Well, you're getting Office help calls, so I'll assume you are not a developer.
I'm a developer. My software created a report in CSV format that their browser (IE) opened in Excel. User was unfamiliar with Excel and could not figure out how to close the program since the file menu was moved. (WTF!?!?!)
it is outright incompetence for any CTO to not have migrated, in the process of migrating, or planning on migrating their workers to OpenOffice at this point.
If you don't mind me asking: how many users (corporate desktops, not friends/family) have you migrated from MS Office to OpenOffice?
Talk is cheap. Until you've moved maybe 100 or more people professionally from one to the other, you really shouldn't drone on about "incompetence". Suffice it to say: people do NOT want to change, and will put up with amazing amounts of wasted time and inconvenience to avoid doing so. Most people think of computers as these "black boxes" with arcane syntax and usability.
I've had tech support calls that consisted of somebody dragging the menu around in IE so that the "back" button had moved! (which underscores perhaps the most worthless feature MS has ever put out - the movable menu. Who ever wants to change that?)
It's not incompetence - it's following the path of least resistance. That results in less friction, which results in happier staff which results in more productivity, which results in more profit, which means that the executives get richer, the lackeys don't get fired, and everybody is satisfactorially miserable.
Safe wireless? WEP is like using a condom that's been poked with holes.
I emphatically disagree. Using WEP is EXACTLY like closing your front door.
What most people don't realize is that the security measures to protect your house are largely social. A $70 battery-powered circular saw makes your front-door deadbolt meaningless in about 45 seconds. And usually, there are easier ways to enter your house.
What's not often considered is the considerable social expense paid when you break into somebody else's home. Once you do so, you become a criminal. There are people in official clothing who work full time to get you. The more you do it, the more likely you are to get caught. You may get your head blown off if there is somebody home with a gun - and they aren't going to pay nearly as much for that as you will.
The thing that's lacking in understanding is that the average home is terribly insecure. You can compromise it in less time than it takes to hack a WEP key. Yet most homes are quite safe. People live for many years with only minimal trouble with theft, burglaries, or murders, because of the rather effective police unit.
In short - police form a social antivirus to cover for the fact that people live in insecure homes. In California, I can leave my front door unlocked, and unattended. If you open the door and enter, you are committing a crime, and if I can positively identify you, you are wanted. Statewide. Any dealings with a police agency will result in your arrest and subsequent conviction and jail time for comitting the crime of breaking and entering.
Why did I go into this long monologue? Because WEP encrypting your hotspot is the equivalent of closing your door. It's making clear your intent to be left alone, and to be undisturbed. You are broadcasting that you don't want to be bothered, and that your "spot" isn't open.
That really should be enough for home users. Society doesn't operate on the principle of "Since I can break the door down, I should be allowed to enter", it operates on the basis of "I have a right to be respected in my person and posessions if I make my intentions clear".
My WEP-encrypted hotspot is mine. If you break into it, I'll do anything I can to identify you and prosecute you under local, unauthorized computer-access laws.
The perception (rightly or wrongly) is about Americans being lazy. America is the biggest convenience-led culture in global history. Just look at the obesity levels compared to the rest of the world. Companies dumb stuff down, not because they necessarily think American's have low IQ, but because they think American's aren't used to making an effort.
What a bunch of tripe.
Sorry, not buying it. Historically, Americans are among the hardest working peoples of the world. It's a point of pride among entrepeneurs and business owners how they're going to vacation and only work 50-hour weeks, instead of the usual 70! I know; I'm one of these.
And take a look at the result: Representing just 5% of the world's population, Americans have played pivotal roles in every major advance and technology of the past 100 years. From automobiles to aviation to space travel to microelectronics to software to biotechnology to robotics to physics to telecommunications, Americans have played a pivotal role in all, and the entire world benefits from this explosion of technology: how many people oversees are reading this post, using technology developed and funded by the United States department of defense, once called dARPANET?
I'd consider it's more an issue of pragmatism; I derive intense satisfaction from my career as a software engineer providing support services for alternative education programs. When faced with the "game" of writing software that has the potential to help thousands of (primarily troubled) kids advance and get an education, while simultaneously growing more wealthy, or learn the meaning of 50+ buttons on a DVD remote control, I know where my patience lies.
If you're doing something grand and "real", why would you care if your VCR flashes 12:00? Far from being a sign of laziness, I think it's an issue of priorities.
Certainly, the United States did "do it all", but when you compare the population of the United States to the world as a percentage, the Americans have certainly had a good run for the last 150 years or so...
There are many posts here decrying the idea of writing again, you should refactor, etc. And for the most part, I agree.
But if rewriting is nearly always a bad idea, why is Linux so successful? GNU/Linux is a complete rewrite of the UNIX O/S, including its compiler, utilities, shell, etc. and it's worked out well enough that the GNU tools have become largely the standard of the industry!
Obviously, the poster-child of the F/OSS movement is a good argument for an occasional rewrite or two...
I do just enough specifications to determine how all the pieces are going to fit together, what all the database fields are, and how the constraints, triggers, and foreign keys assure reasonably sound data. I beat the idea in front of a few people and search for objections, until most people approached seem to like the idea, and nobody has any major bones to pick.
I believe that represents your "planned" cities. They didn't go over every detail, they just laid out an idea of how it the major pieces fit together. Thus they came up with a system that basically worked, and still works today.
Agile != Chaos
Agile development means paying close attention to what's really, actually wanted, and doing that next. The fact that you're nextdoor to a convenience store is not something the original planners speculated. The fact that the streets run in a layout intended to separate residential and commercial areas while keeping them not too far apart is.
Just because you're willing to modify the plan quickly to cover unanticipated needs doesn't mean you don't have a plan!
Thing is, though, there are methodologies other than Agile. Agile/XP/Scrumm are very good for in-house software in a business environment, because they are well adapted to unpredictable change. That said, it turns out they perform very poorly in other markets, where you know what the end product is generally going to look like, and unpredictable change turns out to be a smaller candidate in software development. In those markets which are not characterised by unpredictable movement between directions, you will want a different process
This is one of the most insightful things I've read today, particularly this quote: because they are well adapted to unpredictable change.
In the industry my software targets, unpredictable change is the norm. Furthermore, the requirements of the industry are so insufficiently designed that those required to enforce the changes are unsure of what they mean.
So, I picked Agile software development, and it's worked out well consequently.
I suspect that as we approach the singularity, Agile software programming will become more the norm...
Anyway, tighten up that resume, friend. It's worth the US$20 to go to a professional resume-writer. Steal a sample resume while you are in their office, and use that instead of your own.
Screw resumes. They are for the weak. What you need is notoriety. Be very,very, good at what you do, and always get better, every day. And once you've gotten very good at what you do, then be famous! I'm not kidding!
Give first. Get in touch with your local cable-access channel, and produce your own "IT for small business" show. It takes minimal expertise to produce a "local quality" show. Perhaps $2000 in equipment is all you need - you can get by with as little as $750. Heck, in your community, there might be FREE equipment you could use!
Produce an episode weekly, and try to get it aired at a consistent time. Don't make it an ad, make it informative, and USEFUL for viewers. As soon as people see that you are not trying to sell them something, they'll listen to whatever you say. And, if you briefly mention some contact information, you'll have people lining up to throw money at you, because they'll TRUST you. In each episode, you are giving them something they can use. They will reward you for it.
As another case of give first: years ago, I owned a computer store. We had an area we called the "triage" to take computers and give them a once-over. When a customer asked about a problem, we quote a "free diagnostic". We gave the diagnostic right there, as they stood there. It usually took about 10-15 minutes. We gave the system a very detailed once-over, and usually performed a free service or two. (such as running a virus scanner). Combined with a bit of Q&A, we determined the work that needed to be performed. We got comments about the thorough checkout, even though it was pretty quick.
Because we gave them something first, we almost NEVER GOT TURNED DOWN on a work order quote. It just didn't happen. We'd given them something, they watched us do it, and because of that, they felt compelled to give something back.
Establish yourself as "the guy who always can get the right answer". NEVER GIVE A BULLSHIT ANSWER. If you don't know, be honest about it, and then offer to research an answer..
"Well, I don't know much about Cisco IOS, but I've done basic routing in Linux, and I'm certain it's possible to set up the VPN like that. If you want me to, I could look it up....".
You don't have to be omnipotent - and they'll learn quickly if you are BSing them. But, if you work and strive to be the person that never "lets them down" because you always offer something truthful and workable, you'll never, ever go hungry.
People talk to each other. What you want to be is the name that's uttered just after business owner X says to business owner Y: "I'm looking for somebody who ____, who would you recommend?". If you've avoided the BS answers, and you've given somebody something they can use, they'll probably use your name. This is the highest form of notoriety - the referral.
Now, perhaps my formula is a bit scary - I haven't had a "job" in almost 15 years - I've been a consultant/freelance/business-owner all along, in fields as diverse as aviation, real estate, job-placement, IT, and education. But there are plenty with lots of money who pay me well because I never pretend to be anything but what I'm not.
I can't tell you how many times I've left a sales presentation, having spent 5 minutes explaining that I can do A, B, and C, and 3 hours 55 minutes explaining that I can't do D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, YT, U, V, W, X, Y, or Z, and ended up with the contract, even with competitors that could do A-N! It's a big selling point to tell people what you aren't -it establishes trust and a definition of expectations that's comforting to people. They know your limits, and they know what to expect from you. And having the confidence to calmly say what your limits are lets peop
NASA is crippled. Rather than cover the achievements of each mission, they cover the lack of failures. It's a no-win situation. If they screw up ANYWHERE, they look terrible. If they make it back ok, they wasted a ton of money on... what again?
In the media, I've heard all about how they made sure the stupid thing can land, on at least 3 media sources. But WTF is the reason they launched? What are they up there for, other than to make it back alive? I could do that on a Mooney for alot less money and with alot less stress!
This is being handled all wrong. They shoulda spun this as "making real forward progress sometimes hurts - there's risk in growth - DEAL WITH IT" - but instead they're trying to make it seem like it's a big deal to launch into low-earth orbit and make it back alive.
How stupid!?!?!? We've been able to do THAT since the 1960s.
This is a PR ball that's being dropped, and NASA is now neutered. It's a worthless waste of time. Send everybody home, take the (piddling, thanks to terrible PR management) amount of money that was being spent there, and give it to an organization that can LOOK FORWARD again...
Give me a reason to get excited, or stop spending my damned tax dollars. (Oh, and don't mention Iraq, I marched in the streets with signs over that one!)
If somebody came to you and said "hey, I've got this great new way to build a bridge! Instead of making up plans, we'll just start building it! We'll build it out of popsicle sticks first, and then we'll go in and add some steel beams, and toss some pavement on top of that," you'd say they were insane. Nobody does stuff like that in the real world -- yet that's exactly what a lot of poorly-managed 'agile' software projects are doing. They're getting short-term prototyping gains but at the cost of maintainability and probably stability as well.
A complex software project doesn't compare well to a bridge. It's more like a city. Nobody goes and says "Let's build a city!", lays out plans, prototypes and discusses what business go where.
That's just stupid; nobody does a city like that.
A bridge is a simple item, an artifact of intelligence, it's an item with almsot irreducible complexity. A city, however, is a highly complex, interactive social organism with bazillions of interactions, many of which you can't easily forsee. It has a very small level of irreducible complexity. Lots of software has much in common with this.
Cities ARE built in a "agile development" fashion. People spec out just enough to get started, to get them by for the next few months/years, slam together a some houses, and maybe a store or two. People like living there, then somebody comes along and thinks "We outta have.... a Newspaper!" and they build a building and buy paper and start writing articles and printing and all that jazz. It's a little different than software because most software has a lifespan of perhaps 10-20 years, cities have lifespans in the hundreds of years.
Changes in this city are incremental; they're small. They happen everyday. Somebody does an extension on their house. The lady down the street gives birth to a son. The corner grocery starts selling sandwiches. The empty lot down the street becomes a movie theatre. And so, the agile development model continues.
You're dead wrong - the bridge is a small, incremental example of EXACTLY how well-done agile software develops!
We have two major systems at the company I work for. One, that the related staff spent 2 years documenting their business practices and exactly what they wanted the application to do. They took that huge document to a couple of consulting companies and said "we want this." 2 years later the consulting company that won the bid turned over a nearly perfect application.
Wow. Sounds like a ringing endorsement for planning and quality execution.
Unfortunately, though I've tried time and time again, I've never gotten anywhere near the participation required to lay out everything in advance accurately. Worse, the few times I've actually managed to get something together and gotten everybody to sign (in blood) in triplicate, it was rejected on the very first day of rollout because they didn't expect something that was, upon rollout, patently obvious. In my experience, people don't know what they want until they see that you have isn't it. Very few people have the intelligence and foresight to extrapolate what a screenshot will mean to them, in the real world.
So, I've turned my back on the whole idea, and have instead adopted a modified "agile development" approach.
I do just enough specifications to determine how all the pieces are going to fit together, what all the database fields are, and how the constraints, triggers, and foreign keys assure reasonably sound data. I beat the idea in front of a few people and search for objections, until most people approached seem to like the idea, and nobody has any major bones to pick.
Then we code - it goes out the door for public release as soon as it seems stable and workable. I don't bother trying to make it totally bug free, so QA is short and sweet. On rollout, I ask our clients to review it and inform us of any bugs. We never get it right the first time, and we're pretty up front about that. But we fix it quickly, and most importantly, we modify our software towards what the customer actually needs. Stuff that is simply not needed gets dropped pretty fast.
Our software is designed to "fail early" - so that inconsistent or inaccurate data doesn't hurt anything. And so far, we've had only minor issues in over 2 years of heavy, active, exponential growth and development.
Turnaround time for an average modification is less than a week. We issued over 40 releases in the last year alone. Every so often I go over everything in a new perspective, and do a bunch of minor tweaks all at once - that's when UI improvements come down hot and heavy.
The response has been wonderful! A customer who mentions an idea, and sees it implemented a few weeks later is your evangelist for life. You practically become their religeon, and you'll get recommendations and referrals for the rest of your days.
I've heard people talk about it like bargain hunting - they hunt around - just to see what's new!
So far removed from the bleak hopelessness so common here at Slashdot about software projects - it's exciting, intense, fun, and profitable!
Currently Microsoft does not utilize best practices - we're constantly finding vulnerabilities in new products that are due to the same old stupid crap like buffer overflows. Why coddle them?
Ok, then.
Name an Operating System vendor that doesn't have any buffer overflows found! Even the much-beloved Open-BSD had one reported not so long ago, despite what I feel is the best effort possible to eliminate them, and despite limiting the scope of the operating system so much it's a mental strain to consider it an O/S at all - little more than a kernel and a few utilities.
Linux is definitely imperfect. Slowlaris isn't all that wonderful. In short, they ALL have issues, some more than others. Many of the issues found in Windows are found in IE - compare that to the recent swath of holes found in Firefox/Mozilla.
I choose Linux for my development because
A) distributing patches is damned easy (yum update)
B) I don't have to go to the facility to apply them,
C) It's very reliable - 99.94% uptime on a single machine!
Well, trying to run 3-4 virtual machines on a 933 Mhz system sounds painful - it "Mega-Hurtz"... what you describe is only 12 GB per server - WTF would you do with 12 VM instances?
Anyhow I do something kinda similar with my 1.7 Ghz Centrino laptop.
It's got 1.5 GB of RAM, and I routinely run 2 VMs under VMWare for software development. (The host O/S is Fedora Linux)
It's been the bomb! It's really neat to be able to simulate several servers while developing our clustered network application while sitting in an airport or a coffee shop!
Though, I think the performance hit for VM will actually drive hardware sales - VMs aren't as efficient as bare metal.
Having everyone code for firefox isn't really that much better to having everyone code to IE.
Except that it is much better. Mac users, Linux users, and BSD users don't get left out. Plus, it's much easier to code to Firefox, and then test/tweak on other browsers than the other way around.
But it's just amazing to me how broken IE actually is. I tried to get IE to do this nice, flashy, fancy javascript piece, and after 2 weeks of trying, just couldn't get it to look decent - it's the back end of a dog - though it does (now) work. IE is just riddled with nasty, nasty, horrible, terrible CSS bugs. But it was easy to get it all to work in Firefox.
So, I have a big, red box at the top of the screen that basically says: "Technically, this works with IE, but we know it's barely usable. But it works beautifully under the freely downloaded firefox!". with a link to GetFirefox.com.
I spent a few months not so long ago tracking down a cracker who had compromised a mail server for an ISP. He'd gotten root, and installed rootkit style stuff that hid directories, etc.
It was a long process to penetrate all his defenses. Finally, I ended up chatting with the cracker a la Yahoo Chat, including video. He was from Romania, and liked diet 7-up.
So, I get all the sources together with which he compromised the server. I had everything, down to IP addresses. I called the FBI and they referred me to some web page that didn't even allow enough upload to report everything I had found.
I submitted what I could. I didn't even gt a "thank you" email. I would have been happy with a "thank you" message. But I got nothing.
My opinion of the dept of Homeland Security as well as the FBI sank immeasurabily as a result.
A year later, I'm still waiting. Meanwhile, the juaggurnaut that is MySpace continues to grow like WalMart on crack, and other News Corp properties (FX, Fox, Fox News) have jumped on the bandwagon. Call me naive, but I expected the "corporate parent" to stay well hidden from MySpace for fear of losing their main demo (Q: what are you rebelling against? A: what do you got?). Instead the opposite has happened: MySpace and fox passed the "sell out" threshold months ago, and millions more have poured onto MySpace as a result (I find myself meeting people well into their 30's and 40's with freaking MySpace accounts these days!).
Congratulations! You totally missed the !@#@! point of MySpace. See, the big deal in MySpace is getting together a group of F-R-I-E-N-D-S and communicating with them. It's not about some "counter-culture", it's about sharing jokes, leaving posts, and posting pictures to people who give a damn.
Today, I got a MySpace message from a gal I knew in high school. Turns out she's putting together a 15 year reunion. It's an odd year, so kinda low key. I wouldn't have gotten it, except that I spent an hour or two one day putzing on MySpace to put together my account. And I'm already glad I did.
That said, MySpace is poised to become a sweltering cesspool of security nightmares. I doubt it will last more than 3 years as a relevant force - even though it's cool - because of the tidal wave of spyware, viruses, trojans, and cross-site scripting attacks that are about to beset it.
Sad, really - as soon as something cool gets put together, others feel the need to rip it apart...
I have the idea that, because you disagree with the results of a single election, that you are ready to "say goodbye" to the idea of living in a free representative democracy.
It was that idea that I was commenting on. It was patronising and condecending because that idea deserves to be attacked. It's defeatist, and counterproductive.
Did I miss something you wrote, or were you just writing things you don't mean?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you're getting Office help calls, so I'll assume you are not a developer.
I'm a developer. My software created a report in CSV format that their browser (IE) opened in Excel.
User was unfamiliar with Excel and could not figure out how to close the program since the file menu was moved. (WTF!?!?!)
it is outright incompetence for any CTO to not have migrated, in the process of migrating, or planning on migrating their workers to OpenOffice at this point.
If you don't mind me asking: how many users (corporate desktops, not friends/family) have you migrated from MS Office to OpenOffice?
Talk is cheap. Until you've moved maybe 100 or more people professionally from one to the other, you really shouldn't drone on about "incompetence". Suffice it to say: people do NOT want to change, and will put up with amazing amounts of wasted time and inconvenience to avoid doing so. Most people think of computers as these "black boxes" with arcane syntax and usability.
I've had tech support calls that consisted of somebody dragging the menu around in IE so that the "back" button had moved! (which underscores perhaps the most worthless feature MS has ever put out - the movable menu. Who ever wants to change that?)
It's not incompetence - it's following the path of least resistance. That results in less friction, which results in happier staff which results in more productivity, which results in more profit, which means that the executives get richer, the lackeys don't get fired, and everybody is satisfactorially miserable.
Hmmm. "Douchebag".
Intellectualism at its finest.
Safe wireless? WEP is like using a condom that's been poked with holes.
I emphatically disagree. Using WEP is EXACTLY like closing your front door.
What most people don't realize is that the security measures to protect your house are largely social. A $70 battery-powered circular saw makes your front-door deadbolt meaningless in about 45 seconds. And usually, there are easier ways to enter your house.
What's not often considered is the considerable social expense paid when you break into somebody else's home. Once you do so, you become a criminal. There are people in official clothing who work full time to get you. The more you do it, the more likely you are to get caught. You may get your head blown off if there is somebody home with a gun - and they aren't going to pay nearly as much for that as you will.
The thing that's lacking in understanding is that the average home is terribly insecure. You can compromise it in less time than it takes to hack a WEP key. Yet most homes are quite safe. People live for many years with only minimal trouble with theft, burglaries, or murders, because of the rather effective police unit.
In short - police form a social antivirus to cover for the fact that people live in insecure homes. In California, I can leave my front door unlocked, and unattended. If you open the door and enter, you are committing a crime, and if I can positively identify you, you are wanted. Statewide. Any dealings with a police agency will result in your arrest and subsequent conviction and jail time for comitting the crime of breaking and entering.
Why did I go into this long monologue? Because WEP encrypting your hotspot is the equivalent of closing your door. It's making clear your intent to be left alone, and to be undisturbed. You are broadcasting that you don't want to be bothered, and that your "spot" isn't open.
That really should be enough for home users. Society doesn't operate on the principle of "Since I can break the door down, I should be allowed to enter", it operates on the basis of "I have a right to be respected in my person and posessions if I make my intentions clear".
My WEP-encrypted hotspot is mine. If you break into it, I'll do anything I can to identify you and prosecute you under local, unauthorized computer-access laws.
What a bunch of tripe.
Sorry, not buying it. Historically, Americans are among the hardest working peoples of the world. It's a point of pride among entrepeneurs and business owners how they're going to vacation and only work 50-hour weeks, instead of the usual 70! I know; I'm one of these.
And take a look at the result: Representing just 5% of the world's population, Americans have played pivotal roles in every major advance and technology of the past 100 years. From automobiles to aviation to space travel to microelectronics to software to biotechnology to robotics to physics to telecommunications, Americans have played a pivotal role in all, and the entire world benefits from this explosion of technology: how many people oversees are reading this post, using technology developed and funded by the United States department of defense, once called dARPANET?
I'd consider it's more an issue of pragmatism; I derive intense satisfaction from my career as a software engineer providing support services for alternative education programs. When faced with the "game" of writing software that has the potential to help thousands of (primarily troubled) kids advance and get an education, while simultaneously growing more wealthy, or learn the meaning of 50+ buttons on a DVD remote control, I know where my patience lies.
If you're doing something grand and "real", why would you care if your VCR flashes 12:00? Far from being a sign of laziness, I think it's an issue of priorities.
Certainly, the United States did "do it all", but when you compare the population of the United States to the world as a percentage, the Americans have certainly had a good run for the last 150 years or so...
/I'm Californian, and damned proud of it/
There are many posts here decrying the idea of writing again, you should refactor, etc. And for the most part, I agree.
But if rewriting is nearly always a bad idea, why is Linux so successful? GNU/Linux is a complete rewrite of the UNIX O/S, including its compiler, utilities, shell, etc. and it's worked out well enough that the GNU tools have become largely the standard of the industry!
Obviously, the poster-child of the F/OSS movement is a good argument for an occasional rewrite or two...
One more tidbit, from my original post:
I do just enough specifications to determine how all the pieces are going to fit together, what all the database fields are, and how the constraints, triggers, and foreign keys assure reasonably sound data. I beat the idea in front of a few people and search for objections, until most people approached seem to like the idea, and nobody has any major bones to pick.
I believe that represents your "planned" cities. They didn't go over every detail, they just laid out an idea of how it the major pieces fit together. Thus they came up with a system that basically worked, and still works today.
Agile != Chaos
Agile development means paying close attention to what's really, actually wanted, and doing that next. The fact that you're nextdoor to a convenience store is not something the original planners speculated. The fact that the streets run in a layout intended to separate residential and commercial areas while keeping them not too far apart is.
Just because you're willing to modify the plan quickly to cover unanticipated needs doesn't mean you don't have a plan!
Thing is, though, there are methodologies other than Agile. Agile/XP/Scrumm are very good for in-house software in a business environment, because they are well adapted to unpredictable change. That said, it turns out they perform very poorly in other markets, where you know what the end product is generally going to look like, and unpredictable change turns out to be a smaller candidate in software development. In those markets which are not characterised by unpredictable movement between directions, you will want a different process
This is one of the most insightful things I've read today, particularly this quote: because they are well adapted to unpredictable change.
In the industry my software targets, unpredictable change is the norm. Furthermore, the requirements of the industry are so insufficiently designed that those required to enforce the changes are unsure of what they mean.
So, I picked Agile software development, and it's worked out well consequently.
I suspect that as we approach the singularity, Agile software programming will become more the norm...
Room for her husband - my father, whose heart still beats.
Screw resumes. They are for the weak. What you need is notoriety. Be very
Give first. Get in touch with your local cable-access channel, and produce your own "IT for small business" show. It takes minimal expertise to produce a "local quality" show. Perhaps $2000 in equipment is all you need - you can get by with as little as $750. Heck, in your community, there might be FREE equipment you could use!
Produce an episode weekly, and try to get it aired at a consistent time. Don't make it an ad, make it informative, and USEFUL for viewers. As soon as people see that you are not trying to sell them something, they'll listen to whatever you say. And, if you briefly mention some contact information, you'll have people lining up to throw money at you, because they'll TRUST you. In each episode, you are giving them something they can use. They will reward you for it.
As another case of give first: years ago, I owned a computer store. We had an area we called the "triage" to take computers and give them a once-over. When a customer asked about a problem, we quote a "free diagnostic". We gave the diagnostic right there, as they stood there. It usually took about 10-15 minutes. We gave the system a very detailed once-over, and usually performed a free service or two. (such as running a virus scanner). Combined with a bit of Q&A, we determined the work that needed to be performed. We got comments about the thorough checkout, even though it was pretty quick.
Because we gave them something first, we almost NEVER GOT TURNED DOWN on a work order quote. It just didn't happen. We'd given them something, they watched us do it, and because of that, they felt compelled to give something back.
Establish yourself as "the guy who always can get the right answer". NEVER GIVE A BULLSHIT ANSWER. If you don't know, be honest about it, and then offer to research an answer.
You don't have to be omnipotent - and they'll learn quickly if you are BSing them. But, if you work and strive to be the person that never "lets them down" because you always offer something truthful and workable, you'll never, ever go hungry.
People talk to each other. What you want to be is the name that's uttered just after business owner X says to business owner Y: "I'm looking for somebody who ____, who would you recommend?". If you've avoided the BS answers, and you've given somebody something they can use, they'll probably use your name. This is the highest form of notoriety - the referral.
Now, perhaps my formula is a bit scary - I haven't had a "job" in almost 15 years - I've been a consultant/freelance/business-owner all along, in fields as diverse as aviation, real estate, job-placement, IT, and education. But there are plenty with lots of money who pay me well because I never pretend to be anything but what I'm not.
I can't tell you how many times I've left a sales presentation, having spent 5 minutes explaining that I can do A, B, and C, and 3 hours 55 minutes explaining that I can't do D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, YT, U, V, W, X, Y, or Z, and ended up with the contract, even with competitors that could do A-N! It's a big selling point to tell people what you aren't -it establishes trust and a definition of expectations that's comforting to people. They know your limits, and they know what to expect from you. And having the confidence to calmly say what your limits are lets peop
My mother is 9 feet under. My wife knew, though. So did my 5 kids - they all marched next to me.
NASA is crippled. Rather than cover the achievements of each mission, they cover the lack of failures. It's a no-win situation. If they screw up ANYWHERE, they look terrible. If they make it back ok, they wasted a ton of money on... what again?
In the media, I've heard all about how they made sure the stupid thing can land, on at least 3 media sources. But WTF is the reason they launched? What are they up there for, other than to make it back alive? I could do that on a Mooney for alot less money and with alot less stress!
This is being handled all wrong. They shoulda spun this as "making real forward progress sometimes hurts - there's risk in growth - DEAL WITH IT" - but instead they're trying to make it seem like it's a big deal to launch into low-earth orbit and make it back alive.
How stupid!?!?!? We've been able to do THAT since the 1960s.
This is a PR ball that's being dropped, and NASA is now neutered. It's a worthless waste of time. Send everybody home, take the (piddling, thanks to terrible PR management) amount of money that was being spent there, and give it to an organization that can LOOK FORWARD again...
Give me a reason to get excited, or stop spending my damned tax dollars. (Oh, and don't mention Iraq, I marched in the streets with signs over that one!)
If somebody came to you and said "hey, I've got this great new way to build a bridge! Instead of making up plans, we'll just start building it! We'll build it out of popsicle sticks first, and then we'll go in and add some steel beams, and toss some pavement on top of that," you'd say they were insane. Nobody does stuff like that in the real world -- yet that's exactly what a lot of poorly-managed 'agile' software projects are doing. They're getting short-term prototyping gains but at the cost of maintainability and probably stability as well.
A complex software project doesn't compare well to a bridge. It's more like a city. Nobody goes and says "Let's build a city!", lays out plans, prototypes and discusses what business go where.
That's just stupid; nobody does a city like that.
A bridge is a simple item, an artifact of intelligence, it's an item with almsot irreducible complexity. A city, however, is a highly complex, interactive social organism with bazillions of interactions, many of which you can't easily forsee. It has a very small level of irreducible complexity. Lots of software has much in common with this.
Cities ARE built in a "agile development" fashion. People spec out just enough to get started, to get them by for the next few months/years, slam together a some houses, and maybe a store or two. People like living there, then somebody comes along and thinks "We outta have.... a Newspaper!" and they build a building and buy paper and start writing articles and printing and all that jazz. It's a little different than software because most software has a lifespan of perhaps 10-20 years, cities have lifespans in the hundreds of years.
Changes in this city are incremental; they're small. They happen everyday. Somebody does an extension on their house. The lady down the street gives birth to a son. The corner grocery starts selling sandwiches. The empty lot down the street becomes a movie theatre. And so, the agile development model continues.
You're dead wrong - the bridge is a small, incremental example of EXACTLY how well-done agile software develops!
We have two major systems at the company I work for. One, that the related staff spent 2 years documenting their business practices and exactly what they wanted the application to do. They took that huge document to a couple of consulting companies and said "we want this." 2 years later the consulting company that won the bid turned over a nearly perfect application.
Wow. Sounds like a ringing endorsement for planning and quality execution.
Unfortunately, though I've tried time and time again, I've never gotten anywhere near the participation required to lay out everything in advance accurately. Worse, the few times I've actually managed to get something together and gotten everybody to sign (in blood) in triplicate, it was rejected on the very first day of rollout because they didn't expect something that was, upon rollout, patently obvious. In my experience, people don't know what they want until they see that you have isn't it. Very few people have the intelligence and foresight to extrapolate what a screenshot will mean to them, in the real world.
So, I've turned my back on the whole idea, and have instead adopted a modified "agile development" approach.
I do just enough specifications to determine how all the pieces are going to fit together, what all the database fields are, and how the constraints, triggers, and foreign keys assure reasonably sound data. I beat the idea in front of a few people and search for objections, until most people approached seem to like the idea, and nobody has any major bones to pick.
Then we code - it goes out the door for public release as soon as it seems stable and workable. I don't bother trying to make it totally bug free, so QA is short and sweet. On rollout, I ask our clients to review it and inform us of any bugs. We never get it right the first time, and we're pretty up front about that. But we fix it quickly, and most importantly, we modify our software towards what the customer actually needs. Stuff that is simply not needed gets dropped pretty fast.
Our software is designed to "fail early" - so that inconsistent or inaccurate data doesn't hurt anything. And so far, we've had only minor issues in over 2 years of heavy, active, exponential growth and development.
Turnaround time for an average modification is less than a week. We issued over 40 releases in the last year alone. Every so often I go over everything in a new perspective, and do a bunch of minor tweaks all at once - that's when UI improvements come down hot and heavy.
The response has been wonderful! A customer who mentions an idea, and sees it implemented a few weeks later is your evangelist for life. You practically become their religeon, and you'll get recommendations and referrals for the rest of your days.
I've heard people talk about it like bargain hunting - they hunt around - just to see what's new!
So far removed from the bleak hopelessness so common here at Slashdot about software projects - it's exciting, intense, fun, and profitable!
Currently Microsoft does not utilize best practices - we're constantly finding vulnerabilities in new products that are due to the same old stupid crap like buffer overflows. Why coddle them?
Ok, then.
Name an Operating System vendor that doesn't have any buffer overflows found! Even the much-beloved Open-BSD had one reported not so long ago, despite what I feel is the best effort possible to eliminate them, and despite limiting the scope of the operating system so much it's a mental strain to consider it an O/S at all - little more than a kernel and a few utilities.
Linux is definitely imperfect. Slowlaris isn't all that wonderful. In short, they ALL have issues, some more than others. Many of the issues found in Windows are found in IE - compare that to the recent swath of holes found in Firefox/Mozilla.
I choose Linux for my development because
A) distributing patches is damned easy (yum update)
B) I don't have to go to the facility to apply them,
C) It's very reliable - 99.94% uptime on a single machine!
D) It's very cheap - no licensing worries.
E) Security record is decent overall.
Well, trying to run 3-4 virtual machines on a 933 Mhz system sounds painful - it "Mega-Hurtz"... what you describe is only 12 GB per server - WTF would you do with 12 VM instances?
Anyhow I do something kinda similar with my 1.7 Ghz Centrino laptop.
It's got 1.5 GB of RAM, and I routinely run 2 VMs under VMWare for software development. (The host O/S is Fedora Linux)
It's been the bomb! It's really neat to be able to simulate several servers while developing our clustered network application while sitting in an airport or a coffee shop!
Though, I think the performance hit for VM will actually drive hardware sales - VMs aren't as efficient as bare metal.
Slashdot is already meta-news. This is meta-meta-news. There's a point where it becomes just so much navel gazing, and gets ridiculous.
This is that point.
I don't get it. Not only does Slashdot not actually provide news content, now they're going to provide coverage of the reporting on the news?
This just seems like regurgitated chow.
Yuk. These REALLY turn me off.
I believe you can get Win 3.x to run in Dosemu if you run it in "real" mode. I don't remember the switch, though. Something like
/r
win
Having everyone code for firefox isn't really that much better to having everyone code to IE.
Except that it is much better. Mac users, Linux users, and BSD users don't get left out. Plus, it's much easier to code to Firefox, and then test/tweak on other browsers than the other way around.
But it's just amazing to me how broken IE actually is. I tried to get IE to do this nice, flashy, fancy javascript piece, and after 2 weeks of trying, just couldn't get it to look decent - it's the back end of a dog - though it does (now) work. IE is just riddled with nasty, nasty, horrible, terrible CSS bugs. But it was easy to get it all to work in Firefox.
So, I have a big, red box at the top of the screen that basically says: "Technically, this works with IE, but we know it's barely usable. But it works beautifully under the freely downloaded firefox!". with a link to GetFirefox.com.
I spent a few months not so long ago tracking down a cracker who had compromised a mail server for an ISP. He'd gotten root, and installed rootkit style stuff that hid directories, etc.
It was a long process to penetrate all his defenses. Finally, I ended up chatting with the cracker a la Yahoo Chat, including video. He was from Romania, and liked diet 7-up.
So, I get all the sources together with which he compromised the server. I had everything, down to IP addresses. I called the FBI and they referred me to some web page that didn't even allow enough upload to report everything I had found.
I submitted what I could. I didn't even gt a "thank you" email. I would have been happy with a "thank you" message. But I got nothing.
My opinion of the dept of Homeland Security as well as the FBI sank immeasurabily as a result.
All it means is they got slashdotted in the past week....
Problem with that: slashdot isn't one of the top five...(!)
A year later, I'm still waiting. Meanwhile, the juaggurnaut that is MySpace continues to grow like WalMart on crack, and other News Corp properties (FX, Fox, Fox News) have jumped on the bandwagon. Call me naive, but I expected the "corporate parent" to stay well hidden from MySpace for fear of losing their main demo (Q: what are you rebelling against? A: what do you got?). Instead the opposite has happened: MySpace and fox passed the "sell out" threshold months ago, and millions more have poured onto MySpace as a result (I find myself meeting people well into their 30's and 40's with freaking MySpace accounts these days!).
Congratulations! You totally missed the !@#@! point of MySpace. See, the big deal in MySpace is getting together a group of F-R-I-E-N-D-S and communicating with them. It's not about some "counter-culture", it's about sharing jokes, leaving posts, and posting pictures to people who give a damn.
Today, I got a MySpace message from a gal I knew in high school. Turns out she's putting together a 15 year reunion. It's an odd year, so kinda low key. I wouldn't have gotten it, except that I spent an hour or two one day putzing on MySpace to put together my account. And I'm already glad I did.
That said, MySpace is poised to become a sweltering cesspool of security nightmares. I doubt it will last more than 3 years as a relevant force - even though it's cool - because of the tidal wave of spyware, viruses, trojans, and cross-site scripting attacks that are about to beset it.
Sad, really - as soon as something cool gets put together, others feel the need to rip it apart...
Umm i hate to be the one pointing this out, but i for one can think of some very hot things about Jessica Albas that virtualization doesn't have.
You're not much of a geek, are you? Turn in your geek card!
You have no idea who I am or what I believe.
I have the idea that, because you disagree with the results of a single election, that you are ready to "say goodbye" to the idea of living in a free representative democracy.
It was that idea that I was commenting on. It was patronising and condecending because that idea deserves to be attacked. It's defeatist, and counterproductive.
Did I miss something you wrote, or were you just writing things you don't mean?