Ed Yordon put together two great collections of these: Classics in Software Engineering (1979; ISBN 0131351796) and Writings of the Revolution: Selected Readings on Software Engineering (1986; ISBN 0139707085).
The telemarketers are trying, no matter what the consequences are to others, to defend their right to make calls.
The politicians are trying, no matter what the consequences are to others, to react to popular demand (not a terrible thing) but to defend their right to make calls. (The "unconstitutional" argument is that charities, churches, and politicians can still call, but businesses can't.)
But we can be part of the problem, too. Not in demanding to eat dinner, or work from home, uninterrupted; that's fair. On the other hand, when we take out our frustration on the underpaid guys on the other end of the line -- instead of politely saying, "please put me on your company's do-not-call list, have a nice day" -- then we, too, are pursuing our agendas no matter what the consequences are to others.
And the next time you get a call, be as angry as you want at the caller's employer, but remember: you're only one layoff and twelve months of unemployment away from the person calling you.
"We started [Photoshop testing] with a 59.5 MB test image, but many operations completed too quickly to time...."
In unrelated news ...
on
Cracking GSM
·
· Score: 3, Funny
The GSM Association... confirmed the security hole but said it would be expensive and complicated to exploit....
In unrelated news, the National Security Agency requested an emergency budget increase of $13.5B. When ask for justification, the head of the NSA was heard to say, "Warrants? We don't need no stinkin' warrents...."
It seems to me that email lists are trying to do what usenet was designed for.... newsgroups are for sending a message to a self-selecting group of people, email is for sending a message to one person.
E-mail lists were born back in the early ARPANET days. They significantly predate Netnews and the Usenet.
NNTP sends a message to every server that might host an interested user; it's efficient when there are many such users on the server in question, and few servers with no such users. SMTP sends a a message to every interested user (in the absence of spam, anyway); it's efficient when there are few such users per server, and many servers with no such users.
Your salary is only about half of the expense you represent to your employer. You might be willing to work for half salary; would you be willing to work for half salary and pay for all your health care benefits? If you're not a telecommuter, your employer pays for the space you work in; are you willing to work in half a cubical? You need to have some administrative staff support; do you think the people who do those jobs are willing to cut their salaries in half? And work without benefits? (Yes, I know their jobs are at risk, too.)
I'm not saying outsourcing is a good idea. I'm saying, if you want to understand it well enough to deal with it, you should understand it well.
P.S.: Even if your employer cuts back, and makes you pay a bigger share, health care costs to employers in the U.S. are outrageously high. If you hear a story about a pharmaceutical company reporting record profits, and then a story about a company outsourcing its software development because programmers in the U.S. are too expensive... well, it might not be a coincidence.
GAME OVER is UPN's new family comedy series featuring the adventures of the suburban Smashenburn family, who just happen to live in an alternate video-game universe. Comprised of offbeat characters who face everyday familial issues, the Smashenburns find unconventional ways to fight, survive and love within this 3-D CGI-animated world of action heroes, monsters and cartoon characters, inspired by the popular genre of video games.
As head of the Smashenburn household, Rip is a hotshot Grand Prix racecar driver who rides and wrecks daily. His feisty and attractive wife, Raquel, is a modern working woman, juggling family and her exhilarating job as gun-toting, monster-fighting Agent Smashenburn. Their son, Billy, is a 13-year-old shallow, but trendy, wannabe hip-hopster, who often argues with his 14-year-old sister, Alice, a cynical yet socially conscious teen. In the family's master plan to form a stronger bond, the Smashenburns attempt to find the perfect pet. Yet they end up with Turbo, a 300-pound talking creature [looks like a carnivorous purple rabbit], whose favorite past times are robbing pawn shops, smoking stogies and creating mayhem -- all with an attitude. The friendly next-door neighbors are the Changs, a family of Kung Fu fighting Shaolin monks, including the attractive Dark Princess, a.k.a. "Mom," and her husband, Sam.
CHARACTER VOICES Marisa Tomei/Raquel Patrick Warburton/Rip D.L.Hughley/Turbo Rachel Dratch/Alice James Sie/Sam Chang Marie Matiko/Vox E.G.Dailey/Billy
WRITERS David Sacks ("The Simpsons"), Ross Venokur, Jason Venokur and David Goetsch
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner, Caryn Mandabach ("That 70s Show," "Grounded for Life, "3rd Rock From the Sun"), David Sacks ("The Tick"), Jason Venokur ("3rd Rock From the Sun "), David Goetsch, Ross Venokur ("The Tick")
PRODUCTION COMPANY Carsey-Werner-Mandabach Productions, LLC.
There was this one horrible meeting.... Everyone walked out of it thinking, "Okay, that's it, any chance this was going to stay a good place to work is gone." (It was something like a 2 - 3 p.m. meeting. We didn't go back to our desks, we all went to the nearest bar.)
I knew of a consulting company that wanted to expand into roughly our area, and I tried to put something together. ("You want to be here. I knew a few dozen really good people here. Let's talk.") We had exactly the right technical experience. We completely lacked the domain experience needed for the potential customers being targeted in our area. Oh, well.
Within two months, thirty percent of us were gone. The first wave moved within the company; the second wave went to a sibling company in the area; the third wave went to startups or created their own consulting companies. People tended to cluster together, a bit, but there was no mass exodus.
And the scary thing is... in retrospect, that might have been exactly the intended result of that awful meeting.
I admire Trolltech's flexibility in licensing, their willingness to open Qt to use by free and open source developers.
A couple of Slashdotters argued:
As the copyright holder, you can change the license any time you want. You can start it as GPL when it's in-house, and change the license later if you want to sell it outside of your company.
Not so with QT. Can't remeber the exact terms, but that procedure is explicitly forbidden. If you start it as a GPL project using QT, you can't just change license. You have to buy the QT license and develop a new app from scratch.
I understand what you're saying, and I understand what Trolltech wants, but I don't understand how anyone thinks they got there.
GPL: You can distribute internally. Anyone who get the binary has the right to request (and receive) the source. Not a problem; that's all internal.
Qt commercial license: Some number of developers are licensed to build with the Qt framework and distribute the result with a non-free license.
So what prevents a shop from having a bunch of internal developers who only distribute their results internally, plus one licensed person who builds the "gold disk"?
P.S.: According to the URL above, you're supposed to:
Use the Qt Commercial License to... [b]uild software that is not sold, but that advances the business goals of a commercial enterprise.
Seems to me the GPL gives you the right to do that. How does Trolltech expect to enforce the clause quoted above?
I won't bother to find out first hand until they slap a recordable DVD drive in there.
Do you want this because you want to record for archival purposes? The Betamax case ruled home recording for time shifting was fair use. It didn't rule that home recording for permanent archiving was legal. ("Reconstructing the Fair Use Doctrine": "All parties and all members of the Court assumed, at least for the sake of argument, that librarying is not a fair use and that therefore a substantial number of VCR owners often violate the copyright law.")
Do you want this because you want to "share" what you've recorded with friends? If you sell what you've recorded, that's clearly illegal. If you don't profit by this activity, it's not clearly illegal, but it's not clearly legal, either. In the past, it's been unlikely to be enforced; but the times, as you may have noticed, are changing fast.
Time shifting is legal. Tivo, as is, is a wonderful machine for time shifting. Beyond that, the ice gets thin.
Important note: With a single tuner Tivo (read: not one for satellite), you can watch one recorded program and record another; but you cannot watch live TV at the same time you're recording something. It's very much not a VCR.
With the gol darn digital cable, I can't do that any more. My VCR was cable ready for regular cable, why can't I get a PVR that's digital cable ready? As it is, I can get around this for cannels in the regular cable line up by bypassing the digital cable box, but since my cable provider puts all premium channels on digital, I can't tape a movie and watch Junkyard Wars at the same time. It also makes the timer feature on the vcr practically worthless.
Tivo has serial and IR outputs so it can control your digital cable box. When Would You Buy It For A Dollar? comes on Game Show IV on channel 665, Tivo changes the channel by sending the same signal that your digital cable remote would send.
Oscar is an intentionally (and successfully) funny Sylvester Stallone film. Great ensemble cast: Peter Riegert, Chazz Palminteri, Kurtwood Smith, Vincent Spano, Marisa Tomei (in a pre-Cousin Vinny role), Harry Shearer, Tim Curry (!), and even cameos by Kirk Douglas and Don Ameche. Witty writing (based on a French farce), and great Elmer Berstein score, too.
The thing about this movie is, there's so much going on, it's hard to keep track of everything the first time through. Like The Princess Bride, it's much funnier the second time.
You won't find it in your video store. You won't find it on Amazon.com. You'll find it on Ebay, but you'll pay a fortune for it; it's become a bit of a cult classic. (The marketing campaign was terrible, and no one knew how good it was until it had fallen off the radar screen.)
Did anyone notice that Berman's "new" ideas were basically "new ways to reuse the old stuff [which we think the fans will drool over because they love that kind of stuff] in the current series"?
In Hollywood these days, the height of originality is deciding what to remake. Ug.
The term "public records" shall mean any written, printed or graphic matter or any mechanical or electronic data compilation from which information can be obtained, directly or after translation into a form susceptible of visual or aural comprehension, that is in the possession or custody of an agency or public official of this State or any of its political subdivisions and has been received or prepared for use in connection with the transaction of public or governmental business or contains information relating to the transaction of public or governmental business, except [exceptions listed, none relevant]
It's open to interpretation, of course, but I see the problem.
Also from the newspaper article:
Lamoine resident Robert Sharkey last week requested all e-mail addresses in the town's computer. In his written request, Sharkey said he wanted the electronic addresses because he has "a need for corresponding with residents of Lamoine."
Insert joke here.
The request certainly does not adhere the spirit of the law, which is intended to keep decision making "transparent." It may be in line with the letter of the law, though.
(Sorry, longish; skim the first quote if you want.)
I checked my job-search-only e-mail account, and found this message from Monster:
Dear Monster Member,
This is a critical service message regarding your use of Monster:
Regrettably, from time to time, false job postings are listed online and used to illegally collect personal information from unsuspecting job seekers. The placement of such false job postings is a violation of the Monster Terms of Use and may also be a criminal violation of federal and/or state law.
Monster is dedicated to stopping this abuse and providing the safest possible environment for you to search and apply to jobs and manage your career.
Here are some important tips to use when dealing with prospective employers: * Do not give your social security number, even if they suggest that it is for a "routine background check." * Do not provide credit card or bank numbers, or engage in any monetary transactions. * Do not provide any non-work related personal information (i.e. social security number, eye color, marital status etc.) over the phone or online. * Be cautious when dealing with contacts outside of your own country. * Read the article, "Protect Your Personal Info." here: http://resume.monster.com/dosanddonts/personalinfo/
If you see a questionable job posting or site activity, please report the suspected fraud to Monster at reportfraud@monster.com
If you think you have been a victim of fraud, immediately report the committed fraud to your local police and contact Monster at reportfraud@monster.com, so steps can be taken for your safety.
Regards, Heather Abbey Monster Seeker Support
Monster respects your online time and privacy. This is a one-time service related email to notify all Monster users about job search safety issues.
Questions? Email us directly at mayday@monster.com. Please do not reply to this email.
To read the Monster Privacy Commitment, visit http://about.monster.com/privacy/.
Monster, 5 Clock Tower Place, Ste 500, Maynard, MA 01754
Okay, nice of them to look out for me. So I log into Monster, and what's the very first thing I see?
Welcome back to My Monster!
Lock in the lowest student loan rate in history!
Do you have more than $10,000 in outstanding student loans? If so, you may be able to lock in an interest rate below 4% and reduce your monthly payment by up to 50% through a Federal Consolidation Loan through College Loan Corporation.
* Required Information
* Yes No Do you have more than $10,000 in outstanding student loans? * Yes No Are you currently out of school or will you be leaving school within the next 6 months? * Yes No Are you currently in default or more than 60 days delinquent on any student loans?
* Home Telephone * Last School Attended * Date of Birth (Must be 21 or over)
By clicking yes below, I authorize College Loan Corporation to access available data regarding my outstanding federal education loans to determine my eligibility. I will also receive additional information regarding consolidation, and a Consolidation Loan application. I understand that Federal regulations require a borrower who has federal education loans held by a single lender to request consolidation from that lender. Monster may share my name, address, phone number, email address, and date of birth with CLC.
Yes, send me loan information from CLC!
No, Thanks
This was on a web page served by FastWeb ("a Monster company"). I had to click "No" to get to my Monster home page.
Ug.
P.S.: My journal contains the stupidest, funniest job ads I've come across in the past year.
If you go to www.dfsdirectsales.com -- not the Dell outlet site, but the Dell Financial Services direct sales site -- you'll find systems that Dell leased out, and has since taken back. Because Windows was "licensed" to the original user and cannot be transferred, these systems are all sold without operating systems! (The Microsoft tax has already been paid; you don't have to pay it again.)
I don't think you're to beat a 12 inch iBook or Powerbook for small and light, though, and if "[p]erformance isn't a major concern," why are you worried about it enough to rule out a Mac?
Slashdot Mirror
Ed Yordon put together two great collections of these: Classics in Software Engineering (1979; ISBN 0131351796) and Writings of the Revolution: Selected Readings on Software Engineering (1986; ISBN 0139707085).
Hard to find, but worth looking for.
Look for entries with "Job Ad" in my journal.
The telemarketers are trying, no matter what the consequences are to others, to defend their right to make calls.
The politicians are trying, no matter what the consequences are to others, to react to popular demand (not a terrible thing) but to defend their right to make calls. (The "unconstitutional" argument is that charities, churches, and politicians can still call, but businesses can't.)
But we can be part of the problem, too. Not in demanding to eat dinner, or work from home, uninterrupted; that's fair. On the other hand, when we take out our frustration on the underpaid guys on the other end of the line -- instead of politely saying, "please put me on your company's do-not-call list, have a nice day" -- then we, too, are pursuing our agendas no matter what the consequences are to others.
And the next time you get a call, be as angry as you want at the caller's employer, but remember: you're only one layoff and twelve months of unemployment away from the person calling you.
"We started [Photoshop testing] with a 59.5 MB test image, but many operations completed too quickly to time...."
... what does that mean about playing Everquest?-)
He can go about his business.
Ug indeed.The only ground-floor opportunities today are the ones you get a few seconds after they throw you out.
Your salary is only about half of the expense you represent to your employer. You might be willing to work for half salary; would you be willing to work for half salary and pay for all your health care benefits? If you're not a telecommuter, your employer pays for the space you work in; are you willing to work in half a cubical? You need to have some administrative staff support; do you think the people who do those jobs are willing to cut their salaries in half? And work without benefits? (Yes, I know their jobs are at risk, too.)
... well, it might not be a coincidence.
I'm not saying outsourcing is a good idea. I'm saying, if you want to understand it well enough to deal with it, you should understand it well.
P.S.: Even if your employer cuts back, and makes you pay a bigger share, health care costs to employers in the U.S. are outrageously high. If you hear a story about a pharmaceutical company reporting record profits, and then a story about a company outsourcing its software development because programmers in the U.S. are too expensive
GAME OVER is UPN's new family comedy series featuring the adventures of the suburban Smashenburn family, who just happen to live in an alternate video-game universe. Comprised of offbeat characters who face everyday familial issues, the Smashenburns find unconventional ways to fight, survive and love within this 3-D CGI-animated world of action heroes, monsters and cartoon characters, inspired by the popular genre of video games.
As head of the Smashenburn household, Rip is a hotshot Grand Prix racecar driver who rides and wrecks daily. His feisty and attractive wife, Raquel, is a modern working woman, juggling family and her exhilarating job as gun-toting, monster-fighting Agent Smashenburn. Their son, Billy, is a 13-year-old shallow, but trendy, wannabe hip-hopster, who often argues with his 14-year-old sister, Alice, a cynical yet socially conscious teen. In the family's master plan to form a stronger bond, the Smashenburns attempt to find the perfect pet. Yet they end up with Turbo, a 300-pound talking creature [looks like a carnivorous purple rabbit], whose favorite past times are robbing pawn shops, smoking stogies and creating mayhem -- all with an attitude. The friendly next-door neighbors are the Changs, a family of Kung Fu fighting Shaolin monks, including the attractive Dark Princess, a.k.a. "Mom," and her husband, Sam.
CHARACTER VOICES
Marisa Tomei/Raquel
Patrick Warburton/Rip
D.L.Hughley/Turbo
Rachel Dratch/Alice
James Sie/Sam Chang
Marie Matiko/Vox
E.G.Dailey/Billy
WRITERS
David Sacks ("The Simpsons"), Ross Venokur, Jason Venokur and David Goetsch
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner, Caryn Mandabach ("That 70s Show," "Grounded for Life, "3rd Rock From the Sun"), David Sacks ("The Tick"), Jason Venokur ("3rd Rock From the Sun "), David Goetsch, Ross Venokur ("The Tick")
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Carsey-Werner-Mandabach Productions, LLC.
(I wasn't much on Star Blazers but I liked the subtitled Yamato. Truly amazing what was lost in translation.)
There was this one horrible meeting.... Everyone walked out of it thinking, "Okay, that's it, any chance this was going to stay a good place to work is gone." (It was something like a 2 - 3 p.m. meeting. We didn't go back to our desks, we all went to the nearest bar.)
... in retrospect, that might have been exactly the intended result of that awful meeting.
I knew of a consulting company that wanted to expand into roughly our area, and I tried to put something together. ("You want to be here. I knew a few dozen really good people here. Let's talk.") We had exactly the right technical experience. We completely lacked the domain experience needed for the potential customers being targeted in our area. Oh, well.
Within two months, thirty percent of us were gone. The first wave moved within the company; the second wave went to a sibling company in the area; the third wave went to startups or created their own consulting companies. People tended to cluster together, a bit, but there was no mass exodus.
And the scary thing is
Good luck!
We don't want to destroy fair use; we just want to make sure the artists get paid for their work.
We don't want to destroy free software; we just want to be paid every time someone uses it.
<sarcasm>Yeah, right.</sarcasm>
A couple of Slashdotters argued:I understand what you're saying, and I understand what Trolltech wants, but I don't understand how anyone thinks they got there.
GPL: You can distribute internally. Anyone who get the binary has the right to request (and receive) the source. Not a problem; that's all internal.
Qt commercial license: Some number of developers are licensed to build with the Qt framework and distribute the result with a non-free license.
So what prevents a shop from having a bunch of internal developers who only distribute their results internally, plus one licensed person who builds the "gold disk"?
P.S.: According to the URL above, you're supposed to: Seems to me the GPL gives you the right to do that. How does Trolltech expect to enforce the clause quoted above?
Do you want this because you want to "share" what you've recorded with friends? If you sell what you've recorded, that's clearly illegal. If you don't profit by this activity, it's not clearly illegal, but it's not clearly legal, either. In the past, it's been unlikely to be enforced; but the times, as you may have noticed, are changing fast.
Time shifting is legal. Tivo, as is, is a wonderful machine for time shifting. Beyond that, the ice gets thin.
Oscar is an intentionally (and successfully) funny Sylvester Stallone film. Great ensemble cast: Peter Riegert, Chazz Palminteri, Kurtwood Smith, Vincent Spano, Marisa Tomei (in a pre-Cousin Vinny role), Harry Shearer, Tim Curry (!), and even cameos by Kirk Douglas and Don Ameche. Witty writing (based on a French farce), and great Elmer Berstein score, too.
The thing about this movie is, there's so much going on, it's hard to keep track of everything the first time through. Like The Princess Bride, it's much funnier the second time.
You won't find it in your video store. You won't find it on Amazon.com. You'll find it on Ebay, but you'll pay a fortune for it; it's become a bit of a cult classic. (The marketing campaign was terrible, and no one knew how good it was until it had fallen off the radar screen.)
Highly recommended.
Did anyone notice that Berman's "new" ideas were basically "new ways to reuse the old stuff [which we think the fans will drool over because they love that kind of stuff] in the current series"?
In Hollywood these days, the height of originality is deciding what to remake. Ug.
Also from the newspaper article:Insert joke here.
The request certainly does not adhere the spirit of the law, which is intended to keep decision making "transparent." It may be in line with the letter of the law, though.
I checked my job-search-only e-mail account, and found this message from Monster:
Okay, nice of them to look out for me. So I log into Monster, and what's the very first thing I see?This was on a web page served by FastWeb ("a Monster company"). I had to click "No" to get to my Monster home page.
Ug.
P.S.: My journal contains the stupidest, funniest job ads I've come across in the past year.
If you go to www.dfsdirectsales.com -- not the Dell outlet site, but the Dell Financial Services direct sales site -- you'll find systems that Dell leased out, and has since taken back. Because Windows was "licensed" to the original user and cannot be transferred, these systems are all sold without operating systems! (The Microsoft tax has already been paid; you don't have to pay it again.)
I don't think you're to beat a 12 inch iBook or Powerbook for small and light, though, and if "[p]erformance isn't a major concern," why are you worried about it enough to rule out a Mac?