IT is a cost center. We IT people correctly see it as a "strategic cost center" but most CEOs and accounting/finance folks see it as a generic cost center. The age old quest of the finance/accounting people is to reduce cost centers. You need to articulate to your boss the micro-economic factors of how overall costs are actually increased by skimping on IT spending. Identify specific instances as a case study. Also point out how near term projects will save near term costs. Assume the CEO will be obtuse no matter what you say. The popular CEO counter nowadays is people just need to "multitask" more. However multitasking is never a solution and always decreases productivity (it is "specialization of labor" which increases productivity).
I don't think this is a "white" issue. The USA has ~20% people of African descent. In fact, if you separate out just the whites of northern Euro descent then it'd be at the same historical levels. Fact is the poorer demographics have increased which pulls down averages. I also doubt whites ever took dominance for granted relative to east Asians. Asians were broadly admired by whites for exceptionally high intelligence in the media as far back as the 1930s with the Charley Chan detective series.
You cannot pick-and-choose cities like Shanghai, Hong Kong or Singapore the put them against an entire country like USA. That is categorically absurd and looks the the results are being rigged to make a point instead of statistical validity. Instead compare Shanghai to say Boston.
A number of things: First, you may have "exponentially" more conversations because your initial conversations are poor. Not only check if the person understands what you said but also anticipate their next questions. Second, things you might feel are obvious in your mind but not in the minds of others. Insure others understand the full and surrounding context of what your saying. Third, different people comprehend differently. Unfortunately you may need to have a variety of communication forms for different people. Fourth, communicate visually when possible since most people are visual learners. Learn to do simple diagrams using Paint to convey points in synopsis form (Visio tends to be to detailed). Fifth, learn to sing. If you're accent is a problem then singing popular songs helps your elocution. Sixth, be involved in group activities outside of work. People in sports, drama or music groups have better skills since they're around people more. Seventh, it is a problem you may never solve. Tech skills can be learned quickly but communication skills take a lifetime. Byte Magazine used to hire English college majors as writers since it was easier to teach writers tech skills than tech people writing skills. Worse yet, you may be open to outsourcing since Asia is full of billions of great math/tech folks who are one dimensional and cannot communicate.
You're correct doing it out-of-the-garage is not realistic for big software projects (unless you have a telecommunication center in the garage). But unless you have all programmers who have great communication skills and work together in a high quality framework (such as BMW) then the incremental benefit of adding people beyond 5 or 6 coders is diminished by the combinatorial overhead of communicating/coordinating. Better to add more business analysts to get the requirements right.
It is such a sham they even call it the "music industry". The amount of assets in the form of recording studios and distribution is relatively quite small. What's big is the number of office buildings housing lawyers. If you ever drive around the West Hollywood or Beverley Hills area you'll see big office buildings full of lawyers. That's what the "industry" is...
Btw, apologies everyone from shifting the subject away from Healthcare.gov. It just that WWII is just such a great subject when it come to the consequences of mixing politicians with sci/tech...
You're right about the pre-1943 campaign choices Hitler made. Splitting of forces and then fixating on Stalingrad, even as his generals pleaded to retreat, was his most spectacular campaign blunder. But he did interfere with the Battle of Kursk in 1943 when Manstein wanted to hold the Donetz bain. Also, he meddled in other ways, especially in development projects. He wanted the ME 262 to be a Schnellbomber attack aircraft, which delayed the project. He used the V2 overwhelmingly against England when he should have used against various targets (i.e. Russia). He had a bizarre fixation on a giant tanks and massive artillery pieces, which diverted resources.
I work at a major bank. This sort of non-sense has peaked in recent years at big organizations. One would have thought the business side would have become more IT savvy in the past couple of decades. Instead, they still think a magic wand can be waved in the USA or India which will cause a computer system to emerge. Perhaps the business side users are peddled such fantasy by Infosys, Tata, EDS, CGI, CSC, etc. But more likely it's business users who refuse to work collaboratively with IT. They think because they got a bunch of low cost Indian or American programmers, usually with one dimensional skills sets, whacking away at the keyboard that a quality system will emerge. Instead, they get crap. It's like a parade ground crowed with marchers who have no coordinated direction. There's no orchestration, no appreciation for logistics, and not sense of engineering. If an engineer tells the business side something cannot get done, then they replace the engineer with someone who'll tell what they want to hear. The best analogy is Hitler working with his generals in WWII. He thought flags on the battle maps could be moved around like a paste-it board, not concept of logistics. And when a general told Hitler his plans were imbecilic, then the general was shot. Thankfully for humanity Hitler's idiocy destroyed the Third Reich. What else will the business users destroy?
Err, if you can read, imbecile, you can see I've listed other countries besides China, including other democracies. Just face it. Snowden is a BORING loser who revealed nothing new or important.
Revealing the NSA/CIA spies on everyone was no more interesting than knowing the MSS, FSB, Mossad, or BND does the exact same thing. The fact that the NSA was monitoring the same data as Chinese Unit 61398 regularly does was a surprise to no one. If you're anyone who uses modern digital communication then assume you've on a party line with numerous countries listening in. Why narcissistic Snowden thinks he should get clemency, for revealing something any intelligent person knows happens anyways, is baffling.
Most all Wall St firm's systems are bloody awful. There are many reasons for this. First, the true business is sales/brokerage so the engineering side, though it is a strategic asset, is often neglected. This includes putting clueless business side people in charge of IT system. Second, the boom and bust cycles of tech investment are a bad way of building tech systems. It's like not watering your garden all summer except for one day when you use a high-pressure fire hose on it. Third, as part of the boom/bust cost cutting they have no employee longevity in tech so no one understands how the mind-bogglingly complex and obscure layers of technology work. Fourth, and more recently for cost cutting, they've dispersed their dev teams around the globe so communication and teamwork are seriously compromised. Fifth, when there is a boom they try to build their systems so quickly that they take all sorts of dangerous engineering short cuts. All this adds up to engineering disaster.
So it appears that Obama and the White House have become a help desk. So if anyone has any problems with Excel 2007, FireFox or Outlook then please call the White House. You'll get a ticket and they'll investigate the problems. Eventually, to save costs, we'll outsource the Executive Branch to India.
The SF Bay area is one of the most expensive areas in the world. What is $7 million going to buy? Perhaps a Winnebago which they can park on the street and loaded with 10 yo Linux boxes?
Obviously the problem this study is how the boundaries are drawn. Scandinavia is relatively small ethnically homogenous countries verses diverse USA. Same with Singapore. If they sampled the north and west of Boston they'd get significantly higher scores. Other places might be Greenwich/Darian/NewCaanan, Orange County (CA), Marin County, or Grosse Point. Sad to say, anywhere highly populated by Caucasians/India/Asians will score highly. Places populated by African Americans will score low.
From the land where buildings regularly collapse, women get gang raped, and corruption is so wide spread the economy cannot possibly grow, the Obama administration outsourced the linchpin of its programme to India. This garbage software is the result. Of course this has nothing to do with the competency or intelligence of the average Indian program, many of who excel at academic programming skills. What it shows the development process for web development is a lot more than just a bunch of coders wacking away at the keyboard. It requires people with a well rounded skills (especially communication skills), process analysis, modeling, feedback, quality review, and teamwork. And to facilitate any of these it requires programmers be somewhat local. It also requires the programmers to be somewhat vested in the product. It is doubtful anyone who is on a three month contract programming assignment for $10/hour cares about he product.
Evolution and climate change are NOT in the same category in terms of scientific doubt. In the case of evolution, the fact that anyone can go to the Southwest or Pennsylvania and find sea shells buried deep on mountain simply proves life predates 10,000 years ago. Climate change, on the other hand, presents itself as a chicken-little scam. From scientific misconduct to continual promotion of vague, yet terrifying sounding, consequences in the media, climate change is the biggest swindle of faith since Pope Leo X.
Yes. I'm not into using the words "elegant" or "robust" or "powerful: or "passionate" in general since they're way overused with software. I'd usually like more obscure Zeitgeist terms.
Perl is a mess if one doesn't "use strict" or "warning" or doesn't format code properly. It is a coding supervisors job to insure the code is readable via code reviews (in utopia). One can make a mess out of C/C++/Java too if they obfuscate code to protect their job security (it's the person who's code no one understands who gets laid off last). The biggest mistake of all in teaching coding using one letter variable names code examples (such as iterators i and j). Variable names should have meaning. For example, we have a psychopath where I work who always uses the a global Perl hash variable "%e". For one, the letter "e" is one of the most common letters in English so grepping code is a nightmare. For two, it has no meaning. And third, the probability of name collision is huge. The guy is a classic Russian paranoid who thinks nothing about f*ing a code base to insure his own interests. Anyway, apologies for venting...
I teach my nieces and nephews Perl. I love Perl. So many languages have fallen by the wayside but Perl is a masterpiece. I'm also a fan Python and Ruby which are also fun. Lite languages are generally fun. I detest Java since it is such a heavy language and heavy languages are NOT fun.
Park Ave is a major avenue in Manhattan, New York City, 10016. A doorman is someone who sits at the door of apartment buildings as security and concierge. A knife isn't illegal in ones own residence even if concealed. It's absurd hyperbole to link any of this to the naval yard tragedy - take your lithium please.
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IT is a cost center. We IT people correctly see it as a "strategic cost center" but most CEOs and accounting/finance folks see it as a generic cost center. The age old quest of the finance/accounting people is to reduce cost centers. You need to articulate to your boss the micro-economic factors of how overall costs are actually increased by skimping on IT spending. Identify specific instances as a case study. Also point out how near term projects will save near term costs. Assume the CEO will be obtuse no matter what you say. The popular CEO counter nowadays is people just need to "multitask" more. However multitasking is never a solution and always decreases productivity (it is "specialization of labor" which increases productivity).
I don't think this is a "white" issue. The USA has ~20% people of African descent. In fact, if you separate out just the whites of northern Euro descent then it'd be at the same historical levels. Fact is the poorer demographics have increased which pulls down averages. I also doubt whites ever took dominance for granted relative to east Asians. Asians were broadly admired by whites for exceptionally high intelligence in the media as far back as the 1930s with the Charley Chan detective series.
You cannot pick-and-choose cities like Shanghai, Hong Kong or Singapore the put them against an entire country like USA. That is categorically absurd and looks the the results are being rigged to make a point instead of statistical validity. Instead compare Shanghai to say Boston.
It is an indicator of a shift off the first position.
A number of things: First, you may have "exponentially" more conversations because your initial conversations are poor. Not only check if the person understands what you said but also anticipate their next questions. Second, things you might feel are obvious in your mind but not in the minds of others. Insure others understand the full and surrounding context of what your saying. Third, different people comprehend differently. Unfortunately you may need to have a variety of communication forms for different people. Fourth, communicate visually when possible since most people are visual learners. Learn to do simple diagrams using Paint to convey points in synopsis form (Visio tends to be to detailed). Fifth, learn to sing. If you're accent is a problem then singing popular songs helps your elocution. Sixth, be involved in group activities outside of work. People in sports, drama or music groups have better skills since they're around people more. Seventh, it is a problem you may never solve. Tech skills can be learned quickly but communication skills take a lifetime. Byte Magazine used to hire English college majors as writers since it was easier to teach writers tech skills than tech people writing skills. Worse yet, you may be open to outsourcing since Asia is full of billions of great math/tech folks who are one dimensional and cannot communicate.
You're correct doing it out-of-the-garage is not realistic for big software projects (unless you have a telecommunication center in the garage). But unless you have all programmers who have great communication skills and work together in a high quality framework (such as BMW) then the incremental benefit of adding people beyond 5 or 6 coders is diminished by the combinatorial overhead of communicating/coordinating. Better to add more business analysts to get the requirements right.
This proves the old adage that no more programmers should be involved on a project than you can fit into a VW Bug with pizza and beer.
It is such a sham they even call it the "music industry". The amount of assets in the form of recording studios and distribution is relatively quite small. What's big is the number of office buildings housing lawyers. If you ever drive around the West Hollywood or Beverley Hills area you'll see big office buildings full of lawyers. That's what the "industry" is...
Btw, apologies everyone from shifting the subject away from Healthcare.gov. It just that WWII is just such a great subject when it come to the consequences of mixing politicians with sci/tech...
You're right about the pre-1943 campaign choices Hitler made. Splitting of forces and then fixating on Stalingrad, even as his generals pleaded to retreat, was his most spectacular campaign blunder. But he did interfere with the Battle of Kursk in 1943 when Manstein wanted to hold the Donetz bain. Also, he meddled in other ways, especially in development projects. He wanted the ME 262 to be a Schnellbomber attack aircraft, which delayed the project. He used the V2 overwhelmingly against England when he should have used against various targets (i.e. Russia). He had a bizarre fixation on a giant tanks and massive artillery pieces, which diverted resources.
I work at a major bank. This sort of non-sense has peaked in recent years at big organizations. One would have thought the business side would have become more IT savvy in the past couple of decades. Instead, they still think a magic wand can be waved in the USA or India which will cause a computer system to emerge. Perhaps the business side users are peddled such fantasy by Infosys, Tata, EDS, CGI, CSC, etc. But more likely it's business users who refuse to work collaboratively with IT. They think because they got a bunch of low cost Indian or American programmers, usually with one dimensional skills sets, whacking away at the keyboard that a quality system will emerge. Instead, they get crap. It's like a parade ground crowed with marchers who have no coordinated direction. There's no orchestration, no appreciation for logistics, and not sense of engineering. If an engineer tells the business side something cannot get done, then they replace the engineer with someone who'll tell what they want to hear. The best analogy is Hitler working with his generals in WWII. He thought flags on the battle maps could be moved around like a paste-it board, not concept of logistics. And when a general told Hitler his plans were imbecilic, then the general was shot. Thankfully for humanity Hitler's idiocy destroyed the Third Reich. What else will the business users destroy?
Err, if you can read, imbecile, you can see I've listed other countries besides China, including other democracies. Just face it. Snowden is a BORING loser who revealed nothing new or important.
Revealing the NSA/CIA spies on everyone was no more interesting than knowing the MSS, FSB, Mossad, or BND does the exact same thing. The fact that the NSA was monitoring the same data as Chinese Unit 61398 regularly does was a surprise to no one. If you're anyone who uses modern digital communication then assume you've on a party line with numerous countries listening in. Why narcissistic Snowden thinks he should get clemency, for revealing something any intelligent person knows happens anyways, is baffling.
The Obamacare website fiasco should be featured on the next episode of Modern Marvel's "Engineering Disasters" on the History Channel.
Most all Wall St firm's systems are bloody awful. There are many reasons for this. First, the true business is sales/brokerage so the engineering side, though it is a strategic asset, is often neglected. This includes putting clueless business side people in charge of IT system. Second, the boom and bust cycles of tech investment are a bad way of building tech systems. It's like not watering your garden all summer except for one day when you use a high-pressure fire hose on it. Third, as part of the boom/bust cost cutting they have no employee longevity in tech so no one understands how the mind-bogglingly complex and obscure layers of technology work. Fourth, and more recently for cost cutting, they've dispersed their dev teams around the globe so communication and teamwork are seriously compromised. Fifth, when there is a boom they try to build their systems so quickly that they take all sorts of dangerous engineering short cuts. All this adds up to engineering disaster.
So it appears that Obama and the White House have become a help desk. So if anyone has any problems with Excel 2007, FireFox or Outlook then please call the White House. You'll get a ticket and they'll investigate the problems. Eventually, to save costs, we'll outsource the Executive Branch to India.
The SF Bay area is one of the most expensive areas in the world. What is $7 million going to buy? Perhaps a Winnebago which they can park on the street and loaded with 10 yo Linux boxes?
Obviously the problem this study is how the boundaries are drawn. Scandinavia is relatively small ethnically homogenous countries verses diverse USA. Same with Singapore. If they sampled the north and west of Boston they'd get significantly higher scores. Other places might be Greenwich/Darian/NewCaanan, Orange County (CA), Marin County, or Grosse Point. Sad to say, anywhere highly populated by Caucasians/India/Asians will score highly. Places populated by African Americans will score low.
From the land where buildings regularly collapse, women get gang raped, and corruption is so wide spread the economy cannot possibly grow, the Obama administration outsourced the linchpin of its programme to India. This garbage software is the result. Of course this has nothing to do with the competency or intelligence of the average Indian program, many of who excel at academic programming skills. What it shows the development process for web development is a lot more than just a bunch of coders wacking away at the keyboard. It requires people with a well rounded skills (especially communication skills), process analysis, modeling, feedback, quality review, and teamwork. And to facilitate any of these it requires programmers be somewhat local. It also requires the programmers to be somewhat vested in the product. It is doubtful anyone who is on a three month contract programming assignment for $10/hour cares about he product.
Evolution and climate change are NOT in the same category in terms of scientific doubt. In the case of evolution, the fact that anyone can go to the Southwest or Pennsylvania and find sea shells buried deep on mountain simply proves life predates 10,000 years ago. Climate change, on the other hand, presents itself as a chicken-little scam. From scientific misconduct to continual promotion of vague, yet terrifying sounding, consequences in the media, climate change is the biggest swindle of faith since Pope Leo X.
Yes. I'm not into using the words "elegant" or "robust" or "powerful: or "passionate" in general since they're way overused with software. I'd usually like more obscure Zeitgeist terms.
Perl is a mess if one doesn't "use strict" or "warning" or doesn't format code properly. It is a coding supervisors job to insure the code is readable via code reviews (in utopia). One can make a mess out of C/C++/Java too if they obfuscate code to protect their job security (it's the person who's code no one understands who gets laid off last). The biggest mistake of all in teaching coding using one letter variable names code examples (such as iterators i and j). Variable names should have meaning. For example, we have a psychopath where I work who always uses the a global Perl hash variable "%e". For one, the letter "e" is one of the most common letters in English so grepping code is a nightmare. For two, it has no meaning. And third, the probability of name collision is huge. The guy is a classic Russian paranoid who thinks nothing about f*ing a code base to insure his own interests. Anyway, apologies for venting...
History will one day see Perl as a masterpiece on the level of Bach's Brandenberg Concertos or Mozart's piano concertos.
I teach my nieces and nephews Perl. I love Perl. So many languages have fallen by the wayside but Perl is a masterpiece. I'm also a fan Python and Ruby which are also fun. Lite languages are generally fun. I detest Java since it is such a heavy language and heavy languages are NOT fun.
Park Ave is a major avenue in Manhattan, New York City, 10016. A doorman is someone who sits at the door of apartment buildings as security and concierge. A knife isn't illegal in ones own residence even if concealed. It's absurd hyperbole to link any of this to the naval yard tragedy - take your lithium please.