Advertising does work. In the absence of contradictory information you are almost guaranteed to buy the recognized brand name of anything rather than the unknown brand. Then, unless you actively dislike your experience with the name brand, you are almost guaranteed to buy it again.
That's all an advertiser wants: to get you to try their product at least once. People who have bought once will usually buy again unless there was something about the product they did not like. This is the reason for free samples: it's a no-cost way for the consumer to have a positive initial reaction to the product.
Slashdotters are fooling themselves when they run down marketing. Done properly, marketing is very scientific and effective. Read some marketing textbooks to get started on appreciating what is involved.
By the way, I say all of this as a geek CTO with an Electrical Engineering background. Years of first hand experience has taught me that Marketing the core of any successful business. That's not to say Engineering or Accounting are not important but Marketing is the heart.
Unless your cell phone bill is $0.00 you are actually paying for those calls. Your provider has simply determined they can charge you a flat rate at your usage level and still make a profit.
The Apache and Mozilla projects should work together to create useful extensions to the browser. For example: persistent network connections so the browser can behave more like a terminal when writing applications (see: Flash).
If the phone had two interfaces it could move from one network to another by not "letting go" of the first network until a connection is properly established with the second network.
Since the phone would have to have an IP address all that would be needed is something like dynamic DNS so you can directly dial the node that is the phone. It seems to me phone numbers will become relatively obsolete.
With the rising ubiquity of bandwidth it seems to me the cost of TCP/IP time is also going to plummet. If TCP/IP on powerlines ever comes about the cost will really fall.
What would help is if eventually phones could also act as routers so packets could flow from phone to phone to phone. This would help bridge dead zones in buildings and elsewhere. Obviously, encryption would be available.
Of course, the last half century of U.S. foreign policy has been largely devoted to cleaning up over 500 years of brutal European imperialism. Such a messy problem will not have a tidy solution.
True, and by the time you are through paying the other taxes the government collects such as gasoline tax, "sin" taxes on alcohol and tobacco, and via various fees (such as driver's, fishing, and hunting licenses) you are taking home noticeably less than 70%.
I have been in the work force for 30 years and I have observed that a degree in engineering is about the most valuable B.S. you can have. It is assumed if you can do engineering you can probably do just about anything (i.e., management, sales, teaching, etc.).
On the other hand, a B.S. in CompSci is a good degree but graduates are pigeon-holed as computer people.
I wouldn't say you "stand corrected". What you have received is an opposing viewpoint. For example, Ken Young is well known as being the "Steve Ballmer" of the cash value side of the debate. I suggest you carefully research the whole "cash value" (aka "permanent" or "universal") v. "term" life insurance issue and then decide which company you'd choose to support.
The entire insurance business is high stakes and high pressure. The companies involved (on both sides) take no prisoners. As a result there is a lot of heated rhetoric flying around (sort of like the open v. close source debate). After I did my research I decided to "buy term and invest the difference" as it made the most sense to me in my situation.
A good book to read is Andrew Tobias's "The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need". However, read everything you can with a very critical frame of mind. Everyone involved in the financial services business is selling something.
I am certainly in favor of the free economy but what would happen (in at least some circumstances) is that in the name of safety, national security, and for the children, the people paying for the coding would mandate that it be done in the U.S. by U.S. citizens who are licensed. It is quite possible there would be no choice in this even for those paying for the development as legislators could pass laws categorizing software development efforts and stipulating the citizenship and licensing requirements for each category.
I am not saying that any of this is necessarily a good idea, I am ultimately responding to the initial question of this thread which was something like "What is their thought process? Why do they think this will improve code quality?".
Yes, absolutely poor programming is the problem. The question is "why do we get poor programming?". I agree with you that it is largely the fault of people, other than the programmers, making unreasonable demands. Licensing developers would provide those developers with a weapon for self defense: "I am licensed. You are required to use licensed developers. All licensed developers will tell you the same thing. You cannot fire me in favor of someone who will cut corners as no developer will sacrifice his license for your whims".
I don't think we are disagreeing but you don't seem to quite track what I am saying so let me try another approach. Ever notice how you can talk yourself blue in the face explaining to your boss how something is illegal but he ignores you? Ever notice how there's not a peep out of him once a lawyer from legal utters one sentence saying exactly the same thing you've been saying? That's because the lawyer speaks with the weight of his license behind him. Your boss knows every competent lawyer will tell him the same thing and the courts will enforce it.
Most corporations will not put those quality processes in place until there is some sort of regulation such as licensing required. Once licensing is required, and development process guidelines for those who wish to retain their licenses are in place, corporations will have no choice but to listen when their developers say "it has to be done this way to ensure quality (or at least a defense against a lawsuit)". If you say that today at most places you are shown the door while they replace you with someone who won't argue.
Would you consider banking software to be fairly important? I have seen banking software, to be used by the national banks of brittle developing economies being worked on by high school students with no engineering techniques being used at all. This software was being sold by a very large computer company with over 175,000 employees in over 100 countries, not a "fly by night" basement operation.
As to organizations being sued because their critical software failed, that is rarer than disbarments. Even then, the company suffers very little. A programmer or two might be fired. A fine might be paid. At the end of the day yet another profitable quarter is recorded which is all that really matters.
I have worked in software development for over 20 years now and, while most people advocate the careful processes you describe, nowhere I have worked actually does it (including three major companies whose names are three letter acronyms). None of my many friends and acquaintances in the business have worked at such a company either. One of the companies I worked for was ISO9000 certified to boot.
Right now there is no way to prevent incapable programmers from writing critical code. If a license was required, then programmers who cannot meet a minimum level of demonstrable competency wouldn't be allowed to get started writing critical code. A programmer who manages to get certified but who then writes sloppy code could have his license revoked (like disbarment for a lawyer) thereby preventing that programmer from writing any more critical code. By having various licensing levels you could regulate what sort of programs a programmer could work on. A person coding a fly-by-wire system might need a higher rating than someone writing a video game.
I don't like red-tape but there is a silver lining for developers: licensed programmers would get greater pay and have greater job security. Jobs requiring above a certain level of licensing would require the work to be done in this country and by U.S. citizens.
Some schools require all the "math stuff" and still call the degree a B.A. You cannot tell from the degree alone what course material the degree covered.
In the U.S. there is often no difference between a B.A. and a B.S. Both are four year degrees and, while there is sometimes an inferred difference in the rigors of getting a B.A. instead of a B.S., the reality is that you cannot judge what was involved from the name of the degree alone.
Re:Stop looking for "programming" jobs
on
Exporting Myself?
·
· Score: 1
You are completely correct in that hiring a person with only classroom experience to be a "designer" is a recipe for disaster. It is the software industry's version of the military's "90 day wonder".
As far as the degree is concerned: in the U.S. both BS and BA degrees are "Bachelor" degrees which means they are both four year degrees. Two year degrees are "Associate" degrees.
I suggest seeking a position with an international company. When I worked for ICL we had Americans living and working in places like Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Zimbabwe. ICL also had many employees in Commonwealth countries. Most people don't want to work overseas so you have a competitive advantage there.
You should know however that such working conditions can lead to "war stories". One of the people I worked with (briefly) was among the last half dozen Europeans to escape from Iran when the Ayatollah came to power. He and his wife had to travel at night across the open desert to escape. Other ICLers had stories about encounters with the Russian Mafia. Yet others came back with mysterious diseases (not kidding).
Such systems should include the possibility of negotiating rates on the fly. The mobile device should be programmed with upper prices for particular levels of service. Then, for each unit of service purchased a negotiation takes place. If the ISP is not busy the price is low. If the ISP is close to saturation the price is high. If there are multiple ISPs to choose from market competition occurs as everyone negotiates to determine the price. This would result in a balance between coverage and what people are willing to pay.
I think she would have shared her changes because it would benefit her in the long run to not have to keep reapplying her patches when the official version gets updated.
Rational people always act out of self-interest. Free will implies you choose to act. Rationality implies that, at a minimum, you chose what you consider to be the least evil option. The benefits others receive are a side-effect.
For example, a person may choose to vote to raise taxes for greater social programs. That is not an altruistic choice. That person's possible selfish motivations include making that choice in order to live in a world they consider to be more ideal (i.e., one where wealth and opportunity is more evenly distributed) or simply to assuage feelings of guilt.
I have some similar needs plus several more and I am looking at Groove. It seems to do almost everything I need but it is a bit of a resource hog and there is apparently no reminder feature (a popup window to say "You have a meeting in five minutes", for example). Has anyone here got any experience with it?
Also, has anyone tried the Groove-compatible project management tool from TeamDirection?.
This story has a happy ending. I eventually was directed to call 800-772-2227. I explained I am a developer who is going to mutilate the hard drive including the MBR and recovery partition. IBM is shipping the CDROMs to me at no charge as the system is under warranty.
I recommend the IBM Thinkpad as well. I hated laptops but I have just spent two years using a 600X and it has made a convert out of me. I just bought a certified pre-owned T30 of my own from the IBM web site.
My only real complaint is that I didn't get the !@#$% CDROMs for the Windows XP that is installed on it. You are supposed to be satisfied with the recovery partition. The story is if you have a problem with the recovery partition, and the system is under warranty, IBM will fix it ASAP. What I want to know is what am I supposed to do if it's 2:00 in the morning or if the unit is no longer under warranty?
Also, it is possible for the system to get to the point where you can't boot to access the recovery partition. In that case you are supposed to use a recovery floppy - except there is no floppy drive on the system and there's no documentation on what to put on a bootable CDROM (the floppy is built by some utility)!
Even if I wanted to pay for it twice and I bought a retail copy of XP I still lose because now I don't have the IBM-specific drivers and utilities.
Of course, IBM is not the company sticking it to people here, that "honor" belongs to Microsoft and their utterly delusional paranoia that someone might steal a copy of Windows. You can hardly get a PC that doesn't come with Windows and by the time a new version of Windows comes out your hardware that is running the previous version is obsolete so there is very little reason to actually steal Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Advertising does work. In the absence of contradictory information you are almost guaranteed to buy the recognized brand name of anything rather than the unknown brand. Then, unless you actively dislike your experience with the name brand, you are almost guaranteed to buy it again.
That's all an advertiser wants: to get you to try their product at least once. People who have bought once will usually buy again unless there was something about the product they did not like. This is the reason for free samples: it's a no-cost way for the consumer to have a positive initial reaction to the product.
Slashdotters are fooling themselves when they run down marketing. Done properly, marketing is very scientific and effective. Read some marketing textbooks to get started on appreciating what is involved.
By the way, I say all of this as a geek CTO with an Electrical Engineering background. Years of first hand experience has taught me that Marketing the core of any successful business. That's not to say Engineering or Accounting are not important but Marketing is the heart.
Unless your cell phone bill is $0.00 you are actually paying for those calls. Your provider has simply determined they can charge you a flat rate at your usage level and still make a profit.
The Apache and Mozilla projects should work together to create useful extensions to the browser. For example: persistent network connections so the browser can behave more like a terminal when writing applications (see: Flash).
If the phone had two interfaces it could move from one network to another by not "letting go" of the first network until a connection is properly established with the second network.
I think what phones need to do for emergency services is to include GPS in every phone.
Since the phone would have to have an IP address all that would be needed is something like dynamic DNS so you can directly dial the node that is the phone. It seems to me phone numbers will become relatively obsolete.
With the rising ubiquity of bandwidth it seems to me the cost of TCP/IP time is also going to plummet. If TCP/IP on powerlines ever comes about the cost will really fall.
What would help is if eventually phones could also act as routers so packets could flow from phone to phone to phone. This would help bridge dead zones in buildings and elsewhere. Obviously, encryption would be available.
See the movie description at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064064/ .
Of course, the last half century of U.S. foreign policy has been largely devoted to cleaning up over 500 years of brutal European imperialism. Such a messy problem will not have a tidy solution.
True, and by the time you are through paying the other taxes the government collects such as gasoline tax, "sin" taxes on alcohol and tobacco, and via various fees (such as driver's, fishing, and hunting licenses) you are taking home noticeably less than 70%.
I have been in the work force for 30 years and I have observed that a degree in engineering is about the most valuable B.S. you can have. It is assumed if you can do engineering you can probably do just about anything (i.e., management, sales, teaching, etc.).
On the other hand, a B.S. in CompSci is a good degree but graduates are pigeon-holed as computer people.
Disclaimer: I have an engineering degree.
I wouldn't say you "stand corrected". What you have received is an opposing viewpoint. For example, Ken Young is well known as being the "Steve Ballmer" of the cash value side of the debate. I suggest you carefully research the whole "cash value" (aka "permanent" or "universal") v. "term" life insurance issue and then decide which company you'd choose to support.
The entire insurance business is high stakes and high pressure. The companies involved (on both sides) take no prisoners. As a result there is a lot of heated rhetoric flying around (sort of like the open v. close source debate). After I did my research I decided to "buy term and invest the difference" as it made the most sense to me in my situation.
A good book to read is Andrew Tobias's "The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need". However, read everything you can with a very critical frame of mind. Everyone involved in the financial services business is selling something.
I am certainly in favor of the free economy but what would happen (in at least some circumstances) is that in the name of safety, national security, and for the children, the people paying for the coding would mandate that it be done in the U.S. by U.S. citizens who are licensed. It is quite possible there would be no choice in this even for those paying for the development as legislators could pass laws categorizing software development efforts and stipulating the citizenship and licensing requirements for each category.
I am not saying that any of this is necessarily a good idea, I am ultimately responding to the initial question of this thread which was something like "What is their thought process? Why do they think this will improve code quality?".
Yes, absolutely poor programming is the problem. The question is "why do we get poor programming?". I agree with you that it is largely the fault of people, other than the programmers, making unreasonable demands. Licensing developers would provide those developers with a weapon for self defense: "I am licensed. You are required to use licensed developers. All licensed developers will tell you the same thing. You cannot fire me in favor of someone who will cut corners as no developer will sacrifice his license for your whims".
I don't think we are disagreeing but you don't seem to quite track what I am saying so let me try another approach. Ever notice how you can talk yourself blue in the face explaining to your boss how something is illegal but he ignores you? Ever notice how there's not a peep out of him once a lawyer from legal utters one sentence saying exactly the same thing you've been saying? That's because the lawyer speaks with the weight of his license behind him. Your boss knows every competent lawyer will tell him the same thing and the courts will enforce it.
Most corporations will not put those quality processes in place until there is some sort of regulation such as licensing required. Once licensing is required, and development process guidelines for those who wish to retain their licenses are in place, corporations will have no choice but to listen when their developers say "it has to be done this way to ensure quality (or at least a defense against a lawsuit)". If you say that today at most places you are shown the door while they replace you with someone who won't argue.
Would you consider banking software to be fairly important? I have seen banking software, to be used by the national banks of brittle developing economies being worked on by high school students with no engineering techniques being used at all. This software was being sold by a very large computer company with over 175,000 employees in over 100 countries, not a "fly by night" basement operation.
As to organizations being sued because their critical software failed, that is rarer than disbarments. Even then, the company suffers very little. A programmer or two might be fired. A fine might be paid. At the end of the day yet another profitable quarter is recorded which is all that really matters.
I have worked in software development for over 20 years now and, while most people advocate the careful processes you describe, nowhere I have worked actually does it (including three major companies whose names are three letter acronyms). None of my many friends and acquaintances in the business have worked at such a company either. One of the companies I worked for was ISO9000 certified to boot.
Right now there is no way to prevent incapable programmers from writing critical code. If a license was required, then programmers who cannot meet a minimum level of demonstrable competency wouldn't be allowed to get started writing critical code. A programmer who manages to get certified but who then writes sloppy code could have his license revoked (like disbarment for a lawyer) thereby preventing that programmer from writing any more critical code. By having various licensing levels you could regulate what sort of programs a programmer could work on. A person coding a fly-by-wire system might need a higher rating than someone writing a video game.
I don't like red-tape but there is a silver lining for developers: licensed programmers would get greater pay and have greater job security. Jobs requiring above a certain level of licensing would require the work to be done in this country and by U.S. citizens.
Some schools require all the "math stuff" and still call the degree a B.A. You cannot tell from the degree alone what course material the degree covered.
In the U.S. there is often no difference between a B.A. and a B.S. Both are four year degrees and, while there is sometimes an inferred difference in the rigors of getting a B.A. instead of a B.S., the reality is that you cannot judge what was involved from the name of the degree alone.
You are completely correct in that hiring a person with only classroom experience to be a "designer" is a recipe for disaster. It is the software industry's version of the military's "90 day wonder".
As far as the degree is concerned: in the U.S. both BS and BA degrees are "Bachelor" degrees which means they are both four year degrees. Two year degrees are "Associate" degrees.
I suggest seeking a position with an international company. When I worked for ICL we had Americans living and working in places like Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Zimbabwe. ICL also had many employees in Commonwealth countries. Most people don't want to work overseas so you have a competitive advantage there.
You should know however that such working conditions can lead to "war stories". One of the people I worked with (briefly) was among the last half dozen Europeans to escape from Iran when the Ayatollah came to power. He and his wife had to travel at night across the open desert to escape. Other ICLers had stories about encounters with the Russian Mafia. Yet others came back with mysterious diseases (not kidding).
Such systems should include the possibility of negotiating rates on the fly. The mobile device should be programmed with upper prices for particular levels of service. Then, for each unit of service purchased a negotiation takes place. If the ISP is not busy the price is low. If the ISP is close to saturation the price is high. If there are multiple ISPs to choose from market competition occurs as everyone negotiates to determine the price. This would result in a balance between coverage and what people are willing to pay.
I think she would have shared her changes because it would benefit her in the long run to not have to keep reapplying her patches when the official version gets updated.
Rational people always act out of self-interest. Free will implies you choose to act. Rationality implies that, at a minimum, you chose what you consider to be the least evil option. The benefits others receive are a side-effect.
For example, a person may choose to vote to raise taxes for greater social programs. That is not an altruistic choice. That person's possible selfish motivations include making that choice in order to live in a world they consider to be more ideal (i.e., one where wealth and opportunity is more evenly distributed) or simply to assuage feelings of guilt.
I have some similar needs plus several more and I am looking at Groove. It seems to do almost everything I need but it is a bit of a resource hog and there is apparently no reminder feature (a popup window to say "You have a meeting in five minutes", for example). Has anyone here got any experience with it?
Also, has anyone tried the Groove-compatible project management tool from TeamDirection?.
This story has a happy ending. I eventually was directed to call 800-772-2227. I explained I am a developer who is going to mutilate the hard drive including the MBR and recovery partition. IBM is shipping the CDROMs to me at no charge as the system is under warranty.
I recommend the IBM Thinkpad as well. I hated laptops but I have just spent two years using a 600X and it has made a convert out of me. I just bought a certified pre-owned T30 of my own from the IBM web site.
My only real complaint is that I didn't get the !@#$% CDROMs for the Windows XP that is installed on it. You are supposed to be satisfied with the recovery partition. The story is if you have a problem with the recovery partition, and the system is under warranty, IBM will fix it ASAP. What I want to know is what am I supposed to do if it's 2:00 in the morning or if the unit is no longer under warranty?
Also, it is possible for the system to get to the point where you can't boot to access the recovery partition. In that case you are supposed to use a recovery floppy - except there is no floppy drive on the system and there's no documentation on what to put on a bootable CDROM (the floppy is built by some utility)!
Even if I wanted to pay for it twice and I bought a retail copy of XP I still lose because now I don't have the IBM-specific drivers and utilities.
Of course, IBM is not the company sticking it to people here, that "honor" belongs to Microsoft and their utterly delusional paranoia that someone might steal a copy of Windows. You can hardly get a PC that doesn't come with Windows and by the time a new version of Windows comes out your hardware that is running the previous version is obsolete so there is very little reason to actually steal Windows.