It was in the NYTimes Book review, and got a good write-up (good enough for me, who has not read fantasy since I was about 17, to give it a try). I am guessing that the "fantasy for adults" label given to it by the Times and other reviewers attracted teens into the eddings/dragonlance type of sci-fi to it, but the $27 sticker price was too much for them. Hence, they ripped them off.
Just to put my own two cents in on it, im halfway through, and it is "good." At times it is a bit heavy and I wonder if its really worth it to wade through this mediocre story, but other times I find it really entertaining. Its a book that when is said and done I will have enjoyed, but wished I had bought it when it was a paperback.
I would think that trees have a much larger impact on reducing the amount of energy in the atmosphere. Perhaps using wind power will counteract some of the effects of de-forestation? I find it difficult to believe that in terms of total energy, what these windmills will be taking out of the atmosphere will be anywhere near significant. How many watts of power is Ivan unleashing right now?
I think it is a common fallacy to equate "change" or "impact" with "bad," specifically when it comes to environmental issues.
I agree. Few people remember the near hysteria in the late 80's/early 90's over Japan taking over the US economically. It was frequently tossed around that Japanese workers were intensely dedicated, more productive, blahblahblah than US workers. The Japanese economy has been stagnant for almost 10 years now. So much for that eh?
The situation in China/India is a little different. The Japanese economy was a mature economy that was financing a large part of its growth on exploding real estate prices (which eerily reminds me of the current US situation). China/India are in essence mobilizing previously unused resources to fuel their growth- hence they can have things like 10% growth without worrying about things like inflation. However, there is ALOT of concern in China right now over all these loans that are being made, similar to those made by Japanese companies during their boom. The Japanese banking industry is still struggling under the weight of all that bad debt, alot of which was originated over 10 years ago (but near zero inflation there has not diluted the real cost of that debt over time like it does in most other economies). I am drifting here, but the point is that it there are real bubble risks in China ( I do not know India well enough to say anything about that nation either way).
I just thought of a few more that have worked at past and current companies...
Monthly birthday cakes for workers- essentially a monthly friday break for 15 minutes. It was a nice touch that we all appreciated.
Pizza Fridays. Everyone gets together in the conference room or kitchen and eats pizza (on the company) Again, one of those real nice touches whose benefits far outweigh the cost.
Beer/Wine Friday's. Everyone brings in a few beers or a bottle of wine (make sure the managers shell out for good stuff) and everyone tries them out in a blind test and rates them. Of course, do this around 4:30 on a Friday.
Hazing of new guys. Every business has its own language that can be exploited for great fun to everyone else. For example, here at my finance company, junior guys are often told to run upstairs and get a box of "odd lots" when they are starting out (odd lots are merely stock orders that are not divisible by 100). Of course they go to the tipped off guy upstairs and then are sent to some other department, while everyone is trying their hardest to keep a straight face, and then rinse and repeat. Yeah it embarasses the hell out of them, but its one of those locker room things that also says "hey youre one of us now"
Hazing of managers. Much rarer, but at some friend's companies they would at times play tricks on the manager. Most were typical vaseline on the phone type pranks, but one in particular that I found funny was that they locked his office door one morning when they knew he would be late, and put a sign on it to meet with an HR person that agreed to go along with it in the conference room. She met him in there with a scowl and then made a fake call to security and told him to wait in there while she returned. They let him sweat in there for a few minutes until they let him know it was a joke.
Alot of people dismissed the idea of Lan games and happy hours as exclusive to some, but teams are diverse, and no matter what you do, someone is not going to be interested. If they choose not to participate, then so be it.
"Oh, and next Friday...is Hawaiian shirt day...so, you know, if you want to you can go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans."
Seriously... traditions aren't made, they happen. If you want to make one happen, I recommend maybe starting with a bi-weekly happy hour or poker night, or something similarly social along those lines, possibly subsidized by the company.
I cant see the picture, so this is just a guess, but it sounds alot like the OBD-II interface used by mechanics to diagnose your cars problems. Through this interface you can see many many cool things, essentially the output of every sensor in the car. Things like oil pressure, temperature, coolant temperature, rpms (if not already available), etc., in real quantitative units. They can also give you more info when the "check engine" light comes on. If youre a gearhead this is definitely a cool toy.
Here is a link to some pics google returned when searching for them. obd II search Yes, these can be interfaced to laptops, and the image on google even has it interfaced to a palm pilot. You will have to look at aftermarket sites for the details though.
Me and my friends about a year ago decided to come up w/ a single basic screening question to decide if a girl we met was halfway intelligent. We debated on what the one question should be, and finally decided on one: "Where is Kansas?" Where we would mark a point in the air for california and new york and then have them point to where kansas should be. You wouldnt believe where some girls pointed. Some thought it was somewhere around virgina, others in canada, one even pointed to some place out in the middle of the atlantic. And we weren't nitpicking either, you passed if you just pointed to somewhere approximately in the middle. The pass rate for a typical drunk girl was somewhere around 20%. We were astounded. We thought it would be something like 70%. So after seeing those dissapointing results, we did what any guy would do... and lowered our standards.
Holy FUD. I do not know if you are a software developer, but I have come across many bugs, including my own, that could be titled does not work. That does not mean that it never works, it means that in some configurations, when you do X, Y, and then Z, while having Q in the background, things do not work properly. This is a primary source of bugs- a combination of events happen that you did not plan for occur, causing a malfunction. It does not mean that it is common.
Most of us I think have heard the 65,000 bug quote for windows 2000. Considering the amount of code in windows, this is normal. Dont quote me on this, but I have heard there is somewhere on the order of 3 million lines of code in windows. This is about one bug per 46 lines of code, which is a little better than average from what I have read in industry studies for projects of this size.
If you are worried about the price in the first few days after the ipo then you are a speculator (read filth) not an investor.
I disagree. If you are not worried about the share price a few days after, you are foolish. If you know there is an 80% chance that the stock price is going to be significantly lower three days after you plan to buy it, you buy it three days later at the lower price.
Also, your definitions of investing and shares is far off the mark. A share is a piece of the company. You own that company. There is no loaning involved, you don't sell it back to the company, you sell it to another investor. You invest in a company, hoping that the company increases in value, thus raising the share price, or alternatively remains profitable and stable, thus releasing dividends. Share price appreciation is much more common now as most managers choose to reinvest profits in the business, which makes the company grow, and benefits the managers resumes as they get to lord over a larger empire. Also, most managers primarily have options on stock shares and do not own actual shares, so they again just look to get the quick buck from exercising the option and selling it. It used to be more common that something like a tire company would be content with doing well in the tire business, making nice profits and handing out dividends, mostly due to the fact that there were more family businesses and the managers were family members that held large numbers of shares (for a current example MS w/ Gates and Allen share many characteristics). Now the trend is that the company would instead start expanding into making other rubber widgets or if they are feeling really adventurous just buy or venture into some completely unrelated business. Its not a clear argument as to which method is better, as the shareholders should win with each strategy, though companies with dividends have historically produced higher total returns.
This is a common problem with OSS. The versioning system is *broken*. And, what is worse (and very common among the OSS community), OSS developers blame the users, not themselves for the misunderstandings.
Previous to many of these OSS projects gaining prominence, "1.0" was commonly accepted as the milestone where basic functionality was fully working. The software may not be "done", but it was usable and things would Just Work. This was a de-facto standard used by almost all commercial vendors, which was handed down to students of programming, and even into software engineering textbooks. OSS dev guys just said hey screw that...13454 is the point where the software became usable, its up to the users to figure that.
1.0 made sense. now... its virtually meaningless. I have no idea if a.9 version is as good as firefox or as crappy as a piece of software in Beta. 1.0 for OSS somewhat resembles the 3.0 of MS, aka the version when things are finally done well.
Practices like this and others are what entrenching OSS as for "programs for programmers" and keeping them off my family's start menu. Which is fine by me, but the general goal of OSS seems to be for general acceptance among all users. If you disagree, explain, and also explain how I should be interpreting the "intuitive" versioning systems of many pieces of OSS software.
At some point I think this really becomes alot more of a crutch than a virtue. How much of that 23 year old code do you think is still being used, and if it is being used, how much of that code is not there just for legacy backward compatibility purposes? I think being "old" loses its advantage in IT after about 10 years. Then it becomes "stale".
I agree Linux is making great progress. In response to your second statement though, I think there is a big gap between the goal of Windows developers/managers and that of Linux developers, mainly that Linux is written by technology hobbyists for technology hobbyists. I am not sure that we will ever see a Linux with the same ease of use as Windows, and I also do not think this is a completely bad thing. I don't go around trying to convince everyone I see to drive stick or pickup trucks because "its better, you have more hauling capacity, and youre in more control of your car." If they WindowsME-ified Linux, that would be horrible.
I did consider this. There are many significant differences.
First and foremost is that you sign up to be in the army, and the army's central role is to defend America. This does not necessarily mean putting yourself in harm's way. There are many many many positions that would never require you being near the front lines. The army is an organization, an astronaut is a job/profession. Your argument would have been stronger had you said something along the lines of a navy seal or a ranger. The amount of lives put at risk when youre talking about sending out an army is far, far greater than the few people you put on a spacecraft, even taking into consideration the possiblity that something goes horribly wrong and it crashes over a populated area.
A question to ponder: How many families do you think get all excited when a relative gets word hes getting shipped off to war? How many families do you think get excited when they hear their relatives are going to be flying on the space shuttle?
Nevertheless, it still behoves the political masters of that army not to risk soldires' lives unnecessarily . Or should we, say, save money by not issuing body armour, because "gee, you volunteered to be in the army, so you expect to get shot"?
I am all for you on the billions of dollars, but the risk of human lives? But nobody is putting a gun to the heads of people and saying "you're going to be an astronaut and fly into space in a tin can." If NASA put up a listing on the web for an astronaut opening I bet half the country would apply for it. I personally would be at the very front. There are many many jobs that are riskier and in far less demand than being an astronaut.
I bet that more people in the world died from drowning in the US today than the total combined direct loss of life of all the world's space programs throughout history.
Business lines- Installation, service, etc- very lucrative, much more profitable than residential ever was. VOIP will still be sold to residential customers- the article is not that clear on this, but essentially only residential POTS service (yes, its redundant. get over it.) is going to be removed. They still own and operate major trunks and data lines. I don't really know much about how they make money off of those, but they will continue to operate (and make money off of?) those.
Not sure when the last you heard was, but the XBOX IIRC, uses a pentium III 800 chip. You can get these at a retail price of $30 now. I dont recall what the other components were off the top of my head, but im sure the production costs have all halved to quartered for them. I would think that by now they are able to produce the things at cost.
Microsoft is not alone in selling its parts at below cost and losing money on them. Its been a practice used by most systems out there, the Gamecube/Gameboy being notable exceptions. The money rolls in from software sales. Also, all console manufacturers protect their "exclusive" territory fiercely. I dont think you will ever see a mario, metroid, or zelda game on anything but a nintendo system, just like I dont think you will ever see halo on anyhing but an MS system.
I think you really have to add a management modifier to that statement. These guys are the coders, and I am confident that they werent out at the bar celebrating when MS announced that all IE development would stop. As a techie you (and others) should know that you often have to deal with management decisions that you do not want to implement, do not think will benefit anyone, but you have to do it anyway. MS was pushing COM and Active* technologies really hard in the late 90s. I would imagine that the developer's hands were tied in allowing it in IE in the user friendly (but insecure) way that made it such a problem. If the devs were behind it, I am guessing they did not forsee all the evil uses it could be used for that give such a headache today. Other browsers have had the luxury of seeing how bad ActiveX became and learned from its mistakes.
I consider myself a "nice" and not evil person, and I know that given an offer w/ a decent raise, I would join MS, and work in its IE department.
Direct your anger towards the corner offices, not the guys in the cubes. The guys in the cubes IMHO made a damn fast but out-of-the-box insecure browser. And unlike an open source project, I wouldnt expect these guys to deliver any scathing remarks about their boss's or MS's decisions, because im sure they like doing what they are doing, warts and all, and generally like their jobs, and would not want to jeopardize them- and what company really wants to deal with a developer who will go around in public blasting the company on one of its most high-profile products.
In addition, like most engineering projects, you have *minimum* requirements, and that is what you build for. A bridge in the US by code MUST be designed to hold 6 times (iirc) the maximum weight it is designed to carry- in the case of a bridge, this would mean 6 tractor trailers filled to the brim w/ heavy cargo stacked six high. In Nasa's case, I am sure all the components have a mean time before failure calculated, and then probabilities are calculated as to how long it will last. So lets say they built the thing and took on a 10% chance of failure before the mission's intended end ( which I believe was 90 days). So now they are seeing that the components are more rugged than they estimated for, and will last longer. I dont see this as bad.
Im sure this is not entirely by chance- I am sure the Nasa leaders understand that headlines like "Mars rovers may last over a year past their 3 month intended life" go over much better than "Mars rovers fall short of intended year mission" regardless of the actual length or ambitiousness of the mission.
I really hope you are not in the bridge building business...
Something makes me think that you havent played a game w/ 5.1 surround sound. Playing SOCOM II is a different experience w/ the surround sound. I can hear where shots are coming from. its not pinpoint, but I can tell w/in 20 degrees or so where someone is hitting me from. In addition, I can feel it when grenades go off next to me. It adds to the experience. In games like Final Fantasy, those 5.1 scenes look and sound better than most movies.
This is on a PS2 hooked up to a very nice home theater system, something youre not likely to have on a PC. However, surround sound can be implemented in headphones (its in fact, easier), which is a better, cheaper option.
Good sound won't save a game, or make a good game bad, but it can really add to the experience.
I also got a copy at the NY auto show, and I also agree it sucks.
There are two tracks, one called the fuji speedway that I at first thought they had just changed the name of grand valley national speedway, and the other is the much hyped grand canyon course, which looked nothing like what I had seen in screenshots. There is eye candy to be found, but only in the replays. When actually driving, dont expect to be wowed by awesome scenery.
It also only contains two cars: the prius and a prototype that I believe runs on a hydrogen fuel cell, if I remember the display at the auto show correctly. The prius is no fun to drive whatsoever. One of the main new features is that each car has its own dashboard display. Watching your MPG in the prius on a racetrack just doesnt do it for me. The hydrogen car is more fun to drive, and has some really interesting gauges on it, but the grand canyon course is pretty much a rally course, and the car handles fairly poorly on it (again not much fun).
In addition, the game has a 2 minute time limit (IIRC) that doesnt allow you to finish the 2 lap course around the fuji speedway.
I am a HUGE GT3 fan, and nearly jizzed in my pants when I got the demo, but its only fun for about 5 minutes. If anything, it made me really skeptical about how good GT4 is going to be. The graphics are about the same, with the only noticeable improvements being animated spectators. The driving experience felt about the same too, with the same notable lack of damage.
Point being, dont be too upset about the GT4 demo being out of stock. In fact, contact me and I will even send mine out to someone. its 5 minutes of entertainment have long passed.
About a year ago I struggled with this same question, but my question was to move from a "real" development position at a small company with an uncertain future, to taking a configuration management type position at a large firm (lots more money, lots more opportunities, but in my eyes a demotion).
I am happy I took it. My hours are normal now, im no longer held to killer unreasonable deadlines. I have my foot in the door to management as I manage and "own" many resources and get to make (and enforce) real policy decisions that affect a group of about 50 developers. Im still involved in development, but am generally not neck deep in the coding trenches. If I see a build failed for a reason I can fix, I just fix it. I also get to do those projects that as a developer you were just dying to do if only you had the time- essentially refactoring code on a mass scale- ripping libraries out and putting them in a central organized repository, and things of that nature.
Must Reads: Configuration Management Principles and Practice (addison wesley)- Do everything in this book. EVERYTHING. Absolute must read. Software Configuration Management - Wayne Babich
A bit dated, but short and worth a read. Mythical Man Month - Fred Brooks
A good conf. mgr. needs to understand project management issues on software projects. This book is a classic.
Other advice (if you take the job): Like any manager, you can be the developer's best friend or their worst nightmare. Processes are indeed important, but you must not make them burdensome. Red tape sucks for everyone, as well as unneeded, redundant and conflicting procedures.
I am very happy with my decision. The only downside I really have is that even people in the tech industry do not know what configuration management is, and often picture you writing ini files or admining. I often just describe myself as a developer, which is somewhat annoying since its not entirely accurate. Organizations that employ configuration managers are recognizing that they cant just rely on developers pulling workflows out of their ass or software solutions to ensure that their builds remain consistent. I would think that as Software Engineering processes evolve, you will see more Configuration Managers in the future.
There was this obscure OS that no one had ever heard of... man it was cool... it was like unix on the pc... and this guy that developed it... this guy from scandanavia. You see it was really clever because it was a play on his actual name, and easy to remember.
Then... 1998 came. Its been downhill from there. I wouldnt even trust it to a hotmail account now.
The IS Guys then pick up these vague specs, do their best, but usually get caught in a cycle of rework as the users complain "you gave me what I asked for, but not what I need..."
Sounds alot like the discussions me and the compiler often have, though I tend to use more expletives....
You might be right about this... but keep in mind that MSN and yahoo are generally considered not good enough, and that google is far superior. Lets say that MSN really kicks it into high gear and rivals google's search quality. With gmail, users will be on the site consistently, and never really forget about google, and since google has reached a level where it is "good enough" people will be more likely to stick to it.
You are right for the most part though, if MSN really does a notably better job at searching than google, then people will switch.
Re:I thought this very interesting
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Google Files for IPO
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This article makes some HUGE assumptions, the biggest being that search is going to be commoditized. The thing that made google so great is that they were able to differentiate their searches as markedly better and drove customers to their site away from competitors... which allows them to charge more for their ads- considering that they are indeed making a ton of money off of this, I think their customers are quite happy. Really, I would say that half of the entries on the list are related to the fact they think search is easy and anyone can get into the business and excel at it.
The outsourcing item made me wonder how much the writer really understands the difficulty of implementing a search engine. You can outsource typical day to day applications, the easy stuff. Google is doing cutting edge work! This is not a case of putting 1000 monkeys in a room and youll be a leader at search, and if youre still not w/ 1000 monkeys, then just add 1000 more. Or popping out JSP pages.
Google does have a strategy to lock in customers-Gmail. #9, about profit extension is not completely baseless, but they are not extending so much as optimizing their core strength to new applications. If a car engine company makes specialized engines for airplanes or boats, thats not really "extending" to me. If they tried to make cars, then that is a different story.
#6 about pay per click advertising is off base, considering the nature of google's ads. They are non intrusive, and embedded in the dynamically generated html. it would be very difficult for these adds to be removed, and they are so unobtrusive most users are not bothered in the slightest by them.
Overall, I found the article quite lame. Competition is definitely a concern, but if youre buying google, youre really buying the idea that Google can do things better than its competitors- people still buy Ford and GM stock regardless of the competitive nature of the auto business.
IBM has a legendary track record for its support. Its not cheap, but its there, and it SOLVES the problem. Their engineers know their stuff. I've never seen how other companies do support, but when we were having DB2 problems that our DBA's could'nt solve (and those guys are damn good too), we called them, and they had a guy onsite almost immediately, and the problem was fixed within two hours, it impressed the hell out of me. They don't point fingers, they fix the problem.
On the contrary, I bet IBM views feature requests on linux as much more lucrative than that for its proprietary products. I mean, proprietary stuff has to go through a release cycle, but with linux, they can use their consulting model, and charge by the feature. And remember, IBM wants linux to succeed so it can keep doing installs and support, so if a feature is deemed something that all of its customers will want, I bet they will develop the feature and release it. IBM didn't get to where it is now by telling customers to "go code it yourself." In fact, any consulting company would try to sell its services first.
Alot of people view IBM as a sort of has-been because its not gigantic in the PC world anymore. Personally, the way the PC world is going now, w/ dirt cheap commoditized pc's and intense competition everywhere, I think them getting out of the pc business was the best decision they ever made. A company like IBM behind Linux is quite honestly probably going to do more for linux than linus himself did.
Slashdot Mirror
It was in the NYTimes Book review, and got a good write-up (good enough for me, who has not read fantasy since I was about 17, to give it a try). I am guessing that the "fantasy for adults" label given to it by the Times and other reviewers attracted teens into the eddings/dragonlance type of sci-fi to it, but the $27 sticker price was too much for them. Hence, they ripped them off.
Just to put my own two cents in on it, im halfway through, and it is "good." At times it is a bit heavy and I wonder if its really worth it to wade through this mediocre story, but other times I find it really entertaining. Its a book that when is said and done I will have enjoyed, but wished I had bought it when it was a paperback.
I would think that trees have a much larger impact on reducing the amount of energy in the atmosphere. Perhaps using wind power will counteract some of the effects of de-forestation?
I find it difficult to believe that in terms of total energy, what these windmills will be taking out of the atmosphere will be anywhere near significant. How many watts of power is Ivan unleashing right now?
I think it is a common fallacy to equate "change" or "impact" with "bad," specifically when it comes to environmental issues.
I agree.
Few people remember the near hysteria in the late 80's/early 90's over Japan taking over the US economically. It was frequently tossed around that Japanese workers were intensely dedicated, more productive, blahblahblah than US workers. The Japanese economy has been stagnant for almost 10 years now. So much for that eh?
The situation in China/India is a little different. The Japanese economy was a mature economy that was financing a large part of its growth on exploding real estate prices (which eerily reminds me of the current US situation). China/India are in essence mobilizing previously unused resources to fuel their growth- hence they can have things like 10% growth without worrying about things like inflation. However, there is ALOT of concern in China right now over all these loans that are being made, similar to those made by Japanese companies during their boom. The Japanese banking industry is still struggling under the weight of all that bad debt, alot of which was originated over 10 years ago (but near zero inflation there has not diluted the real cost of that debt over time like it does in most other economies). I am drifting here, but the point is that it there are real bubble risks in China ( I do not know India well enough to say anything about that nation either way).
I just thought of a few more that have worked at past and current companies...
Monthly birthday cakes for workers- essentially a monthly friday break for 15 minutes. It was a nice touch that we all appreciated.
Pizza Fridays. Everyone gets together in the conference room or kitchen and eats pizza (on the company) Again, one of those real nice touches whose benefits far outweigh the cost.
Beer/Wine Friday's. Everyone brings in a few beers or a bottle of wine (make sure the managers shell out for good stuff) and everyone tries them out in a blind test and rates them. Of course, do this around 4:30 on a Friday.
Hazing of new guys. Every business has its own language that can be exploited for great fun to everyone else. For example, here at my finance company, junior guys are often told to run upstairs and get a box of "odd lots" when they are starting out (odd lots are merely stock orders that are not divisible by 100). Of course they go to the tipped off guy upstairs and then are sent to some other department, while everyone is trying their hardest to keep a straight face, and then rinse and repeat. Yeah it embarasses the hell out of them, but its one of those locker room things that also says "hey youre one of us now"
Hazing of managers. Much rarer, but at some friend's companies they would at times play tricks on the manager. Most were typical vaseline on the phone type pranks, but one in particular that I found funny was that they locked his office door one morning when they knew he would be late, and put a sign on it to meet with an HR person that agreed to go along with it in the conference room. She met him in there with a scowl and then made a fake call to security and told him to wait in there while she returned. They let him sweat in there for a few minutes until they let him know it was a joke.
Alot of people dismissed the idea of Lan games and happy hours as exclusive to some, but teams are diverse, and no matter what you do, someone is not going to be interested. If they choose not to participate, then so be it.
"Oh, and next Friday...is Hawaiian shirt day...so, you know,
if you want to you can go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans."
Seriously... traditions aren't made, they happen. If you want to make one happen, I recommend maybe starting with a bi-weekly happy hour or poker night, or something similarly social along those lines, possibly subsidized by the company.
I cant see the picture, so this is just a guess, but it sounds alot like the OBD-II interface used by mechanics to diagnose your cars problems. Through this interface you can see many many cool things, essentially the output of every sensor in the car. Things like oil pressure, temperature, coolant temperature, rpms (if not already available), etc., in real quantitative units. They can also give you more info when the "check engine" light comes on. If youre a gearhead this is definitely a cool toy.
Here is a link to some pics google returned when searching for them. obd II search Yes, these can be interfaced to laptops, and the image on google even has it interfaced to a palm pilot. You will have to look at aftermarket sites for the details though.
Me and my friends about a year ago decided to come up w/ a single basic screening question to decide if a girl we met was halfway intelligent. We debated on what the one question should be, and finally decided on one: "Where is Kansas?" Where we would mark a point in the air for california and new york and then have them point to where kansas should be. You wouldnt believe where some girls pointed. Some thought it was somewhere around virgina, others in canada, one even pointed to some place out in the middle of the atlantic. And we weren't nitpicking either, you passed if you just pointed to somewhere approximately in the middle. The pass rate for a typical drunk girl was somewhere around 20%. We were astounded. We thought it would be something like 70%. So after seeing those dissapointing results, we did what any guy would do... and lowered our standards.
Holy FUD. I do not know if you are a software developer, but I have come across many bugs, including my own, that could be titled does not work. That does not mean that it never works, it means that in some configurations, when you do X, Y, and then Z, while having Q in the background, things do not work properly. This is a primary source of bugs- a combination of events happen that you did not plan for occur, causing a malfunction. It does not mean that it is common.
Most of us I think have heard the 65,000 bug quote for windows 2000. Considering the amount of code in windows, this is normal. Dont quote me on this, but I have heard there is somewhere on the order of 3 million lines of code in windows. This is about one bug per 46 lines of code, which is a little better than average from what I have read in industry studies for projects of this size.
If you are worried about the price in the first few days after the ipo then you are a speculator (read filth) not an investor.
I disagree. If you are not worried about the share price a few days after, you are foolish. If you know there is an 80% chance that the stock price is going to be significantly lower three days after you plan to buy it, you buy it three days later at the lower price.
Also, your definitions of investing and shares is far off the mark. A share is a piece of the company. You own that company. There is no loaning involved, you don't sell it back to the company, you sell it to another investor. You invest in a company, hoping that the company increases in value, thus raising the share price, or alternatively remains profitable and stable, thus releasing dividends. Share price appreciation is much more common now as most managers choose to reinvest profits in the business, which makes the company grow, and benefits the managers resumes as they get to lord over a larger empire. Also, most managers primarily have options on stock shares and do not own actual shares, so they again just look to get the quick buck from exercising the option and selling it. It used to be more common that something like a tire company would be content with doing well in the tire business, making nice profits and handing out dividends, mostly due to the fact that there were more family businesses and the managers were family members that held large numbers of shares (for a current example MS w/ Gates and Allen share many characteristics). Now the trend is that the company would instead start expanding into making other rubber widgets or if they are feeling really adventurous just buy or venture into some completely unrelated business. Its not a clear argument as to which method is better, as the shareholders should win with each strategy, though companies with dividends have historically produced higher total returns.
This is a common problem with OSS. The versioning system is *broken*. And, what is worse (and very common among the OSS community), OSS developers blame the users, not themselves for the misunderstandings.
.13454 is the point where the software became usable, its up to the users to figure that.
.9 version is as good as firefox or as crappy as a piece of software in Beta. 1.0 for OSS somewhat resembles the 3.0 of MS, aka the version when things are finally done well.
Previous to many of these OSS projects gaining prominence, "1.0" was commonly accepted as the milestone where basic functionality was fully working. The software may not be "done", but it was usable and things would Just Work. This was a de-facto standard used by almost all commercial vendors, which was handed down to students of programming, and even into software engineering textbooks. OSS dev guys just said hey screw that..
1.0 made sense. now... its virtually meaningless. I have no idea if a
Practices like this and others are what entrenching OSS as for "programs for programmers" and keeping them off my family's start menu. Which is fine by me, but the general goal of OSS seems to be for general acceptance among all users. If you disagree, explain, and also explain how I should be interpreting the "intuitive" versioning systems of many pieces of OSS software.
At some point I think this really becomes alot more of a crutch than a virtue. How much of that 23 year old code do you think is still being used, and if it is being used, how much of that code is not there just for legacy backward compatibility purposes? I think being "old" loses its advantage in IT after about 10 years. Then it becomes "stale".
I agree Linux is making great progress. In response to your second statement though, I think there is a big gap between the goal of Windows developers/managers and that of Linux developers, mainly that Linux is written by technology hobbyists for technology hobbyists. I am not sure that we will ever see a Linux with the same ease of use as Windows, and I also do not think this is a completely bad thing. I don't go around trying to convince everyone I see to drive stick or pickup trucks because "its better, you have more hauling capacity, and youre in more control of your car." If they WindowsME-ified Linux, that would be horrible.
I did consider this. There are many significant differences.
First and foremost is that you sign up to be in the army, and the army's central role is to defend America. This does not necessarily mean putting yourself in harm's way. There are many many many positions that would never require you being near the front lines. The army is an organization, an astronaut is a job/profession. Your argument would have been stronger had you said something along the lines of a navy seal or a ranger. The amount of lives put at risk when youre talking about sending out an army is far, far greater than the few people you put on a spacecraft, even taking into consideration the possiblity that something goes horribly wrong and it crashes over a populated area.
A question to ponder: How many families do you think get all excited when a relative gets word hes getting shipped off to war? How many families do you think get excited when they hear their relatives are going to be flying on the space shuttle?
Nevertheless, it still behoves the political masters of that army not to risk soldires' lives unnecessarily . Or should we, say, save money by not issuing body armour, because "gee, you volunteered to be in the army, so you expect to get shot"?
See Iraq?
Fuckwit.
Mature.
I am all for you on the billions of dollars, but the risk of human lives? But nobody is putting a gun to the heads of people and saying "you're going to be an astronaut and fly into space in a tin can." If NASA put up a listing on the web for an astronaut opening I bet half the country would apply for it. I personally would be at the very front. There are many many jobs that are riskier and in far less demand than being an astronaut.
I bet that more people in the world died from drowning in the US today than the total combined direct loss of life of all the world's space programs throughout history.
Business lines- Installation, service, etc- very lucrative, much more profitable than residential ever was.
VOIP will still be sold to residential customers- the article is not that clear on this, but essentially only residential POTS service (yes, its redundant. get over it.) is going to be removed. They still own and operate major trunks and data lines. I don't really know much about how they make money off of those, but they will continue to operate (and make money off of?) those.
Not sure when the last you heard was, but the XBOX IIRC, uses a pentium III 800 chip. You can get these at a retail price of $30 now. I dont recall what the other components were off the top of my head, but im sure the production costs have all halved to quartered for them. I would think that by now they are able to produce the things at cost.
Microsoft is not alone in selling its parts at below cost and losing money on them. Its been a practice used by most systems out there, the Gamecube/Gameboy being notable exceptions. The money rolls in from software sales. Also, all console manufacturers protect their "exclusive" territory fiercely. I dont think you will ever see a mario, metroid, or zelda game on anything but a nintendo system, just like I dont think you will ever see halo on anyhing but an MS system.
I think you really have to add a management modifier to that statement. These guys are the coders, and I am confident that they werent out at the bar celebrating when MS announced that all IE development would stop. As a techie you (and others) should know that you often have to deal with management decisions that you do not want to implement, do not think will benefit anyone, but you have to do it anyway. MS was pushing COM and Active* technologies really hard in the late 90s.
I would imagine that the developer's hands were tied in allowing it in IE in the user friendly (but insecure) way that made it such a problem. If the devs were behind it, I am guessing they did not forsee all the evil uses it could be used for that give such a headache today. Other browsers have had the luxury of seeing how bad ActiveX became and learned from its mistakes.
I consider myself a "nice" and not evil person, and I know that given an offer w/ a decent raise, I would join MS, and work in its IE department.
Direct your anger towards the corner offices, not the guys in the cubes. The guys in the cubes IMHO made a damn fast but out-of-the-box insecure browser. And unlike an open source project, I wouldnt expect these guys to deliver any scathing remarks about their boss's or MS's decisions, because im sure they like doing what they are doing, warts and all, and generally like their jobs, and would not want to jeopardize them- and what company really wants to deal with a developer who will go around in public blasting the company on one of its most high-profile products.
Not if you are still within your budget...
In addition, like most engineering projects, you have *minimum* requirements, and that is what you build for. A bridge in the US by code MUST be designed to hold 6 times (iirc) the maximum weight it is designed to carry- in the case of a bridge, this would mean 6 tractor trailers filled to the brim w/ heavy cargo stacked six high. In Nasa's case, I am sure all the components have a mean time before failure calculated, and then probabilities are calculated as to how long it will last. So lets say they built the thing and took on a 10% chance of failure before the mission's intended end ( which I believe was 90 days). So now they are seeing that the components are more rugged than they estimated for, and will last longer. I dont see this as bad.
Im sure this is not entirely by chance- I am sure the Nasa leaders understand that headlines like "Mars rovers may last over a year past their 3 month intended life" go over much better than "Mars rovers fall short of intended year mission" regardless of the actual length or ambitiousness of the mission.
I really hope you are not in the bridge building business...
Something makes me think that you havent played a game w/ 5.1 surround sound. Playing SOCOM II is a different experience w/ the surround sound. I can hear where shots are coming from. its not pinpoint, but I can tell w/in 20 degrees or so where someone is hitting me from. In addition, I can feel it when grenades go off next to me. It adds to the experience. In games like Final Fantasy, those 5.1 scenes look and sound better than most movies.
This is on a PS2 hooked up to a very nice home theater system, something youre not likely to have on a PC. However, surround sound can be implemented in headphones (its in fact, easier), which is a better, cheaper option.
Good sound won't save a game, or make a good game bad, but it can really add to the experience.
I also got a copy at the NY auto show, and I also agree it sucks.
There are two tracks, one called the fuji speedway that I at first thought they had just changed the name of grand valley national speedway, and the other is the much hyped grand canyon course, which looked nothing like what I had seen in screenshots. There is eye candy to be found, but only in the replays. When actually driving, dont expect to be wowed by awesome scenery.
It also only contains two cars: the prius and a prototype that I believe runs on a hydrogen fuel cell, if I remember the display at the auto show correctly. The prius is no fun to drive whatsoever. One of the main new features is that each car has its own dashboard display. Watching your MPG in the prius on a racetrack just doesnt do it for me. The hydrogen car is more fun to drive, and has some really interesting gauges on it, but the grand canyon course is pretty much a rally course, and the car handles fairly poorly on it (again not much fun).
In addition, the game has a 2 minute time limit (IIRC) that doesnt allow you to finish the 2 lap course around the fuji speedway.
I am a HUGE GT3 fan, and nearly jizzed in my pants when I got the demo, but its only fun for about 5 minutes. If anything, it made me really skeptical about how good GT4 is going to be. The graphics are about the same, with the only noticeable improvements being animated spectators. The driving experience felt about the same too, with the same notable lack of damage.
Point being, dont be too upset about the GT4 demo being out of stock. In fact, contact me and I will even send mine out to someone. its 5 minutes of entertainment have long passed.
About a year ago I struggled with this same question, but my question was to move from a "real" development position at a small company with an uncertain future, to taking a configuration management type position at a large firm (lots more money, lots more opportunities, but in my eyes a demotion).
I am happy I took it. My hours are normal now, im no longer held to killer unreasonable deadlines. I have my foot in the door to management as I manage and "own" many resources and get to make (and enforce) real policy decisions that affect a group of about 50 developers. Im still involved in development, but am generally not neck deep in the coding trenches. If I see a build failed for a reason I can fix, I just fix it. I also get to do those projects that as a developer you were just dying to do if only you had the time- essentially refactoring code on a mass scale- ripping libraries out and putting them in a central organized repository, and things of that nature.
Must Reads:
Configuration Management Principles and Practice (addison wesley)- Do everything in this book. EVERYTHING. Absolute must read.
Software Configuration Management - Wayne Babich
A bit dated, but short and worth a read.
Mythical Man Month - Fred Brooks
A good conf. mgr. needs to understand project management issues on software projects. This book is a classic.
Other advice (if you take the job):
Like any manager, you can be the developer's best friend or their worst nightmare. Processes are indeed important, but you must not make them burdensome. Red tape sucks for everyone, as well as unneeded, redundant and conflicting procedures.
I am very happy with my decision. The only downside I really have is that even people in the tech industry do not know what configuration management is, and often picture you writing ini files or admining. I often just describe myself as a developer, which is somewhat annoying since its not entirely accurate. Organizations that employ configuration managers are recognizing that they cant just rely on developers pulling workflows out of their ass or software solutions to ensure that their builds remain consistent. I would think that as Software Engineering processes evolve, you will see more Configuration Managers in the future.
It used to be so great...
There was this obscure OS that no one had ever heard of... man it was cool... it was like unix on the pc... and this guy that developed it... this guy from scandanavia. You see it was really clever because it was a play on his actual name, and easy to remember.
Then... 1998 came. Its been downhill from there. I wouldnt even trust it to a hotmail account now.
The IS Guys then pick up these vague specs, do their best, but usually get caught in a cycle of rework as the users complain "you gave me what I asked for, but not what I need..."
Sounds alot like the discussions me and the compiler often have, though I tend to use more expletives....
You might be right about this... but keep in mind that MSN and yahoo are generally considered not good enough, and that google is far superior. Lets say that MSN really kicks it into high gear and rivals google's search quality. With gmail, users will be on the site consistently, and never really forget about google, and since google has reached a level where it is "good enough" people will be more likely to stick to it.
You are right for the most part though, if MSN really does a notably better job at searching than google, then people will switch.
This article makes some HUGE assumptions, the biggest being that search is going to be commoditized. The thing that made google so great is that they were able to differentiate their searches as markedly better and drove customers to their site away from competitors... which allows them to charge more for their ads- considering that they are indeed making a ton of money off of this, I think their customers are quite happy. Really, I would say that half of the entries on the list are related to the fact they think search is easy and anyone can get into the business and excel at it.
The outsourcing item made me wonder how much the writer really understands the difficulty of implementing a search engine. You can outsource typical day to day applications, the easy stuff. Google is doing cutting edge work! This is not a case of putting 1000 monkeys in a room and youll be a leader at search, and if youre still not w/ 1000 monkeys, then just add 1000 more. Or popping out JSP pages.
Google does have a strategy to lock in customers-Gmail. #9, about profit extension is not completely baseless, but they are not extending so much as optimizing their core strength to new applications. If a car engine company makes specialized engines for airplanes or boats, thats not really "extending" to me. If they tried to make cars, then that is a different story.
#6 about pay per click advertising is off base, considering the nature of google's ads. They are non intrusive, and embedded in the dynamically generated html. it would be very difficult for these adds to be removed, and they are so unobtrusive most users are not bothered in the slightest by them.
Overall, I found the article quite lame. Competition is definitely a concern, but if youre buying google, youre really buying the idea that Google can do things better than its competitors- people still buy Ford and GM stock regardless of the competitive nature of the auto business.
IBM has a legendary track record for its support. Its not cheap, but its there, and it SOLVES the problem. Their engineers know their stuff. I've never seen how other companies do support, but when we were having DB2 problems that our DBA's could'nt solve (and those guys are damn good too), we called them, and they had a guy onsite almost immediately, and the problem was fixed within two hours, it impressed the hell out of me. They don't point fingers, they fix the problem.
On the contrary, I bet IBM views feature requests on linux as much more lucrative than that for its proprietary products. I mean, proprietary stuff has to go through a release cycle, but with linux, they can use their consulting model, and charge by the feature. And remember, IBM wants linux to succeed so it can keep doing installs and support, so if a feature is deemed something that all of its customers will want, I bet they will develop the feature and release it. IBM didn't get to where it is now by telling customers to "go code it yourself." In fact, any consulting company would try to sell its services first.
Alot of people view IBM as a sort of has-been because its not gigantic in the PC world anymore. Personally, the way the PC world is going now, w/ dirt cheap commoditized pc's and intense competition everywhere, I think them getting out of the pc business was the best decision they ever made. A company like IBM behind Linux is quite honestly probably going to do more for linux than linus himself did.