Yeah and make sure that you ask that those subsidies actually reach the people their supposed to protect (i.e. the farmers) - what good is a subsidy to ADM (formerly 'supermarket to the world')?
Will all those wireless users congregating at one spot lead to interference? The effects of big metal boxes on RF is well known:)
How will it affect bandwidth? Say I got only a 10Mbit pipe how many user will I be able to support if during a snow storm an unusually high number of trucks happen to stop at one place?
I suppose email (just text no 10 meg power point slides) would be reasonable though surfing would be subject to local availability/load.
A lot of posters have made some good points about how the wages are lower etc... I personally think that some of that is a myth - I know that back in the days during the dot-com bust just as people were beginning to get laid off due to economic conditions at my company's US locations, the folks in Bangalore were receiving bonuses on the order of 80%-100% of their wages! And...people were quitting because some of them *only* received a bonus of 75%!
Currency exchange rates are one thing but giving someone a bonus equivalent to his yearly salary is quite another - and these folks that I mention were at comprable rank levels to the people who got laid off in the US!
No I think that management is to blame - some 'guru' comes up and says that layoffs and bangalore are the thing to do and the rest of the pack follows. Who do the laid off people turn to? Eventually its the government's responsibility to intervene and look out for the people. Oh wait not here not ever...*sigh*
as a last defense - I'm a very low user of SMS (1-2 messages per 2-3 months) so I was on a 'per use' basis where I would pay for each outgoing (10 cents) and incoming (2 cents) messages. It wasn't too bad and it was useful as I could use the service when I needed to. I'm not sure how, but in the past two months I've received around 12 spam messages originating from web spammers. This is quite a surprise since I haven't ever given out my number to anyone.
I called the cellphone company each time, the first time they gave me a refund on *one* of the spam messages, the second time they wanted me to sign up for a monthly $4.99 fee to get all those messages for 'free' - I explained my situation but it was all in vain, the droid I got couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to pay only $4.99 a month for messages I did not want - in the end I just cancelled the SMS service because heck I had already wasted 20mins with the cell phone rep and that was the only way I wouldn't be paying for this crap.
I think if the system charged the phone companies for relaying spam across their networks to user the problem would be solved yesterday. So long as people are willing to tolerate this there is no incentive for change. I propose that everyone mention spam to their networks and if possible opt out of the service. That will get some attention (eventually).
I read the article but came out feeling that the spam issue is being discussed only superfically and the real will to truely solve the issue is only half-hearted at best.
"E-mail marketers should be required to describe their products honestly and honor consumer requests to be taken off their contact lists, the commissioners said, while criminal penalties should be explored for those who falsify their return addresses."
I thought false advertising was already disallowed?
"...honor consumer requests to be taken off..." - hey we never signed up for this in the first place! Why is it so damn difficult to decree that the default preference be "opt-in" rather than "opt-out". How many bazillion times has this been brought up already?
"Because many spammers close up shop and hide their assets once they realize they are being targeted, FTC agents should be allowed to investigate them in secret for a limited period of time, commissioners said, or at least delay notification. FTC agents should be able to review spam complaints amassed by Internet providers and given greater latitude to go after spammers who hijack others' accounts, they said.
The new authority to go after spam should be modeled after the laws that give the FTC jurisdiction over telemarketers, the commissioners said."
Investigations/warrants today require a court approval for a reason - mistakes are made and the whole idea of a warrant is to provide a check and balance so that innocent people are not squashed under the bulldozer of expediancy! This has worked for all sorts of crimes where law enforcement needs to be undercover...
"The new authority to go after spam should be modeled after the laws that give the FTC jurisdiction over telemarketers... - And how many here believe that those laws have been so effective that even 10% of the telemarketers have been held at bay?
Sorry, my review is two thumbs down - seems like something else is being sought under the pretext of solving a real problem and that in itself damages the true efforts that are on going to deal with spam.
And...I wonder who gets to look at all my information? Who watches the watchers? (more accurately who catches the watcher) How long before we can expect for the data collected to be used for other unrelated things (such as child support etc mentioned in the prior posting)?
On the other hand, they got my name, address, phone, date of birth - the only piece they need is my social security number and mother's maiden name and they can get a credit card in my name!
I think code reuse is great but just like anything, it should not be used everywhere without understanding the long term side-effects. Where I work, we maintain and enhance 12-15 year old code. Barring a few areas that had to be totally revamped (due to trillions of bugs per line) almost all of the existing code architecture/structure has been maintained since the first time the software became "stable" - approx. 11-12 years ago.
This has led to many issues that one would not expect to see in today's software development environment:
Fancy gymnastics to "workaround" legacy code:
Much of the legacy code incorporated functionality that came along later (eg mutexes and semaphore locking/unlocking) but the original design was so intrusive to the rest of the code that now its impossible to work without pacifying code that doesn't do much than burn CPU cycles.
Excessively hard to incorporate newer libraries:
The original designers worked with one set of rigid OO concepts (e.g., "all multiple-inheritance is evil so it must be eliminated and code added to make it impossible forever") - this makes it inordinately hard to coax code into the legacy design - most often the "I'll take the OO idea" wins over "this code would work with some work" simply because by the time all the mods are factored in, it is better to just re-write the stuff to accomodate the legacy base.
Damper on Creativity?
There are some problems that are just best suited to custom solutions. In my experience, for work that has strict performance constraints, the custom solution often works the best - IMHO, researching existing algorithms is fine, using them as "the" solution is not. That is not to say that research should be totally ignored - often a good extension can be developed from reading someone else's experience, eventually one can create something new by oneself. But that process does not happen if one simply accepts the existing models/code as the be all end all.
Firstly, since I work for a large multinational company my experience may only be typical of that category but I think the lessons may hold value elsewhere too.
Your question hit home since I'm on a project that was initially supposed to be done "in house" - now we have atleast 5 different 3rd party vendors and our job is more like being an "integrator" for all of them. We tried very hard to show that our solution was viable and that we could do it but in the end we lost. The lessons learnt are as follows:
Management does whatever they want:
My personal experience has shown that management doesn't place much faith in the technical staff. There is no rational, no logical reason for this behavior but they are only convinced by people they have known for a long time or come to them via some higher authority (e.g., super-star consultants who a technically astute person may recognize as no more than paper-tigers).
This is more likely to happen if the upper management folks are new, don't know the technical staff and are easily taken in by hype or are plain narcissitic.
I don't discount that there may be management folks who are not like that, there are good companies who may listen to their technical staff but they're far and increasingly fewer today.
Another problem is that many management folk are like sheep/copy-cats - "hey! database XYZ worked great for that company, I gotta get me some of that...". The current mantra seems to be of reducing costs by outsourcing and reducing the true artistic/design level work to a minimum while "cheaply" getting results.
Technical Expertise/Opinions come always yield to Project Management:
No matter how straight forward the design is, project manglement always gets the last say - I have $X and need this done - I can get it for $X/2 from this third party (never mind that it perhaps only gets you to 50% of the requirements).
Model for the future?
Sad conclusion is that this is not bound to end here. The only recourse is that one joins the rank of one of the companies that actually do the work...until they grow and can outsource. Sometimes I code just because I want to build something for myself. The job...is just a job. The age of doing creative things at work is fast fading into memory. On the bright side, I have also encountered that short term expidency with this out-sourcing fever always loses in the long run. The solution to surviving in with irrational management? That I'm still working on:)
- Producing good quality material takes time and patience.
- People have always cranked out "information' that really isn't. The forms may have become different (e.g. powerpoint slides with spiffy animations) but the real substance is more often lost.
+ Couple this with an uncontrolled profit motives and the situation is even more appalling (as an example, just recall how many "technical" presentations are just sales pitches in disguise).
- The abuse is much more rampant today as the good stuff is increasingly drowned out by the ever rising noise level.
Slashdot Mirror
How many miles would that be for a single trip? Will it allow me to get one more free?
Yeah and make sure that you ask that those subsidies actually reach the people their supposed to protect (i.e. the farmers) - what good is a subsidy to ADM (formerly 'supermarket to the world')?
Will all those wireless users congregating at one spot lead to interference? The effects of big metal boxes on RF is well known :)
How will it affect bandwidth? Say I got only a 10Mbit pipe how many user will I be able to support if during a snow storm an unusually high number of trucks happen to stop at one place?
I suppose email (just text no 10 meg power point slides) would be reasonable though surfing would be subject to local availability/load.
A lot of posters have made some good points about how the wages are lower etc... I personally think that some of that is a myth - I know that back in the days during the dot-com bust just as people were beginning to get laid off due to economic conditions at my company's US locations, the folks in Bangalore were receiving bonuses on the order of 80%-100% of their wages! And...people were quitting because some of them *only* received a bonus of 75%!
Currency exchange rates are one thing but giving someone a bonus equivalent to his yearly salary is quite another - and these folks that I mention were at comprable rank levels to the people who got laid off in the US!
No I think that management is to blame - some 'guru' comes up and says that layoffs and bangalore are the thing to do and the rest of the pack follows. Who do the laid off people turn to? Eventually its the government's responsibility to intervene and look out for the people. Oh wait not here not ever...*sigh*
as a last defense - I'm a very low user of SMS (1-2 messages per 2-3 months) so I was on a 'per use' basis where I would pay for each outgoing (10 cents) and incoming (2 cents) messages. It wasn't too bad and it was useful as I could use the service when I needed to. I'm not sure how, but in the past two months I've received around 12 spam messages originating from web spammers. This is quite a surprise since I haven't ever given out my number to anyone.
I called the cellphone company each time, the first time they gave me a refund on *one* of the spam messages, the second time they wanted me to sign up for a monthly $4.99 fee to get all those messages for 'free' - I explained my situation but it was all in vain, the droid I got couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to pay only $4.99 a month for messages I did not want - in the end I just cancelled the SMS service because heck I had already wasted 20mins with the cell phone rep and that was the only way I wouldn't be paying for this crap.
I think if the system charged the phone companies for relaying spam across their networks to user the problem would be solved yesterday. So long as people are willing to tolerate this there is no incentive for change. I propose that everyone mention spam to their networks and if possible opt out of the service. That will get some attention (eventually).
I read the article but came out feeling that the spam issue is being discussed only superfically and the real will to truely solve the issue is only half-hearted at best.
- Investigations/warrants today require a court approval for a reason - mistakes are made and the whole idea of a warrant is to provide a check and balance so that innocent people are not squashed under the bulldozer of expediancy! This has worked for all sorts of crimes where law enforcement needs to be undercover...
- "The new authority to go after spam should be modeled after the laws that give the FTC jurisdiction over telemarketers... - And how many here believe that those laws have been so effective that even 10% of the telemarketers have been held at bay?
Sorry, my review is two thumbs down - seems like something else is being sought under the pretext of solving a real problem and that in itself damages the true efforts that are on going to deal with spam.And...I wonder who gets to look at all my information? Who watches the watchers? (more accurately who catches the watcher) How long before we can expect for the data collected to be used for other unrelated things (such as child support etc mentioned in the prior posting)?
On the other hand, they got my name, address, phone, date of birth - the only piece they need is my social security number and mother's maiden name and they can get a credit card in my name!
yikes!
I think code reuse is great but just like anything, it should not be used everywhere without understanding the long term side-effects. Where I work, we maintain and enhance 12-15 year old code. Barring a few areas that had to be totally revamped (due to trillions of bugs per line) almost all of the existing code architecture/structure has been maintained since the first time the software became "stable" - approx. 11-12 years ago.
This has led to many issues that one would not expect to see in today's software development environment:
Much of the legacy code incorporated functionality that came along later (eg mutexes and semaphore locking/unlocking) but the original design was so intrusive to the rest of the code that now its impossible to work without pacifying code that doesn't do much than burn CPU cycles.
The original designers worked with one set of rigid OO concepts (e.g., "all multiple-inheritance is evil so it must be eliminated and code added to make it impossible forever") - this makes it inordinately hard to coax code into the legacy design - most often the "I'll take the OO idea" wins over "this code would work with some work" simply because by the time all the mods are factored in, it is better to just re-write the stuff to accomodate the legacy base.
There are some problems that are just best suited to custom solutions. In my experience, for work that has strict performance constraints, the custom solution often works the best - IMHO, researching existing algorithms is fine, using them as "the" solution is not. That is not to say that research should be totally ignored - often a good extension can be developed from reading someone else's experience, eventually one can create something new by oneself. But that process does not happen if one simply accepts the existing models/code as the be all end all.
Firstly, since I work for a large multinational company my experience may only be typical of that category but I think the lessons may hold value elsewhere too. Your question hit home since I'm on a project that was initially supposed to be done "in house" - now we have atleast 5 different 3rd party vendors and our job is more like being an "integrator" for all of them. We tried very hard to show that our solution was viable and that we could do it but in the end we lost. The lessons learnt are as follows:
My personal experience has shown that management doesn't place much faith in the technical staff. There is no rational, no logical reason for this behavior but they are only convinced by people they have known for a long time or come to them via some higher authority (e.g., super-star consultants who a technically astute person may recognize as no more than paper-tigers). This is more likely to happen if the upper management folks are new, don't know the technical staff and are easily taken in by hype or are plain narcissitic.
I don't discount that there may be management folks who are not like that, there are good companies who may listen to their technical staff but they're far and increasingly fewer today.
Another problem is that many management folk are like sheep/copy-cats - "hey! database XYZ worked great for that company, I gotta get me some of that...". The current mantra seems to be of reducing costs by outsourcing and reducing the true artistic/design level work to a minimum while "cheaply" getting results.
No matter how straight forward the design is, project manglement always gets the last say - I have $X and need this done - I can get it for $X/2 from this third party (never mind that it perhaps only gets you to 50% of the requirements).
Sad conclusion is that this is not bound to end here. The only recourse is that one joins the rank of one of the companies that actually do the work...until they grow and can outsource. Sometimes I code just because I want to build something for myself. The job...is just a job. The age of doing creative things at work is fast fading into memory. On the bright side, I have also encountered that short term expidency with this out-sourcing fever always loses in the long run. The solution to surviving in with irrational management? That I'm still working on :)
Simply put:
:)
- Producing good quality material takes time and patience.
- People have always cranked out "information' that really isn't. The forms may have become different (e.g. powerpoint slides with spiffy animations) but the real substance is more often lost.
+ Couple this with an uncontrolled profit motives and the situation is even more appalling (as an example, just recall how many "technical" presentations are just sales pitches in disguise).
- The abuse is much more rampant today as the good stuff is increasingly drowned out by the ever rising noise level.
enough said
what would we have to do, both in our software and in our operating systems, to make this come to pass?
Reboot one more time for the change(s) to take effect?Now if they only waited till July 4th and had ;)
a fireworks display that could put Macy's parade
to shame
(i bet there would be some companies out there
who would love to sponsor this display..hehe)