I am going to assume that youre not a money whore and that's not criteria #1, and that youre a techie type, not looking to become a CEO.
Some of the more subtle things, imho: 1.) Benefits/cost of benefits: Companies that offer "benefits" but have you shoulder the cost of 80% of them often reeks of a company that is just putting up appearances in all areas, and is generally cheap, or struggling.
2.) The kitchen, or perhaps lack thereof. Are there lots of pay vending machines, even for coffee, or worse, water? This again reeks of a company that doesnt really care a whole lot about their worker's happiness or isnt doing well enough to go to price club and buy a vat of coffee or chips.
3.) The office. Cube farms w/ managers in corner offices w/ the doors closed? Do the cubicles/whatever appear to be layed out in a way to encourage the flow of ideas, or just for managers to keep tabs on employees. Is it painted in flat white cost-cutting paint that has needed a fresh coat for the past 5 years? Im not saying look for wood paneled walls, but it should be easy to spot whether or not the office was designed to be a nice place where you would want to spend your time, or a factory line meant to spit out code. Check out the machines- do they have old 17 inch monitors on the fritz, or do most developers have nice 22" monitors w/ newish machines. Are there signs posted about "procedures" and "reminders" to put waste paper in the proper receptacles and that office supplies are meant for in office use only, and that employees are not to take more than 10 minute coffee breaks, and to please be considerate and make sure your coffee mugs are cleaned and out of the sink before you leave at the end of the day... etc? Ive seen this... it reeks of low level managers and admins struggling to flex any muscle they have- any requests for favors or exceptions to policies will most likely get stonewalled by some bitter under appreciated admin. Excessive procedure reminders reeks of micro-managing types that will never let you make a decision.
4.) The general 'aura' of the office. Are there people grumbling in corner's or are people generally chipper and interested in what they're doing. Do people have "personality" items on their desk- IE pictures, nerf balls w/ the company logo on them, brain teaser puzzles (especially in a techie office) like rubik's cubes, etc, or do they appear to have a "I need to get back to work" look to them.
5.) Do they bring someone from the trenches in to speak to you alone and tell you how they like the company? This is usually a good sign. Do your coworkers and managers seem like good guys? I went from a company of very cool people, to a much better "job" where my coworkers are generally very lame and anti-social. I went from doing a close to weekly happy hour w/ my coworkers to close to zero social interaction both outside and inside the office. It sucks more than you may think, never really having more than general polite hows the kids conversations w/ your coworkers at lunch (or on the flip side, it can be a life changing experience to make good lifelong type friends w/ your coworkers).
A guy without a degree, in this or any not.com economy, is going to find it real tough to jump between companies and move his way *up* the ladder. Its a lot more difficult for a manager to say, "this guy's a support grunt, he wants to be a supervisor, and he has no degree or even certs". bzzzt. next!
If youre stuck in a $13/hr job, and been stuck there, maybe its time to start making some impressions. Start with the stupid stuff, IE dressing better, slacking off less. Make suggestions to make your workflows and processes better. Think like your manager- suggest new software or tools you could write to make things work smoother. Better yet, walk in one day and say "hey, I was tinkering around and came up w/ this cool new app we could use to streamline our support requests" If there is paper anywhere in your system, make it digital, make it a webapp or something (obviously, use your head here and dont get stuck in the hammer/nail syndrome). Essentially, act like your supervisor, or how your supervisor should be acting. Stand out from the crowd. Second of all, make friends. lots of them. Make all those people you help thrilled that you came by and not your coworker. shoot the shit w/ them as your reinstalling office or whatever. Talk to your bosses. Hes an arrogant prick? make off color jokes. If hes one of those stodgy old types then youll be better off by playing dress up and raising your professionalism level.
I dont know anyone that will make a coder out of a support grunt though unless they have a degree or have proven their ability. Your best bet is to go back to school. Coding grunts these days seem to be starting a bit above 40k. In 4 years when youre done, since youll have previous experience in IT, you will probably be able to start ~50k, but of course, your mileage may vary.
these sites are vastly overinflated, imho. They are still reporting salaries at least partly based in the.com days.
Re:Software architect?
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UML Fever
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I often hear building type analogies like this, and IMHO always focus on the wrong aspects of software and architecture.
The reason most software is late, over budget, and buggy is because the specs are not what the customer wants. Customers understand that when they are buildng a house, that the blueprints are of utmost importance, and that the blueprints are going to reflect the house that they are going to build, and go to great lengths to visualize the house depicted in the blueprints. They also have an understanding of building concepts, and know that they can not wait until the bathroom is finished, and then say "hey, I want the tub over on the other side of the room" without understanding that the bathroom will essentially have to be gutted. These same people will have no problem demanding significant overhauls of the layout of a gui or the basic fundamental requirements of the software. From my experience, customers will often blow right through a spec document, browsing it, and saying OK looks great! What is worse is, the more detailed (hence boring) the spec is, the less likely the customer is to really look at it. Begging, pleading, blackmailing, and torturing customers to read the specs is rarely effective, the best solution IMHO is the XP method of letting the customers see things as early as possible.
This leads to another problem- software growing in scope and function well beyond its original intentions. People inherently understand that you can not take a basic mudhut or woodframe house and just keep adding to it indefinitely and still have a coherent structure- there is only so much the foundation can support, and only so much you can do to a house before you have to major extensive rennovations. The same thing occurs with software. Customers often say, "we like this, but we would really like this feature," and management will almost always cave in and say sure! Next thing you know, the system has a large patchwork of add-ons that sometimes have to be hacked in and make the code difficult to maintain, and make it even more rigid. People dont take trailers or sheds and try to make them into colonial two story homes, but they will often try to take simple reporting tools and make them into comprehensive organization wide information dashboards, one report or feature at a time.
Design Patterns and frameworks try to attack the problem by telling us how to build even sheds with concrete and steel foundations, and modularized/interchangable parts so that further additions do not cause too many problems, which is a good thing. But until there is a universal general understanding of the software development process by the customers, these problems will persist in software, and the industry itself.
Just because most of the time I only use 200mhz, does not mean that that is all I need. There are times when im playing games, compiling, playing mp3's, watching movies, startup/shutdown, and various other times when I do want/need a real processor.
Is underclocking really the solution? Do you really feel that paying for extra capacity is a solution? Even if you did underclock, how low would you have to go before a heatsink would be sufficient?
A via c3 might be a suitable alternative, but it appears they top out around 1ghz, which would mean I would have to shell out for only a slight upgrade (its not expensive, but for the same $44 I can get a 2ghz athlon).
This is a little off topic, but I have recently become quite "fan fatigued" and would absolutely kill for a processor that could just rely on a heatsink. In addition to being quieter, it would be a hell of alot more reliable- I find that fans, even supposedly higher quality brand name ones, are the least reliable component in machines.
In addition, I am surprised at the lack of implementation of more speed-step like features. I leave my PC on all the time. even when im using it, im usually surfing the web, getting email, IMing, and using other types of low utilization type applications. I probably only need 200mhz or so of that 3Ghz.
The real movement is only starting now though. Us geeks have been grumbling for the past two years or so about fans and power consumption, but as computers are finding their way into bedrooms, den's, entertainment centers, kitchens, and whatnot, I think we will start to see a continued focus on lower power consumption machines. Not only because people dont want to have turn up the TV to drown out the fan noise in a PC, but as one computers spread like tv's and find their ways into each room in the house, its going to have a noticeable impact on the power bill.
Re:Ricky Skaggs through a subwoofer?
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Giant Sub-Woofer
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· Score: 1
yeah youre right, "cutoff" can go both ways, but in reference to subwoofers it always seems to reference the low end. Most decent main speakers can get low enough that you do not have to worry about the high end of the subwoofer's response.
Either way, a mandolin is definitely *not* going to show off his subwoofer.
You misinterpreted your professor(s). It is no longer considered practical to optimize, however, that does not mean that you should not be selecting the proper algorithms. That does not mean that you should not sit and ponder whether you should use a linear or binary search, but it does mean that you should not sit there and modify your binary search to instead of cutting the problem in half, cut it into a 1:3 ratio because it will run faster that way most of the time since users often only want whats in the first 1/3 of a collection.
Again, this also means not using "tricks" like bit shifting when multiplying by powers of 2, which while giving a small boost in performance, can seriously degrade readability of code, unless its well documented, and its usually not.
I have never ever seen a professor advocate just using a linear search because its cleaner, or anything of that sort. Im a recent grad, and they always drove home that you should focus on big O performance, and really only big O performance. Pick the right well documented algorithm, and implement it in a straightforward fashion.
After working in industry for a bit now, I agree with them. I worked on a java based web app that was "slow" at the time. So yeah we tweaked things around a bit and made a mess of the code. The lead programmer/architect came in, changed some of our algorithms and reindexed the tables, and achieved an order of magnitude improvement. After that, our tweaks became worthless. Now im working on a real time type system, and performance is alot more of an issue, and is essentially directly tied to costs, since our system must be able to handle ridiculous loads by the specs and thus needs lots of extra hardware. So you see lots of inlined assembly in our code, and "tricks" and the code is largely undocumented, although it also is well designed. For this reason no one even knows what most of the error messages in the consoles mean anymore, and changes can be very tricky. It is often considered easier to scrap a component than try to make significant changes to it. If it were not for the extremely low employee turnover rate they have, they would probably be in a lot of trouble.
Re:Ricky Skaggs through a subwoofer?
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Giant Sub-Woofer
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· Score: 1
Actually, the cutoff for subwoofers is generally much much lower than that. Even cheaper best buy type subwoofers get to around 30hz. A good subwoofer will cut off around 20. I made an enclosure for a 12" shiva mkII driver and it cuts off somewhere a bit below 20 hz.
I think you are thinking of regular woofers, that generally cut off around that frequency range, though even a decent woofer will get below 100hz. I have the amp on my sub to pick up around 120hz, though my main speakers are rather small.
Even if they are tracking you for targetted advertising... then so what? I am sure the information comes in handy- IE when my mom types in the keyword "apples" into google that she probably wants some candles or a painting or some massive doily to sheath our house in or whatever, but when I type it in I want to see some G5's or ipods. I am sure there are other uses than just clarifying ambiguous search terms. Amazon uses similar techniques, and their recommendations when I log in are usually pretty on the spot- IE stuff that if given unlimited time and money, I would buy.
Unless they start sending me unsolicited spam, either via email or to my house, I have no problem with this. I often appreciate the targeted ads on google. Especially since the spammers started creeping in, sometimes the ads are more what im looking for than the actual results. Anything not personally identifying is A-ok with me.
Google has been pretty legit so far, and has gone well out of its way to keep its users happy, so nailing them to the cross over something that might happen seems premature.
youre resorting to name calling and im the idiot? That's an interesting benchmark of intelligence you have there;).
But anyway, back on topic, is that you missed my implied point, which is that yes these figures are based on wealth, and not income, and apparently figures are not really kept on what their incomes are so that we can not say for sure whether they paid their fair share of taxes, but I think it is fairly reasonable to conclude that the wealthiest have a more proportionate income to the less wealthy, especially if you only include realized (aka not paper) income.
Regardless, who says that whoever holds the most wealth has to pay the most taxes? Why should this be a law? do they consume 90% of the resources? What you are suggesting is something close to a welfare state. It could be an equally valid statement in my opinion to say that those who consume the resources should be the ones paying for them, and presumably the rich do not really utilize SS or medicare, so they should get off the hook for tons of the taxes they pay. I am not advocating this type of system, but I do not see it as at all self evident that those who hold X% of the wealth should pay X% of the taxes.
In addition, as I stated before, the top 1% pays 27% of the taxes, and holds 35% of the wealth, so by your definition of an ideal tax situation, they are not too far off. Your issue is then with the next 9% that pay 22% of the taxes, but hold 63%/53% of the wealth (depending on whose figures you believe. These guys have a "tax deficit" of about 30/40%.
With an average wealth in the top half of 1.5million, and ~650k in the bottom half, I think especially in the bottom half, you are not really "getting" who you think you are- These guys are the doctors, lawyers, mid/upper level managers of the world, the guys that drive the 3 series BMW's, not the "rich" CEO's and business owners driving benz's and exotic sports cars that I think you are targetting. With the price of houses these days, its really not that hard especially in the typical dual income household to get your net wealth in the lower end of this range by the time you retire if you invest in a 401k.
You can afford health insurance (which by the way, if you really feel is too high... then umm... stop paying it- if youre young youre getting the shaft end of the deal anyway), a car, a nice apartment, heat, electricity, a dvd player, a decent size tv w/ cable, to go out to eat when you want, etc... and im sure you work in a comfortable air conditioned office where your biggest safety hazard is spilling some hot coffee in your lap. Well maybe YOU personally cant, but in general people can.
That to me is fat and happy. Would you rather work in a shoe factory for 70 hours a week and still hardly be able to afford food?
Oh but the common argument is that our parents were SOOO much better off. Bullshit. My grandparents which were THE stereotypical 1950's and 60's suburban Long Island family (my grandfather even worked for a defense firm), if you ask them will tell you about their struggle when they were young, and could hardly afford their payment on their single used beetle, how they were really hoping for a second girl since they had no idea what they would do if they had a boy and thus unable to share a bedroom w/ his sister. There was one TV, one phone- that didnt have long distance, no pool in the backyard, no internet, no computers, that's it. Health Insurance- not until they striked for it in the 60's. There wasn't anything to cut from the budget. And nowadays you would have never guessed it- they are now very typical middle class w/ the two cars, computer internet etc. They were middle class then, and middle class now. The good ol' days were never as good as they seemed.
You are fat and happy. Get rid of the net access, cell phone, and cable, trade in whatever car you have for a used civic, eat pasta and rice instead of hitting up wendy's and other restaurants, forgo the health insurance and other costly benefits. If you are still struggling then, I will agree, you are not fat and happy. But something tells me that you are.
Well I will agree with you that tax cuts almost always help the rich out more than the poor. However, it should be noted that the wealthiest 10% in this country pay 50% of the taxes. The top 1% alone in 2000 paid 27% of the taxes. Look at the tax bracket system, the poor pay almost nothing.
Now lets look at where this money goes. 33-41% (depending on who you believe), thats at least 1 out of every three of your tax dollars, goes to transfer payments- Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, etc. These clearly do not benefit the rich in any significant way. About another 40% goes to defense, another 8 to paying off interest on our debt, and only about and another 15 to general government functions. Clearly, on the spending side, the middle and lower classes win, though thats generally not an argument made against the gov't.
So yeah, we hear alot about people evading taxes this way and that, buy when you have a barrage of bullets coming at you, aren't you going to dodge them? The rich still shell out. A 1995 figure says that the top 1% held about 35% of the wealth. In that respect, the rich fall short by about 8% in their "share", which is not the outrageous figure most people make it out to be.
What is the solution? a flat tax? A flat tax would skin the poor alot more than the rich. Meeting halfway at a 27% tax (or whatever) for everyone would hurt the poor alot, and actually provide relief for the rich.
Just to let you know, I am purely middle class, and at the moment would even be considered lower middle class based on net worth and income (admittedly because I am young). However, I do think our tax system is fair enough, though I do NOT support the many tax breaks the republicans hand out to the rich, especially when they put them under the banner of helping the elderly. I do not feel that the top 2% is really screwing anyone over though.
I would disagree with you in one instance that used to be fairly common- You are not satisfied with your results. It used to be a very common thing that I would go to lycos (then claiming the largest index), yahoo (then had the best results), and then altavista, hotbot, google, or whatever else came to mind. Eventually google rose to the top as its searches always produced what I was looking for. Now, you're right, I dont go elsewhere because google gets me the info I want.
However, being at the top has its problems as the spammers are moving in. I recently did some searches for product names + review and all that came up were spam sites and people trying to sell me the product, and very few relevant reviews. Similarly, during my job search a few months ago I put "resume writing" and all the top hits were sites selling me RESUME WRITING KITS GUARANTEED TO WORK! only $50!. I just repeated the search and the situation is a little better (though not up to google standards), but the point being is that I don't think search engines have quite the inertia you think they do. If google stops producing, im not going down w/ the ship. Off to MSN or Yahoo I go.
You wont be on the producer side of the equation, but your net savings will be much MUCH higher by installing a geothermal system. They're cheaper to install, are pollutionless (well as compared to oil/gas burners), and provide central air and heat. Also... look at evaporative roof cooling systems if you have a flat roof. Are you well insulated? how about planting a tree or two on the south side of the house to provide some shade? Point being is that there are far more effective ways of lowering your energy bills than installing solar, though I do see the draw to producing your own power. Still, saving 1kw*hr of energy per day is better than producing 500w*hr each day.
One myth about solar in most systems- you will NOT be the only one on your block w/ lights during an outage. The power grid is a two way street, and your power will flow right back out to the grid in most setups. You will have to install special equipment to disconnect you from the grid in these cases.
There are programs out there where you can finance geothermal heat pumps so you dont feel the pain upon installation of the system. most of the time, youre cost savings in your energy bill is greater than the loan, so youll actually have more money in your pocket (and a brand new heat system- increased resale value).
for more info: http://www.nrel.gov/clean_energy/geoheatpum ps.html
Um, why do we have even have the Federal Reserve when the U.S. government is specifically charged with minting coin under Art I Sect 10 of the Constitution?
The money supply is primarily controlled through interest rates, which are controlled by the Fed (see http://www.quicken.com/cms/viewers/article/investm ents/5271). I can understand your position if you do not truly understand the economic system. Read up on economic theory, maybe you will see that it does not have to be all that bad. There have been some good articles on this in the Economist, but they unfortunately longer offered free on the web.
Because you either have wealth in stocks or simply don't care about the future of workers in the U.S.
I have a few thousand in a 401k. is that wealth? Im in the trenches in IT just like everyone else. Outsourcing could hurt. alot. Ive got my backup plan... do you?
These stances have very little to do with a politicians own inner beliefs. Outsourcing is beyond a hotbutton issue at this point. Saying that you support jobs moving overseas for the eventual benefit of the world and America over the long run is political suicide. Do you really expect Kerry to get up there and support outsourcing? Every Republican, scratch that... every newspaper in the country looking to sell a few copies would plaster "Kerry supports jobs moving overseas!" Outsourcing is the tossed grenade that no one wants to jump on. I dont see any republicans out there supporting outsourcing either. I dont see ANYONE in politics supporting it. The greatest decision anyone ever (even if accidentally) made was to make the Fed reserve a non-political entity.
Yes I actually support outsourcing. It is bitter medicine that is going to force painful changes in our economy and to people, and the scariest part is that where the jobs are going to be replaced and even if they are going to be replaced is uncertain. However, whats the alternative? Protectionism? How long is that going to really "save" us? Indians can do the same job cheaper than us. The laws of supply and demand will raise their salary and lower ours to an equilibrium point. Hopefully the Indians will move up alot farther so we dont have to move down so much. So you can hope on that, educate yourself to a point where you are too valuable to be outsourced, or try to find a non-outsourcable profession. I prefer these options to living like a steel worker and just watching my industry slowly die over a series of decades under "protectionist" policies.
Imagine the DaVinci Code, but just not as good.
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Digital Fortress
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· Score: 1
This book was to me very formulaic. It became apparent to me that Dan Brown, while he does produce some great stories, pretty much rehashes the same themes over and over. The extremely clever main character, the sinister secretive organization, the sexual undertones, conspiracy type theories, unexpected complex plot twists (the hes a good guy, oh no now hes a bad guy type, or is he? kind of thing). At times I almost feel he did a search and replace on the character's names and the "CIA" with all references to the church.
If you think of the DaVinci Code as a 4 cylinder car, think of Digital Fortress as the same car except two of the cylinders are not hitting. Its the same experience, just not as good. Cryptography replaced art history and religous symbols, and it just did not work as well. After reading the DaVinci Code, I thought Dan Brown was brilliant. After reading Digital Fortress, I thought he was just an average guy with a knack for research and bringing out the conspiracy theorist in all of us.
I can not agree more. I was on a large project for a software consulting firm that was supposed to end this march, and when we asked what other work we had lined up, all we got was vague answers (AKA BS) and things felt just kind of uncomfortable. If you see this pattern, get the resume polished up, and START LOOKING. I found a new job relatively quickly, for actually alot more money at a much better firm, that doesnt do work on a project basis. Grill people in your interview about their business model and how they make money, and where they plan to be in a few years. While no one has been laid off at my previous firm yet, they are reducing their officespace by almost half in the next few months future, leaving literally no extra room for any new employees, and requiring additional density to accomodate current ones. Talk about a morale killer.
I would agree with the above post to some extent, but have talked to a few people in the industry, some making "real" premiere games, and others stuck in smaller just getting by type companies, trying to get a big breakthrough game. 2 were prodigy types, the ones that started programming at a very young age and cranked out assembly to speed up their programs by age 10 types... But the other 2 guys I talked to, were indeed brilliant, but had a pretty normal background. Didnt program much or at all until their teens. One didnt even get into games until he was 30. However, they all had one thing in common- they were friggen brilliant. You will have to give it your all. And there is no harm in trying, since in your journey to become a guru-like like programmer, you will pick up skills you can use outside the game industry if you dont ever break into it.
But, a bit more on topic: They all got into games by making games. For fun. because they wanted to, and loved to. So, to extrapolate to your situation... start making maps. download all the level editors you can find. Start building. If you can make the next dust map on CounterStrike, or Fish Hook on SocomII, (and if you dont know what im talking about, get cracking or maybe this isnt for you) I think you will get recognized pretty quickly as a "premiere guy" and get hired.
im pretty damn sure these are billing rates. My company did some outsourcing and I happened to see their rates, and they were about $15/hr. I as an intern, at this same company was billed out for about $50/hr (note: at.com boom height). When I later joined on as a full timer, my position was billed around $75/hr (I personally was on a contract project so hours didnt really apply). I read somewhere this week that the average programmer in india makes about $8/hr. The company I am at now, which pays close to top dollar for talent, in the most expensive place to live on the east coast, has an average salary of ~100k . So no, this is not unreasonable. And yeah, my "multiples" were quite high. $12/hr (no benefits as an intern and ~40 as a full timer.
Of course, the real comparison should be "in-house" vs. offshoring, which is the most common model. Offshore companies are not really competing directly w/ big american firms, and are right now content w/ being hired by other big firms.
But also, you have to realize that your company pays all kinds of taxes on you also. Your "costs" dont end with your salary. And not with your benefits either. People pay you (payroll department), those people cost money. You most likely have some type of secretarial access, direct or not, and they cost money too. Computers, email accounts, vpn access, cubicles, these are all costs associated with you. They add up. Outsourced and offshored people are a much more nicely packaged cost. But adding up these costs could very easily bring these figures to the 120k/year cost.
You have not played Socom, and your statement makes me doubt that you have seen these cheaters in other games. Most of the cheats in socom make you absolutely invincible. The "wall hacking" cheats might "just" give you an edge, since you can see where other players are, but most cheats in online games are much more severe. Socom, for example, you have the outright invincibility cheat, the infinite rate of fire cheat, that make you for all intents and purposes omnipotent, and the game absolutely unplayable to others in the server. These dont make you compete better, they make you friggen invincible. What they get out of ruining a server, I dont know. If roger clemens dragged a cannon onto the mound that fired nerf balls at 300 mph, you would bet there would be an uproar.
And the real problem is that on console games, you cant just patch the problem. Its there for good. Some games have limited patching capabilities server side, like Tribes Aerial Assault on PS2 (which actually was able to make some great changes to the gameplay by just modifying server code), but most have none, or at least no interest from the developers to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
I am going to assume that youre not a money whore and that's not criteria #1, and that youre a techie type, not looking to become a CEO .
Some of the more subtle things, imho:
1.) Benefits/cost of benefits: Companies that offer "benefits" but have you shoulder the cost of 80% of them often reeks of a company that is just putting up appearances in all areas, and is generally cheap, or struggling.
2.) The kitchen, or perhaps lack thereof. Are there lots of pay vending machines, even for coffee, or worse, water? This again reeks of a company that doesnt really care a whole lot about their worker's happiness or isnt doing well enough to go to price club and buy a vat of coffee or chips.
3.) The office. Cube farms w/ managers in corner offices w/ the doors closed? Do the cubicles/whatever appear to be layed out in a way to encourage the flow of ideas, or just for managers to keep tabs on employees. Is it painted in flat white cost-cutting paint that has needed a fresh coat for the past 5 years? Im not saying look for wood paneled walls, but it should be easy to spot whether or not the office was designed to be a nice place where you would want to spend your time, or a factory line meant to spit out code. Check out the machines- do they have old 17 inch monitors on the fritz, or do most developers have nice 22" monitors w/ newish machines.
Are there signs posted about "procedures" and "reminders" to put waste paper in the proper receptacles and that office supplies are meant for in office use only, and that employees are not to take more than 10 minute coffee breaks, and to please be considerate and make sure your coffee mugs are cleaned and out of the sink before you leave at the end of the day... etc? Ive seen this... it reeks of low level managers and admins struggling to flex any muscle they have- any requests for favors or exceptions to policies will most likely get stonewalled by some bitter under appreciated admin. Excessive procedure reminders reeks of micro-managing types that will never let you make a decision.
4.) The general 'aura' of the office. Are there people grumbling in corner's or are people generally chipper and interested in what they're doing. Do people have "personality" items on their desk- IE pictures, nerf balls w/ the company logo on them, brain teaser puzzles (especially in a techie office) like rubik's cubes, etc, or do they appear to have a "I need to get back to work" look to them.
5.) Do they bring someone from the trenches in to speak to you alone and tell you how they like the company? This is usually a good sign. Do your coworkers and managers seem like good guys? I went from a company of very cool people, to a much better "job" where my coworkers are generally very lame and anti-social. I went from doing a close to weekly happy hour w/ my coworkers to close to zero social interaction both outside and inside the office. It sucks more than you may think, never really having more than general polite hows the kids conversations w/ your coworkers at lunch (or on the flip side, it can be a life changing experience to make good lifelong type friends w/ your coworkers).
A guy without a degree, in this or any not .com economy, is going to find it real tough to jump between companies and move his way *up* the ladder. Its a lot more difficult for a manager to say, "this guy's a support grunt, he wants to be a supervisor, and he has no degree or even certs". bzzzt. next!
If youre stuck in a $13/hr job, and been stuck there, maybe its time to start making some impressions. Start with the stupid stuff, IE dressing better, slacking off less. Make suggestions to make your workflows and processes better. Think like your manager- suggest new software or tools you could write to make things work smoother. Better yet, walk in one day and say "hey, I was tinkering around and came up w/ this cool new app we could use to streamline our support requests" If there is paper anywhere in your system, make it digital, make it a webapp or something (obviously, use your head here and dont get stuck in the hammer/nail syndrome). Essentially, act like your supervisor, or how your supervisor should be acting. Stand out from the crowd. Second of all, make friends. lots of them. Make all those people you help thrilled that you came by and not your coworker. shoot the shit w/ them as your reinstalling office or whatever. Talk to your bosses. Hes an arrogant prick? make off color jokes. If hes one of those stodgy old types then youll be better off by playing dress up and raising your professionalism level.
I dont know anyone that will make a coder out of a support grunt though unless they have a degree or have proven their ability. Your best bet is to go back to school. Coding grunts these days seem to be starting a bit above 40k. In 4 years when youre done, since youll have previous experience in IT, you will probably be able to start ~50k, but of course, your mileage may vary.
these sites are vastly overinflated, imho. They are still reporting salaries at least partly based in the .com days.
I often hear building type analogies like this, and IMHO always focus on the wrong aspects of software and architecture.
The reason most software is late, over budget, and buggy is because the specs are not what the customer wants. Customers understand that when they are buildng a house, that the blueprints are of utmost importance, and that the blueprints are going to reflect the house that they are going to build, and go to great lengths to visualize the house depicted in the blueprints. They also have an understanding of building concepts, and know that they can not wait until the bathroom is finished, and then say "hey, I want the tub over on the other side of the room" without understanding that the bathroom will essentially have to be gutted. These same people will have no problem demanding significant overhauls of the layout of a gui or the basic fundamental requirements of the software. From my experience, customers will often blow right through a spec document, browsing it, and saying OK looks great! What is worse is, the more detailed (hence boring) the spec is, the less likely the customer is to really look at it. Begging, pleading, blackmailing, and torturing customers to read the specs is rarely effective, the best solution IMHO is the XP method of letting the customers see things as early as possible.
This leads to another problem- software growing in scope and function well beyond its original intentions. People inherently understand that you can not take a basic mudhut or woodframe house and just keep adding to it indefinitely and still have a coherent structure- there is only so much the foundation can support, and only so much you can do to a house before you have to major extensive rennovations. The same thing occurs with software. Customers often say, "we like this, but we would really like this feature," and management will almost always cave in and say sure! Next thing you know, the system has a large patchwork of add-ons that sometimes have to be hacked in and make the code difficult to maintain, and make it even more rigid. People dont take trailers or sheds and try to make them into colonial two story homes, but they will often try to take simple reporting tools and make them into comprehensive organization wide information dashboards, one report or feature at a time.
Design Patterns and frameworks try to attack the problem by telling us how to build even sheds with concrete and steel foundations, and modularized/interchangable parts so that further additions do not cause too many problems, which is a good thing. But until there is a universal general understanding of the software development process by the customers, these problems will persist in software, and the industry itself.
Just because most of the time I only use 200mhz, does not mean that that is all I need. There are times when im playing games, compiling, playing mp3's, watching movies, startup/shutdown, and various other times when I do want/need a real processor.
Is underclocking really the solution? Do you really feel that paying for extra capacity is a solution? Even if you did underclock, how low would you have to go before a heatsink would be sufficient?
A via c3 might be a suitable alternative, but it appears they top out around 1ghz, which would mean I would have to shell out for only a slight upgrade (its not expensive, but for the same $44 I can get a 2ghz athlon).
This is a little off topic, but I have recently become quite "fan fatigued" and would absolutely kill for a processor that could just rely on a heatsink. In addition to being quieter, it would be a hell of alot more reliable- I find that fans, even supposedly higher quality brand name ones, are the least reliable component in machines.
In addition, I am surprised at the lack of implementation of more speed-step like features. I leave my PC on all the time. even when im using it, im usually surfing the web, getting email, IMing, and using other types of low utilization type applications. I probably only need 200mhz or so of that 3Ghz.
The real movement is only starting now though. Us geeks have been grumbling for the past two years or so about fans and power consumption, but as computers are finding their way into bedrooms, den's, entertainment centers, kitchens, and whatnot, I think we will start to see a continued focus on lower power consumption machines. Not only because people dont want to have turn up the TV to drown out the fan noise in a PC, but as one computers spread like tv's and find their ways into each room in the house, its going to have a noticeable impact on the power bill.
yeah youre right, "cutoff" can go both ways, but in reference to subwoofers it always seems to reference the low end. Most decent main speakers can get low enough that you do not have to worry about the high end of the subwoofer's response.
Either way, a mandolin is definitely *not* going to show off his subwoofer.
You misinterpreted your professor(s). It is no longer considered practical to optimize, however, that does not mean that you should not be selecting the proper algorithms. That does not mean that you should not sit and ponder whether you should use a linear or binary search, but it does mean that you should not sit there and modify your binary search to instead of cutting the problem in half, cut it into a 1:3 ratio because it will run faster that way most of the time since users often only want whats in the first 1/3 of a collection.
Again, this also means not using "tricks" like bit shifting when multiplying by powers of 2, which while giving a small boost in performance, can seriously degrade readability of code, unless its well documented, and its usually not.
I have never ever seen a professor advocate just using a linear search because its cleaner, or anything of that sort. Im a recent grad, and they always drove home that you should focus on big O performance, and really only big O performance. Pick the right well documented algorithm, and implement it in a straightforward fashion.
After working in industry for a bit now, I agree with them. I worked on a java based web app that was "slow" at the time. So yeah we tweaked things around a bit and made a mess of the code. The lead programmer/architect came in, changed some of our algorithms and reindexed the tables, and achieved an order of magnitude improvement. After that, our tweaks became worthless. Now im working on a real time type system, and performance is alot more of an issue, and is essentially directly tied to costs, since our system must be able to handle ridiculous loads by the specs and thus needs lots of extra hardware. So you see lots of inlined assembly in our code, and "tricks" and the code is largely undocumented, although it also is well designed. For this reason no one even knows what most of the error messages in the consoles mean anymore, and changes can be very tricky. It is often considered easier to scrap a component than try to make significant changes to it. If it were not for the extremely low employee turnover rate they have, they would probably be in a lot of trouble.
Actually, the cutoff for subwoofers is generally much much lower than that. Even cheaper best buy type subwoofers get to around 30hz. A good subwoofer will cut off around 20. I made an enclosure for a 12" shiva mkII driver and it cuts off somewhere a bit below 20 hz.
I think you are thinking of regular woofers, that generally cut off around that frequency range, though even a decent woofer will get below 100hz. I have the amp on my sub to pick up around 120hz, though my main speakers are rather small.
Even if they are tracking you for targetted advertising... then so what? I am sure the information comes in handy- IE when my mom types in the keyword "apples" into google that she probably wants some candles or a painting or some massive doily to sheath our house in or whatever, but when I type it in I want to see some G5's or ipods. I am sure there are other uses than just clarifying ambiguous search terms. Amazon uses similar techniques, and their recommendations when I log in are usually pretty on the spot- IE stuff that if given unlimited time and money, I would buy.
Unless they start sending me unsolicited spam, either via email or to my house, I have no problem with this. I often appreciate the targeted ads on google. Especially since the spammers started creeping in, sometimes the ads are more what im looking for than the actual results. Anything not personally identifying is A-ok with me.
Google has been pretty legit so far, and has gone well out of its way to keep its users happy, so nailing them to the cross over something that might happen seems premature.
youre resorting to name calling and im the idiot? ;).
That's an interesting benchmark of intelligence you have there
But anyway, back on topic, is that you missed my implied point, which is that yes these figures are based on wealth, and not income, and apparently figures are not really kept on what their incomes are so that we can not say for sure whether they paid their fair share of taxes, but I think it is fairly reasonable to conclude that the wealthiest have a more proportionate income to the less wealthy, especially if you only include realized (aka not paper) income.
I will go to the clue store, but I shall be picking one up for you- you see, Wealth != Income. Two very seperate things.
Do some homework before flaming please.
well, I see figures that dispute yours...
n /C ourses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgso
which says the top 10% hold more like 80%...
Regardless, who says that whoever holds the most wealth has to pay the most taxes? Why should this be a law? do they consume 90% of the resources? What you are suggesting is something close to a welfare state. It could be an equally valid statement in my opinion to say that those who consume the resources should be the ones paying for them, and presumably the rich do not really utilize SS or medicare, so they should get off the hook for tons of the taxes they pay. I am not advocating this type of system, but I do not see it as at all self evident that those who hold X% of the wealth should pay X% of the taxes.
In addition, as I stated before, the top 1% pays 27% of the taxes, and holds 35% of the wealth, so by your definition of an ideal tax situation, they are not too far off. Your issue is then with
the next 9% that pay 22% of the taxes, but hold 63%/53% of the wealth (depending on whose figures you believe. These guys have a "tax deficit" of about 30/40%.
With an average wealth in the top half of 1.5million, and ~650k in the bottom half, I think especially in the bottom half, you are not really "getting" who you think you are- These guys are the doctors, lawyers, mid/upper level managers of the world, the guys that drive the 3 series BMW's, not the "rich" CEO's and business owners driving benz's and exotic sports cars that I think you are targetting. With the price of houses these days, its really not that hard especially in the typical dual income household to get your net wealth in the lower end of this range by the time you retire if you invest in a 401k.
You can afford health insurance (which by the way, if you really feel is too high... then umm... stop paying it- if youre young youre getting the shaft end of the deal anyway), a car, a nice apartment, heat, electricity, a dvd player, a decent size tv w/ cable, to go out to eat when you want, etc... and im sure you work in a comfortable air conditioned office where your biggest safety hazard is spilling some hot coffee in your lap. Well maybe YOU personally cant, but in general people can.
That to me is fat and happy. Would you rather work in a shoe factory for 70 hours a week and still hardly be able to afford food?
Oh but the common argument is that our parents were SOOO much better off. Bullshit. My grandparents which were THE stereotypical 1950's and 60's suburban Long Island family (my grandfather even worked for a defense firm), if you ask them will tell you about their struggle when they were young, and could hardly afford their payment on their single used beetle, how they were really hoping for a second girl since they had no idea what they would do if they had a boy and thus unable to share a bedroom w/ his sister. There was one TV, one phone- that didnt have long distance, no pool in the backyard, no internet, no computers, that's it. Health Insurance- not until they striked for it in the 60's. There wasn't anything to cut from the budget. And nowadays you would have never guessed it- they are now very typical middle class w/ the two cars, computer internet etc. They were middle class then, and middle class now. The good ol' days were never as good as they seemed.
You are fat and happy. Get rid of the net access, cell phone, and cable, trade in whatever car you have for a used civic, eat pasta and rice instead of hitting up wendy's and other restaurants, forgo the health insurance and other costly benefits. If you are still struggling then, I will agree, you are not fat and happy. But something tells me that you are.
Well I will agree with you that tax cuts almost always help the rich out more than the poor. However, it should be noted that the wealthiest 10% in this country pay 50% of the taxes. The top 1% alone in 2000 paid 27% of the taxes. Look at the tax bracket system, the poor pay almost nothing.
Now lets look at where this money goes. 33-41% (depending on who you believe), thats at least 1 out of every three of your tax dollars, goes to transfer payments- Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, etc. These clearly do not benefit the rich in any significant way. About another 40% goes to defense, another 8 to paying off interest on our debt, and only about and another 15 to general government functions. Clearly, on the spending side, the middle and lower classes win, though thats generally not an argument made against the gov't.
So yeah, we hear alot about people evading taxes this way and that, buy when you have a barrage of bullets coming at you, aren't you going to dodge them? The rich still shell out. A 1995 figure says that the top 1% held about 35% of the wealth. In that respect, the rich fall short by about 8% in their "share", which is not the outrageous figure most people make it out to be.
What is the solution? a flat tax? A flat tax would skin the poor alot more than the rich. Meeting halfway at a 27% tax (or whatever) for everyone would hurt the poor alot, and actually provide relief for the rich.
Just to let you know, I am purely middle class, and at the moment would even be considered lower middle class based on net worth and income (admittedly because I am young). However, I do think our tax system is fair enough, though I do NOT support the many tax breaks the republicans hand out to the rich, especially when they put them under the banner of helping the elderly. I do not feel that the top 2% is really screwing anyone over though.
I would disagree with you in one instance that used to be fairly common- You are not satisfied with your results. It used to be a very common thing that I would go to lycos (then claiming the largest index), yahoo (then had the best results), and then altavista, hotbot, google, or whatever else came to mind. Eventually google rose to the top as its searches always produced what I was looking for. Now, you're right, I dont go elsewhere because google gets me the info I want.
However, being at the top has its problems as the spammers are moving in. I recently did some searches for product names + review and all that came up were spam sites and people trying to sell me the product, and very few relevant reviews. Similarly, during my job search a few months ago I put "resume writing" and all the top hits were sites selling me RESUME WRITING KITS GUARANTEED TO WORK! only $50!. I just repeated the search and the situation is a little better (though not up to google standards), but the point being is that I don't think search engines have quite the inertia you think they do. If google stops producing, im not going down w/ the ship. Off to MSN or Yahoo I go.
You wont be on the producer side of the equation, but your net savings will be much MUCH higher by installing a geothermal system. They're cheaper to install, are pollutionless (well as compared to oil/gas burners), and provide central air and heat. Also... look at evaporative roof cooling systems if you have a flat roof. Are you well insulated? how about planting a tree or two on the south side of the house to provide some shade? Point being is that there are far more effective ways of lowering your energy bills than installing solar, though I do see the draw to producing your own power. Still, saving 1kw*hr of energy per day is better than producing 500w*hr each day.
m ps.html
One myth about solar in most systems- you will NOT be the only one on your block w/ lights during an outage. The power grid is a two way street, and your power will flow right back out to the grid in most setups. You will have to install special equipment to disconnect you from the grid in these cases.
There are programs out there where you can finance geothermal heat pumps so you dont feel the pain upon installation of the system. most of the time, youre cost savings in your energy bill is greater than the loan, so youll actually have more money in your pocket (and a brand new heat system- increased resale value).
for more info:
http://www.nrel.gov/clean_energy/geoheatpu
But... Have you considered GROWING grass?
The money supply is primarily controlled through interest rates, which are controlled by the Fed (see http://www.quicken.com/cms/viewers/article/investm ents/5271). I can understand your position if you do not truly understand the economic system. Read up on economic theory, maybe you will see that it does not have to be all that bad. There have been some good articles on this in the Economist, but they unfortunately longer offered free on the web.
Because you either have wealth in stocks or simply don't care about the future of workers in the U.S.
I have a few thousand in a 401k. is that wealth? Im in the trenches in IT just like everyone else. Outsourcing could hurt. alot. Ive got my backup plan... do you?
These stances have very little to do with a politicians own inner beliefs. Outsourcing is beyond a hotbutton issue at this point. Saying that you support jobs moving overseas for the eventual benefit of the world and America over the long run is political suicide. Do you really expect Kerry to get up there and support outsourcing? Every Republican, scratch that... every newspaper in the country looking to sell a few copies would plaster "Kerry supports jobs moving overseas!" Outsourcing is the tossed grenade that no one wants to jump on. I dont see any republicans out there supporting outsourcing either. I dont see ANYONE in politics supporting it. The greatest decision anyone ever (even if accidentally) made was to make the Fed reserve a non-political entity.
Yes I actually support outsourcing. It is bitter medicine that is going to force painful changes in our economy and to people, and the scariest part is that where the jobs are going to be replaced and even if they are going to be replaced is uncertain. However, whats the alternative? Protectionism? How long is that going to really "save" us? Indians can do the same job cheaper than us. The laws of supply and demand will raise their salary and lower ours to an equilibrium point. Hopefully the Indians will move up alot farther so we dont have to move down so much. So you can hope on that, educate yourself to a point where you are too valuable to be outsourced, or try to find a non-outsourcable profession. I prefer these options to living like a steel worker and just watching my industry slowly die over a series of decades under "protectionist" policies.
This book was to me very formulaic. It became apparent to me that Dan Brown, while he does produce some great stories, pretty much rehashes the same themes over and over. The extremely clever main character, the sinister secretive organization, the sexual undertones, conspiracy type theories, unexpected complex plot twists (the hes a good guy, oh no now hes a bad guy type, or is he? kind of thing). At times I almost feel he did a search and replace on the character's names and the "CIA" with all references to the church.
If you think of the DaVinci Code as a 4 cylinder car, think of Digital Fortress as the same car except two of the cylinders are not hitting. Its the same experience, just not as good. Cryptography replaced art history and religous symbols, and it just did not work as well. After reading the DaVinci Code, I thought Dan Brown was brilliant. After reading Digital Fortress, I thought he was just an average guy with a knack for research and bringing out the conspiracy theorist in all of us.
I can not agree more. I was on a large project for a software consulting firm that was supposed to end this march, and when we asked what other work we had lined up, all we got was vague answers (AKA BS) and things felt just kind of uncomfortable. If you see this pattern, get the resume polished up, and START LOOKING. I found a new job relatively quickly, for actually alot more money at a much better firm, that doesnt do work on a project basis. Grill people in your interview about their business model and how they make money, and where they plan to be in a few years.
While no one has been laid off at my previous firm yet, they are reducing their officespace by almost half in the next few months future, leaving literally no extra room for any new employees, and requiring additional density to accomodate current ones. Talk about a morale killer.
I would agree with the above post to some extent, but have talked to a few people in the industry, some making "real" premiere games, and others stuck in smaller just getting by type companies, trying to get a big breakthrough game. 2 were prodigy types, the ones that started programming at a very young age and cranked out assembly to speed up their programs by age 10 types... But the other 2 guys I talked to, were indeed brilliant, but had a pretty normal background. Didnt program much or at all until their teens. One didnt even get into games until he was 30. However, they all had one thing in common- they were friggen brilliant. You will have to give it your all. And there is no harm in trying, since in your journey to become a guru-like like programmer, you will pick up skills you can use outside the game industry if you dont ever break into it.
But, a bit more on topic: They all got into games by making games. For fun. because they wanted to, and loved to. So, to extrapolate to your situation... start making maps. download all the level editors you can find. Start building. If you can make the next dust map on CounterStrike, or Fish Hook on SocomII, (and if you dont know what im talking about, get cracking or maybe this isnt for you) I think you will get recognized pretty quickly as a "premiere guy" and get hired.
im pretty damn sure these are billing rates. My company did some outsourcing and I happened to see their rates, and they were about $15/hr. I as an intern, at this same company was billed out for about $50/hr (note: at .com boom height). When I later joined on as a full timer, my position was billed around $75/hr (I personally was on a contract project so hours didnt really apply). I read somewhere this week that the average programmer in india makes about $8/hr. The company I am at now, which pays close to top dollar for talent, in the most expensive place to live on the east coast, has an average salary of ~100k . So no, this is not unreasonable. And yeah, my "multiples" were quite high. $12/hr (no benefits as an intern and ~40 as a full timer.
Of course, the real comparison should be "in-house" vs. offshoring, which is the most common model. Offshore companies are not really competing directly w/ big american firms, and are right now content w/ being hired by other big firms.
But also, you have to realize that your company pays all kinds of taxes on you also. Your "costs" dont end with your salary. And not with your benefits either. People pay you (payroll department), those people cost money. You most likely have some type of secretarial access, direct or not, and they cost money too. Computers, email accounts, vpn access, cubicles, these are all costs associated with you. They add up. Outsourced and offshored people are a much more nicely packaged cost. But adding up these costs could very easily bring these figures to the 120k/year cost.
You have not played Socom, and your statement makes me doubt that you have seen these cheaters in other games. Most of the cheats in socom make you absolutely invincible. The "wall hacking" cheats might "just" give you an edge, since you can see where other players are, but most cheats in online games are much more severe. Socom, for example, you have the outright invincibility cheat, the infinite rate of fire cheat, that make you for all intents and purposes omnipotent, and the game absolutely unplayable to others in the server. These dont make you compete better, they make you friggen invincible. What they get out of ruining a server, I dont know. If roger clemens dragged a cannon onto the mound that fired nerf balls at 300 mph, you would bet there would be an uproar.
And the real problem is that on console games, you cant just patch the problem. Its there for good. Some games have limited patching capabilities server side, like Tribes Aerial Assault on PS2 (which actually was able to make some great changes to the gameplay by just modifying server code), but most have none, or at least no interest from the developers to do so.