make some effort to make it easier to work together (for example, by creating shared libraries, which in turn is only possible if you use the same language).
However
There is no such thing as a "silver bullet" or a "one solution fits all" in IT. Standardization can bring some improvements up to a point, but if taken too far it just becomes a straight-jacket - you don't want to be in the situation where what you have is a round hole and all that you're allowed to use is a square peg.
The challenge is always to find the right balance between flexibility and efficiency: it's neither smart to do a project using Ruby on Rails because the single person in the company that knows it finds it "cool", nor is it smart to design and develop a distributed computing platform requiring hundreds of machines using Windows instead of Linux because "we're a Windows software house".
Standardization of software development tools and languages has to do with optimizing the process at a higher level than most developers are used to.
The point here is to optimize the way a whole company (or at least a whole division) produces software:
Standardized support tools (build tools, version control, etc) mean that there will be things like shared project templates and a higher average level of expertise with the tools being used (if everybody uses the same tools, there will be more experts with those tools around).
Standardized languages mean that in-house developed libraries and frameworks are feasible and can be reused all across the company in many of the projects being developed.
Standardization in tools and languages also increases predictability of results - everybody, including managers, gains a better grasp on how long it takes to do something since they have a lot more experience using that set of tools and languages.
Standardization also means that it's a lot easier to find and train replacements for those that leave or (even more important if you're a developer) those that progress in their career to new tasks and responsibilities and don't want to be stuck "maintaining the software I did 4 years ago".
When you are working as a part of a team you work with the team and don't just go away and do your own thing 'cause you know best and everybody else is an asshole.
To use your automotive metaphor (this is ./ after all):
- If you work in a garage you get many different cars with many different problems so you use whatever tools are appropriate for the task at hand.
- If you work in a car factory (say Porsche), you use the specialized tools you are assigned to use for the tasks you're supposed to do. This applies even if you're one of the designers of a new car - you don't just go out using your own CAD application 'cause you think you know best.
I've worked in a situation where behind the scenes tools where standardized but not IDEs.
There are a couple of issues when everybody has their own IDE, mostly to do with being able to help each other out (when you have to go help a colleague with a piece of coding or debugging but you have trouble working with their IDE) and with setting up the project or new project features (5 IDEs means 6 places to change - each IDE plus the main build - and thus 6 different sets of possible problems and there's always somebody that has trouble setting up a specific feature in their IDE). Also often enough you don't want multiple sets of (possibly conflicting) project configuration files in your source control, which in turn might means that a lot of time is wasted when somebody looses their configuration.
Your point is indeed correct that standardizing your build tools, version control and other behind the scenes tools is THE most important thing, not IDEs.
However, standardizing IDE does bring visible benefits and any half-competent developer which is not a prima donna is capable of adjusting him/herself to work with whatever tools are available.
Ahem?
And so do sales people: it's called big client accounts.
Not to mention opening "new markets", targeting "different market segments", analyzing sales patters, etc ...
Even though my main occupation is in technology, I do own a small company that sells electronic goods. I can tell you from experience that, if you try to do more than just sell the same things as everybody else day in and day out, it's not easy.
You either have only talked to incompetent sales people (the equivalent of a below average programmer in a state job) or you're just ignorant and formed a negative opinion out of thin air (or your vague idea of how selling works, whatever is thiner).