I haven't worked real manual labor, but I've worked retail. Same thing only not as repetitive and without the exercise.
If you haven't worked "real manual labor", then how do you know that it is the "same thing"? I worked for a construction company for two summers during college. Yes, labor jobs get you outside in the fresh air, they get your body moving, and you maybe get to interact with other people more. But when the fresh air is 90 degrees and 90% humidity and you're doing blacktop, trust me: you'll long for the office job.
The grass is always greener...
Re:1976 Cobol programmer's bug
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2
Heh. Gotta wonder whether it was one of the keypunchers that made the mistake... I remember having a hard time convincing my mother, who was trained on a typewriter, that "l" (ell) is *much* different that "1" (one) because she was in the habit of hitting (ell) to produce a (one). Older typewriters often didn't even have a (one) key so you had to do this. Of course, she never punched in any of my code for me, but I can see where a rookie keypuncher might make a similar mistake...
A steady flow of cash coming into the company while there is no product yet to sell.
Your customer provides all of the requirements in a level of detail sufficient to base a design upon them.
Your customer has a static set of needs and none of the requirements change during the project.
You can find people that can read code, write code well enough to produce good whitebox tests, and who just want to test rather than write production code.
The project is small enough that all of the people working on it can comprehend the design of all of the pieces of the project -- in order to be able to effectively peer review others' designs.
You can find people who know all of the solid mathematical/engineering principles that you mentioned, can estimate, can design, and can program.
None of these people are prima donnas that screw up the dynamics of your team.
Nobody leaves halfway through your project. Although since everyone can comprehend the design of the entire project, this wouldn't impact you beyond the loss of that person's future work.
Why would anyone "ask slashdot" such a ridiculous question? You're going to get 14 different responses and all of them will be wrong. Talk to a lawyer -- it won't cost as much as you think it will, and you'll get good advice.
The ruling states that, although the links themselves were indirect, they were accompanied by detailed instructions on how to locate the pages in question. It was this combination which the judge ruled illegal, not the actual link per se.
So text like:
Go to google. Search for "how to derail a train". You'll see interesting articles in the first ten hits.
would also be considered illegal? (As opposed to linking like this; and, of course, assuming such search terms led to the desired page.)
How about:
On the internet there is information about how to derail a train.
One note here, when you add a monitor into the equation, things get a little trickier.
A great source for monitors locally is an off-lease shop that sells off-lease, reconditioned, and just plain used monitors for dirt cheap. A buddy got a 21" there a couple years ago for about 1/3 of what he would have paid retail. Had a half-inch scratch in a corner of the screen that you had to look at the monitor from an angle to see; two years later and it is still working fine.
If you can find one of these shops in your vicinity, I'd recommend checking it out. Just make 'em turn it on for you before you take it home. All sales are final...;)
So while he may be setting (or have forced upon him) aspects such as deadlines, you need to control scope, methodology and quality.
Good point, but I'd disagree with the piece about quality. This is sometimes so much a technical decision as a business decision, although quite often it is a delicate balance between the two.
I'd actually consider these separate types of bugs. They're both design problems. The first is of the type that can often be remedied by either a) forming your requirements better or b) performing peer design reviews.
The second is what the XP-people would call a "code smell". I've found Fowler's Refactoring book to be quite useful in figuring out ways to fix the design such that the "I made a change in these six places but forgot that one" (and other) bugs go away.
Do these kinds of tools exist, and if so why aren't they more widely used? Yes, they're called "coverage analyzers" or something similar. A couple of tools that I've used in the past (for c/c++):
PureCoverage from Rational. It's been a few years since I've used this, but it was handy to have. Basically, you compile the code with special instrumentation and then run the PureCoverage tool which brings up a window showing (among other possibilities) functions, lines, and number of times each was called/executed.
gcov (part of gcc). This provides the same basic functionality as PureCoverage but doesn't give the pretty windows (duh).
These types of tools can also be useful for performance tuning (with gcc, gperf is also handy).
Part of the problem is that many people consider "software" to be one thing. It isn't.
You simply cannot have the expectation that software will *NEVER* crash.
Umm, the aircraft and space industries certainly do.
Yup, you're right. But NASA has the luxury of producing single-purpose software. They don't have to worry about x^y^z possible permutations of hardware/software/enrivonment&configuration. They have a single hardware platform, a single configuration (or maybe a small set of configuration options), and a well-known set of co-existing software.
But IIS (to use the popular example) can be deployed in an endless array of environments (firewall settings, network configuration, WinNT/2k/XP, etc), in various configurations (feature X active, feature Y inactive, etc.), with different third-party software and on wildly varying hardware.
It takes a tremendous amount of effort just to get IIS to *work* in so many environments. To say that IIS and NASA flight control software are both the same kind of animal is ridiculous. Going back to the engineer / bridge-building analogy, it is possible for an engineer to design a bridges for a logging company that needs to cross a bunch of streams in the act of logging part of some forest where there are no existing roads. It is a very different task, and requires different engineering skills, reliability needs, materials, cost parameters, and builders (among other parameters) to build a several-hundred foot interstate highway overpass. And then consider a portable bridge, like the Army or Marine Corps might use in a combat environment. Sure they're all "bridges", but they're entirely different in their construction and conception.
Software has similar comparisons. If I am writing firmware for a microwave and you are writing an web/database application, we're going to be thinking about very different things. I'm going to worry about time constraints, whether the hardware is responding properly, and making sure that the "popcorn" button doesn't try to defrost your chicken; I don't have to be concerned with hackers. You really don't care what kind of hardware you're running on; in fact, you're going to write the code as portably as possible (maybe across database engines, OS's, and/or web servers). Firmware is a different beast from a web application in the same way a portable bridge is different from a highway overpass.
In otherwords if you accepted the job for $40k and they know you are worth $100k, most companies aren't going to walk over and say "you know, you are underpaid, here's $60k a year more." No, they will say "great job, here's a $5k a year raise!
Exactly! There's a range of salaries that you and your employer can agree on. You have a minimum, they have a maximum. If you are worth a 100k salary, then the company's max might be, say 95k. You might be willing to work for as little as 40k. So, if your salary is 40k-95k, both parties are happy! (Of course, the company is "happier" at the lower end, while you're "happier" at the higher end.)
Okay, I figured, "Hey, a 1.1a release. Maybe most of the kinks are out." So (once again, foolishly), I download, install, and voila! It still sucks. On Win2k. Even after nuking my previous installation and all mozilla-related settings.
My mouse wheel doesn't work. (Yes, I fiddled with the settings.)
17.3 billion privacy and security settings and it still can't render my ISP's crappy webmail page properly.
Dialogs that don't fit all of the controls within the window.
Address import from Outlook that takes about 20 seconds and imports a grand total of *1* out of *250* names -- but doesn't even get the address associated with that *1* name!
I don't have the patience to play with this silly thing for another 20 minutes to find enough other bugs to round out this list. Needless to say, this isn't really the quality you'd expect from a 1.1-level release.
(Yes, I posted this with 1.1a. After hitting "submit", I will uninstall and go back to nice, reliable IE.)
With a real contract there is a a physical proof (your signature) that you agreed, witnessed and countersigned by a notary and/or the other party of the contract.
95% of the contracts you agree to are verbal and have no signature, witness, or notary associated with them. Think about the fact that every time you buy something at a store, you are creating a contract to exchange money for goods. I'm not sure what else you might mean by a "real" contract.
Remember, an oral contract is valid and enforceable. (It just isn't worth the paper it is written on.)
The UCB course mentioned in the article looks more like it will teach on-line journalism, but they've buzzworded it with 'blogging' as a PR exercise. These guys know PR, you see.
Looks more like they can spot a trend. When real journalists, start blogging (or at least what appears to be similar to blogging, the line keeps getting blurrier), somebody is going to offer a course in how to do it (the technology part, most likely).
Sure, blogging about news does not make one a journalist. But journalists can blog, it ain't that tough to do... although some of them will end up writing columns as opposed to actually blogging. Whatever. It isn't really that important.
But the Punters aren't well informed... so Mom and Pop will buy the kids (who will hack it) a new toy
You are correct here, but the difference is that replay will get whacked on the other end when the backlash comes after people start getting shut off from the service for hacking/accused of copying/etc. "But you signed the contract" is what the customers will hear. And then people will start to realize, "hey, what a crappy service." And Replay's business will tank. (Yeah, yeah, this is all in theory, and pure speculation.)
Don't commit fraud (by lying about the nature of your service).
Don't commit fraud (by lying about the source of your database).
Don't email people in Washington State or Minnesota (the only places I know of offhand with anti-spam laws on the books).
Don't violate my TOS (this could be tough, gotta find a dumb ISP...).
Don't send adult material (just to be on the safe side; don't want to get nailed for sending pr0n to kids).
Essentially, I'm safe if I advertise my services as:
SuperSPAMmers, Inc. will send out 100K emails to unsuspecting victims, whose emails we scraped off publicly available websites, as long as the message to be sent is in no way fraudulent or contains adult material.
And the "privacy policy" says nothing about getting off a list or stopping the flow of mail.
...at least according to what was in the article. Doesn't look like there's anything else that they can prosecute.
I should be able to rebrand it as "Rotten Cottage Cheese" if I want.
And you can. I am. My server is now powered by "Xena, Warrior Princess". Although if you twist my arm, I'll join the campaign and call it "Rotten Cottage Cheese" instead.
The dividend payout ratio for the S see [1], the rises coincide with recessions as companies try to keep dividend payments steady but profits dip). Also worth noting is that the tendency of US companies to pay high dividends has declined over time (see [2]). The only companies I can find that regularly pay out dividends of more than 50% are slow-growth businesses like electric utilities or car manufacturers, which are known for having high dividend yields. Can you point me to a list of companies with 25% long-term growth rates that pay out 80% dividends? Without running all the numbers, it looks like the DJIA would come out to about a 50% payout on average. Running the Nasdaq 100 would give a COMPLETELY different picture. MSFT is a very different company than Honeywell or General Motors.
- In FY97, MSFT purchased stock in the amount equivalent to a 37% dividend payout. - In FY98 the payout was 21%. - In FY99 the payout was 10%. - In FY00 the payout was 23%. - In FY01 the payout was 79%.
Remember, share repurchases have the same net effect as dividend payouts. Given that MSFT paid (small) dividends in FY97 through FY00, the respective payout numbers are (97-00): 38%, 22, 11, 23.
You talk about sitting on $40B in cash. Don't forget that they have nearly $12B in current liabilities -- these are suppliers and employees that need to be paid!
And why exactly should MSFT be penalized for sitting on cash? Plenty of US companies have lots of cash. They already all pay taxes on the interest they earn from this "unused" cash, as it becomes part of their net profit. You "doubt they can demonstrate its neccessary for operational overheads" [sic], but this is beside the point. In the US, a company can use corporate assets for any legal purpose. If you think that MSFT is doing something illegal with its cash, then say so. Otherwise, don't try to insinuate that the mere possession of capital is illegal or otherwise "wrong".
If you want a piece of that $40B, you might buy some shares of MSFT. Put a proposal stating that they should increase the dividend payout on their proxy form for the next annual meeting. See if the shareholders vote to approve. If they do, you can collect your $0.18 per share per quarter (an estimate of the dividend amount given 40% payout and the most recent share buyback amounts). But if you're investing for dividends, look at REITs -- they have a higher yield and they are tax advantaged.
MSFT does pay a substantial amount of taxes: $1.2B in the quarter ended Mar 02. That works out to a little over $4 for every man, woman and child living in the US (*not* just citizens) -- and that is just in the first three months of this year.
(Note: I am no fan of MSFT, I just dislike seeing "facts" misrepresented.)
A small example of misinformation from this interview:
The fact [MSFT] have been able to avoid paying shareholders dividends has given them huge amounts of cash and power. Typically a corporation pays over 80% of its profit as shareholder dividends in the USA.
This is bulls**t -- first, MSFT has huge amounts of cash because they have very high operating margins and astronomical sales; second, he makes it sound like there is something wrong with avoiding paying out dividends (there isn't). Maybe it is true in the UK, but here in the US, corporations have lately tended to slow down dividend payments as it is more tax efficient to either a) retain the earnings and use the cash to grow the business (MSFT does this) or b) use the cash to buy back stock in the open market. Either option tends to increase the stock price, so investors realize a profit through capital gains, which are given preferred tax treatment versus dividends.
There's more stuff in there that sounds a little fishy; others will probably point them out. Don't forget: just like anyone with an agenda, Cox is going to skew the "facts" to back up his position...
Slashdot Mirror
I had the same reaction. Thought there must be some kind of new way of fiddling with the PROMs...
Now what's this vector-graphics stuff about?
Give me a break.
I haven't worked real manual labor, but I've worked retail. Same thing only not as repetitive and without the exercise.
If you haven't worked "real manual labor", then how do you know that it is the "same thing"? I worked for a construction company for two summers during college. Yes, labor jobs get you outside in the fresh air, they get your body moving, and you maybe get to interact with other people more. But when the fresh air is 90 degrees and 90% humidity and you're doing blacktop, trust me: you'll long for the office job.
The grass is always greener...
Heh. Gotta wonder whether it was one of the keypunchers that made the mistake... I remember having a hard time convincing my mother, who was trained on a typewriter, that "l" (ell) is *much* different that "1" (one) because she was in the habit of hitting (ell) to produce a (one). Older typewriters often didn't even have a (one) key so you had to do this. Of course, she never punched in any of my code for me, but I can see where a rookie keypuncher might make a similar mistake...
the openbsd website has been updated:
One remote hole in the default install, in nearly 6 years!
*sigh*
Fun while it lasted, I guess...
Why would anyone "ask slashdot" such a ridiculous question? You're going to get 14 different responses and all of them will be wrong. Talk to a lawyer -- it won't cost as much as you think it will, and you'll get good advice.
So text like:
would also be considered illegal? (As opposed to linking like this; and, of course, assuming such search terms led to the desired page.)
How about:
One note here, when you add a monitor into the equation, things get a little trickier.
;)
A great source for monitors locally is an off-lease shop that sells off-lease, reconditioned, and just plain used monitors for dirt cheap. A buddy got a 21" there a couple years ago for about 1/3 of what he would have paid retail. Had a half-inch scratch in a corner of the screen that you had to look at the monitor from an angle to see; two years later and it is still working fine.
If you can find one of these shops in your vicinity, I'd recommend checking it out. Just make 'em turn it on for you before you take it home. All sales are final...
So while he may be setting (or have forced upon him) aspects such as deadlines, you need to control scope, methodology and quality.
Good point, but I'd disagree with the piece about quality. This is sometimes so much a technical decision as a business decision, although quite often it is a delicate balance between the two.
I'd actually consider these separate types of bugs. They're both design problems. The first is of the type that can often be remedied by either a) forming your requirements better or b) performing peer design reviews.
The second is what the XP-people would call a "code smell". I've found Fowler's Refactoring book to be quite useful in figuring out ways to fix the design such that the "I made a change in these six places but forgot that one" (and other) bugs go away.
Do these kinds of tools exist, and if so why aren't they more widely used?
Yes, they're called "coverage analyzers" or something similar. A couple of tools that I've used in the past (for c/c++):
These types of tools can also be useful for performance tuning (with gcc, gperf is also handy).
Part of the problem is that many people consider "software" to be one thing. It isn't.
You simply cannot have the expectation that software will *NEVER* crash.
Umm, the aircraft and space industries certainly do.
Yup, you're right. But NASA has the luxury of producing single-purpose software. They don't have to worry about x^y^z possible permutations of hardware/software/enrivonment&configuration. They have a single hardware platform, a single configuration (or maybe a small set of configuration options), and a well-known set of co-existing software.
But IIS (to use the popular example) can be deployed in an endless array of environments (firewall settings, network configuration, WinNT/2k/XP, etc), in various configurations (feature X active, feature Y inactive, etc.), with different third-party software and on wildly varying hardware.
It takes a tremendous amount of effort just to get IIS to *work* in so many environments. To say that IIS and NASA flight control software are both the same kind of animal is ridiculous. Going back to the engineer / bridge-building analogy, it is possible for an engineer to design a bridges for a logging company that needs to cross a bunch of streams in the act of logging part of some forest where there are no existing roads. It is a very different task, and requires different engineering skills, reliability needs, materials, cost parameters, and builders (among other parameters) to build a several-hundred foot interstate highway overpass. And then consider a portable bridge, like the Army or Marine Corps might use in a combat environment. Sure they're all "bridges", but they're entirely different in their construction and conception.
Software has similar comparisons. If I am writing firmware for a microwave and you are writing an web/database application, we're going to be thinking about very different things. I'm going to worry about time constraints, whether the hardware is responding properly, and making sure that the "popcorn" button doesn't try to defrost your chicken; I don't have to be concerned with hackers. You really don't care what kind of hardware you're running on; in fact, you're going to write the code as portably as possible (maybe across database engines, OS's, and/or web servers). Firmware is a different beast from a web application in the same way a portable bridge is different from a highway overpass.
In otherwords if you accepted the job for $40k and they know you are worth $100k, most companies aren't going to walk over and say "you know, you are underpaid, here's $60k a year more." No, they will say "great job, here's a $5k a year raise!
Exactly! There's a range of salaries that you and your employer can agree on. You have a minimum, they have a maximum. If you are worth a 100k salary, then the company's max might be, say 95k. You might be willing to work for as little as 40k. So, if your salary is 40k-95k, both parties are happy! (Of course, the company is "happier" at the lower end, while you're "happier" at the higher end.)
I don't have the patience to play with this silly thing for another 20 minutes to find enough other bugs to round out this list. Needless to say, this isn't really the quality you'd expect from a 1.1-level release.
(Yes, I posted this with 1.1a. After hitting "submit", I will uninstall and go back to nice, reliable IE.)
With a real contract there is a a physical proof (your signature) that you agreed, witnessed and countersigned by a notary and/or the other party of the contract.
95% of the contracts you agree to are verbal and have no signature, witness, or notary associated with them. Think about the fact that every time you buy something at a store, you are creating a contract to exchange money for goods. I'm not sure what else you might mean by a "real" contract.
Remember, an oral contract is valid and enforceable. (It just isn't worth the paper it is written on.)
http://www.mozilla.org/mirrors.html
The UCB course mentioned in the article looks more like it will teach on-line journalism, but they've buzzworded it with 'blogging' as a PR exercise. These guys know PR, you see.
Looks more like they can spot a trend. When real journalists, start blogging (or at least what appears to be similar to blogging, the line keeps getting blurrier), somebody is going to offer a course in how to do it (the technology part, most likely).
Sure, blogging about news does not make one a journalist. But journalists can blog, it ain't that tough to do... although some of them will end up writing columns as opposed to actually blogging. Whatever. It isn't really that important.
But the Punters aren't well informed... so Mom and Pop will buy the kids (who will hack it) a new toy
You are correct here, but the difference is that replay will get whacked on the other end when the backlash comes after people start getting shut off from the service for hacking/accused of copying/etc. "But you signed the contract" is what the customers will hear. And then people will start to realize, "hey, what a crappy service." And Replay's business will tank. (Yeah, yeah, this is all in theory, and pure speculation.)
I have to wonder: would most of the respondents really know the difference between free software and "encumbered" (illegitimate) software?
Essentially, I'm safe if I advertise my services as:
And the "privacy policy" says nothing about getting off a list or stopping the flow of mail.
...at least according to what was in the article. Doesn't look like there's anything else that they can prosecute.
I should be able to rebrand it as "Rotten Cottage Cheese" if I want.
And you can. I am. My server is now powered by "Xena, Warrior Princess". Although if you twist my arm, I'll join the campaign and call it "Rotten Cottage Cheese" instead.
(Note that the first line in the second paragraph should read "S & P 500", not just "S". I thought slash would quote the ampersand for me...)
Ok, let's look at the facts:
The dividend payout ratio for the S see [1], the rises coincide with recessions as companies try to keep dividend payments steady but profits dip). Also worth noting is that the tendency of US companies to pay high dividends has declined over time (see [2]). The only companies I can find that regularly pay out dividends of more than 50% are slow-growth businesses like electric utilities or car manufacturers, which are known for having high dividend yields. Can you point me to a list of companies with 25% long-term growth rates that pay out 80% dividends? Without running all the numbers, it looks like the DJIA would come out to about a 50% payout on average. Running the Nasdaq 100 would give a COMPLETELY different picture. MSFT is a very different company than Honeywell or General Motors.
- In FY97, MSFT purchased stock in the amount equivalent to a 37% dividend payout.
- In FY98 the payout was 21%.
- In FY99 the payout was 10%.
- In FY00 the payout was 23%.
- In FY01 the payout was 79%.
Remember, share repurchases have the same net effect as dividend payouts. Given that MSFT paid (small) dividends in FY97 through FY00, the respective payout numbers are (97-00): 38%, 22, 11, 23.
You talk about sitting on $40B in cash. Don't forget that they have nearly $12B in current liabilities -- these are suppliers and employees that need to be paid!
And why exactly should MSFT be penalized for sitting on cash? Plenty of US companies have lots of cash. They already all pay taxes on the interest they earn from this "unused" cash, as it becomes part of their net profit. You "doubt they can demonstrate its neccessary for operational overheads" [sic], but this is beside the point. In the US, a company can use corporate assets for any legal purpose. If you think that MSFT is doing something illegal with its cash, then say so. Otherwise, don't try to insinuate that the mere possession of capital is illegal or otherwise "wrong".
If you want a piece of that $40B, you might buy some shares of MSFT. Put a proposal stating that they should increase the dividend payout on their proxy form for the next annual meeting. See if the shareholders vote to approve. If they do, you can collect your $0.18 per share per quarter (an estimate of the dividend amount given 40% payout and the most recent share buyback amounts). But if you're investing for dividends, look at REITs -- they have a higher yield and they are tax advantaged.
MSFT does pay a substantial amount of taxes: $1.2B in the quarter ended Mar 02. That works out to a little over $4 for every man, woman and child living in the US (*not* just citizens) -- and that is just in the first three months of this year.
(Note: I am no fan of MSFT, I just dislike seeing "facts" misrepresented.)
[1] http://www.cpcug.org/user/invest/payout.gif, http://www.barra.com/research/fundamentals.asp
[2] http://www.lowrisk.com/dividends.htm
A small example of misinformation from this interview:
The fact [MSFT] have been able to avoid paying shareholders dividends has given them huge amounts of cash and power. Typically a corporation pays over 80% of its profit as shareholder dividends in the USA.
This is bulls**t -- first, MSFT has huge amounts of cash because they have very high operating margins and astronomical sales; second, he makes it sound like there is something wrong with avoiding paying out dividends (there isn't). Maybe it is true in the UK, but here in the US, corporations have lately tended to slow down dividend payments as it is more tax efficient to either a) retain the earnings and use the cash to grow the business (MSFT does this) or b) use the cash to buy back stock in the open market. Either option tends to increase the stock price, so investors realize a profit through capital gains, which are given preferred tax treatment versus dividends.
There's more stuff in there that sounds a little fishy; others will probably point them out. Don't forget: just like anyone with an agenda, Cox is going to skew the "facts" to back up his position...