I've just spent 2 years managing programmers who although not older, were generally much smarter than me, so I speak from relevant experience.
First of all you have one huge advantage; Software developers want to do great work. Coders are generally passionate and proud about what they do.
Your job is to make sure they have the environment they need to do that.
Programmers tend to be task-focussed people. Their faults are typically that they don't communicate unless asked, and they forget deadlines unless they are constantly made aware of them. Obviously I'm generalising here, but the balance of your team will probably tend this way.
So what you need to give them is clearly defined tasks, regular meetings where they talk to you and each other, and no excuse for not being aware of their targets/deadlines.
Most people, and geeks more than most, don't like to be ordered around and will be more invested in decisions they made themselves. Therefore when you make decisions about the development process, do it in a meeting. Say something like, "We need a more structured process for development." (Programmers will generally agree, they like order and structure, that's why they're programmers.) "We could use [insert favoured methodology here], what does the team think?"
If they have no stronger opinions, people will generally choose the one choice given to them and consider it to be their own idea from then on. If they/have/ got stronger opinions, they might well be worth listening to.
So in short;
Define the team methodology in as democratic manner as you can.
Get them to sign up to the methodology and make it theirs.
From then on enforce discipline with reference to the methodology. Your authority then proceeds from the team itself, as well as your position.
A couple of other piece of advice; be a hard-ass about defining requirements with your clients (internal or external) and even more so about changing them. Learn everything you can about software estimation. Most projects that fall over at the end make their mistakes at the beginning.
A degree is one way of getting your first job. A basic BSc. won't really mean anything after the first 2 years in the industry, although some employers will pay more attention to a Masters, or a Doctorate especially.
If you can't show previous jobs, write your own software and publish it somewhere. Or contribute to open source projects. There are some people who can read code who also have the power to hire.
Get some industry certifications. Microsoft certification, (*ducks*) Java certification etc. are all worth something to some people. That's something you can get yourself for a lot less time and money than a degree although they're generally not worth as much.
All that aside, the current job market is not your friend right now - or anyone elses for that matter.:(
I remember one of my colleagues was rather dismissive of it, suggesting that a search engine was only as good as the number of pages it had indexed. Google was new, therefore it couldn't have indexed as many as the others. I started using it anyway.
What I remember is that before google I used to bookmark everything useful I found, so I could be sure of finding it again. After using google for a while I stopped bothering. It was quicker to find a page with google that troll through my huge list of bookmarks.
You're overstating the lack of support for the idea. It isn't necessary to eliminate evidence for local sources of such compounds to increase the support for extra-terrestrial sources.
This evidence shows that such compounds exist beyond earth. Furthermore, it shows that they can survive the journey to the surface of the earth within a meteorite. Meteorites fall to earth all the time.
Therefore there is a possibility that these, or similar, compounds could have come to earth from outer space and been involved in the creation of life.
It only makes it marginally more likely, but your statement that this evidence is absolutely irrelevant is incorrect.
Umm, yeah right. Somebody spent 10 million pounds building huge fsck-off undersea robot, but they didn't bother to do any research into whether it would work, or if there was a market for it...
I think it's likely to be useful enough to pay for itself. Nobody puts up that kind of money without some fairly convincing evidence it will make a profit.
Nowhere in the article does it suggest a causal link between the fact that the cellphone exploded and that the man's ribs and spine were broken.
A doctor speculates that explosion damaged his heart and lungs (which still seems a bit far-fetched to me) but it is explicitly stated to be both a quote and a *presumption*.
I would suggest that the information about the broken spine and ribs has been put in the article for the sake of completeness and accuracy.
A bunch of people here are beating up on a straw man.
Most nations on earth don't allow just anyone to wander across the borders and do whatever they want. If you posit a civilisation sufficiently advanced to cross space and interact with us in any meaningful way, You have to allow that they might be able to 'control' access to that space as well.
Perhaps the most advanced / powerful civilisation in this part of the galaxy has just decided that earth is off limits for eveyone?
I believe the majority of social animals on earth have a concept of territiory - all life competes for resources - so I would think it more likely than not that an extra-terrestrial society would also have a concept of territory.
And the study you cite to support this blanket statement is... ?
The vast diversity of life in the world today suggests that divergent evolution is the norm. The concept of Sympatric speciation has some empirical evidence to support it in species without caste systems.
Natural selection is the phenomena of being removed from the gene pool prior to reproduction.
That's exactly the mistake that most people make when they talk about evolution. It's not just down to the ability to stay alive long enough, i.e. not all selectors involve organism death.
Some people lead long, healthy active lives and never reproduce through choice, lack of opportunity or possibly just inadequate social skills. Isaac Newton famously died a virgin.
People may also reproduce but choose the best partner to reproduce with, thus ensuring their line dies out in the future. Or social fashions may influence the reproductive choices of generations, i.e. big is beautiful, or slender, Blonde or brunette etc.
And lets not even start on the concept of nations and other communal groupings competing with each other...
It's not a taxi, and the difference is important for economic reasons, not technical or semantic.
A taxi currently requires a driver, a human being who will always cost (on average) as much to run as any other given human being. This puts an absolute cost on the service that cannot be reduced in terms of my earning power.
A car that drives itself though, can (and almost certainly will within a relatively small number of years) become much cheaper to produce and maintain. So it will change the way people travel - expect your children, or at least you grandchildren, to live in a world where only a few enthusiasts "drive" and the rest are merely passengers.
Oddly enough I suspect that the decision to use DRM was probably effectively forced on them. Unless they intended to provide content themselves, They need to deal with current distributors of content, and you can pretty much guarantee that those distributors will see DRM as a requirement.
This doesn't excuse them for being so tight-lipped about the nature of and reasons for their choices though.
New Zealand doesn't have a Constitution, it has a Treaty. I won't try to explain it, as someone else has done a much better job here. Basically NZ as a country has existed from this date - it may be the only colonial country where the aboriginal people did give their legal blessing to legal and political systems derived from Britain.
By and large, I'm proud to say, we have given to the hysteria of the Threat Of Terror less than many places, but we have at least one stain on our human rights record that derives from this.
Slashdot Mirror
How stable is it,
and how fast is it?
I'm glad I didn't expect anything to work...
Links or STFU
He's right, please post references to support figures and statistics
I've just spent 2 years managing programmers who although not older, were generally much smarter than me, so I speak from relevant experience.
First of all you have one huge advantage; Software developers want to do great work. Coders are generally passionate and proud about what they do.
Your job is to make sure they have the environment they need to do that.
Programmers tend to be task-focussed people. Their faults are typically that they don't communicate unless asked, and they forget deadlines unless they are constantly made aware of them. Obviously I'm generalising here, but the balance of your team will probably tend this way.
So what you need to give them is clearly defined tasks, regular meetings where they talk to you and each other, and no excuse for not being aware of their targets/deadlines.
Most people, and geeks more than most, don't like to be ordered around and will be more invested in decisions they made themselves. Therefore when you make decisions about the development process, do it in a meeting. Say something like, "We need a more structured process for development." (Programmers will generally agree, they like order and structure, that's why they're programmers.) "We could use [insert favoured methodology here], what does the team think?"
If they have no stronger opinions, people will generally choose the one choice given to them and consider it to be their own idea from then on. If they /have/ got stronger opinions, they might well be worth listening to.
So in short;
Define the team methodology in as democratic manner as you can.
Get them to sign up to the methodology and make it theirs.
From then on enforce discipline with reference to the methodology. Your authority then proceeds from the team itself, as well as your position.
A couple of other piece of advice; be a hard-ass about defining requirements with your clients (internal or external) and even more so about changing them. Learn everything you can about software estimation. Most projects that fall over at the end make their mistakes at the beginning.
A degree is one way of getting your first job. A basic BSc. won't really mean anything after the first 2 years in the industry, although some employers will pay more attention to a Masters, or a Doctorate especially.
If you can't show previous jobs, write your own software and publish it somewhere. Or contribute to open source projects. There are some people who can read code who also have the power to hire.
Get some industry certifications. Microsoft certification, (*ducks*) Java certification etc. are all worth something to some people. That's something you can get yourself for a lot less time and money than a degree although they're generally not worth as much.
All that aside, the current job market is not your friend right now - or anyone elses for that matter. :(
I discovered it 1999, in my first job in IT.
I remember one of my colleagues was rather dismissive of it, suggesting that a search engine was only as good as the number of pages it had indexed. Google was new, therefore it couldn't have indexed as many as the others. I started using it anyway.
What I remember is that before google I used to bookmark everything useful I found, so I could be sure of finding it again. After using google for a while I stopped bothering. It was quicker to find a page with google that troll through my huge list of bookmarks.
You're overstating the lack of support for the idea. It isn't necessary to eliminate evidence for local sources of such compounds to increase the support for extra-terrestrial sources.
This evidence shows that such compounds exist beyond earth. Furthermore, it shows that they can survive the journey to the surface of the earth within a meteorite. Meteorites fall to earth all the time.
Therefore there is a possibility that these, or similar, compounds could have come to earth from outer space and been involved in the creation of life.
It only makes it marginally more likely, but your statement that this evidence is absolutely irrelevant is incorrect.
Umm, yeah right. Somebody spent 10 million pounds building huge fsck-off undersea robot, but they didn't bother to do any research into whether it would work, or if there was a market for it...
I think it's likely to be useful enough to pay for itself. Nobody puts up that kind of money without some fairly convincing evidence it will make a profit.
> ...doesn't it mean it has some evolutionary advantages?
Yes.
"Will you go out with me Saturday night?"
"I wouldn't go out with you on Saturday if you paid me $1 million."
"What are you doing next weekend then?"
Persistence in the face of negative feedback sometimes is a winning strategy.
we should do this every year
Nowhere in the article does it suggest a causal link between the fact that the cellphone exploded and that the man's ribs and spine were broken.
A doctor speculates that explosion damaged his heart and lungs (which still seems a bit far-fetched to me) but it is explicitly stated to be both a quote and a *presumption*.
I would suggest that the information about the broken spine and ribs has been put in the article for the sake of completeness and accuracy.
A bunch of people here are beating up on a straw man.
You're right to be worried about it. I vote cheros reads the code to make sure it doesn't happen.
Most nations on earth don't allow just anyone to wander across the borders and do whatever they want. If you posit a civilisation sufficiently advanced to cross space and interact with us in any meaningful way, You have to allow that they might be able to 'control' access to that space as well.
Perhaps the most advanced / powerful civilisation in this part of the galaxy has just decided that earth is off limits for eveyone?
I believe the majority of social animals on earth have a concept of territiory - all life competes for resources - so I would think it more likely than not that an extra-terrestrial society would also have a concept of territory.
Facts about the Oceans:
Area: about 140 million square miles (362 million sq km), ore nearly 71% of the Earth's surface.
Average Depth: 12,200 feet (3,720 m).
http://www.mos.org/oceans/planet/features.html
A one line comment where the poster states he hasn't read the article gets modded as insightful? Come on mods, smarten up.
And the study you cite to support this blanket statement is... ?
The vast diversity of life in the world today suggests that divergent evolution is the norm. The concept of Sympatric speciation has some empirical evidence to support it in species without caste systems.
That's exactly the mistake that most people make when they talk about evolution. It's not just down to the ability to stay alive long enough, i.e. not all selectors involve organism death.
Some people lead long, healthy active lives and never reproduce through choice, lack of opportunity or possibly just inadequate social skills. Isaac Newton famously died a virgin.
People may also reproduce but choose the best partner to reproduce with, thus ensuring their line dies out in the future. Or social fashions may influence the reproductive choices of generations, i.e. big is beautiful, or slender, Blonde or brunette etc.
And lets not even start on the concept of nations and other communal groupings competing with each other...
Google for samsung hd841 and the first page you get is a forum full of complaints. You might not want one anyway...
According to who? I have observed no real push by the market to move from their expensive servers to OSS servers.
Then you're not observing very carefully. I can think of at least one large company who has done this just off the top of my head.
Vodafone have moved all the J2EE-based middleware to JBoss from (I think it was mostly Weblogic?) across the board, across the world.
The company I currently work for, an EFTPOS technology provider, have just done the same with their product as well.
That's called a 'taxi' ;-)
It's not a taxi, and the difference is important for economic reasons, not technical or semantic.
A taxi currently requires a driver, a human being who will always cost (on average) as much to run as any other given human being. This puts an absolute cost on the service that cannot be reduced in terms of my earning power.
A car that drives itself though, can (and almost certainly will within a relatively small number of years) become much cheaper to produce and maintain. So it will change the way people travel - expect your children, or at least you grandchildren, to live in a world where only a few enthusiasts "drive" and the rest are merely passengers.
Oddly enough I suspect that the decision to use DRM was probably effectively forced on them. Unless they intended to provide content themselves, They need to deal with current distributors of content, and you can pretty much guarantee that those distributors will see DRM as a requirement.
This doesn't excuse them for being so tight-lipped about the nature of and reasons for their choices though.
Who new that sensitive teeth could be an evolutionary advantage...
I want one of these processors in my PC running Linux.
Mind some people didn't stop fighting for quite a few years after this date, and even today there are outstanding issues...
By and large, I'm proud to say, we have given to the hysteria of the Threat Of Terror less than many places, but we have at least one stain on our human rights record that derives from this.
What I want to know is... How long will it take to search the whole world's information?