All they have to do is make believe they're working - take a lot of cofee brakes, long lunches, smoke brakes, web surfing. Nothing too obvious but in the end it adds up to 2 or 3h a day of R&R.
Bid your time, keep your job and when the recession is over (maybe 1 or 2 years) dump those bastards. Think of it as a a sort of passive resistance (like Ghandi).
To me it stupidly obvious that nobody in that damn company expects the project to be ready on time - by giving the image that everybody is working really hard to finish that project on time (they're probably on the customer's site), there will be a strong excuse when the thing is not ready on time - "As you could see, we gave 200%. If it weren't for unexepcted problems.. " (they'le come up with something) "... we would have finished on schedule".
I live in Europe and i've worked both in a "work 10h/day get payed 8 and if we need it you'll work extra for the same money" and a "work 8h/day and that's it" (different countries).
I can tell you one thing - i produced much more (as in results) working 8h/day than doing 10x6. In one specific situation, after about 2 months of doing an average 60h/week i was so incredibly tired that i produced less that i would be if i had worked only 20h/week (no kidding).
My pet theory is that a tired mind produces more bugs. Now, finding a bug and fixing takes a lot more time (like 10-1000 times more) than coding it right. The outcome is that the total time is longer because you end up wasting a lot of unecessary time in bugfixing.
If you are really really tired, than things get so bad that you even type wrong (at my worst point i was doing something like 1 spelling mistake every 4 or 5 keypresses - that's when i decide to quit and ended up moving to another country, my best decision ever).
<RANT>
I definitely can't understand the management mentality that believes that someone that's working 80h/week can produce more than someone doing 40. I suppose it's a mix of stupidity - more hours = more work done - and a "cover your ass" approach - when the project fails (not if), the manager can always say that it's not his/her fault, he/she made the coders work really hard (and working long hours is a highly visible thing).
</RANT>
That's wisdom
on
Ageism in IT?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I suspect the best ITers grow to become wiser.
Simple things like:
Thinking before you code - 'cause you know from past experience that it will not only be faster to implement the same functionality, it will also have less problems (uncovered bugs) in the future (guess who usually has to fix the bugs) and will be more easy to adapt when (not if) the requirements change.
Finding out that most problems end up being variants of stuff you've done or seen in the past - different names, different industries, different languages and still the same patterns appear behind problems (and solutions).
There is NO language, development methodology, OS or whatever that is right for all situations - there is no silver bullet, different things have different strenghts and different weaknesses.
No mater how much you know, you can always learn something new from someone.
... (there's a lot more)
Anyways, i've recently came to the conclusion (by once again being face with people that should know beter but don't) that most IT professionals seem to be stuck at being Knowledgeable (Answering the Hows) and never to grow to become Wise (Answering the Whys) - this has beem pretty disapointing to me, so forgive me my rant.
By the way, wisdom comes from experience but age does not necessarily implies being wise.
Actually you simply moved the ugly switch into class PostCodeFactory {
static public PostCode getPostCode(Locale locale) { // HERE - construct valid post code object here
} }
If the postal code is not universal or cannot be mathematically derived from other country specific information (for example from the telephone indicative), there will always be an ugly switch somewhere ('cause at some point or other in the program you will have to make a choice - be it what object to create or directly how to handle a specific postal code)
Cogito ergo sun (I think therefore i am.)
Descartes, ( Born March 1596, died Feb 1650)
This all goes down to the old questions:
Do I really exist?
Does the world around me exists?
Is the world as i percieve it to be?
Descartes tried to answer the first question.
While trying to explain the other two, don't forget that the only proof that you have that the world out there exists comes through your senses. For all you know, there are no other people out there - maybe your senses are being mislead:
by a complex computer simulation
by a powerfull telephatic entity
by a drug
by yourself - you've suffered psychological trauma this is all a dream
...
According to Descartes, the only thing you can be sure about is that you exist.
This is common in many poor countries. Check the price of copper, and check the average salary in some of these countries... For many, "recycling" phone cable is a much better source of income than any legal work they would have a chance of getting.
The situation in Europe was that the landline phone companies were usually a state-owned, legal monopoly.
When mobile phones came that cosy, outdated, calcified environment was shattered by new entrants:
The mobile phone technology offered services that the landline technology couldn't offer (access anywhere, roaming, SMS)
The slight advantage that the old telephone company had in terms of already having an already in the ground voice network was not enough to provide a barrier to entry for new companies in the mobile telephony area
The new mobile phone companies started competing amongst temselfs and against the old telephone company. They came up with new ideas (pre-payed telephone cards,...) and offered more services on mobiles (voicemail,...) than had ever been available for landline telephones (let's just say that the old monopoly companies never felt the need to invest in services for they're customers)
The outcome of all this is that in Europe today still, landline telephony is crap (pay-per-minute charges, basic service) while mobile telephone is incredibly successful.
Still, since mobile telephony prices are constantly droping (thus becoming more competitive against landline), the old public telephone companies have mostly been privatised and the lanline telephony market has been liberalized, things are (slowly) improving for landline also.
The last thing I want anyway is to be constantly wired up so that idiots can call me and instant message me about problems they could solve themselves if they used their brains instead of their phones.
Try the following:
The first couple of times that an "idiot" comes to you with a simple problem, teach said idiot how to solve it (usually teaching them more than the step-by-step solution for that specific problem is more efficient in the long run)
If the same idiot comes back again with the same sort of problem, start by asking "Have you tried doing what i teached you last time?". Most times they haven't, so send them back to try it and then come back to you if they can't sort it out
If after trying what you thought them, they can't sort it out themselfs, help them. Teach them something new if you can
If an idiot is persistently calling you without first trying what you thought him/her, then: always send them back to try it; delay your "service" (basically, reduce the priority of their problem to the lowest possible - if you have anything else to do just give an excuse to the idiot and tell him/her to call back later)
The basic principles behind this is that "people will take the easiest path". Puting things another way - if it's easier to come to you to solve their problems than it is to solve it themselfs, then they will come to you.
Your objective is twofold:
Make it more easier for them to solve the problem themselfs than coming to you
Still be available to solve the real problems (and since you are free from wasting time with shitty-shit problems you have more time to deal with the big ones)
Let me ask you a question, though. This war, including the postwar reconstruction, is probably going to cost us around 200 billion dollars, and that doesn't count the cost of the munitions we're using. We've used over a billion and a half dollars' worth of cruise missiles alone so far, and the war's only a week old. Two hundred billion dollars plus would have bought us practically all the Iraqi oil we could have hauled off. Why didn't we just buy it, and save everybody a lot of time, money, and trouble?
It's not quite that simple.
Most of the money that's spent on the war is actually spent paying US companies for products and services (those cruise missiles were actually bought from someone) + salaries for servicemen.
That money is thus transfered from the US government to other sectors of the US economy.
From the point of view of the global US economy, most of the money spent on the war stays in the US.
Now, if we assume that after the reconstruction the entities that will benefict the most from the new status quo in Iraq will be US oil companies, then what this war ammounts to is: - Having the US government spend taxpayer's money in the Defense industry to subsidize the US oil industry.
-------------
Please note that i'm only touching the economical side here. There's the whole human side (lives lost in both sides, the future of the surviving Iraqui people); political side (Bush's approval rates); and geopolitical side (will the rest of the world still trust the US?).
... should be safe as long as anyone is contributing to that project (+ remaining life of that someone + 100 years).
If an open source project has not have contributions for 100+ years, then i don't really care if the Government of Mexico can charge royalties on it.
------------------
On a side note, i suspect that the works of Aristotelis, Plato and Omero will become more expensive to buy in Mexico. Same thing for traditional Mexican music.
I've moved to Holland and her 40h/week is the norm in IT.
Re:The End Of Paper Money?
on
Cashless Society
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
the money card would have a database (physically located in several places across the country/world) which is something physical cash cannot offer - a backup
For smart-cards, the most up-to-date information about how much money do you have in it sits in the card itself:
If you loose your card you loose the money you have in it. Whoever finds the card can use the money in it. (just like cash)
Also if you damage the chip in the card you loose the money in it. Same as if you burn some dollar bills:
With the smart-card your bank ends up with the money ('cause the real money in circulation in smart-cards is actually being kept in some special account until it is transfered from a shopper's smart-card into his bank account).
If you burn some dollar bills the value of all other dollar bills in circulation slightly increases.
I see what your saying, but...
first of all, "credit cards will be shifting to smart cards". Umm, do you mean the smart card technology? Because smart cards would never replace credit cards.
Actually card issuers are being forced to migrate from magstripe (magenetic-stripe) cards to smart-cards by Europay, Mastercard and Visa (this is called the EMV migration). Here's a nice document from VISA (PDF) about it.
A smart-card actually has a microchip with some programming in it (while a magstripe one only has data). Actually, one smart card can have several applications (for example: shop customer-card application + medical information application + debit application).
From a hardware point of view there is really no difference between a debit and credit application - the difference is in the application itself (the debit one will only let you spend the money you've already loaded in the card, the credit one will only let you spend money up to a limit defined in the card)
By the way, the apps and the data area for each app are encrypted with a specific key for the card and one for the app.
Lewis is able to determine that it's seeing a human by recognizing that it's looking at a pair of legs. Once this realization is made, Lewis gazes up to look at the individual's face.
That pretty much describes the way most guys recognize chicks (especially in sunny climates)
One of the airlines (in Europe) that i've flowned with (and which shall remain nameless) forbade the use of CD reading devices during any part of the flight. At first i tought it was just misinformation from the stewardess, but i checked the airline's magazine and there it was in the safety precautions section - no CD reading devices.
I really cannot see what's the problem with CD reading devices. Maybe there's some BOFH like explanation, say: "Quantum coupled ressonance between the CD reading laser and the flight systems"
Slashdot Mirror
All they have to do is make believe they're working - take a lot of cofee brakes, long lunches, smoke brakes, web surfing. Nothing too obvious but in the end it adds up to 2 or 3h a day of R&R. Bid your time, keep your job and when the recession is over (maybe 1 or 2 years) dump those bastards. Think of it as a a sort of passive resistance (like Ghandi).
To me it stupidly obvious that nobody in that damn company expects the project to be ready on time - by giving the image that everybody is working really hard to finish that project on time (they're probably on the customer's site), there will be a strong excuse when the thing is not ready on time - "As you could see, we gave 200%. If it weren't for unexepcted problems .. " (they'le come up with something) " ... we would have finished on schedule".
I can tell you one thing - i produced much more (as in results) working 8h/day than doing 10x6. In one specific situation, after about 2 months of doing an average 60h/week i was so incredibly tired that i produced less that i would be if i had worked only 20h/week (no kidding).
My pet theory is that a tired mind produces more bugs. Now, finding a bug and fixing takes a lot more time (like 10-1000 times more) than coding it right. The outcome is that the total time is longer because you end up wasting a lot of unecessary time in bugfixing.
If you are really really tired, than things get so bad that you even type wrong (at my worst point i was doing something like 1 spelling mistake every 4 or 5 keypresses - that's when i decide to quit and ended up moving to another country, my best decision ever).
<RANT>
I definitely can't understand the management mentality that believes that someone that's working 80h/week can produce more than someone doing 40. I suppose it's a mix of stupidity - more hours = more work done - and a "cover your ass" approach - when the project fails (not if), the manager can always say that it's not his/her fault, he/she made the coders work really hard (and working long hours is a highly visible thing).
</RANT>
Simple things like:
- Thinking before you code - 'cause you know from past experience that it will not only be faster to implement the same functionality, it will also have less problems (uncovered bugs) in the future (guess who usually has to fix the bugs) and will be more easy to adapt when (not if) the requirements change.
- Finding out that most problems end up being variants of stuff you've done or seen in the past - different names, different industries, different languages and still the same patterns appear behind problems (and solutions).
- There is NO language, development methodology, OS or whatever that is right for all situations - there is no silver bullet, different things have different strenghts and different weaknesses.
- No mater how much you know, you can always learn something new from someone.
... (there's a lot more)
Anyways, i've recently came to the conclusion (by once again being face with people that should know beter but don't) that most IT professionals seem to be stuck at being Knowledgeable (Answering the Hows) and never to grow to become Wise (Answering the Whys) - this has beem pretty disapointing to me, so forgive me my rant.By the way, wisdom comes from experience but age does not necessarily implies being wise.
Hello, my name is Stephen Michael Cohen
You stole my sex
Prepare to die!!
Ahhh - the beneficts of not going with the rest of the flock.
...
You see, sheep end up slaughtered
I don't disagree with the proposed structure. I'm just pointing that it doesn't solve the problem described in the parent post (ie the ugly switch)
Actually you simply moved the ugly switch into
// HERE - construct valid post code object here
class PostCodeFactory {
static public PostCode getPostCode(Locale locale) {
}
}
If the postal code is not universal or cannot be mathematically derived from other country specific information (for example from the telephone indicative), there will always be an ugly switch somewhere ('cause at some point or other in the program you will have to make a choice - be it what object to create or directly how to handle a specific postal code)
Descartes, ( Born March 1596, died Feb 1650)
This all goes down to the old questions:
- Do I really exist?
- Does the world around me exists?
- Is the world as i percieve it to be?
Descartes tried to answer the first question.While trying to explain the other two, don't forget that the only proof that you have that the world out there exists comes through your senses. For all you know, there are no other people out there - maybe your senses are being mislead:
- by a complex computer simulation
- by a powerfull telephatic entity
- by a drug
- by yourself - you've suffered psychological trauma this is all a dream
- ...
According to Descartes, the only thing you can be sure about is that you exist.Which might make fibre cheaper in the long run
When mobile phones came that cosy, outdated, calcified environment was shattered by new entrants:
The outcome of all this is that in Europe today still, landline telephony is crap (pay-per-minute charges, basic service) while mobile telephone is incredibly successful.
Still, since mobile telephony prices are constantly droping (thus becoming more competitive against landline), the old public telephone companies have mostly been privatised and the lanline telephony market has been liberalized, things are (slowly) improving for landline also.
The last thing I want anyway is to be constantly wired up so that idiots can call me and instant message me about problems they could solve themselves if they used their brains instead of their phones.
Try the following:
- The first couple of times that an "idiot" comes to you with a simple problem, teach said idiot how to solve it (usually teaching them more than the step-by-step solution for that specific problem is more efficient in the long run)
- If the same idiot comes back again with the same sort of problem, start by asking "Have you tried doing what i teached you last time?". Most times they haven't, so send them back to try it and then come back to you if they can't sort it out
- If after trying what you thought them, they can't sort it out themselfs, help them. Teach them something new if you can
- If an idiot is persistently calling you without first trying what you thought him/her, then: always send them back to try it; delay your "service" (basically, reduce the priority of their problem to the lowest possible - if you have anything else to do just give an excuse to the idiot and tell him/her to call back later)
The basic principles behind this is that "people will take the easiest path". Puting things another way - if it's easier to come to you to solve their problems than it is to solve it themselfs, then they will come to you.Your objective is twofold:
Don't beleive me? Fine, but don't come crying to me when you have a heart attack and die.
...
I suspect you won't have many of those
Let me ask you a question, though. This war, including the postwar reconstruction, is probably going to cost us around 200 billion dollars, and that doesn't count the cost of the munitions we're using. We've used over a billion and a half dollars' worth of cruise missiles alone so far, and the war's only a week old. Two hundred billion dollars plus would have bought us practically all the Iraqi oil we could have hauled off. Why didn't we just buy it, and save everybody a lot of time, money, and trouble?
It's not quite that simple.
Most of the money that's spent on the war is actually spent paying US companies for products and services (those cruise missiles were actually bought from someone) + salaries for servicemen.
That money is thus transfered from the US government to other sectors of the US economy.
From the point of view of the global US economy, most of the money spent on the war stays in the US.
Now, if we assume that after the reconstruction the entities that will benefict the most from the new status quo in Iraq will be US oil companies, then what this war ammounts to is:
- Having the US government spend taxpayer's money in the Defense industry to subsidize the US oil industry.
-------------
Please note that i'm only touching the economical side here. There's the whole human side (lives lost in both sides, the future of the surviving Iraqui people); political side (Bush's approval rates); and geopolitical side (will the rest of the world still trust the US?).
... should be safe as long as anyone is contributing to that project (+ remaining life of that someone + 100 years).
If an open source project has not have contributions for 100+ years, then i don't really care if the Government of Mexico can charge royalties on it.
------------------
On a side note, i suspect that the works of Aristotelis, Plato and Omero will become more expensive to buy in Mexico. Same thing for traditional Mexican music.
You're also in the wrong country.
I've moved to Holland and her 40h/week is the norm in IT.
For smart-cards, the most up-to-date information about how much money do you have in it sits in the card itself:
If you loose your card you loose the money you have in it. Whoever finds the card can use the money in it. (just like cash)
Also if you damage the chip in the card you loose the money in it. Same as if you burn some dollar bills:
Actually card issuers are being forced to migrate from magstripe (magenetic-stripe) cards to smart-cards by Europay, Mastercard and Visa (this is called the EMV migration). Here's a nice document from VISA (PDF) about it.
A smart-card actually has a microchip with some programming in it (while a magstripe one only has data). Actually, one smart card can have several applications (for example: shop customer-card application + medical information application + debit application).
From a hardware point of view there is really no difference between a debit and credit application - the difference is in the application itself (the debit one will only let you spend the money you've already loaded in the card, the credit one will only let you spend money up to a limit defined in the card)
By the way, the apps and the data area for each app are encrypted with a specific key for the card and one for the app.
... (or maybe not) i usually find more funny comments in code from people who actually like coding (and are good at it) than from code monkeys .
What kind of penalties are there for non-compliance?
They're forbiden to say mate for 48 hours!???
If they have and X-Ray version of the glasses i'm up for a pair.
I was talking from personal experience
Lewis is able to determine that it's seeing a human by recognizing that it's looking at a pair of legs. Once this realization is made, Lewis gazes up to look at the individual's face.
That pretty much describes the way most guys recognize chicks (especially in sunny climates)
One of the airlines (in Europe) that i've flowned with (and which shall remain nameless) forbade the use of CD reading devices during any part of the flight. At first i tought it was just misinformation from the stewardess, but i checked the airline's magazine and there it was in the safety precautions section - no CD reading devices.
I really cannot see what's the problem with CD reading devices. Maybe there's some BOFH like explanation, say:
"Quantum coupled ressonance between the CD reading laser and the flight systems"
Netherlands
It was just a cursory look - maybe i could find a cheaper price if i looked harder
That's in the US.
Here in Europe you get the previledge of spending $450 on an X-Box