I am somewhat surprised that what MIT needed did not already exist as commercial off the shelf code. Their requirements are hardly very unusual, in fact since the content is not going to change much once it is put up there is not a great deal of difference between this site and any other web zine.
Being a senior IT guy at the University of Michigan, being an Ars Digita alumni, and knowing intimately how Universities work, I can answer this question:
Academic institutions LOVE to think that they are somehow different, special, gifted, unique, and dare I say it - divine.
We like to think that no one else can know our problems and only we can solve them, and refuse to acknowledge that there are only so many different solutions to the same problem. Academic computing boils down to these areas:
1) Registration/ student records management 2) HR/Payroll management 3) Content/presence management for publicity 4) Online learning systems 5) Security/signon infrastructure 5) Coordination of back office components between the other five
You can argue that there is a need for one more area:
6) Research computing
but that normally is a separate group from ACADEMICS.
I am constantly amazed at how much universities spend on their systems, and how much customization they do - to the tune of MILLIONS of dollars a year. And then, on top of that, when one department decides to go another route, THEY spend alot of money, and then the institution has to eventually roll that structure back into the overall schema, costing even MORE money.
The bottom line is that university IT systems need to be run more and more like corporate IT, and the same amount of planning, forethought, and most of all INTELLIGENCE needs to be applied.
Has anyone else found the barrier to project management is their technical knowledge?
I might counter that you have this backwards. As a long-time project manager with a technical background, my feeling is that the barrier to technical knowledge is project management.:-) I really WANT to code or design, but status meetings and budget reviews keep getting in the way. Sigh.
In all seriousness, though, work with your current project manager. If they are not technical, then they are glossing over things because they don't understand the importance. Testing is a wee bit critical, and unless they are pulling delivery dates completely out of their backsides with no input from you it is partially your fault for the schedules being pushed so hard. Your job is, quite frankly, to manage your project manager. "Manage up". Tell him/her how things are going, exactly, and make delivery scedules completely clear. DO NOT HIDE ANYTHING! The secret to a good relationship with a project manager is information flow. The more s/he knows about exactly what is going on, the more likely you are to be in agreement with schedules. Your PM is getting pressure from upper management to delivery products on time and under budget, and unless s/he knows about schedule slips way ahead of time, or problems with the design, etc, the less time s/he will have to prepare the executives for a change. You are not working in a vaccuum! Your PM is your best (and often ONLY) advocate to the executives, and you need to make them work for you. Believe it or not, I prefer it when I know all the good AND bad things going on so I can protect my team from unreasonable pressure from above and get them the resources they need to finish the work. If I don't know, I can't prepare the groundwork.
If you want to move into project management, take on more and more of the role yourself. Gather status reports ahead of time and consolidate them into a summary for your PM. Ask to assist in budget preparations or schedule creation. Make it clear that you are there to help, not to hinder, and make it clear that you want to move into that role. Show the merit of a technical person acting in a PM capacity.
Good luck. And think seriously about it - if you love technical work, you might want to consider staying there, as PM work is NOT technical and you might feel that you have made a big mistake at some point.
Microsoft is a corporation, bound to it's shareholders, and is chartered to make a profit. In order to adopt an open source mentality, it would need to be demonstrated that open source is as profitable as closed-source projects. And, in the many years of the open source movement, I have not seen many open source projects that are highly profitable. So, therefore, I don't think that there is an argument that would convince microsoft to change their approach, other than federal injunction.
A large part of this was due to Lucas' condition that if a theater shows AOTC, that it show for a minimum of four weeks. Smaller theaters with only a few screens can't support this kind of commitment during the summer movie season. So, since Spider-Man had no such condition, it opened (and stayed) on more screens.
If you are ever at a LAN party on a sinking ship, you are in good shape with this mod!:-) Of course, you would have to coat your mouse as well, which could make it a little hard to use.
No, guns are designed to shoot little lead pellets a long way really, really fast. How is killing people involved in this equation? What about killing deer? Gophers? Cows? Watermelons?
What you CHOOSE to do with a gun is up to you. In fact, in the owners manual, most handguns state that you specifically SHOULDN'T shoot people with it.
I use them to shoot at targets at the pistol range. For me, gun control means not missing your target.
This sounds an awful lot like the arguements against gun companies. Essentially, gun companies don't kill people, they just make guns. Ammo companies don't kill people, they just make bullets.
KaZaa doesn't trade copywritten material, they just make software.
Funny thing is, though, that I see the truth in all these arguements. PEOPLE pull the trigger, PEOPLE swap illegal files.
Since I can use a garden hoe to hack my neighbor to bits, should the hoe company be help liable?
Greylock was the VC firm behind both RedHat and Ars Digita. RedHat's 'purchase' of Ars Digita allows Greylock to bury the aD losses in the RH books, as well as give a glimmer of hope to the ACS product making the light of day again.
About the Ars Digita staff going to RedHat - the total number appears to be about 10 to 15 people, so it's hardly the flood of engineers. RedHat got ACS for a song. And to think that two years ago when aD approached RedHat about putting ACS into the standard distro, they laughed in our faces.
Paintball today is all about how much ammo you can get downrange, not about skill, stealth or cunning. I know I'll sound like an oldtimer here, but when *I* played the game in the early 80's, we had Nelspot 007's, little hand held pistols. You carried three 10-round tubes onto the field and a couple of extra C02 cartridges. One cartridge would shoot about 15 rounds. At then end of the day, we would often have rounds left over. The game was about sneaking around, tactics, and the occasional firefight with a completely manual pistol that was innacurate as hell and had to be cocked by hand. EACH SHOT HAD TO COUNT.
We also used oil based paint, since that's all that was available in those days. A hit on the skin was a mark for a couple of weeks. Right about 1984 was when the water-based stuff hit the market.
Paintball ATV's like this are a continuing sign that the game is all about rounds per minute now.
-sigh-
Oh, and we had to walk five miles through the snow to get to a paintball game. Uphill. Both ways.
If I was ever actually drafted to fight in a war, I know the DOD would rather have a talented computer programmer than another warm body in the front lines. Besides, it takes 3 years to train a soldier to do his (or her) job well.
Ummm, yeah. Right.
Be careful, here. US Marine Corps Boot Camp is 13 weeks, plus anoth 12 weeks of advanced infantry training. That's just over six months, start to finish. Training HVPI's (High Velocity Projective Interceptors) doesn't take three years at all. How is that possible, when the Army has a two-year contract for an Infantry position?
And, as a former Marine, I would state that any "talented computer hacker" who knows nothing about the actual operations of the military would be better off catching bullets than writing bugs.
When things like this happen, TV, much more than the Net or the Web, reveals whether leaders rise or fall to the occasion. Mayor Guiliani of New York clearly rose to the tragedy. President Bush, sticking to his cautious sing-song monotone, fled to various bunkers and seemed to shrink throughout the day. Guiliani got bigger by the hour. Defying advice that he hide out until the shooting stopped, he rushed to the scene, was nearly killed, calmed the city down and took charge of the clean-up and rescue. Bush got on his best suit and stuck to the prompter. At least that was the image that TV brought of us of these two very different leaders.
Oh, come one. If the Mayor of New York is killed in a secondary attack, the country is still stable. Yes, he is the mayor of the largest city in the country, but his death would have had nearly no effect on our country. He would have been a statistic.
If the president is killed, then it's a whole other story. Sequestering him away from the public eye for about 5 hours while we determined if the attacks were even over was prudent and handled perfectly.
Grow up.
"George hid" is all you can say? Our country performed nearly flawlessly in how we initially reacted to the attacks. That's why the death toll is 10% of what I originally feared. Every death is a tragedy, yes, but imagine the numbers if we had dragged our feet at all.
"I am ok with giving up a little bit of my privacy."
Oh. My. God.
This is where it starts. You give up a little, and then you give up a little bit more, and then more, and next thing you know you are being broadcast on "reality tv" while you rub one out in front of your computer.
Giving up a little bit of freedom/privacy is the first step towards giving up all your freedom/privacy.
The writing on the Infinite Matrix site is - well, ummm, without trying to be flamebait - shit.
I tried. I really did. I *tried* to like it. I randomly selected a story from the archives - Mouse Lights, by Richard Kadrey. Three paragraphs of crap. What's the point? Some kid lives in a post-apocolyptic future and has christmas lights. He dies, end of story. Whoop. De. Doo.
And Sterling's "my favorite things" list is just that. A list of links. No original thought.
I am a long-time fan of Science Fiction, I read lots of it. But I am selective in what I read. The web has once again proven that the barriers of entry are so low that anything/anyone can be "published" online. Hey, since I posted to/., does that mean that *I* have gotten published? Time to brush up my resume!
If this is the last issue online, then it's not a huge loss. If it *isn't* the last issue, pray for some enlightenment. I'm not even talking about lasers and aliens or any of that - just progressive fiction that says something. Don't give me writing that describes worlds, give me writing about characters, dammit!
Throw enough resources and money at the problem and the trip is engineering child's play. The martian gravity well is nowhere near the problem the earth's is. The trip could even be staged with fuel sent ahead by slower orbits while the crew waited for more optimal transfer possibilities and for the fuel and gear to arrive ahead of them.
If it was childs play, what happened to the last three martian probes? (yes, I know what HAPPENED, my point is that it happened at all...) Sending fuel and food ahead in a slower orbit is only usefull if it actually GETS there. And I seriously doubt our ability to get it there with enough reliability to stake a mission on it.
Then again, missions without risk gain us nothing. So, if you can find folks willing to starve to death on mars, I say go for it.
With budgets being slashed and Nasa having trouble getting robots to land, what does everyone think the reality of a manned mission in our lifetime is?
So, then WHERE is the electricity GENERATED? Does your wall plug just magically create the juice to go into your car?
Come on - all you are doing is moving the problem somewhere else. Some coal/natural gas burning facility somewhere has to burn more coal and create more emissions there to keep your car running.
<troll>But, since people with this attitude seem to forget about these things, you just keep hugging those trees and talking bad about the auto companies, OK?</troll>
Same thing happened when Ford spun off Visteon, and didn't check first to see if the name was taken. The little guy (a consulting firm in Florida, I believe) had to take it in the shorts.
Same thing with X-Box. Don't these people know how to use Google?
(FP, btw!)
If I wanted employment references, I never would have posted that. I really believe that the true answer to aD's woes is somewhere in the middle:
Rather than try to have a utopia for programmers at the cost of core business ideals, try to work the general good things of traditional business while allowing employees the freedom to do their best work. Ultimately, the paychecks are signed by the VC's money and any profits that aD can bring in. VC's don't throw money at companies for love, they want a fat return. Philips spending habits were going to squeeze the teet dry too fast for their taste.
- Hans
Well, I'll tell you what - I am a former aD employee, and I'm coming out of the closet. I am NOT any of the AC's above, but I can say this as fact:
Philip was an asshole to me every single time I spoke to him. And I was fairly high up in the food chain, as a level 3 engineer (there were four levels, and Eve/Jin/Tracy/a couple of others were L4's). I was also a Technical Sales Manager - the first engineer brought into the sales group to try to coordinate the process of bringing in new business and keeping the out of control developers (led by Philip) at bay while we tried to sort out what was going on.
My second day at the company, I met Philip for the first time. I was really looking forward to it. The conversation went something like this:
Philip: Who are you?
Me: My name's Hans, I just started. I wanted to say that...
Philip: Are you a programmer or a system administrator?
Me: I do both, but I prefer...
Philip: You are wearing a cell phone on your belt. You're a sysadmin.
Me: Well, not really. I...
Philip: Do you use emacs of vi?
Me (proudly): vi (it *is* the better editor)
Philip: You're a sysadmin. You just don't know it.
Me: Well, anyway, I wanted to say that I really enjoyed your book and I am looking forward to working here.
Philip:
Well, it really didn't matter WHAT Philip said, since he had already dismissed me and walked away.
At least Alex hung around and got a tummy rub.
Over the next few months, I attempted to build up an office in the midwest (Ann Arbor). I also worked to get new business and add a technical perspective to the sales efforts and keep promises to clients in line. Every time I came back to Cambridge, I either was pummeled by Philiip who couldn't give me the time of day but reveled in being insulting, or heard tails from the aD staff about his latest loose-cannon move.
Philip was OUT OF CONTROL. Spending money like water, planning koi ponds, and having doorways enlarged to allow his ego to pass through. The company was headed towards bankruptcy if his spending continued at the helm. Allen and his pack decided that it was time to curb those expenses. For god's sake, there were 40 $3000 flat panels, aeron chairs and workstations sitting in a nearly empty office in Atlanta (for example) that a) didn't have developers to work them and b) didn't have the client base to support hiring the developers to work them. There is one basic premise of business that, from my perspective, Philip decided to ignore. You have to earn more than you spend.
I finally decided to leave when Allen and Ern (rightfully, in hindsight) decided to close the Ann Arbor office that I was tasked to open, staff, and build up. I returned to a research position at the University of Michigan, where I am today. I was given the option to continue with Ars Digita in my current role, but with a new baby I didn't want to travel that much, so I declined.
I was constantly aghast at the over-the-top spending that aD did. The modest Ann Arbor office (which never had a chance to get established) worked with $20 chairs from office max, used 17" monitors and $5 steelcase desks from the University of Michigan property disposition. And you know what? We could have gotten as much work done as if we had the expensive stuff. My thinking was that we would push for this if we ever made a profit for the company, not before.
That ideal wasn't perpetuated by Philip, who was going around the world talking at conferences and opening offices. I *think* the last straw was when he sent an email to the company talking about how great Australia was, and that we were opening an office in Sydney. It was total anarchy, and Philip was simply out of control.
The board and VC's did the right thing to cut him out of a management position. They also did the right thing to try to keep his... umm... "charisma" in a public facing position - let's be honest, much of the public opinion of arsDigita comes from Philips 18 charisma. But Sun Tzu had it right in the art of war: Leave an enemy behind, and he will rise to strike you from behind...
READ: The anti-trust case has been in the works for about 1.5 years, and I GUARANTEE you that Micro$oft knew about it a year before that.
I believe you when I say that it's about selling product - even Billy would be stupid to not try to tap the Linux marketplace, but if you ARE really working on the project, Anonymous Coward, then your attitude most likely reflects an accurate portrait about how Micro$oft views that "opensource crap".
I don't think this is a hoax...
One of the proposed solutions is that the OS and Applications division are split into different companies. When that happens, Micro$oft will legally not be able to use proprietary (ie - undocumented) API points to get their applications to work better than the competition. So, by porting Office NOW, they can leverage the NT/2000 source and port the Office Suite legally, without conflict of interest. This would be MUCH easier than trying to do it AFTER a split, where separate companies could be sued for anti-trust (again) by sharing proprietary information that would violate the most likely outcome of the current trial.
So, instead of a hoax, I think that it might be a recognition by Micro$oft that they need to get with the program, and take every advantage they can NOW to maintain market share of the office suite marketplace.
Or, it could be a hoax.
- Hans
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, contrair... Spent 12 years there. Comparatively, there is alot more planning for the bottom line than in Academia.
I am somewhat surprised that what MIT needed did not already exist as commercial off the shelf code. Their requirements are hardly very unusual, in fact since the content is not going to change much once it is put up there is not a great deal of difference between this site and any other web zine.
Being a senior IT guy at the University of Michigan, being an Ars Digita alumni, and knowing intimately how Universities work, I can answer this question:
Academic institutions LOVE to think that they are somehow different, special, gifted, unique, and dare I say it - divine.
We like to think that no one else can know our problems and only we can solve them, and refuse to acknowledge that there are only so many different solutions to the same problem. Academic computing boils down to these areas:
1) Registration/ student records management
2) HR/Payroll management
3) Content/presence management for publicity
4) Online learning systems
5) Security/signon infrastructure
5) Coordination of back office components between the other five
You can argue that there is a need for one more area:
6) Research computing
but that normally is a separate group from ACADEMICS.
I am constantly amazed at how much universities spend on their systems, and how much customization they do - to the tune of MILLIONS of dollars a year. And then, on top of that, when one department decides to go another route, THEY spend alot of money, and then the institution has to eventually roll that structure back into the overall schema, costing even MORE money.
The bottom line is that university IT systems need to be run more and more like corporate IT, and the same amount of planning, forethought, and most of all INTELLIGENCE needs to be applied.
Has anyone else found the barrier to project management is their technical knowledge?
:-) I really WANT to code or design, but status meetings and budget reviews keep getting in the way. Sigh.
I might counter that you have this backwards. As a long-time project manager with a technical background, my feeling is that the barrier to technical knowledge is project management.
In all seriousness, though, work with your current project manager. If they are not technical, then they are glossing over things because they don't understand the importance. Testing is a wee bit critical, and unless they are pulling delivery dates completely out of their backsides with no input from you it is partially your fault for the schedules being pushed so hard. Your job is, quite frankly, to manage your project manager. "Manage up". Tell him/her how things are going, exactly, and make delivery scedules completely clear. DO NOT HIDE ANYTHING! The secret to a good relationship with a project manager is information flow. The more s/he knows about exactly what is going on, the more likely you are to be in agreement with schedules. Your PM is getting pressure from upper management to delivery products on time and under budget, and unless s/he knows about schedule slips way ahead of time, or problems with the design, etc, the less time s/he will have to prepare the executives for a change. You are not working in a vaccuum! Your PM is your best (and often ONLY) advocate to the executives, and you need to make them work for you. Believe it or not, I prefer it when I know all the good AND bad things going on so I can protect my team from unreasonable pressure from above and get them the resources they need to finish the work. If I don't know, I can't prepare the groundwork.
If you want to move into project management, take on more and more of the role yourself. Gather status reports ahead of time and consolidate them into a summary for your PM. Ask to assist in budget preparations or schedule creation. Make it clear that you are there to help, not to hinder, and make it clear that you want to move into that role. Show the merit of a technical person acting in a PM capacity.
Good luck. And think seriously about it - if you love technical work, you might want to consider staying there, as PM work is NOT technical and you might feel that you have made a big mistake at some point.
Microsoft is a corporation, bound to it's shareholders, and is chartered to make a profit. In order to adopt an open source mentality, it would need to be demonstrated that open source is as profitable as closed-source projects. And, in the many years of the open source movement, I have not seen many open source projects that are highly profitable. So, therefore, I don't think that there is an argument that would convince microsoft to change their approach, other than federal injunction.
A large part of this was due to Lucas' condition that if a theater shows AOTC, that it show for a minimum of four weeks. Smaller theaters with only a few screens can't support this kind of commitment during the summer movie season. So, since Spider-Man had no such condition, it opened (and stayed) on more screens.
If you are ever at a LAN party on a sinking ship, you are in good shape with this mod! :-) Of course, you would have to coat your mouse as well, which could make it a little hard to use.
No, guns are designed to shoot little lead pellets a long way really, really fast. How is killing people involved in this equation? What about killing deer? Gophers? Cows? Watermelons?
What you CHOOSE to do with a gun is up to you. In fact, in the owners manual, most handguns state that you specifically SHOULDN'T shoot people with it.
I use them to shoot at targets at the pistol range. For me, gun control means not missing your target.
This sounds an awful lot like the arguements against gun companies. Essentially, gun companies don't kill people, they just make guns. Ammo companies don't kill people, they just make bullets.
KaZaa doesn't trade copywritten material, they just make software.
Funny thing is, though, that I see the truth in all these arguements. PEOPLE pull the trigger, PEOPLE swap illegal files.
Since I can use a garden hoe to hack my neighbor to bits, should the hoe company be help liable?
OK, enough rambling.
The reason is simple...
Greylock was the VC firm behind both RedHat and Ars Digita. RedHat's 'purchase' of Ars Digita allows Greylock to bury the aD losses in the RH books, as well as give a glimmer of hope to the ACS product making the light of day again.
About the Ars Digita staff going to RedHat - the total number appears to be about 10 to 15 people, so it's hardly the flood of engineers. RedHat got ACS for a song. And to think that two years ago when aD approached RedHat about putting ACS into the standard distro, they laughed in our faces.
(Yes, I was an aD wonk)
I suggest the goatse.cx guy... Except for Katz, he is the most disturbing regular /. participant.
Paintball today is all about how much ammo you can get downrange, not about skill, stealth or cunning. I know I'll sound like an oldtimer here, but when *I* played the game in the early 80's, we had Nelspot 007's, little hand held pistols. You carried three 10-round tubes onto the field and a couple of extra C02 cartridges. One cartridge would shoot about 15 rounds. At then end of the day, we would often have rounds left over. The game was about sneaking around, tactics, and the occasional firefight with a completely manual pistol that was innacurate as hell and had to be cocked by hand. EACH SHOT HAD TO COUNT.
We also used oil based paint, since that's all that was available in those days. A hit on the skin was a mark for a couple of weeks. Right about 1984 was when the water-based stuff hit the market.
Paintball ATV's like this are a continuing sign that the game is all about rounds per minute now.
-sigh-
Oh, and we had to walk five miles through the snow to get to a paintball game. Uphill. Both ways.
If I was ever actually drafted to fight in a war, I know the DOD would rather have a talented computer programmer than another warm body in the front lines. Besides, it takes 3 years to train a soldier to do his (or her) job well.
Ummm, yeah. Right.
Be careful, here. US Marine Corps Boot Camp is 13 weeks, plus anoth 12 weeks of advanced infantry training. That's just over six months, start to finish. Training HVPI's (High Velocity Projective Interceptors) doesn't take three years at all. How is that possible, when the Army has a two-year contract for an Infantry position?
And, as a former Marine, I would state that any "talented computer hacker" who knows nothing about the actual operations of the military would be better off catching bullets than writing bugs.
- Hans
JonKatz said:
When things like this happen, TV, much more than the Net or the Web, reveals whether leaders rise or fall to the occasion. Mayor Guiliani of New York clearly rose to the tragedy. President Bush, sticking to his cautious sing-song monotone, fled to various bunkers and seemed to shrink throughout the day. Guiliani got bigger by the hour. Defying advice that he hide out until the shooting stopped, he rushed to the scene, was nearly killed, calmed the city down and took charge of the clean-up and rescue. Bush got on his best suit and stuck to the prompter. At least that was the image that TV brought of us of these two very different leaders.
Oh, come one. If the Mayor of New York is killed in a secondary attack, the country is still stable. Yes, he is the mayor of the largest city in the country, but his death would have had nearly no effect on our country. He would have been a statistic.
If the president is killed, then it's a whole other story. Sequestering him away from the public eye for about 5 hours while we determined if the attacks were even over was prudent and handled perfectly.
Grow up.
"George hid" is all you can say? Our country performed nearly flawlessly in how we initially reacted to the attacks. That's why the death toll is 10% of what I originally feared. Every death is a tragedy, yes, but imagine the numbers if we had dragged our feet at all.
- Hans
"I am ok with giving up a little bit of my privacy."
Oh. My. God.
This is where it starts. You give up a little, and then you give up a little bit more, and then more, and next thing you know you are being broadcast on "reality tv" while you rub one out in front of your computer.
Giving up a little bit of freedom/privacy is the first step towards giving up all your freedom/privacy.
The writing on the Infinite Matrix site is - well, ummm, without trying to be flamebait - shit.
/., does that mean that *I* have gotten published? Time to brush up my resume!
I tried. I really did. I *tried* to like it. I randomly selected a story from the archives - Mouse Lights, by Richard Kadrey. Three paragraphs of crap. What's the point? Some kid lives in a post-apocolyptic future and has christmas lights. He dies, end of story. Whoop. De. Doo.
Dr. Real? Ahem. Dr. Really Boring.
And Sterling's "my favorite things" list is just that. A list of links. No original thought.
I am a long-time fan of Science Fiction, I read lots of it. But I am selective in what I read. The web has once again proven that the barriers of entry are so low that anything/anyone can be "published" online. Hey, since I posted to
If this is the last issue online, then it's not a huge loss. If it *isn't* the last issue, pray for some enlightenment. I'm not even talking about lasers and aliens or any of that - just progressive fiction that says something. Don't give me writing that describes worlds, give me writing about characters, dammit!
Sheesh.
Throw enough resources and money at the problem and the trip is engineering child's play. The martian gravity well is nowhere near the problem the earth's is. The trip could even be staged with fuel sent ahead by slower orbits while the crew waited for more optimal transfer possibilities and for the fuel and gear to arrive ahead of them.
If it was childs play, what happened to the last three martian probes? (yes, I know what HAPPENED, my point is that it happened at all...) Sending fuel and food ahead in a slower orbit is only usefull if it actually GETS there. And I seriously doubt our ability to get it there with enough reliability to stake a mission on it.
Then again, missions without risk gain us nothing. So, if you can find folks willing to starve to death on mars, I say go for it.
With budgets being slashed and Nasa having trouble getting robots to land, what does everyone think the reality of a manned mission in our lifetime is?
So THAT'S why the ice cream in the top of my bowl melts first... It's closer to the sun!
So, then WHERE is the electricity GENERATED? Does your wall plug just magically create the juice to go into your car?
Come on - all you are doing is moving the problem somewhere else. Some coal/natural gas burning facility somewhere has to burn more coal and create more emissions there to keep your car running.
<troll>But, since people with this attitude seem to forget about these things, you just keep hugging those trees and talking bad about the auto companies, OK?</troll>
Same thing happened when Ford spun off Visteon, and didn't check first to see if the name was taken. The little guy (a consulting firm in Florida, I believe) had to take it in the shorts. Same thing with X-Box. Don't these people know how to use Google? (FP, btw!)
If I wanted employment references, I never would have posted that. I really believe that the true answer to aD's woes is somewhere in the middle: Rather than try to have a utopia for programmers at the cost of core business ideals, try to work the general good things of traditional business while allowing employees the freedom to do their best work. Ultimately, the paychecks are signed by the VC's money and any profits that aD can bring in. VC's don't throw money at companies for love, they want a fat return. Philips spending habits were going to squeeze the teet dry too fast for their taste. - Hans
Well, I'll tell you what - I am a former aD employee, and I'm coming out of the closet. I am NOT any of the AC's above, but I can say this as fact:
... umm... "charisma" in a public facing position - let's be honest, much of the public opinion of arsDigita comes from Philips 18 charisma. But Sun Tzu had it right in the art of war: Leave an enemy behind, and he will rise to strike you from behind...
Philip was an asshole to me every single time I spoke to him. And I was fairly high up in the food chain, as a level 3 engineer (there were four levels, and Eve/Jin/Tracy/a couple of others were L4's). I was also a Technical Sales Manager - the first engineer brought into the sales group to try to coordinate the process of bringing in new business and keeping the out of control developers (led by Philip) at bay while we tried to sort out what was going on.
My second day at the company, I met Philip for the first time. I was really looking forward to it. The conversation went something like this:
Philip: Who are you?
Me: My name's Hans, I just started. I wanted to say that...
Philip: Are you a programmer or a system administrator?
Me: I do both, but I prefer...
Philip: You are wearing a cell phone on your belt. You're a sysadmin.
Me: Well, not really. I...
Philip: Do you use emacs of vi?
Me (proudly): vi (it *is* the better editor)
Philip: You're a sysadmin. You just don't know it.
Me: Well, anyway, I wanted to say that I really enjoyed your book and I am looking forward to working here.
Philip:
Well, it really didn't matter WHAT Philip said, since he had already dismissed me and walked away.
At least Alex hung around and got a tummy rub.
Over the next few months, I attempted to build up an office in the midwest (Ann Arbor). I also worked to get new business and add a technical perspective to the sales efforts and keep promises to clients in line. Every time I came back to Cambridge, I either was pummeled by Philiip who couldn't give me the time of day but reveled in being insulting, or heard tails from the aD staff about his latest loose-cannon move.
Philip was OUT OF CONTROL. Spending money like water, planning koi ponds, and having doorways enlarged to allow his ego to pass through. The company was headed towards bankruptcy if his spending continued at the helm. Allen and his pack decided that it was time to curb those expenses. For god's sake, there were 40 $3000 flat panels, aeron chairs and workstations sitting in a nearly empty office in Atlanta (for example) that a) didn't have developers to work them and b) didn't have the client base to support hiring the developers to work them. There is one basic premise of business that, from my perspective, Philip decided to ignore. You have to earn more than you spend.
I finally decided to leave when Allen and Ern (rightfully, in hindsight) decided to close the Ann Arbor office that I was tasked to open, staff, and build up. I returned to a research position at the University of Michigan, where I am today. I was given the option to continue with Ars Digita in my current role, but with a new baby I didn't want to travel that much, so I declined.
I was constantly aghast at the over-the-top spending that aD did. The modest Ann Arbor office (which never had a chance to get established) worked with $20 chairs from office max, used 17" monitors and $5 steelcase desks from the University of Michigan property disposition. And you know what? We could have gotten as much work done as if we had the expensive stuff. My thinking was that we would push for this if we ever made a profit for the company, not before.
That ideal wasn't perpetuated by Philip, who was going around the world talking at conferences and opening offices. I *think* the last straw was when he sent an email to the company talking about how great Australia was, and that we were opening an office in Sydney. It was total anarchy, and Philip was simply out of control.
The board and VC's did the right thing to cut him out of a management position. They also did the right thing to try to keep his
- Hans
He HATES being called "Phil". Tee-hee. - Hans (former aD wonk)
I believe you when I say that it's about selling product - even Billy would be stupid to not try to tap the Linux marketplace, but if you ARE really working on the project, Anonymous Coward, then your attitude most likely reflects an accurate portrait about how Micro$oft views that "opensource crap".
- Hans
I don't think this is a hoax... One of the proposed solutions is that the OS and Applications division are split into different companies. When that happens, Micro$oft will legally not be able to use proprietary (ie - undocumented) API points to get their applications to work better than the competition. So, by porting Office NOW, they can leverage the NT/2000 source and port the Office Suite legally, without conflict of interest. This would be MUCH easier than trying to do it AFTER a split, where separate companies could be sued for anti-trust (again) by sharing proprietary information that would violate the most likely outcome of the current trial. So, instead of a hoax, I think that it might be a recognition by Micro$oft that they need to get with the program, and take every advantage they can NOW to maintain market share of the office suite marketplace. Or, it could be a hoax. - Hans