I did development for USGS once about 8 years ago. The hiring process was terrible because of all the paper work. They hired several grad students, and one guy who had a semester's worth of programming. Why? Because he served in the Gulf war and was a Vet. So they were required to hire him if they hired us.
We also used Data General computers. Cheaper and better UNIX computers were out there, but the paperwork made them impossible to get. To use a new vendor you had to post that you were looking for equiptment. Then you had to see how many minorities were in the vendor company leadership. Those got preference. Bunch of other forms and regulations.
Require consideration of open source good idea? On paper. But that is the problem. There are too many good ideas on paper that became laws, and you have to pile through to do anything in government.
Being a slashdot user I didn't read the article. (Because the sites are always down after the slashdot post for some reason.) But are the comments about it are correct, that 'open source' was required to be on the approved list? Great, I can write a piece of crap and it is required to be approved? Hope not.
Trust the guy they hired to make the decision. Otherwise he shouldn't be in the position if he didn't deserve the trust. (Yes, I know about the stupid Oracle license story a while back.)
I agree. The fact that DSL isn't widely deployed is because of all the telco greed. I have a lot of telco stock, so I'm happy with this. With these recent rulings, my stock will go even higher!
Oh wait. The telco's aren't making a profit. And my stock isn't worth enough for me to spend the transaction fee to sell it. Telco's are bleeding like there is no tomorrow because they are investing in all this high-tech internet stuff that didn't make them any money.
Are you sure the telco's aren't really an internet charity?
With the right libraries I could do it in a few minutes with both C and Java.
Without the right libraries it would be harder in C, Java, and Perl.
The standard set of libraries has a lot to do with it. I think that is usually what makes a language so popular.
Microsoft and their developers network was important to their success. For less that $2k I could get a huge binder with boatloads of tools and libraries and tech articles. For $2k I couldn't even get a compiler on a lot of UNIX systems. Which do you think I liked better at the time?
Most people have the idea now, make it easy on developers or you won't have apps. (Apple never got this.) Java has great built in libs. Perl. Microsoft stuff.
The only other big different is if you don't have to explicitly free up memory like you do in C/C++.
Dude, you are assuming that there is source. With only 4k on the smaller cartriges, you were coding assembly. So the source is 'open'. Get the ROM and look at the bytes.
Oh great. Just what we need. "Well, after careful analysis computer analysis with my powerful algorithms, I have concluded that break-dancing is now cool. I will be the first nerd in history to be atop this new trend."
Good coders have their own methodology. The key is that they do not follow a methodology just for the sake of the methodology, but they understand what works.
Programmers who recently are introduced to patterns are amusing to watch. They see the patterns, and try to apply them to the problem. But the correct solution to a problem will naturally imply some sort of pattern. Pattern books are useful only in adding to a programmers experience. Here is a problem. Here is a good solution. But don't try to apply our solution to your problem, as your problem will always be a bit different.
Another way to state: People who are good at brain-teasers are usually good at figuring out problems in real life. But rarely do the brain teasers mirror real life.
The other key to success is some good management. Good programmers can get by with mediocre management. But even a team of crack developers will fail with bad management. When you go into a job, always make sure the management is strong. Otherwise you may just be wasting a few months or years of your life.
I'm planning on selling solar panels that look like stained glass. And they are 13% efficient. And just like they solar panels in the article, it will probably be years before you can buy them.
Reminds me of a joke. Guy goes into a hardware store, wants a hammer. Hardware store says they cost $10, but they are out of them. Guy goes to hardware store number two. This store says hammers are $20.
"But the store down the street will sell me a hammer for $10, they are just out of them right now!"
"Well, when we are out of hammers, we sell them for $5".
There was another one where he was pretended to be a guy that thinking about suicide. The person calling was selling caskets. So the telemarketer was both trying to talk him out of killing himself, but if he did, he should buy this casket.
This post says nothing. Perhaps you could list what features AIX has that Linux does not? That would be an interesting post.
I use AIX all the time. To me it is just another UNIX system.
Las Vegas and the PBX
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I read a story where you were an expert witness for a trial in Las Vegas over redirected telephone calls. The defense called in to question if you really had hacked into the phone system. On a break, you ran to some old 'storage' locker and retrieved a printout of accounts and passwords or something.
What was the story behind your part that trial? (And how much stuff do you have in storage?)
Cringely's documentary has some interesting interviews about how Xerox gave away a lot of their technologies. Many of the workers thought the management was insane.
While the failures of recognizing the loss of Xerox ideas seem obvious now, one must realize that nothing like that existed at the time. Developing any of those technologies would have involved huge risk and cost. The important thing is that certain people did realize it, and the technologies were marketed. Just not by Xerox.
Ideas are easy. Developing and marketing them takes real work.
It all depends if you are actually doing something of interest.
Like the comments in Slashcode, most apps go from static, to dynamic, to static caching of dynamic pages.
At DTN we served up customized portal pages to people with commodity and equity quotes, news, graphs, etc. Since they didn't have any money we had to use a load balanced Pentium Pro and a Pentium II. The app had no problem serving the load, and it was fast.
Now that I work for companies that have money, our apps run really slow. Developers get expensive machines and don't know how to optimize any more.
Because you don't 'own' it. You only have a license to use it. By cracking the DVD you are using it (perhaps) in a manner that is not what the author licensed you to for.
This would not work. The goverment is not a fast agency. If they did this we'd be proving we could repair Applie//e computers, not Intel P4's with RAID and fibre channel components.
And can you imagine the politics? Microsoft would want training for people to repair their hardware spec. Hollywood would want people to take an oath not to disable their copy protection devices that might be enabled some day. Homeland would want a quick scan of the hard drive for those terrorist keywords.
I think we are better off with the unregulated way things are now.
I don't think ClearCase competes with Visual Source Safe. VSS hasn't changed in the last 10 years. It has no support for anything basic like branching. (I know there is a branch option, but it doesn't really do branching.)
VSS has to get UNIX support through a different vendor. Even Microsoft doesn't use VSS. They use some internally created thing. I don't think Microsoft care much about VSS.
Dude, even products like MS Excel, or MS Word didn't have hundreds of OO developers.
But I do know several projects that have had that many developers. I also know of zero projects with that many that have delivered anything but a big binder of documents.
Clearcase is another of rational's products. I'm curious about other people's experiences. Things I don't like:
1. Network dependent. Since the code is on a 'mounted' drive, everything is slower. I have to go to the network for everything. 2. Integrates into Windows OS. If clearcase or the network has problems, I have to reboot. 3. Takes to long. The whole integration stream, delivery, etc. takes about 10 button pushes and a good minute of time. 4. Costs too much. CVS works better, and is free.
Rational software is some of the worst designed examples of user interface out there. There are two types of people that like rational software:
1. They haven't used anything better like togethersoft or visio. 2. They are management and don't actually have to use it.
Rational and IBM should get along great. Neither company produces good software. But both companies produce incredible salespeople. Working for a large bank, I have a great deal of respect for these guys. How would you like to try selling IBM or rational products? As engineers we are usually too honest. I'd never get anywhere.
Rational sells a process. The process is great for business people because it produces visible artifacts. (Aptly named, as they don't get used and are only good in the archeological sense.)
Togethersoft (recently bought by Borland) has much better software but it is very expensive, and they don't have the quality salesforce IBM has.
So if you think that salespeople don't matter, think again. In this case, they can take a barely functional product and have it dominate that sector of industry. Even in the face of better products.
You are absolutely right, you don't need struts for that. I did something similar (along with 8 zillion other people). Our 'ActionObjects' could also specify a view object. We had views for JSP, XML, portal pages, etc. Very lightweight and easy to understand. (Struts is not easy to understand for beginners.)
You also don't need libraries like log4j for logging. Logging is easy, right? (That's what I thought until I started using log4j. Holy cow, the things my logging can do now...)
But struts has many add ons for form processing, db connection handling, controller options, dynamic form object creation, dynamic validation, error handling, internationalization, page layout, etc. And it makes it easy to make your own add-ons.
So now I can work 1 or 2 days a week, and get everything done that I used to do during the whole week. The rest of the time I can spend playing around with other stuff.
Right now I'm trying to figure out if Java Data Objects are worth while. Right now it makes my code slightly smaller, but adds lots of xml. And I'm suspicious it is slow. But these were some of my same unfounded complaints against struts when I started.
I really like the O'Reilly book that just came out. Most of the chapters of this book went through public review, if I remember correctly. The book is very solid.
The real advantage of struts for me comes from its ability to handle forms. Regular expression checking of input is a great way to make sure you don't take in bad data. Not having to write this code, and code to handle and repost the page when errors occur, takes away a lot of the tedium of development.
What I don't like about struts is all the abstractions. New developers should start with the basics and work up. But no one has the time for that. So figuring out what is going on under the covers is hard to do. The O'Reilly book is pretty good at trying to explain some of this stuff. But there's no substitute for actually doing it.
And is it just me, or has 'real' coding started to go away? I spend half my time messing with xml config files anymore. I get more done, but it isn't as much fun.
See CylantSecure. Run your apps for a while and have it learn your apps typical behavior. Then when something unusual happens it kills off the process. Interesting concept.
Slashdot Mirror
We also used Data General computers. Cheaper and better UNIX computers were out there, but the paperwork made them impossible to get. To use a new vendor you had to post that you were looking for equiptment. Then you had to see how many minorities were in the vendor company leadership. Those got preference. Bunch of other forms and regulations.
Require consideration of open source good idea? On paper. But that is the problem. There are too many good ideas on paper that became laws, and you have to pile through to do anything in government.
Being a slashdot user I didn't read the article. (Because the sites are always down after the slashdot post for some reason.) But are the comments about it are correct, that 'open source' was required to be on the approved list? Great, I can write a piece of crap and it is required to be approved? Hope not.
Trust the guy they hired to make the decision. Otherwise he shouldn't be in the position if he didn't deserve the trust. (Yes, I know about the stupid Oracle license story a while back.)
I always wanted to pay for the privilage of proof reading slashdot.
I worry if we make the cost so small, we'll have an artificial ring of space debris around our planet and we'll never be able to get out of here.
That visualizer is from 1999. Not very current.
Oh wait. The telco's aren't making a profit. And my stock isn't worth enough for me to spend the transaction fee to sell it. Telco's are bleeding like there is no tomorrow because they are investing in all this high-tech internet stuff that didn't make them any money.
Are you sure the telco's aren't really an internet charity?
Without the right libraries it would be harder in C, Java, and Perl.
The standard set of libraries has a lot to do with it. I think that is usually what makes a language so popular.
Microsoft and their developers network was important to their success. For less that $2k I could get a huge binder with boatloads of tools and libraries and tech articles. For $2k I couldn't even get a compiler on a lot of UNIX systems. Which do you think I liked better at the time?
Most people have the idea now, make it easy on developers or you won't have apps. (Apple never got this.) Java has great built in libs. Perl. Microsoft stuff.
The only other big different is if you don't have to explicitly free up memory like you do in C/C++.
Dude, you are assuming that there is source. With only 4k on the smaller cartriges, you were coding assembly. So the source is 'open'. Get the ROM and look at the bytes.
Oh great. Just what we need. "Well, after careful analysis computer analysis with my powerful algorithms, I have concluded that break-dancing is now cool. I will be the first nerd in history to be atop this new trend."
Good coders have their own methodology. The key is that they do not follow a methodology just for the sake of the methodology, but they understand what works.
Programmers who recently are introduced to patterns are amusing to watch. They see the patterns, and try to apply them to the problem. But the correct solution to a problem will naturally imply some sort of pattern. Pattern books are useful only in adding to a programmers experience. Here is a problem. Here is a good solution. But don't try to apply our solution to your problem, as your problem will always be a bit different.
Another way to state: People who are good at brain-teasers are usually good at figuring out problems in real life. But rarely do the brain teasers mirror real life.
The other key to success is some good management. Good programmers can get by with mediocre management. But even a team of crack developers will fail with bad management. When you go into a job, always make sure the management is strong. Otherwise you may just be wasting a few months or years of your life.
Reminds me of a joke. Guy goes into a hardware store, wants a hammer. Hardware store says they cost $10, but they are out of them. Guy goes to hardware store number two. This store says hammers are $20.
"But the store down the street will sell me a hammer for $10, they are just out of them right now!"
"Well, when we are out of hammers, we sell them for $5".
There was another one where he was pretended to be a guy that thinking about suicide. The person calling was selling caskets. So the telemarketer was both trying to talk him out of killing himself, but if he did, he should buy this casket.
This post says nothing. Perhaps you could list what features AIX has that Linux does not? That would be an interesting post.
I use AIX all the time. To me it is just another UNIX system.
I read a story where you were an expert witness for a trial in Las Vegas over redirected telephone calls. The defense called in to question if you really had hacked into the phone system. On a break, you ran to some old 'storage' locker and retrieved a printout of accounts and passwords or something.
What was the story behind your part that trial? (And how much stuff do you have in storage?)
I'm not sure I'd really make that post a troll.
Cringely's documentary has some interesting interviews about how Xerox gave away a lot of their technologies. Many of the workers thought the management was insane.
While the failures of recognizing the loss of Xerox ideas seem obvious now, one must realize that nothing like that existed at the time. Developing any of those technologies would have involved huge risk and cost. The important thing is that certain people did realize it, and the technologies were marketed. Just not by Xerox.
Ideas are easy. Developing and marketing them takes real work.
Some static story pages? Who cares?
It all depends if you are actually doing something of interest.
Like the comments in Slashcode, most apps go from static, to dynamic, to static caching of dynamic pages.
At DTN we served up customized portal pages to people with commodity and equity quotes, news, graphs, etc. Since they didn't have any money we had to use a load balanced Pentium Pro and a Pentium II. The app had no problem serving the load, and it was fast.
Now that I work for companies that have money, our apps run really slow. Developers get expensive machines and don't know how to optimize any more.
Because you don't 'own' it. You only have a license to use it. By cracking the DVD you are using it (perhaps) in a manner that is not what the author licensed you to for.
This would not work. The goverment is not a fast agency. If they did this we'd be proving we could repair Applie //e computers, not Intel P4's with RAID and fibre channel components.
And can you imagine the politics? Microsoft would want training for people to repair their hardware spec. Hollywood would want people to take an oath not to disable their copy protection devices that might be enabled some day. Homeland would want a quick scan of the hard drive for those terrorist keywords.
I think we are better off with the unregulated way things are now.
I don't think ClearCase competes with Visual Source Safe. VSS hasn't changed in the last 10 years. It has no support for anything basic like branching. (I know there is a branch option, but it doesn't really do branching.)
VSS has to get UNIX support through a different vendor. Even Microsoft doesn't use VSS. They use some internally created thing. I don't think Microsoft care much about VSS.
Dude, even products like MS Excel, or MS Word didn't have hundreds of OO developers.
But I do know several projects that have had that many developers. I also know of zero projects with that many that have delivered anything but a big binder of documents.
Togethersoft can do transparent roundtrip engineering.
Rational just manages to mangle code going both ways.
Clearcase is another of rational's products. I'm curious about other people's experiences. Things I don't like:
1. Network dependent. Since the code is on a 'mounted' drive, everything is slower. I have to go to the network for everything.
2. Integrates into Windows OS. If clearcase or the network has problems, I have to reboot.
3. Takes to long. The whole integration stream, delivery, etc. takes about 10 button pushes and a good minute of time.
4. Costs too much. CVS works better, and is free.
Advantages of Clearcase:
1. Has salespeople.
Rational software is some of the worst designed examples of user interface out there. There are two types of people that like rational software:
1. They haven't used anything better like togethersoft or visio.
2. They are management and don't actually have to use it.
Rational and IBM should get along great. Neither company produces good software. But both companies produce incredible salespeople. Working for a large bank, I have a great deal of respect for these guys. How would you like to try selling IBM or rational products? As engineers we are usually too honest. I'd never get anywhere.
Rational sells a process. The process is great for business people because it produces visible artifacts. (Aptly named, as they don't get used and are only good in the archeological sense.)
Togethersoft (recently bought by Borland) has much better software but it is very expensive, and they don't have the quality salesforce IBM has.
So if you think that salespeople don't matter, think again. In this case, they can take a barely functional product and have it dominate that sector of industry. Even in the face of better products.
You are absolutely right, you don't need struts for that. I did something similar (along with 8 zillion other people). Our 'ActionObjects' could also specify a view object. We had views for JSP, XML, portal pages, etc. Very lightweight and easy to understand. (Struts is not easy to understand for beginners.)
You also don't need libraries like log4j for logging. Logging is easy, right? (That's what I thought until I started using log4j. Holy cow, the things my logging can do now...)
But struts has many add ons for form processing, db connection handling, controller options, dynamic form object creation, dynamic validation, error handling, internationalization, page layout, etc. And it makes it easy to make your own add-ons.
So now I can work 1 or 2 days a week, and get everything done that I used to do during the whole week. The rest of the time I can spend playing around with other stuff.
Right now I'm trying to figure out if Java Data Objects are worth while. Right now it makes my code slightly smaller, but adds lots of xml. And I'm suspicious it is slow. But these were some of my same unfounded complaints against struts when I started.
I really like the O'Reilly book that just came out. Most of the chapters of this book went through public review, if I remember correctly. The book is very solid.
The real advantage of struts for me comes from its ability to handle forms. Regular expression checking of input is a great way to make sure you don't take in bad data. Not having to write this code, and code to handle and repost the page when errors occur, takes away a lot of the tedium of development.
What I don't like about struts is all the abstractions. New developers should start with the basics and work up. But no one has the time for that. So figuring out what is going on under the covers is hard to do. The O'Reilly book is pretty good at trying to explain some of this stuff. But there's no substitute for actually doing it.
And is it just me, or has 'real' coding started to go away? I spend half my time messing with xml config files anymore. I get more done, but it isn't as much fun.
See CylantSecure. Run your apps for a while and have it learn your apps typical behavior. Then when something unusual happens it kills off the process. Interesting concept.