Much like the Stock Market, a company's future success has nothing to do with its past successes.
Sun is one of the historic companies in the Valley and has given the world some amazing technology. I want companies like Sun to thrive but unfortunately the vagaries of the business world suggest that companies that fail to adapt often become roadside litter.
You can chalk it up to FUD or whatever conspiracy you choose. Facts are facts. Sun is a company that is on the cusp of becoming irrelevant very quickly.
This is a good thing, though. Not because the Sun support will really help all that many folks, but because of the appearance of legitimacy it lends to OOO
Very true. This is really more about PR than anything else. Remember, it's much easier to promise support than to deliver it.
And a big plus: it flips a solar middle finger at Microsoft. Jyahh!
No, this is all about Sun trying to stay alive. They've been flipping the finger at Microsoft for years and where has that gotten them (same with Oracle). If they hadn't been so focused on Microsoft and tried to create strategies to combat the commodization of their hardware, perhaps they wouldn't be in the position they're in now.
I mean let's be realistic...if promising application support is big news from Sun, then they're about on their last legs.
there are good coders outside the USA, second, outsourcing is mostly done in countries where, unlike in the USA and most of (western) Europe, coding is still a skill.
This generalization is popular but like most generalizations is not rooted entirely in fact.
I work with about 20 Russian programmers. I can honestly tell you, they are nothing special. I have been in training classes with them where they have displayed a startingly abysmal knowledge of basic CS fundamentals and programming methodologies.
I can assure you that outsourcing has nothing to do with finding programmers where coding is still a skill. It's all about finding programmers who will take less money than the current programmers.
I think what they were trying to say is one-dimensional coders are fast becoming dinosaurs. These days in the corporate world, programmers have to demonstrate added-valued.
They can't just sit in their cubes and complete isolated tasks that no one outside of their direct managers know about. The solution providers that get noticed by the people who make the decisions to outsource are the ones who understand that technology in and of itself isn't a reason to keep someone employed, not when that same technology can be mastered by someone at 1/10th the cost.
What is needed (and is sorely lacking) are people who can connect the pieces, be it technology or corporate understanding and provide global solutions, particularly in situations where the questions aren't even known yet.
Where I work, many of the programmers if not checked on every 30 minutes just sit around and waste valuable time. They don't try to learn about the business. They don't try to integrate their current knowledge with future technologies. They don't try to position themselves for the changing corporate environment. And then they get shocked when they get laid off or rumors of outsourcing prop up.
I don't particularly like Microft technology but most of our products are built on top of it and can be extended by things like VBA/VBS. I'm trying to learn it so that I can give the upper management the things that they want. To that end, I've bought books, gone to Kinkos to blow up object models, etc. On more than one occassion I've been asked why I'm doing such things by the other programmers. I try to explain it to them but they just act like I'm stupid.
Yeah, it was bad timing for the Germans. If they had waited a couple of years to begin WW2, they probably would have had usable rocket technology which may have changed the course of the war.
Thankfully, Hitler was an egotist and pushed thousands of German intellectuals out of Germany and to America and other Allied nations.
At my company, we use a BI solution that is three-tiered. Our server group maintains the app server, but they know nothing about the administration of the actual product. We tried to get ownership of the app server because whenever we need to change files or do anything that requires access to the box, it takes forever to get done. We were shot down because this conflicted with our new "Security Czar's" vision.
This BI solution is supposedly very important to the company but they refuse to listen to us. The other day I had to walk the app server admin through a process and he was asking me questions that should be known. Of course since I wasn't able to hold his hands throughout the entire process, it didn't get completed correctly.
This is a routine occourence with these guys. On one occassion, they had to change one line in a file to correct an error from generating in the application. It took about a month to get done. We had to open a ticket. I had to send supporting information on why this needed to be done. I had to remind the admin to do it. Twice.
The users are giving up on the product, but no one in IT Mgmt will understand why. They'll just assume it was the product and go to a competitor. And it'll start all over again.
Space Invaders reminds me of a time, a time that seems perfect to me.
For me, I was a youngster in NYC in late 70's thru early 80's. Penn Station was my playground. They had all the videogames you could think of down there. They even had those old football games with the rollers that you had to smack at with the palm of your hand, which would inevitably get pinched by rolling too far and falling into the small crevice next to the ball.
All games were 25 cents. All of them.
The Penn Station arcades are no longer there. It doesn't seem the same to me.
A NYC slice of pizza and a water down soda, invariably from one of the 50 "Original Rays" would sustain me for hours of game playing. The grease would run down your arm...but you didn't care. It was all about the game. Even now, the smell of a NYC slice takes me back to that time.
Most pizzerias back then had a couple of game machines. Most do not these days.
I remember a small videogame place named Simon's on 8th avenue between 17th and 18th st., if I remember correctly. I'd walk there from JHS 70 and play pacman and asteroids and missile command for hours. I'll never forget the time this guy was playing and left 50 cents in the game for me to play as he left. He was my hero that evening.
It's no longer there. Some hip new eatery has long ago replaced it.
But Space Invaders was my firs love. How I loved that game. Beautiful in its simplicity. When I run into a machine, I have to play at least one game. No matter where I am. It brings me back to fun days. Days not longed by worries about job and mortgages and terrorism. Kids need those days.
I hope this release of a classic will give kids of today memories like I have.
What...are you accusing Slashdot of using inflammatory rhetoric to paint a bad picture of Microsoft ?
My friend, I wish that I could slap your face for impugning the character of my Slashdot friends. Clearly, you must know that they are above this type of behaviour.
So0, presumably, you won't "do business" with any "other company" either?
Don't be a dickhead. Apple tries to paint themselves as a company that is different from the others, in that they're not ruthlessly out there trying to make money. When in fact it's a damn lie. Their image gets tripped up every now and then when they make majore screwups like this battery issue.
Apple's posturing does have a bit of appeal to the moronic Slashdot kiddie corps who attribute human qualities like "noble" and "evil" to companies based on marketing rhetoric.
No they're not. They're Mac enthusiasts who were pissed that the only option given to them by Apple was to go buy another iPod.
That's odious. It's anti-consumer behaviour. When you design a device with a non-removable (or easily removable) battery, you'd better have a replacement plan from day one. If something goes wrong with the battery, it doesn't make sense to tell your loyal customers that they have to spend hundreds of dollars to fix or that they have to buy another iPod.
Apple created this bad publicity themselves and then they tried to belatedly cover their asses. Too late. I'll never buy an iPod based on how this went down.
This is the reason I will never do business with Apple. They are like every other company and will screw you over in a minute. The only difference with Apple is they count on the loyalty of their sycophants to defend them even when they are blatantly in the wrong.
They try to promote and foster a sense of community and culture and then rip you off.
In order to serve the court as an expert witness, you have to be demonstrably free of bias or personal agenda.
More bullshit produced by the slashdot kiddie corps.
All expert witnesses are hired by either the plaintiffs or defendants to give their opinion. They are obviously biased towards one position more than the other.
They receive compenstation for their expert testimony. Is their recompense an example of them pursuing their own agenda (financial)? Of course not. Only an idiot would suggest otherwise.
I'm all for the USA taking oil from those arab,muslim savages. I won't be satisfied until we nuke that whole area and anyone country that wants to step up.
Arabs and muslims are nothing but roaches and should be exterminated.
e-mail scripting was never a useful device to anyone
Exposing the Outlook object model to.vbs files embedded in emails was pretty stupid on Microsoft's part, but the ability to script emails is very valuable from an organizational standpoint. The Security Model (for Active X objects and Windows login) that Microsoft defined was the real culprit.
I remember in NYC back in the late 80's or early 90's there was a debate between a professor in the CUNY system who had written a book debunking the popular belief that pre-biblical Egyptians were black, as civil rights advocates of the 60's were wont to do, and a bunch of black CUNY professors.
She strategically threw in the word "niggardly" in her debate and the black professors went ballistic. She manipulated them into the outburst with her choice of word and pretended that they were upset about nothing.
Granted, the use of the word was benign on its face but the context and the power that some words (and sounds) provoke belied her feigned naivete.
PS: I know some people living near the Silicon Glen area. American companies' eagerness to hire and fire hasn't done anything to make the USA any more popular. It may be business-as-usual for some American companies, but rightly or wrongly, don't expect it to help your country make friends.
Slashdot Mirror
Much like the Stock Market, a company's future success has nothing to do with its past successes.
Sun is one of the historic companies in the Valley and has given the world some amazing technology. I want companies like Sun to thrive but unfortunately the vagaries of the business world suggest that companies that fail to adapt often become roadside litter.
You can chalk it up to FUD or whatever conspiracy you choose. Facts are facts. Sun is a company that is on the cusp of becoming irrelevant very quickly.
This is a good thing, though. Not because the Sun support will really help all that many folks, but because of the appearance of legitimacy it lends to OOO
Very true. This is really more about PR than anything else. Remember, it's much easier to promise support than to deliver it.
And a big plus: it flips a solar middle finger at Microsoft. Jyahh!
No, this is all about Sun trying to stay alive. They've been flipping the finger at Microsoft for years and where has that gotten them (same with Oracle). If they hadn't been so focused on Microsoft and tried to create strategies to combat the commodization of their hardware, perhaps they wouldn't be in the position they're in now.
I mean let's be realistic...if promising application support is big news from Sun, then they're about on their last legs.
there are good coders outside the USA, second, outsourcing is mostly done in countries where, unlike in the USA and most of (western) Europe, coding is still a skill.
This generalization is popular but like most generalizations is not rooted entirely in fact.
I work with about 20 Russian programmers. I can honestly tell you, they are nothing special. I have been in training classes with them where they have displayed a startingly abysmal knowledge of basic CS fundamentals and programming methodologies.
I can assure you that outsourcing has nothing to do with finding programmers where coding is still a skill. It's all about finding programmers who will take less money than the current programmers.
Did you go to a job training school or a community college? I've never seen that type of course in a four year school.
We have to be careful what we call a CS Program.
I think what they were trying to say is one-dimensional coders are fast becoming dinosaurs. These days in the corporate world, programmers have to demonstrate added-valued.
They can't just sit in their cubes and complete isolated tasks that no one outside of their direct managers know about. The solution providers that get noticed by the people who make the decisions to outsource are the ones who understand that technology in and of itself isn't a reason to keep someone employed, not when that same technology can be mastered by someone at 1/10th the cost.
What is needed (and is sorely lacking) are people who can connect the pieces, be it technology or corporate understanding and provide global solutions, particularly in situations where the questions aren't even known yet.
Where I work, many of the programmers if not checked on every 30 minutes just sit around and waste valuable time. They don't try to learn about the business. They don't try to integrate their current knowledge with future technologies. They don't try to position themselves for the changing corporate environment. And then they get shocked when they get laid off or rumors of outsourcing prop up.
I don't particularly like Microft technology but most of our products are built on top of it and can be extended by things like VBA/VBS. I'm trying to learn it so that I can give the upper management the things that they want. To that end, I've bought books, gone to Kinkos to blow up object models, etc. On more than one occassion I've been asked why I'm doing such things by the other programmers. I try to explain it to them but they just act like I'm stupid.
Maybe I am, but I think I'm being pragmatic.
Yeah, it was bad timing for the Germans. If they had waited a couple of years to begin WW2, they probably would have had usable rocket technology which may have changed the course of the war.
Thankfully, Hitler was an egotist and pushed thousands of German intellectuals out of Germany and to America and other Allied nations.
At my company, we use a BI solution that is three-tiered. Our server group maintains the app server, but they know nothing about the administration of the actual product. We tried to get ownership of the app server because whenever we need to change files or do anything that requires access to the box, it takes forever to get done. We were shot down because this conflicted with our new "Security Czar's" vision.
This BI solution is supposedly very important to the company but they refuse to listen to us. The other day I had to walk the app server admin through a process and he was asking me questions that should be known. Of course since I wasn't able to hold his hands throughout the entire process, it didn't get completed correctly.
This is a routine occourence with these guys. On one occassion, they had to change one line in a file to correct an error from generating in the application. It took about a month to get done. We had to open a ticket. I had to send supporting information on why this needed to be done. I had to remind the admin to do it. Twice.
The users are giving up on the product, but no one in IT Mgmt will understand why. They'll just assume it was the product and go to a competitor. And it'll start all over again.
Space Invaders reminds me of a time, a time that seems perfect to me.
For me, I was a youngster in NYC in late 70's thru early 80's. Penn Station was my playground. They had all the videogames you could think of down there. They even had those old football games with the rollers that you had to smack at with the palm of your hand, which would inevitably get pinched by rolling too far and falling into the small crevice next to the ball.
All games were 25 cents. All of them.
The Penn Station arcades are no longer there. It doesn't seem the same to me.
A NYC slice of pizza and a water down soda, invariably from one of the 50 "Original Rays" would sustain me for hours of game playing. The grease would run down your arm...but you didn't care. It was all about the game. Even now, the smell of a NYC slice takes me back to that time.
Most pizzerias back then had a couple of game machines. Most do not these days.
I remember a small videogame place named Simon's on 8th avenue between 17th and 18th st., if I remember correctly. I'd walk there from JHS 70 and play pacman and asteroids and missile command for hours. I'll never forget the time this guy was playing and left 50 cents in the game for me to play as he left. He was my hero that evening.
It's no longer there. Some hip new eatery has long ago replaced it.
But Space Invaders was my firs love. How I loved that game. Beautiful in its simplicity. When I run into a machine, I have to play at least one game. No matter where I am. It brings me back to fun days. Days not longed by worries about job and mortgages and terrorism. Kids need those days.
I hope this release of a classic will give kids of today memories like I have.
Just thought it came across incorrectly
What...are you accusing Slashdot of using inflammatory rhetoric to paint a bad picture of Microsoft ?
My friend, I wish that I could slap your face for impugning the character of my Slashdot friends. Clearly, you must know that they are above this type of behaviour.
I see the Apple fags have gotten to this post.
Suck my dick, bitches.
So0, presumably, you won't "do business" with any "other company" either?
Don't be a dickhead. Apple tries to paint themselves as a company that is different from the others, in that they're not ruthlessly out there trying to make money. When in fact it's a damn lie. Their image gets tripped up every now and then when they make majore screwups like this battery issue.
Apple's posturing does have a bit of appeal to the moronic Slashdot kiddie corps who attribute human qualities like "noble" and "evil" to companies based on marketing rhetoric.
But it just turns me off completely.
Grow the fuck up. You work for free?
Non sequitor.
No they're not. They're Mac enthusiasts who were pissed that the only option given to them by Apple was to go buy another iPod.
That's odious. It's anti-consumer behaviour. When you design a device with a non-removable (or easily removable) battery, you'd better have a replacement plan from day one. If something goes wrong with the battery, it doesn't make sense to tell your loyal customers that they have to spend hundreds of dollars to fix or that they have to buy another iPod.
Apple created this bad publicity themselves and then they tried to belatedly cover their asses. Too late. I'll never buy an iPod based on how this went down.
This is the reason I will never do business with Apple. They are like every other company and will screw you over in a minute. The only difference with Apple is they count on the loyalty of their sycophants to defend them even when they are blatantly in the wrong.
They try to promote and foster a sense of community and culture and then rip you off.
I'll see your anecdote and raise you one:
I don't know anyone who has bought a Mac after buying an iPod.
Your turn.
In order to serve the court as an expert witness, you have to be demonstrably free of bias or personal agenda.
More bullshit produced by the slashdot kiddie corps.
All expert witnesses are hired by either the plaintiffs or defendants to give their opinion. They are obviously biased towards one position more than the other.
They receive compenstation for their expert testimony. Is their recompense an example of them pursuing their own agenda (financial)? Of course not. Only an idiot would suggest otherwise.
I'm all for the USA taking oil from those arab,muslim savages. I won't be satisfied until we nuke that whole area and anyone country that wants to step up.
Arabs and muslims are nothing but roaches and should be exterminated.
All of them.
e-mail scripting was never a useful device to anyone
.vbs files embedded in emails was pretty stupid on Microsoft's part, but the ability to script emails is very valuable from an organizational standpoint. The Security Model (for Active X objects and Windows login) that Microsoft defined was the real culprit.
Exposing the Outlook object model to
Wow, those are two companies to take seriously, huh? And Redhat seems to be heading in their direction.
All in all, no one in Redmond is going to lose any sleep over this.
XP = Extreme Programming.
Go fuck yourself, idiot.
I remember in NYC back in the late 80's or early 90's there was a debate between a professor in the CUNY system who had written a book debunking the popular belief that pre-biblical Egyptians were black, as civil rights advocates of the 60's were wont to do, and a bunch of black CUNY professors.
She strategically threw in the word "niggardly" in her debate and the black professors went ballistic. She manipulated them into the outburst with her choice of word and pretended that they were upset about nothing.
Granted, the use of the word was benign on its face but the context and the power that some words (and sounds) provoke belied her feigned naivete.
you do the vast majority of your compatriots a great disservice with this kind of talk.
I speak for myself. If you want to extrapolate that to cover the entire U.S., that's your prerogative.
Instead of scaring American companies with your "threats", just be a man and walk the walk -- stop using/buying *all* American products.
At least you don't have to worry about your haggis supply being interrupted, you fucking idiot.
PS: I know some people living near the Silicon Glen area. American companies' eagerness to hire and fire hasn't done anything to make the USA any more popular. It may be business-as-usual for some American companies, but rightly or wrongly, don't expect it to help your country make friends.
You think companies do business to make friends?
Go eat some haggis, you fucking idiot.