First off I would like to mention that even if we do kill off an entire species, it means that natural selection isn't working for that species...
Natural selection must be flawed because fish don't evolve fast enough to keep up with technological developments in GPS, fishing nets, diesel engines, and all of the other tools we use to catch fish? When you get laid off from your job because you are a moron will you complain that natural selection failed you too?
Secondly, The commercial fishing and hunting industries do not want to kill off an entire species or even come close to it...
Yes but individuals need to maximize thier personal efficency to make the greatest amount of money. It doesn't matter if The Institute of Fishermen Association of America doesn't want salmon to go extinct if every one of its members still goes out every day to catch as many as they can get away with.
You obviously have never lived in an area where the economy depended heavily on a natural resource that replenished itself slower than the companies were able to extract it.
In my case, I grew up in a timber town. All the high school kids expected to follow thier dads into the local mills. But, we cut the trees faster than the trees would grow. Some companies survived cutting second or third growth. But the scale had to be incredibly restricted. Most of the kids are doing things other than working in the lumber mills.
The same logic applied to fishing and hunting. If you use a natural resource faster than it can replenish itself that natural resource will decline. If you continue to take more than the area can replenish; eventually the resource will be gone. This a LAW and no amount of anti-environmentalist rants will change this TRUTH.
Anyway, enough time wasted responding to a troll...
Actually, I'm not sure if it's a smart question, but what value does an MBA bring to a small to mid-sized business?
To phase it another way, what skills does an MBA bring to a business that require college in the first place. Given enough practice I can probably figure out how to tie a tie, but they must do something more valuable than that;)
I recognize the value of good management, but is it something that can be taught?
His books are indeed special. Look at the amount of fevor that hits/. every time a reference to one of the books is posted. However there are a lot of things that LOTR and the Hobbit are NOT.
They are not psychological dramas that explore the furthest recesses of the main character's psyche.
Nor are they the first book to include dragons,
...or elves,
...or wizards.
They are not metaphores for the Cold War,
...or of WWII,
...or the Industrial Revolution (actually this article and this article make a point that Tolkien was definitely influenced by the industrial revolution which was reflected in his books.)
They are not a Green Manifesto.
I think the Village Voice article makes the best point of what they are and why the LOTR, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion are important.
The Lord of the Rings said it was a valuable pursuit to create worlds. Not only create worlds but create the languages, myths, histories, people, cultures, and conflicts of that world. This of course was immediatly reflected in countless fantasy books of various qualities. In D&D and the games that followed. And, I think, in the mind set of those of us that program computers.
What is an Operating System but a (hopefully) consistant world where cultures (applications) can thrive. A computer language is not more or less contrieved that Tolkien's elvish languages. In fact the structure of a good computer language reflects the culture in which it was used (compare the "culture" of Basic to C to Perl) but we are lucky that we live in a time where our made-up languages can be used to earn good salaries.
There is a reason why the LOTR strikes a chord with many of us; we all love to create worlds. The LOTR is an example of how consistant and beautiful and exciting those worlds can be...
Thanks, I got the point. And then I thought it would be funny if it turned out that coal was actually fairly expensive per ton. If it's a $1000 bucks a ton then 1000 tons would actually be a pretty good theft (obvious logistical issues put aside for the moment) and its probably easier to sell coal in small batches (unlike the Hope Diamond).
So I did a search for "cost + coal" and got a link that indicated that coal can be found for as little as $10 a ton. So anyway, it wasn't as funny...
That was the (minimal) thought process behind the post.
Did you realize that coal can be bought for as little as $10 a short ton (in North Dakota in 1999)? Now I'm definitely going to steal the Hope diamond instead of 1000 tons of coal.
Could you have a good faith effort where both sides do their best to win? Microsoft and the EFF, for example, decide to settle the ambiguity and determine if the GPL is valid in the court of law. The case itself may be contrivied, but both sides are heavily vested in proving their side is correct.
It seems like you hear the term "test case" refering to various laws (not to mention the examples of individuals turn themselves into the police to test the legality of a specific criminal law...)
How about never sending employees off on any conferences or any sort of professional course, despite repeated requests ? that happens too..
(Oh, we don't have the cash.. but btw, all managers travel Business class)
I agree. Always they complain about the lack of money for projects ("do you think you can work on this project in your free time? that budget is almost used up."). But all the sales guys and managers have their ego's tied up in how much they are on the road. If Joe spends more time on the road than John then, obviously, his dick is longer. So they spend a week at a time at the Hilton near some airport after buying the airline ticket one day in advance (hell, even if you're flying coach, that one day in advance ticket is over a thousand bucks) and don't forget that they get to keep the airline miles. They spend more on rental car, plane ticket, hotel, and per diem in a week then I make in a month (maybe two months). Nine tenths of the trips could be handled with a fucking telephone call (or an email, but that's pretty technically difficult for most of these guys).
And then, we have to listen to them complain about how hard it is to be away from home (two minutes later we're listening to how drunk they got in the airport bar or how the strippers in X are better looking than the strippers in Y.)
If someone makes a comment about how male geeks are neanderthal, social retards, tell them to spend 10 minutes in a room with three male, 40 y.o., ex-military, salesmen. We all look like GQ Models in comparison.
Everybody has opinions... I thought they spent almost as much time on snide "invented the internet" comments and misrepresentations about Gore as Fox News did. I thought Bush got a free ride.
OTOH, my finance's uncle is sure that the entire NPR office is run directy from the Kremlin and were blatently for Gore only because Stalin is dead.
I guess you hear what you want to hear. (And that includes me.)
Here's a test... Do a search on the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper for "GPL". Number of results: 0.
The sad thing is, the journalists have no idea what the difference between Open Source and Free Software, no idea that GPL is only one aspect of "open source", and they are certainly in no position to inform their reader about the difference.
The moron that interviewed Balmer obviously had no idea what open source -- no caps -- is, just that the words had been used negatively by Microsoft flacks. So, he asks a fluffy question for his fluff-piece interview and Balmer gets a chance to spread some FUD to the uninformed masses.
I think what's really giving the NSA, CIA, FBI, Mossad, M5, M6, etc. the shits is the disposable cell phone with X pre-paid minutes bought with $20 dollar bill.
If you're important (or notorious from the alphabet-agencies point-of-view) enough to need encryption, you're going to be better off with a simple anonymous phone (the same anonymous phone that every mom gives to her child before sending them off to school.)
OTOH, my understanding is that the disposable phones will be "send only", so the receipiant may still be vulnerable to bugs, etc... I guess will have to wait and see what comes out of the product pipeline over the next couple of years.
I wouldn't mind learning the Dvorak. But then I remember the keyboard that really saved on typing... The Timex/Sinclair 1000!! (Though, these days, I'd probably update that membrane keyboard)
Come on! Most people don't use their credit/debit cards on-line because they don't want their spouses to see "horney_cheerleaders.com" on their credit card statement;)
It seems to me that the art to writing reviews is to find the good stuff to say. If the game (or movie, or book, etc.) is so bad that the good stuff you find is highly contrived then most intelligent people will take your point and not waste their money. As for the unintelligent people, well, "A fool and his money..."
For example, the original review complained that the CD's were only useful as coasters. Instead, he could have praised their good qualities.
Ubisoft spared no expense in delivering quality CD-ROMs with this game. After extended period protecting my desk from the ravages of a hot coffee cup, they remained undeformed and shiny. The Ubisoft logo was only moderately scarred.
Instead of complaining about the software protection...
Games of this quality have historically motivated the devoted gamer, and Myst III is no exception. The inferior CD player in my computer proved too dated to be able to handle the cutting edge
Safedisk copy protection technology that Ubisoft included to help keep costs down for all legitimate users. Fortunately the screenshots on the oversized box that Myst III shipped in motivated me to go out and get a newer CD-ROM drive. Similarly, my motherboard, CPU, and video card were unable to handle the legendary 3-D graphics, but, I had to tell myself; 'if my computer doesn't run Myst III then, dammit, it's time for a new computer.'
Don't rag on the poor developers, give credit where credit is due.
Heeding some complaints that Myst III was released with some bugs, Ubisoft developers have apparently decided not to release any more software before it's done. The 'M3 patch' named after a rare error that occurs in Myst's video has been delayed until it is perfect. With an anticipated release date of a week from now, it should be one of the best sofware patches in recent history.
Finally, and seriously, don't give a any product a "zero". Most readers will think you are holding a grudge and won't take you seriously. Is it worse than software that sends pr0n to your Mom, initializes your harddrive, and fries your CPU? No? It's better than a zero. Give it a "4 out of 10" and no one's going to buy it anyway (unless they have too much free time and way too much cash.)
Just my two cents... If I knew what I was talking about I'd be a highly-paid game reviewer;)
Actually, you made perfect sence. The solution is a good one but maybe a little limited.
What I would want in a system to control documentation.
ONE and only one version of each document available to the general office staff. This is the version that has been approved by someone in management. When your InstallShield programmer reaches for the Liscense Agreement there is one up-to-date version available.
VP's, lawyers, tech writers, marketing, etc. have access to a second "work-in-progress" document with all the annotation, strike-outs etc.. so they can have meetings and has out whether the document should say "who" instead of "whom".
Older versions of documents are only available when the need is great (fighting off a lawsuit or something.)
Finally, and most important, when someone sends a document out to the public they use the version in your system NOT the version that they downloaded to their local hard drive seven months ago.
It could probably be done with a web interface with links to the documents. Nothing too fancy. Maybe there is a page of "Project X Documents", "Project X Documents (Beta)" (password protected), "Sales Documents" etc.. The hardest part is determining how you want to organize your documents and then establishing a "this is the way we do things here" policy that people stick with. For a company the size mentioned, it doesn't seem to be a full time job once its set up.
Probably after "Fountains of Prardise", but Heinlein had a space elevator at the beginning of "Friday". Got blown up in an attempt to kill the title character.
So here we have the reason why all my techie funds are worthless at the moment. Maybe you all should go back to work and use those long hours you make to be productive.
There you go, you've learned a lesson today. Never depend on anyone else for your financial success.
9 am - arrive at work check suck.com, salon.com, and, of course, slashdot.org
11 am - check email
12 pm - go to lunch
1 pm - check email and slashdot.org again
2 pm - shit, better get to work (stare out the window for an hour)
3 pm - check email and slashdot.org. If I'm really bored, play an hour or two of Zangband.
5 pm - most everybody else is going home ("look at that hard-working programmer still at his desk, that's that 'hackor ethic!' I've heard about", they whisper in reverent tones...) time to check out the pr0n sites!
6pm - begin commute
7 pm - arrive home
Let's add that up. I guess I work about 40 (50 if your count the commute) hours a week, like most people.;-)
Here is a sample letter to send to Microsoft:
Dear Microsoft,
I am a hardware maker|software developer|scientist|researcher|government agency (please choose one). I would like the source code to Windows 2000 Pro. Please send it on CD-Rom to the following address. Thank you for your assistance to the hardware makers|software development|scientific|researchers|government agencies (please choose one) community. Your good will and generocity is highly appreciated.
He doesn't seem to be burning bridges. He says to simply smile and find a job you are happier with. No ranting, no recriminations, just the end of one business relationship and the beginning of another. Burning bridges would be to spend an hour complaining at the exit interview about everything that you disliked about your job.
I agree that you need to do a good job of seeing whether your current job can be "fixed". Every job is going to have things that piss you off...
Two answers. The Software Quality Assurance shouldn't just be covering crashes. The "misspelled company name" would be (at the company I used to work at) a "severity one" (we used the term "blocking") marketing error. The marketing department wouldn't sign off on release if such a bug was still in the system.
Your second point is covered through a process called triage. A meeting where the localization (one representitive), SQA (2), marketing (1), and engineering (2 representitives) (6 people total though someone from tech support, usually, sat in as we got near to ship to get an idea of what kind of things might still be in the program) met for 30 minutes each morning to assign a severity, priority and area (e.g. GUI (mispellings would have gone in here), loading files, installation, documentation, etc..) to each bug discovered in the previous day and assign the person responsible for fixing it.
The most senior engineering rep ran the meeting, and the most senior SQA person presented the bugs that had been discovered since the last meeting (or issues that had been tested and found to not be fixed.)
In my experience, SQA wanted to assign everything "severity one", engineering wanted to assign everything "severity four", marketing wanted to find the nearest coffee machine, and localization and documentation generally stayed quiet. Between the six of them, the process seemed to work pretty well.
One final note, the reason it worked pretty well was that this was a "high priority" meeting. Only the Head of Engineering (or the owner) could schedule a meeting that took priority over "triage".
Slashdot Mirror
But your argument is flawed
He says this without irony????
First off I would like to mention that even if we do kill off an entire species, it means that natural selection isn't working for that species...
Natural selection must be flawed because fish don't evolve fast enough to keep up with technological developments in GPS, fishing nets, diesel engines, and all of the other tools we use to catch fish? When you get laid off from your job because you are a moron will you complain that natural selection failed you too?
Secondly, The commercial fishing and hunting industries do not want to kill off an entire species or even come close to it...
Yes but individuals need to maximize thier personal efficency to make the greatest amount of money. It doesn't matter if The Institute of Fishermen Association of America doesn't want salmon to go extinct if every one of its members still goes out every day to catch as many as they can get away with.
You obviously have never lived in an area where the economy depended heavily on a natural resource that replenished itself slower than the companies were able to extract it.
In my case, I grew up in a timber town. All the high school kids expected to follow thier dads into the local mills. But, we cut the trees faster than the trees would grow. Some companies survived cutting second or third growth. But the scale had to be incredibly restricted. Most of the kids are doing things other than working in the lumber mills.
The same logic applied to fishing and hunting. If you use a natural resource faster than it can replenish itself that natural resource will decline. If you continue to take more than the area can replenish; eventually the resource will be gone. This a LAW and no amount of anti-environmentalist rants will change this TRUTH.
Anyway, enough time wasted responding to a troll...
Actually, I'm not sure if it's a smart question, but what value does an MBA bring to a small to mid-sized business?
To phase it another way, what skills does an MBA bring to a business that require college in the first place. Given enough practice I can probably figure out how to tie a tie, but they must do something more valuable than that ;)
I recognize the value of good management, but is it something that can be taught?
His books are indeed special. Look at the amount of fevor that hits /. every time a reference to one of the books is posted. However there are a lot of things that LOTR and the Hobbit are NOT.
I think the Village Voice article makes the best point of what they are and why the LOTR, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion are important.
The Lord of the Rings said it was a valuable pursuit to create worlds. Not only create worlds but create the languages, myths, histories, people, cultures, and conflicts of that world. This of course was immediatly reflected in countless fantasy books of various qualities. In D&D and the games that followed. And, I think, in the mind set of those of us that program computers.
What is an Operating System but a (hopefully) consistant world where cultures (applications) can thrive. A computer language is not more or less contrieved that Tolkien's elvish languages. In fact the structure of a good computer language reflects the culture in which it was used (compare the "culture" of Basic to C to Perl) but we are lucky that we live in a time where our made-up languages can be used to earn good salaries.
There is a reason why the LOTR strikes a chord with many of us; we all love to create worlds. The LOTR is an example of how consistant and beautiful and exciting those worlds can be...
Thanks, I got the point. And then I thought it would be funny if it turned out that coal was actually fairly expensive per ton. If it's a $1000 bucks a ton then 1000 tons would actually be a pretty good theft (obvious logistical issues put aside for the moment) and its probably easier to sell coal in small batches (unlike the Hope Diamond).
So I did a search for "cost + coal" and got a link that indicated that coal can be found for as little as $10 a ton. So anyway, it wasn't as funny...
That was the (minimal) thought process behind the post.
God I'm bored...
Could you have a good faith effort where both sides do their best to win? Microsoft and the EFF, for example, decide to settle the ambiguity and determine if the GPL is valid in the court of law. The case itself may be contrivied, but both sides are heavily vested in proving their side is correct.
It seems like you hear the term "test case" refering to various laws (not to mention the examples of individuals turn themselves into the police to test the legality of a specific criminal law...)
How about never sending employees off on any conferences or any sort of professional course, despite repeated requests ? that happens too.. (Oh, we don't have the cash.. but btw, all managers travel Business class)
I agree. Always they complain about the lack of money for projects ("do you think you can work on this project in your free time? that budget is almost used up."). But all the sales guys and managers have their ego's tied up in how much they are on the road. If Joe spends more time on the road than John then, obviously, his dick is longer. So they spend a week at a time at the Hilton near some airport after buying the airline ticket one day in advance (hell, even if you're flying coach, that one day in advance ticket is over a thousand bucks) and don't forget that they get to keep the airline miles. They spend more on rental car, plane ticket, hotel, and per diem in a week then I make in a month (maybe two months). Nine tenths of the trips could be handled with a fucking telephone call (or an email, but that's pretty technically difficult for most of these guys).
And then, we have to listen to them complain about how hard it is to be away from home (two minutes later we're listening to how drunk they got in the airport bar or how the strippers in X are better looking than the strippers in Y.)
If someone makes a comment about how male geeks are neanderthal, social retards, tell them to spend 10 minutes in a room with three male, 40 y.o., ex-military, salesmen. We all look like GQ Models in comparison.
Everybody has opinions... I thought they spent almost as much time on snide "invented the internet" comments and misrepresentations about Gore as Fox News did. I thought Bush got a free ride.
OTOH, my finance's uncle is sure that the entire NPR office is run directy from the Kremlin and were blatently for Gore only because Stalin is dead.
I guess you hear what you want to hear. (And that includes me.)
Here's a test... Do a search on the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper for "GPL". Number of results: 0.
The sad thing is, the journalists have no idea what the difference between Open Source and Free Software, no idea that GPL is only one aspect of "open source", and they are certainly in no position to inform their reader about the difference.
The moron that interviewed Balmer obviously had no idea what open source -- no caps -- is, just that the words had been used negatively by Microsoft flacks. So, he asks a fluffy question for his fluff-piece interview and Balmer gets a chance to spread some FUD to the uninformed masses.
I think what's really giving the NSA, CIA, FBI, Mossad, M5, M6, etc. the shits is the disposable cell phone with X pre-paid minutes bought with $20 dollar bill.
If you're important (or notorious from the alphabet-agencies point-of-view) enough to need encryption, you're going to be better off with a simple anonymous phone (the same anonymous phone that every mom gives to her child before sending them off to school.)
OTOH, my understanding is that the disposable phones will be "send only", so the receipiant may still be vulnerable to bugs, etc... I guess will have to wait and see what comes out of the product pipeline over the next couple of years.
I wouldn't mind learning the Dvorak. But then I remember the keyboard that really saved on typing... The Timex/Sinclair 1000!! (Though, these days, I'd probably update that membrane keyboard)
Come on! Most people don't use their credit/debit cards on-line because they don't want their spouses to see "horney_cheerleaders.com" on their credit card statement ;)
It seems to me that the art to writing reviews is to find the good stuff to say. If the game (or movie, or book, etc.) is so bad that the good stuff you find is highly contrived then most intelligent people will take your point and not waste their money. As for the unintelligent people, well, "A fool and his money..."
For example, the original review complained that the CD's were only useful as coasters. Instead, he could have praised their good qualities.
Instead of complaining about the software protection...
Don't rag on the poor developers, give credit where credit is due.
Finally, and seriously, don't give a any product a "zero". Most readers will think you are holding a grudge and won't take you seriously. Is it worse than software that sends pr0n to your Mom, initializes your harddrive, and fries your CPU? No? It's better than a zero. Give it a "4 out of 10" and no one's going to buy it anyway (unless they have too much free time and way too much cash.)
Just my two cents... If I knew what I was talking about I'd be a highly-paid game reviewer ;)
ONE and only one version of each document available to the general office staff. This is the version that has been approved by someone in management. When your InstallShield programmer reaches for the Liscense Agreement there is one up-to-date version available.
VP's, lawyers, tech writers, marketing, etc. have access to a second "work-in-progress" document with all the annotation, strike-outs etc.. so they can have meetings and has out whether the document should say "who" instead of "whom".
Older versions of documents are only available when the need is great (fighting off a lawsuit or something.)
Finally, and most important, when someone sends a document out to the public they use the version in your system NOT the version that they downloaded to their local hard drive seven months ago.
It could probably be done with a web interface with links to the documents. Nothing too fancy. Maybe there is a page of "Project X Documents", "Project X Documents (Beta)" (password protected), "Sales Documents" etc.. The hardest part is determining how you want to organize your documents and then establishing a "this is the way we do things here" policy that people stick with. For a company the size mentioned, it doesn't seem to be a full time job once its set up.
Because he has a desire to create and the ability to focus that desire towards his own OS.
If you don't understand then you are, indeed, missing something.
Probably after "Fountains of Prardise", but Heinlein had a space elevator at the beginning of "Friday". Got blown up in an attempt to kill the title character.
FAA doesn't approve it. So what? They give him a fine if he makes it down alive. If he doesn't survive they fine his estate?
Read the Oregonian version, a lot more information . Thanks to searleb for posting.
So here we have the reason why all my techie funds are worthless at the moment. Maybe you all should go back to work and use those long hours you make to be productive.
There you go, you've learned a lesson today. Never depend on anyone else for your financial success.
8 am - begin commute
9 am - arrive at work check suck.com, salon.com, and, of course, slashdot.org
11 am - check email
12 pm - go to lunch
1 pm - check email and slashdot.org again
2 pm - shit, better get to work (stare out the window for an hour)
3 pm - check email and slashdot.org. If I'm really bored, play an hour or two of Zangband.
5 pm - most everybody else is going home ("look at that hard-working programmer still at his desk, that's that 'hackor ethic!' I've heard about", they whisper in reverent tones...) time to check out the pr0n sites!
6pm - begin commute
7 pm - arrive home
Let's add that up. I guess I work about 40 (50 if your count the commute) hours a week, like most people. ;-)
Oh that's it!
Here is a sample letter to send to Microsoft:
Dear Microsoft,
I am a hardware maker|software developer|scientist|researcher|government agency (please choose one). I would like the source code to Windows 2000 Pro. Please send it on CD-Rom to the following address. Thank you for your assistance to the hardware makers|software development|scientific|researchers|government agencies (please choose one) community. Your good will and generocity is highly appreciated.
Sincerely,
(insert name here)
(insert address here)
I agree that you need to do a good job of seeing whether your current job can be "fixed". Every job is going to have things that piss you off...
How many toaster operators do you know?
Just one... but he's really, really good!!
Everything works except "Open File".
Two answers. The Software Quality Assurance shouldn't just be covering crashes. The "misspelled company name" would be (at the company I used to work at) a "severity one" (we used the term "blocking") marketing error. The marketing department wouldn't sign off on release if such a bug was still in the system.
Your second point is covered through a process called triage. A meeting where the localization (one representitive), SQA (2), marketing (1), and engineering (2 representitives) (6 people total though someone from tech support, usually, sat in as we got near to ship to get an idea of what kind of things might still be in the program) met for 30 minutes each morning to assign a severity, priority and area (e.g. GUI (mispellings would have gone in here), loading files, installation, documentation, etc..) to each bug discovered in the previous day and assign the person responsible for fixing it.
The most senior engineering rep ran the meeting, and the most senior SQA person presented the bugs that had been discovered since the last meeting (or issues that had been tested and found to not be fixed.)
In my experience, SQA wanted to assign everything "severity one", engineering wanted to assign everything "severity four", marketing wanted to find the nearest coffee machine, and localization and documentation generally stayed quiet. Between the six of them, the process seemed to work pretty well.
One final note, the reason it worked pretty well was that this was a "high priority" meeting. Only the Head of Engineering (or the owner) could schedule a meeting that took priority over "triage".