This leaves the possibility of an alliance with Cthulu, Nyarlathotep and Yog Sothoth, although this may lead to difficult post-war negotiations. My greatest concern is, in fact, the alliance of the elves with the Machines and their use of Agents in positions of authority. According to the Mothman Prophecies and certain Tengwar crop circles, there may be other, unknown, forces at their disposal as well. I propose continued night guant overflights for intelligence gathering. We should also be prepared to launch a preemptive dhole strike if the information warrants it.
This actually worked for me in a similar situation. I, and the rest of the Engineering Dept, entered a straight-faced suggestion that we all wear jumpsuits and caps with lots of pockets and the company logo. I, for one, would have been glad to so simplify laundry day, but that caused enough of an uproar that the issue was dropped. I approached the issue like it was a new system roll-out with vendors and pricing and cost of implementation even if the employees paid for their own uniforms. (Silk-screening setup, shipping, inventory etc...)
So that's one. I agree with an earlier post that if you can point to the irrelevance of the dress code in terms of the bottom-line as opposed to cost of implementation that will be your strongest argument. There is a legitimate study out there somewhere on health risks of restricting blood-flow with ties.
good luck and may Birkenstock smile upon you.
This last 3 month engagement I traveled roughly 14 hours a week (flew in Sundays and out Fridays.) Worked 45-50 onsite for the customer then spent about 10 hours a week on expense reports and other administrative overhead. I slept 5 nights a week in a hotel room. So counting travel, but not counting the hotel... 69-74hrs.
This is typical. The problem is, I don't seem to have any other options. It's either 100k/year doing this or 10k/year washing dishes. And I understand that I'm paying off a mortgage and contributing to my daughter's college fund. Although it's sometimes difficult to remember where the house is, or what she looks like. My wife and I talk more over IM than face to face.
I will say, I have absolutely no interest in the money. I just want a good project and 3 squares a day. I just haven't found any way to get that in the same package.
I think your argument takes too narrow a view of
support. True, until now most support has been
in the area of configuration and installation support as well as troubleshooting basic useability issues.
That doesn't mean things have to be that way. let's assume for a minute a company deploying a 100% Linux solution. It includes three prepackaged
boxen types configured to serve as
a Human Resources Server Appliance
a basic Database Appliance
a Client Appliance
Let's then assume these boxen plug into an ethernet cable and power and come up under DHCP with no user intervention.
At this point the customer makes a call to support to schedule some time going through the configuration of the HR rules engine.
We're talking about doing what used to be called Professional Services as a simple call to customer support. I know there are holes in this idea, but as you come up with arguments, come up with your own examples and solutions. I think you'll find quickly that improving quality never has to lead to a loss of profits, just more opportunities for premium services.
My company rolled out a brand new system a year ago that's feeding about 1 million to a million and a half cattle every day. It's written in Java. It runs on laptops running windows 95 or 98, servers running Linux, stand-alone, peer-to-peer and in wireless X client configurations. And you don't get any more mission critical than calling feed for cattle.
It also includes scriptable feed step-up programs using JPython and 3D graphs of consumption.
We haven't had any cross-platform issues beyond keeping our CLASSPATH set. I've done big C projects and OO C++ systems and I've never seen as clean an OO implementation as Java/RMI allows.
I don't like everything in the language, but I think it's the best OOP language right now.
To tell you how much thought went into this and how far this is from being a "fad." This system replaces our original systems which have been in service calling feed for most of the cattle industry since '89. That system is writen in Fortran and runs on DOS.
Tell me the one again about how this would have been a better product written in 3 dialects of C++ with a CORBA ORB and a Jethro's "syntaxes is us" template library.
With no formal training, Dr. Mills has developed an amazing new theory of Theoretical Funding. The Grand Unified Monetary theory or GUM which unifies the four forces of nature Avarice, Gullibility, Ignorance and Humor.
Infomercial hosts everywhere will write sonnets in his honor. I stand in awe.
That sounds pretty cool. Do you still have any of the old code/hardwear specs around? That would make a great addition over at the wearables newsgroup home page. If you don't have time to put it up there email me the specs, and if I can get it to work, I'll document it and get it up with the credits to you and your friend. Then I'll hack the hell out of it for my personal use:)
I agree, emulating a keyboard with this would be unimaginative and wasteful. Fortunately there is a much better approach--thumbcode. I can chord, but it's just not as satisfying as having a keyboard, but a suspect signing would be even better with practice. Not to mention the looks you would get when you wire your office, home and virtual pets to respond to gestures.
Now, a set of these and some display contacts with a resolution of at least 80 by 25 characters and my life would be complete. I could Angband right through meetings.
we're currently converting about 200 Qnx and OS9 machines to a hybrid Linux/Java -- Dos system. The dos machine will act as a microcontroller and I/O interface while the Linux/Java system provides the logic and user interface.
You sound like some B sci-fi hero. What could possibly have led you to believe that there is anything sacred about a 70 year life span? Was 30 sacred, 20... Is 80 too long, 100, 150?
The bottom line is that there is an awful lot more of the universe than I can explore in 70 years. I couldn't run out of new experiences and frontiers in 10,000. Especially if I get to do it with 100 billion of my closest friends and a significant fraction of the speed of light.
Use some imagination. History hasn't even begun yet.
The current solution for verifying the quality of information for any source is to find cooberating sources. If every book in the library says an endoplasmic reticulum is a squishy ended lemur, you'll have to do your own research to prove them wrong. The same thing applies to infomarco and is dealt with in Stephenson's Snow Crash. In his fictional CIC, a search would turn up answers and information from a variety of sources, you would buy the information based on the "track record" of those sources. Obviously a famous surgeon or physicist is going to have a powerful advantage over a grad student in that market. A well funded search could pull together arguments from many people, rate them by how well they've been known to do in the past and weight the results accordingly. Your argument is valid in the short term. The idea has a lot of growing up to do.
The naming rule in cubicle land is that titles are given out according to the arbitrary whim of people who thing that "impactfull" is an English word. Terms properly reserved for professionals are given out as arbitraryily as titles like "Senior Executive Assitant Vice President." I, for example, am officially designated as a "Program Engineer" though I have no idea what a "Program Engineer" might be. I personally prefer "software developer" over "Software Engineer" or "Programmer" when asked. I've suggested on several occaisons that "thaumaturg" would be expressive, and no other profession is currently using it. Perhaps the "Network Engineers" could insist on being called "Network Alchemists.";)
I normally would agree with you on doing somebody else's work for cheap, but considering Mozilla is looking like our only shot at a !(Microsoft) web browser version 5+ I'm willing to do something like that just for the t-shirt. Worst case, I improve my understanding of patterns and improve a product that I can use directly. Best case, I win a book that I can loan out instead of MY copy. I mean, UML and Patterns books are worse that ACDC and Black Sabbath albums, they never come back.
Here's an example of your programming contest idea. Sounds like it was alot of fun. Anyway the alternative would be to post a request and proposal on co-source to do the work and see what kind of cash you could raise.
Shades of Cyrptonomicon and "Van Eck Phreaking." It would be interesting to build a simple receiver that demodulated the signal. It might be just as interesting to find if any common subsystems are vulnerable to interference in such a way that they could act as passive receivers. We would have a little Sub Rosa LAN. Then we could write a TCP/IP stack to use the new hardware layer and blow the whole bandwidth on intra office spam and instant messaging. I doubt we could use it for Quake:P
Since these guys are actively soliciting investors and have "sold one"(!?!) although probably not for $26 million. The incredible claims constitute felony fraud in any state if they should prove false. I think we can see intent in the claims for applications. (Holography no less!) Where's the state attorney general?
Perhaps as "Sourceror." I like "TechnoMage" but then I'm a B5 fan. I like the earlier "Code Poet" designation as well. Maybe TechnoMage could cover hard/soft/wetware and Sourceror could more specifically address coders. Regardless, I think we must cede hacker as a casualty of the culture wars. Maybe we can reinforce the terms with pointy propeller hats and robes with pocket protectors..
Slashdot Mirror
This leaves the possibility of an alliance with Cthulu, Nyarlathotep and Yog Sothoth, although this may lead to difficult post-war negotiations. My greatest concern is, in fact, the alliance of the elves with the Machines and their use of Agents in positions of authority. According to the Mothman Prophecies and certain Tengwar crop circles, there may be other, unknown, forces at their disposal as well. I propose continued night guant overflights for intelligence gathering. We should also be prepared to launch a preemptive dhole strike if the information warrants it.
Because otheriwse it takes to long to fail the connection with ipchains set to "deny" :)
Here's a very nice hardware token implementation.
Should be easier to sell to corporate as a combined physical security and network security solution. (Replacing keycards and network passwords.)
This actually worked for me in a similar situation. I, and the rest of the Engineering Dept, entered a straight-faced suggestion that we all wear jumpsuits and caps with lots of pockets and the company logo. I, for one, would have been glad to so simplify laundry day, but that caused enough of an uproar that the issue was dropped. I approached the issue like it was a new system roll-out with vendors and pricing and cost of implementation even if the employees paid for their own uniforms. (Silk-screening setup, shipping, inventory etc...)
So that's one. I agree with an earlier post that if you can point to the irrelevance of the dress code in terms of the bottom-line as opposed to cost of implementation that will be your strongest argument. There is a legitimate study out there somewhere on health risks of restricting blood-flow with ties. good luck and may Birkenstock smile upon you.
If I can't frag the contestants, what's the point?
.net, you are the weakest link! BLAM!
This last 3 month engagement I traveled roughly 14 hours a week (flew in Sundays and out Fridays.) Worked 45-50 onsite for the customer then spent about 10 hours a week on expense reports and other administrative overhead. I slept 5 nights a week in a hotel room. So counting travel, but not counting the hotel... 69-74hrs. This is typical. The problem is, I don't seem to have any other options. It's either 100k/year doing this or 10k/year washing dishes. And I understand that I'm paying off a mortgage and contributing to my daughter's college fund. Although it's sometimes difficult to remember where the house is, or what she looks like. My wife and I talk more over IM than face to face. I will say, I have absolutely no interest in the money. I just want a good project and 3 squares a day. I just haven't found any way to get that in the same package.
Actually it's a Neal Stephenson novel. Cryptonomicon
I don't want to give anything away, but if the idea intrigues you, read the book.
I think your argument takes too narrow a view of support. True, until now most support has been in the area of configuration and installation support as well as troubleshooting basic useability issues.
That doesn't mean things have to be that way. let's assume for a minute a company deploying a 100% Linux solution. It includes three prepackaged boxen types configured to serve as
Let's then assume these boxen plug into an ethernet cable and power and come up under DHCP with no user intervention.
At this point the customer makes a call to support to schedule some time going through the configuration of the HR rules engine.
We're talking about doing what used to be called Professional Services as a simple call to customer support. I know there are holes in this idea, but as you come up with arguments, come up with your own examples and solutions. I think you'll find quickly that improving quality never has to lead to a loss of profits, just more opportunities for premium services.
My company rolled out a brand new system a year ago that's feeding about 1 million to a million and a half cattle every day. It's written in Java. It runs on laptops running windows 95 or 98, servers running Linux, stand-alone, peer-to-peer and in wireless X client configurations. And you don't get any more mission critical than calling feed for cattle.
It also includes scriptable feed step-up programs using JPython and 3D graphs of consumption.
We haven't had any cross-platform issues beyond keeping our CLASSPATH set. I've done big C projects and OO C++ systems and I've never seen as clean an OO implementation as Java/RMI allows.
I don't like everything in the language, but I think it's the best OOP language right now.
To tell you how much thought went into this and how far this is from being a "fad." This system replaces our original systems which have been in service calling feed for most of the cattle industry since '89. That system is writen in Fortran and runs on DOS.
Tell me the one again about how this would have been a better product written in 3 dialects of C++ with a CORBA ORB and a Jethro's "syntaxes is us" template library.
ko ko kurji
With no formal training, Dr. Mills has developed an amazing new theory of Theoretical Funding. The Grand Unified Monetary theory or GUM which unifies the four forces of nature Avarice, Gullibility, Ignorance and Humor.
Infomercial hosts everywhere will write sonnets in his honor. I stand in awe.
It think this might be what he was talking about.
80x25 is a Wyse 150 with status bar, oops.
That sounds pretty cool. Do you still have any of the old code/hardwear specs around? That would make a great addition over at the wearables newsgroup home page. If you don't have time to put it up there email me the specs, and if I can get it to work, I'll document it and get it up with the credits to you and your friend. Then I'll hack the hell out of it for my personal use :)
I agree, emulating a keyboard with this would be unimaginative and wasteful. Fortunately there is a much better approach--thumbcode. I can chord, but it's just not as satisfying as having a keyboard, but a suspect signing would be even better with practice. Not to mention the looks you would get when you wire your office, home and virtual pets to respond to gestures.
Now, a set of these and some display contacts with a resolution of at least 80 by 25 characters and my life would be complete. I could Angband right through meetings.
we're currently converting about 200 Qnx and OS9 machines to a hybrid Linux/Java -- Dos system. The dos machine will act as a microcontroller and I/O interface while the Linux/Java system provides the logic and user interface.
You sound like some B sci-fi hero. What could possibly have led you to believe that there is anything sacred about a 70 year life span? Was 30 sacred, 20... Is 80 too long, 100, 150?
The bottom line is that there is an awful lot more of the universe than I can explore in 70 years. I couldn't run out of new experiences and frontiers in 10,000. Especially if I get to do it with 100 billion of my closest friends and a significant fraction of the speed of light.
Use some imagination. History hasn't even begun yet.
I notice Sun has just 404ed the top25 bug page without explanation. :)
The current solution for verifying the quality of information for any source is to find cooberating sources. If every book in the library says an endoplasmic reticulum is a squishy ended lemur, you'll have to do your own research to prove them wrong. The same thing applies to infomarco and is dealt with in Stephenson's Snow Crash. In his fictional CIC, a search would turn up answers and information from a variety of sources, you would buy the information based on the "track record" of those sources. Obviously a famous surgeon or physicist is going to have a powerful advantage over a grad student in that market. A well funded search could pull together arguments from many people, rate them by how well they've been known to do in the past and weight the results accordingly. Your argument is valid in the short term. The idea has a lot of growing up to do.
The naming rule in cubicle land is that titles are given out according to the arbitrary whim of people who thing that "impactfull" is an English word. Terms properly reserved for professionals are given out as arbitraryily as titles like "Senior Executive Assitant Vice President." I, for example, am officially designated as a "Program Engineer" though I have no idea what a "Program Engineer" might be. I personally prefer "software developer" over "Software Engineer" or "Programmer" when asked. I've suggested on several occaisons that "thaumaturg" would be expressive, and no other profession is currently using it. Perhaps the "Network Engineers" could insist on being called "Network Alchemists." ;)
How about:
Caliban
Montague
Capulet
Hamlet
Horatio
Benvolio
or
Zeno
Plato
Aristotle
Madonna
or even
Hippocampus
Medulla
Amygdala
Thalmus
ParamesencephalicBasalCistern
And My personal favorites
FistOfTheFireMonkey
EarOfTheWindPig
MaxillaryPalpOfTheStrontiumLocust
The latter would make wonderful management print server. ;)
This is a recurring minimum code size contest site with different goals each time.
I normally would agree with you on doing somebody else's work for cheap, but considering Mozilla is looking like our only shot at a !(Microsoft) web browser version 5+ I'm willing to do something like that just for the t-shirt. Worst case, I improve my understanding of patterns and improve a product that I can use directly. Best case, I win a book that I can loan out instead of MY copy. I mean, UML and Patterns books are worse that ACDC and Black Sabbath albums, they never come back.
Here's an example of your programming contest idea. Sounds like it was alot of fun. Anyway the alternative would be to post a request and proposal on co-source to do the work and see what kind of cash you could raise.
Shades of Cyrptonomicon and "Van Eck Phreaking." It would be interesting to build a simple receiver that demodulated the signal. It might be just as interesting to find if any common subsystems are vulnerable to interference in such a way that they could act as passive receivers. We would have a little Sub Rosa LAN. Then we could write a TCP/IP stack to use the new hardware layer and blow the whole bandwidth on intra office spam and instant messaging. I doubt we could use it for Quake :P
Since these guys are actively soliciting investors
and have "sold one"(!?!) although probably not for
$26 million. The incredible claims constitute
felony fraud in any state if they should prove
false. I think we can see intent in the claims for
applications. (Holography no less!)
Where's the state attorney general?
Perhaps as "Sourceror." I like "TechnoMage" but
then I'm a B5 fan. I like the earlier "Code Poet"
designation as well. Maybe TechnoMage could
cover hard/soft/wetware and Sourceror could more
specifically address coders. Regardless,
I think we must cede hacker as a casualty
of the culture wars. Maybe we
can reinforce the terms with pointy propeller
hats and robes with pocket protectors..