From another point of view, the "hard" information is mostly just reboiled from the Cq. The "soft" information is the "value add" that the author provided.
If all you really want is the technical information, you can get all of this from online sources (and print it if you want a hardcopy). The thing that made me buy the book were the chapters on the philosophy of open source project management.
Excuse me? VSS *sucks*. Ok, it might be reasonable for one, *maybe* two people absolute max. We're (trying to) use it for ~30 people and it is awful...
CVS, OTOH, is a wonderful tool. I haven't had to use it in a group of more than a half-dozen developers, but it holds up well, provides a better security model, and is truly cross-platform (the win32 clients work quite well). And I must say that this book has been a valuable reference. If you have to admin CVS, definitely get it. If you are just using CVS, get one or two copies for the group to share.
Where are closures? If you wonder why I mention them, then you have never tried functional programming techniques.
While I agree that python does not have *all* the power of perl, note that python does provide lambda expressions (limited to an expression, so it's less powerful than a fully generalized mechanism).
CGI isn't really that much different than another project, IMO. You've got to look at a number of factors: 1. portability 2. experience of your developers with the language 3. language strengths/weaknesses for a particular task I'm sure there's others...
I'm a big fan of perl, but I guess that is mostly because of #2...
If you are comfortable with running your own operation, you could have a contract manufacturer build the product and then sell them yourself. You'll retain more profit that way.
To speak to the pricing question you pose, there is a marketing technique known as (I hope I get this right, it's been a few years since my college MKTG class...) "price skimming". Basically the idea is that, with any new technology, there is a small portion of the market that is willing to pay a very high price for the device. As the product matures, the price moves downward. This is because a) it becomes easier/cheaper to produce the product; b) more competition enters the market, driving the price downward; c) the manufacturer has recovered r&d costs and other minor factors.
The risk is, of course, that the product introduction fails for any number of reasons, and you are never able to recover your r&d costs. In this case, though, it sounds like you've already done most of the r&d and you're willing to eat those costs... so you just need to cover the unit costs, which gives you quite a bit of pricing advantage.
Now, what about... your ISP selling your browsing habits?
If you don't know what Signal11 is talking about, take a look at the contract you signed when you signed up for service. I don't know what % of ISPs do it, but MediaOne/RR explicitly states in their service contract "we will monitor and sell info on your browsing habits" [paraphrased]. If you want the service, you've got to agree to it... and since I can't get DSL, there's no competition. (Dialup is out of the question -- I've been spoiled;)
Speaking strictly from personal memories (feel free to refute this), being the quintessential geek and having the associated pariah status always led to self-deprecating feelings. I never wanted to hurt anyone else, though they certainly wanted to hurt me.
Yup, that's how it always was while I was in school. At least, until I gave up on the "cool crowd" and started hanging out with the geeks. What a great bunch of people. I've found that, as a hard-core geek, I (not even consciously) gravitate towards others who don't quite fit in with the mainstream. And I'm very happy this way!
-You'll get to stack your resume with lots of company names: I've personally worked with State of Michigan, Ford, Chrysler, American Express, IBM, Motorola, Dept. of Defense, and Avnet.
Of course, if you have 50 companies on your resume, and you've never worked for one place for more than a year, you're much more likely to get passed over for FT employment should you ever decide you want to stop contracting...
-You'll get to pick and choose the projects you want to work on.
I work FT for my current company, and I pick and choose my projects for the most part. And if I get stuck on some crappy, death-march project, I can always quit...
-You won't have to pretend that the old social contract is still in force, and consequently you won't be surprised when your permanent employer decides to fire you at age 53, rather than let you retire and have to pay you a pension.
I don't know anyone that still belives this farce (at least nobody in high-tech).
I wouldn't say that FTE is better than working for a "body shop" or vice verse. It all depends on your situation at the time.
Bezos makes some very important points. They are simply using the current system to protect their business. They will not necessarily enforce the patent rigidly; it will often be too expensive. Save the flames -- I realize that this is not the point. The point is that patent law needs to be overhauled.
The point that Bezos makes that I do disagree with is that the Patent Office is doing ok with the regulations and the resources that they have. Even given that they don't have much, they seem to be doing a pretty poor job, IMHO.
Clearly if a network application sucks up too much bandwidth, any net admin is going to freak out.
But banning it because people do illegal things with it? Give me a break. Take a look at your local "decency laws". There's a 50-50 chance that netscape/ie are used for "illegal activities" on any given day. Not to mention copying pirated software...
As was pointed out in an earlier post, ORA is not publicly traded. So this is slightly off-topic...
For many large, publicly-traded companies, the majority of shareholders are large institutions (e.g. mutual funds, pension funds, etc). If you want to get something voted on at a shareholder meeting, convince the biggest institutions and you're more likely to win. This means you only have to convince a few people of "the right thing".
3M, for example, is 70% owned by institutions. State Street & Merrill Lynch own pretty big chunks of that. See Yahoo to see what I mean.
In several respects, what you suggest is not as mature as software, but this has started. I'm sorry I don't have better URLs, but take a look at Cornell's Law site: Copyrights Patents
If you look around, there is quite a bit of information available on this stuff. Some of it isn't even too difficult for lay-persons to understand. (Of course, some of the mumbo-jumbo is the equivalent of trying to read poorly-written kernel code...)
Keep Netscape/Unix From Crashing Like the Overextended Hack Job Piece Of Crap Code It Is - HOWTO
How about giving me a browser that just does browsing? I know it's a novel concept, but why should my WEB BROWSER do Usenet and email? That's why I have slrn and mutt... I know, I know: "use lynx". But the formatting and graphics are tough to do in a tty...
The stock market does not determine when a recession begins or ends. A recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the economy. (Measured by GDP, not the DOW, NASDAQ or any other stock index.) So the point you are trying to make is correct. The growth in our economy is slowing (decelerating), but has not reversed to become negative.
Come on, guy. It's not that hard to compile a console-style win32 binary.
It is somewhat more difficult when you don't have access to a win32 machine. If it is so easy, why don't you provide us with these binaries? I agree with your line of reasoning, but I think a little help rather than whining would help the cause a lot more...
Slashdot Mirror
If all you really want is the technical information, you can get all of this from online sources (and print it if you want a hardcopy). The thing that made me buy the book were the chapters on the philosophy of open source project management.
Excuse me? VSS *sucks*. Ok, it might be reasonable for one, *maybe* two people absolute max. We're (trying to) use it for ~30 people and it is awful...
CVS, OTOH, is a wonderful tool. I haven't had to use it in a group of more than a half-dozen developers, but it holds up well, provides a better security model, and is truly cross-platform (the win32 clients work quite well). And I must say that this book has been a valuable reference. If you have to admin CVS, definitely get it. If you are just using CVS, get one or two copies for the group to share.
While I agree that python does not have *all* the power of perl, note that python does provide lambda expressions (limited to an expression, so it's less powerful than a fully generalized mechanism).
1. portability
2. experience of your developers with the language
3. language strengths/weaknesses for a particular task
I'm sure there's others...
I'm a big fan of perl, but I guess that is mostly because of #2...
To speak to the pricing question you pose, there is a marketing technique known as (I hope I get this right, it's been a few years since my college MKTG class...) "price skimming". Basically the idea is that, with any new technology, there is a small portion of the market that is willing to pay a very high price for the device. As the product matures, the price moves downward. This is because a) it becomes easier/cheaper to produce the product; b) more competition enters the market, driving the price downward; c) the manufacturer has recovered r&d costs and other minor factors.
The risk is, of course, that the product introduction fails for any number of reasons, and you are never able to recover your r&d costs. In this case, though, it sounds like you've already done most of the r&d and you're willing to eat those costs... so you just need to cover the unit costs, which gives you quite a bit of pricing advantage.
If you don't know what Signal11 is talking about, take a look at the contract you signed when you signed up for service. I don't know what % of ISPs do it, but MediaOne/RR explicitly states in their service contract "we will monitor and sell info on your browsing habits" [paraphrased]. If you want the service, you've got to agree to it... and since I can't get DSL, there's no competition. (Dialup is out of the question -- I've been spoiled ;)
Until you go to [insert "evil" site here] and they associate your serial# with your sitelogin/realname/whateveridentifyinginfoyouwantt otalkabout.
Yup, that's how it always was while I was in school. At least, until I gave up on the "cool crowd" and started hanging out with the geeks. What a great bunch of people. I've found that, as a hard-core geek, I (not even consciously) gravitate towards others who don't quite fit in with the mainstream. And I'm very happy this way!
I call myself a "hacker" when I'm going golfing.
I call myself an "engineer" when I'm working (i.e. writing software). Engineers write code, programmers blow PALs... ;)
(Yes, I guess you could call this a troll. Deal with it.)
Of course, if you have 50 companies on your resume, and you've never worked for one place for more than a year, you're much more likely to get passed over for FT employment should you ever decide you want to stop contracting...
-You'll get to pick and choose the projects you want to work on.
I work FT for my current company, and I pick and choose my projects for the most part. And if I get stuck on some crappy, death-march project, I can always quit...
-You won't have to pretend that the old social contract is still in force, and consequently you won't be surprised when your permanent employer decides to fire you at age 53, rather than let you retire and have to pay you a pension.
I don't know anyone that still belives this farce (at least nobody in high-tech).
I wouldn't say that FTE is better than working for a "body shop" or vice verse. It all depends on your situation at the time.
The point that Bezos makes that I do disagree with is that the Patent Office is doing ok with the regulations and the resources that they have. Even given that they don't have much, they seem to be doing a pretty poor job, IMHO.
But banning it because people do illegal things with it? Give me a break. Take a look at your local "decency laws". There's a 50-50 chance that netscape/ie are used for "illegal activities" on any given day. Not to mention copying pirated software...
For many large, publicly-traded companies, the majority of shareholders are large institutions (e.g. mutual funds, pension funds, etc). If you want to get something voted on at a shareholder meeting, convince the biggest institutions and you're more likely to win. This means you only have to convince a few people of "the right thing".
3M, for example, is 70% owned by institutions. State Street & Merrill Lynch own pretty big chunks of that. See Yahoo to see what I mean.
Around here, the only way to get the engineers to go to a meeting is to have free lunch...
Copyrights
Patents
If you look around, there is quite a bit of information available on this stuff. Some of it isn't even too difficult for lay-persons to understand. (Of course, some of the mumbo-jumbo is the equivalent of trying to read poorly-written kernel code...)
How about giving me a browser that just does browsing? I know it's a novel concept, but why should my WEB BROWSER do Usenet and email? That's why I have slrn and mutt... I know, I know: "use lynx". But the formatting and graphics are tough to do in a tty...
The stock market does not determine when a recession begins or ends. A recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the economy. (Measured by GDP, not the DOW, NASDAQ or any other stock index.) So the point you are trying to make is correct. The growth in our economy is slowing (decelerating), but has not reversed to become negative.
-bluebomber
It is somewhat more difficult when you don't have access to a win32 machine. If it is so easy, why don't you provide us with these binaries? I agree with your line of reasoning, but I think a little help rather than whining would help the cause a lot more...
-bluebomber
Or we could just put Justices in the courts that will throw out those "certain types of laws...that stomp on our constitution"...
-bluebomber