I saw a very amusing Dilbert cartoon on this theme. (Forgive me if I get some of the detail a bit wrong.) The company Dilbert worked for outsourced desktop support to a company in India, who outsourced it to a company in VietNam, who outsourced it to a company in the Phillipenes, who outsourced it back to Dilbert's company (because they lied about their service delivery). _This_ is the wave of the future.
Not quite. The significant difference is that techies are generally reasonably intelligent, and suits are usually as dumb as dogshit (in my experience). Other than that, they're pretty similar, I guess.
Gartner will _always_ give you the finest opinion that money can buy. Only management could trust them. (Which pretty much explains most of the problems of our world.)
Placed in his position (and I have been), I would have just spent a lot of time posting to/., playing patience, futzing about writing software I was interested in,...
You do realise, don't you, that most of the languages spoken (and written) in India and Europe (including, but not limited to, English) are Indo-European?
When I was much younger, I worked briefly for what was then the Dept of Social Security, which was responsible for aged and invalid pensions, and unemployment benefits, and I was the Death Benefits clerk for a few months. What happened was that if a pensioner died, their widow (or, rarely, widower) would get a one-time payment of $A50 to help pay for the funeral. On many occasions, I'd be paying out the death benefit to some grieving widow whose husband had just retired, but whose pension claim was still being assessed (a process which took a month at most). These poor old pricks were dropping off the perch within weeks of retiring (at age 65). I think it had a lot to do with the fact that most blokes defined themselves in terms of their job, and just couldn't cope with being out of the workforce. Oh, most of them probably smoked as well.
I don't doubt that a significant number of people lived to a reasonable age in most pre-industrial cultures - even in mediaeval Europe, you stood a good chance of reaching 60 if you survived past 6 (unless you were a peasant, of course). I don't think that the advanced ages we reach (75+) were typical, however.
I think the fact that Bush committed troops to Iraq speaks for itself. If he had genuinely believed that Iraq had WMD, he would have been much more circumspect, because, given Saddam Hussein's record, there was every reason to expect he would have deployed them against invaders.
I'm aware there's a whole world beyond Australia's shores, and the education system wasn't particularly broken when I was at school (although we did only learn British history). I'd be surprised if life expectancy were much different anywhere in the world until fairly recently, particularly because of infant mortality, death in childbirth, and poor hygene.
I'd be very interested in finding out about anywhere where the bulk of people survived much past 40 in the past.
The reason that talking "sense" to a hippie irritates her (or him) is because we told you all what the problems were 35 years ago, and you didn't fucking listen.
Now. Come on. You _can't_ _possibly_ have intelligent discourse with a conservative. Believe me, I've tried (oh god, how I've tried!), but it just doesn't happen. They aren't capable of it. Not even the educated ones. Oh, sure, they don't drool much, and they don't dribble too much soup down the fronts of their shirts, and some of them can spell "Plato's Republic", but an intelligent conversation? Get real.
Generally when I design software, the first thing I like to do is plan it thoroughly. This is a time-consuming process, and is also a pre-requisite for giving a reasonable estimate of how long the project will take. It's rare I actually am allowed the luxury of this step, however.
You're quite correct about the risks of building something without design documents, however.
Apropos new house designs... in the 1950's a Sydney architect called Harry Seidler started building houses with flat rooves, and, because people thought they looked really nifty, other architects and builders started making them too. Most of them leaked, because the design hadn't been debugged before they implemented it.
You've hit one of the nails on the head (although there are others). I've been involved in a number of projects where this approach has been forced on me (because some dopey manager just saw something nifty at a vendor's "conference"), and it generally ends in tears.
The thing is, that designing and building bridges, cars, houses, etc., are well-understood problems with a number of thoroughly debugged solutions. People still fuck it up. Software design is _not_ a well-understood domain (despite Knuth's work), and designers and developers are often doing something that has never been done before. If you've never done something, you cannot possibly estimate how long it will take. Once you add clueless management and marketing types into the situation, it's surprising that any software ever works.
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I saw a very amusing Dilbert cartoon on this theme. (Forgive me if I get some of the detail a bit wrong.) The company Dilbert worked for outsourced desktop support to a company in India, who outsourced it to a company in VietNam, who outsourced it to a company in the Phillipenes, who outsourced it back to Dilbert's company (because they lied about their service delivery). _This_ is the wave of the future.
Not quite. The significant difference is that techies are generally reasonably intelligent, and suits are usually as dumb as dogshit (in my experience). Other than that, they're pretty similar, I guess.
Actually, many of us quite like Solaris ...
(and also the book of the same name.)
Gartner will _always_ give you the finest opinion that money can buy. Only management could trust them. (Which pretty much explains most of the problems of our world.)
It's the bit between the fuck hole and the muck hole. And if you slip, you're in the shit. (An oldy but a goody, brought to you by 1968.)
Placed in his position (and I have been), I would have just spent a lot of time posting to /., playing patience, futzing about writing software I was interested in, ...
What are they going to do, sack you? Fuck 'em.
You do realise, don't you, that most of the languages spoken (and written) in India and Europe (including, but not limited to, English) are Indo-European?
I thought so.
About 10 years ago, I usually sent a "fuck off and die" reply to spammers. It didn't work :^(
These days, I don't bother. (But I still wish they'd fuck off and die.)
When I was much younger, I worked briefly for what was then the Dept of Social Security, which was responsible for aged and invalid pensions, and unemployment benefits, and I was the Death Benefits clerk for a few months. What happened was that if a pensioner died, their widow (or, rarely, widower) would get a one-time payment of $A50 to help pay for the funeral. On many occasions, I'd be paying out the death benefit to some grieving widow whose husband had just retired, but whose pension claim was still being assessed (a process which took a month at most). These poor old pricks were dropping off the perch within weeks of retiring (at age 65). I think it had a lot to do with the fact that most blokes defined themselves in terms of their job, and just couldn't cope with being out of the workforce. Oh, most of them probably smoked as well.
I don't doubt that a significant number of people lived to a reasonable age in most pre-industrial cultures - even in mediaeval Europe, you stood a good chance of reaching 60 if you survived past 6 (unless you were a peasant, of course). I don't think that the advanced ages we reach (75+) were typical, however.
I think the fact that Bush committed troops to Iraq speaks for itself. If he had genuinely believed that Iraq had WMD, he would have been much more circumspect, because, given Saddam Hussein's record, there was every reason to expect he would have deployed them against invaders.
I'm aware there's a whole world beyond Australia's shores, and the education system wasn't particularly broken when I was at school (although we did only learn British history). I'd be surprised if life expectancy were much different anywhere in the world until fairly recently, particularly because of infant mortality, death in childbirth, and poor hygene.
I'd be very interested in finding out about anywhere where the bulk of people survived much past 40 in the past.
Thank you.
Cool! That certainly ties in with the fertility thing. I just figured oestrus had to do with eggs because of oestrogen.
I'm pretty sure "Easter" has the same etymology as "oestrus" - it's all about eggs.
The reason that talking "sense" to a hippie irritates her (or him) is because we told you all what the problems were 35 years ago, and you didn't fucking listen.
It's just that the conservatives are a _much_ bigger target, in terms of hipocrisy particularly.
I mean, Clinton lied about a few blow jobs, whereas Bush lied about the reasons he went to war.
Now. Come on. You _can't_ _possibly_ have intelligent discourse with a conservative. Believe me, I've tried (oh god, how I've tried!), but it just doesn't happen. They aren't capable of it. Not even the educated ones. Oh, sure, they don't drool much, and they don't dribble too much soup down the fronts of their shirts, and some of them can spell "Plato's Republic", but an intelligent conversation? Get real.
nobody likes a smartarse.
You've clearly never beeen to Australia. Pi _can_ be squared (but it's a shitty Balfour's pi).
We didn't used to live this long, as a rule.
Does that answer your question?
Generally when I design software, the first thing I like to do is plan it thoroughly. This is a time-consuming process, and is also a pre-requisite for giving a reasonable estimate of how long the project will take. It's rare I actually am allowed the luxury of this step, however.
You're quite correct about the risks of building something without design documents, however.
Apropos new house designs ... in the 1950's a Sydney architect called Harry Seidler started building houses with flat rooves, and, because people thought they looked really nifty, other architects and builders started making them too. Most of them leaked, because the design hadn't been debugged before they implemented it.
Oh, and they're really ugly, too (imo).
You've hit one of the nails on the head (although there are others). I've been involved in a number of projects where this approach has been forced on me (because some dopey manager just saw something nifty at a vendor's "conference"), and it generally ends in tears.
The thing is, that designing and building bridges, cars, houses, etc., are well-understood problems with a number of thoroughly debugged solutions. People still fuck it up. Software design is _not_ a well-understood domain (despite Knuth's work), and designers and developers are often doing something that has never been done before. If you've never done something, you cannot possibly estimate how long it will take. Once you add clueless management and marketing types into the situation, it's surprising that any software ever works.