Partially, yes. But I'm also partially serious. We're talking about a law that requires companies to pay over time to employees when neither the employee or the company want that.
I'm not sure how the employee could possibly not want to get paid.
These laws are typically in place where there is a power imbalance between employer and employee. Normally, this gets fixed by having unions, which give employees power when negotiating with employers, but unions have their own issues.
Laws setting up minimum requirements can fix some of this by giving employees some basic rights without forcing them to fight their employers.
Laws can always go too far, and I personally think that running a corporation is far too complicated and expensive (e.g. sox compliance). However, protecting employees is one area where the result typically ends up being positive for everyone involved, even the employers, who get a more motivated workforce.
I'm not so sure I agree with where your going with your argument. Sure, if your a programmer, you may not be able to program for more than 4-6 hours, but that doesnt mean you've "stopped working". Doing all that administrative bullshit IS WORKING
Yes, I didn't mean to say it wasn't, should have explained that better. It's important to answer mail and document your stuff. But there's only so much of that type of "non-demanding programmer work;" I'd say at most an hour a day.
There's simply no way I can fill 8.5 hours a day with useful work; I'm actually more productive if I work 7 hours a day than 8.5 hours a day.
I agree with your assessment; you should get paid for every hour you spend at work. That would probably teach your employer not to force you to work useless overtime:-)
I really don't get overtime for programmers. Well, perhaps if you need to ship in a few days and aren't quite finished yet, so you work overtime for a few days. That could work.
But constant overtime? It just doesn't work.
If you're building a wall and putting one brick on another, you're probably going to do about twice as much work in twice the time. This does not apply to programming. I've noticed that I have about 4 to 6 hours of programming in me each day. Some days it's more; perhaps up to 10 hours. But most days, it's around 4 to 6 hours.
After I've run out of "programmming" time, I have to stop programming, because if I continue to write code, I'll have to spend time rewriting it the next day. I simply start writing crap code after about 4 to 6 hours of writing code. I can't properly concentrate on writing code anymore, I guess. Once I reach this point, I typically start doing administrativa, replying to mails, answering support calls, writing documentation and such. Or I just go home (happily, I can do that at my current work place; as long as my output is good, I don't need to put in the time).
In my experience, most programmers work the same way. Nobody codes well for 10 hours a day, each day.
This gets us to overtime. If you force people to continue writing code after their natural code writing limit is exhausted, they will write crap. And they will have to refactor that crap. So in effect, forcing programmers to work overtime will slow down your project, because they'll start spending more and more time fixing broken code instead of writing good fresh code.
Do these "analysts" actually turn on their brains before making predictions? Do they get paid for this crap? Have they ever actually used a touch screen or an eye tracker for serious work, or are they just living in imagination land?
The mouse may eventually be replaced by such devices, but it won't be during the next 5 years. Touch screens are useless for today's computer setup since they require you to hold your hand in an unnatural position, which is tiring and obscures your screen. Facial recognition doesn't work well enough yet, and requires major relearning. And the Wii Remote is basically a floating mouse, anyways.
That is amusing. Somebody is modding all of my comments outside of this/. article as "Troll". Reading your latest comment and your Journal, you don't seem to be that kind of guy, but to the person who is doing it: If you are reading this, classy move, man! I laughed so hard when I saw this that I nearly fell out my chair. Well done!
NBC did not renew their content agreement with Apple back in August 07. NBC moved to Hulu and other methods of distribution. Even Colbert/John Stewart, (big vid sellers for apple) while still selling on iTunes, also offer free version of their show on comedy centrals website.
Yes, but that is missing the point of iTunes: Apple isn't making a whole lot of money (if any) selling TV series on iTunes. They're making money selling hardware with high margins, and they're using iTunes to sell said hardware, namely iPods and iPhones.
Not having NBC on iTunes hurts Apple as far as it removes one incentive of owning an iPod - watching NBC shows on it - but in the grand scale of things, it can't have cost them too many iPod sales, especially since no other MP3 player can play these shows.
In this poor economy, Apples focus on the consumer space will seriously hurting it in the upcoming months
But what would be the alternative for Apple? They can't hold their own in the enterprise market because the enterprise market requires low-margin boxes and an expensive support structure; Apple has neither.
Historically, the consumer space is the only space Apple was successfull.
As for the poor economy, how this affects Apple remains to be seen. They produce reasonably cheap luxury goods; a poor economy could possibly even help them as people try to assert their wealth via things they can still afford.
regardless of the iPod market share - iPod sales are expected to peak or decline (most likely why iPod sales figures for q208 are not reported yet)
iPod sales have been expected to decline for some years now; it hasn't yet happened. It will happen eventually, but I think Apple anticipated this, hence the iPhone.
In come the iPhone - it's critical for Apples continued growth. It's so close to competing with the blackberry, that I think a more business-friendly leader would be better suited to guide Apple for a time.
I don't think Apple has a business market outside of niche markets (such as video production or the print industry) and the CEO's cell phone.
Apple is doing great things - Jobs has done good resuscitating Apple these past many years. I think more business savvy leadership is necessary to sustain the growth. Consumer spending is going to be a problem for the next couple of years.
Not having any insight into Apple's inner workings, I would guess Jobs' influence is mainly in product development. People like Oppenheimer, Schiller, Johnson and Cook are leading the business side, and I think they're quite business savvy.
Perhaps they should have more influence in product design; but perhaps the business market is simply not a market in which Apple can sustain itself.
I find it amusing that you keep on telling me that I'm a "fanboi" while ranting on and on about how evil Jobs is. I think I'm not the fanboy here.
I really don't know if Jobs is evil, and even if he was, you continue to fail to explain why you think he's a bad man, or how his being evil hurt Apple. Isn't NBC back on iTunes? Even if they aren't, I fail to see how this hurts Apple, the iPod isn't losing any market share; it's just NBC which makes less money. And Apple seems to be doing just fine with AT&T.
PPS: Fuck you.
I see. Now that calling me a fanboy did not help you win the argument, you must resort to more heavy-handed attempts. I'm not sure why you think this helps your point; it just makes you look like the mindless fanboy.
Even if we assume that you are right about the premise that Jobs is a "scumbag" (and we'll just have to take your word for it - most of us don't know him as well as you seem to), your logic is flawed. Why would Apple be better off without him? Just because he's a "horrible person"? That makes no sense.
I guess there's nothing wrong with focussing on programming, but that doesn't mean that you can ignore the remaining topics, like theoretical informatics, chip design, security and perhaps even things like project management.
A list of top 100 programmers? Where can I see that? I wonder where I'm at, I'm guessing in the high 20s.
Oh, you're not talking about the top 100 programmers after all. You're talking about "influential comp sci people." You do realize that comp sci is a young field, don't you? Most of the profs I had did not study comp sci because it did not exist back when they were studying. So what did they study? Maths, mostly. And then they spent the rest of their lives with comp sci.
So yeah, you don't need to study comp sci. You can also study maths and then spend the rest of your life with comp sci. Eventually, you'll get to the same level of expertise which comp sci students were at after four years of university.
Yeah. Making the user or inhabitant happy is absolutely a function of an application or a building! If a building kills the soul of its inhabitants, it's not functional.
I think the example I brought up is pretty simple; I switched from a hierarchical, folder-based mail client to using gmail exclusively precisely because this is a case which occurs so often (and also because search works so well in gmail - I actually tend to ignore structure and go straight for search most of the time - it's easy to combine tags and search, too, like a shell for mail organization).
You're right, it's usually possible to fit mails into folder structures in a way that has each mail in one or at most two places. It's just that tagging is an even more natural way of doing this, instead of pretending that mails are structured in a folder hierarchy only to then put them into more than one place because there often is not one specific place in a hierarchy where they belong.
To each his own, I guess, but claiming that tags are inferior to folder hierarchies is at best a matter of taste.
Right, which is why you start with a folder hierarchies and map to tags.;)
But wasn't the original question which was a superset of the other?:-)
But this is exactly where you are when you don't use folders, and only use tags: you can't map tags into sensible folder hierarchies. (sorry for the double reply, too, only saw that it was the same answer after already replying to the other one:-)
I studied at ETH Zuerich, and we sure as hell didn't learn anything about faith-based systems like Agile or Extreme Programming. ETH is an engineering university; no arts or humanities are taught. If you study software engineering at ETH Zuerich, you absolutely learn about software design, about project management, and about how 95% of a software project is maintenance and support. You will also learn language design, you'll learn how to write compilers, and you'll learn electronic engineering and chip design as part of the software engineering course.
Obviously, no university will produce fully-formed anything, no matter what you study. I doubt that is possible at all, so it's kind of unfair to hold it against universities.
Recently I've been bumping into more and more people who've either left Google to come to Microsoft or got offers from both companies and picked Microsoft over Google
No shit! Dare, you're working at Microsoft! What did you expect to happen, that you bump into people working at Google who just happen to hang out in Microsoft's cafeteria?
English has absurd spelling rules. It's pretty flexible, but the reason it's the dominant language has nothing to do with its qualities: World-wide pop culture and computer literature is in English, and most of the early Internet's content was (and still is) in English, hence it's popularity.
Slashdot Mirror
Partially, yes. But I'm also partially serious. We're talking about a law that requires companies to pay over time to employees when neither the employee or the company want that.
I'm not sure how the employee could possibly not want to get paid.
These laws are typically in place where there is a power imbalance between employer and employee. Normally, this gets fixed by having unions, which give employees power when negotiating with employers, but unions have their own issues.
Laws setting up minimum requirements can fix some of this by giving employees some basic rights without forcing them to fight their employers.
Laws can always go too far, and I personally think that running a corporation is far too complicated and expensive (e.g. sox compliance). However, protecting employees is one area where the result typically ends up being positive for everyone involved, even the employers, who get a more motivated workforce.
I'm not so sure I agree with where your going with your argument. Sure, if your a programmer, you may not be able to program for more than 4-6 hours, but that doesnt mean you've "stopped working". Doing all that administrative bullshit IS WORKING
Yes, I didn't mean to say it wasn't, should have explained that better. It's important to answer mail and document your stuff. But there's only so much of that type of "non-demanding programmer work;" I'd say at most an hour a day.
There's simply no way I can fill 8.5 hours a day with useful work; I'm actually more productive if I work 7 hours a day than 8.5 hours a day.
I agree with your assessment; you should get paid for every hour you spend at work. That would probably teach your employer not to force you to work useless overtime :-)
You are being ironic, aren't you?
I really don't get overtime for programmers. Well, perhaps if you need to ship in a few days and aren't quite finished yet, so you work overtime for a few days. That could work.
But constant overtime? It just doesn't work.
If you're building a wall and putting one brick on another, you're probably going to do about twice as much work in twice the time. This does not apply to programming. I've noticed that I have about 4 to 6 hours of programming in me each day. Some days it's more; perhaps up to 10 hours. But most days, it's around 4 to 6 hours.
After I've run out of "programmming" time, I have to stop programming, because if I continue to write code, I'll have to spend time rewriting it the next day. I simply start writing crap code after about 4 to 6 hours of writing code. I can't properly concentrate on writing code anymore, I guess. Once I reach this point, I typically start doing administrativa, replying to mails, answering support calls, writing documentation and such. Or I just go home (happily, I can do that at my current work place; as long as my output is good, I don't need to put in the time).
In my experience, most programmers work the same way. Nobody codes well for 10 hours a day, each day.
This gets us to overtime. If you force people to continue writing code after their natural code writing limit is exhausted, they will write crap. And they will have to refactor that crap. So in effect, forcing programmers to work overtime will slow down your project, because they'll start spending more and more time fixing broken code instead of writing good fresh code.
I don't pirate games, but from back when I was a kid and from what my friends do, I think some of the reasons are:
OTOH, analysts and investors aren't exactly the most rational of human beings :-)
Do these "analysts" actually turn on their brains before making predictions? Do they get paid for this crap? Have they ever actually used a touch screen or an eye tracker for serious work, or are they just living in imagination land?
The mouse may eventually be replaced by such devices, but it won't be during the next 5 years. Touch screens are useless for today's computer setup since they require you to hold your hand in an unnatural position, which is tiring and obscures your screen. Facial recognition doesn't work well enough yet, and requires major relearning. And the Wii Remote is basically a floating mouse, anyways.
That is amusing. Somebody is modding all of my comments outside of this /. article as "Troll". Reading your latest comment and your Journal, you don't seem to be that kind of guy, but to the person who is doing it: If you are reading this, classy move, man! I laughed so hard when I saw this that I nearly fell out my chair. Well done!
NBC did not renew their content agreement with Apple back in August 07. NBC moved to Hulu and other methods of distribution. Even Colbert/John Stewart, (big vid sellers for apple) while still selling on iTunes, also offer free version of their show on comedy centrals website.
Yes, but that is missing the point of iTunes: Apple isn't making a whole lot of money (if any) selling TV series on iTunes. They're making money selling hardware with high margins, and they're using iTunes to sell said hardware, namely iPods and iPhones.
Not having NBC on iTunes hurts Apple as far as it removes one incentive of owning an iPod - watching NBC shows on it - but in the grand scale of things, it can't have cost them too many iPod sales, especially since no other MP3 player can play these shows.
In this poor economy, Apples focus on the consumer space will seriously hurting it in the upcoming months
But what would be the alternative for Apple? They can't hold their own in the enterprise market because the enterprise market requires low-margin boxes and an expensive support structure; Apple has neither.
Historically, the consumer space is the only space Apple was successfull.
As for the poor economy, how this affects Apple remains to be seen. They produce reasonably cheap luxury goods; a poor economy could possibly even help them as people try to assert their wealth via things they can still afford.
regardless of the iPod market share - iPod sales are expected to peak or decline (most likely why iPod sales figures for q208 are not reported yet)
iPod sales have been expected to decline for some years now; it hasn't yet happened. It will happen eventually, but I think Apple anticipated this, hence the iPhone.
In come the iPhone - it's critical for Apples continued growth. It's so close to competing with the blackberry, that I think a more business-friendly leader would be better suited to guide Apple for a time.
I don't think Apple has a business market outside of niche markets (such as video production or the print industry) and the CEO's cell phone.
Apple is doing great things - Jobs has done good resuscitating Apple these past many years. I think more business savvy leadership is necessary to sustain the growth. Consumer spending is going to be a problem for the next couple of years.
Not having any insight into Apple's inner workings, I would guess Jobs' influence is mainly in product development. People like Oppenheimer, Schiller, Johnson and Cook are leading the business side, and I think they're quite business savvy.
Perhaps they should have more influence in product design; but perhaps the business market is simply not a market in which Apple can sustain itself.
I find it amusing that you keep on telling me that I'm a "fanboi" while ranting on and on about how evil Jobs is. I think I'm not the fanboy here.
I really don't know if Jobs is evil, and even if he was, you continue to fail to explain why you think he's a bad man, or how his being evil hurt Apple. Isn't NBC back on iTunes? Even if they aren't, I fail to see how this hurts Apple, the iPod isn't losing any market share; it's just NBC which makes less money. And Apple seems to be doing just fine with AT&T.
PPS: Fuck you.
I see. Now that calling me a fanboy did not help you win the argument, you must resort to more heavy-handed attempts. I'm not sure why you think this helps your point; it just makes you look like the mindless fanboy.
Have a nice day!
Well, you managed to insult me, but you still haven't answered my question. Why do you think Jobs is not needed anymore?
Even if we assume that you are right about the premise that Jobs is a "scumbag" (and we'll just have to take your word for it - most of us don't know him as well as you seem to), your logic is flawed. Why would Apple be better off without him? Just because he's a "horrible person"? That makes no sense.
I guess there's nothing wrong with focussing on programming, but that doesn't mean that you can ignore the remaining topics, like theoretical informatics, chip design, security and perhaps even things like project management.
A list of top 100 programmers? Where can I see that? I wonder where I'm at, I'm guessing in the high 20s.
Oh, you're not talking about the top 100 programmers after all. You're talking about "influential comp sci people." You do realize that comp sci is a young field, don't you? Most of the profs I had did not study comp sci because it did not exist back when they were studying. So what did they study? Maths, mostly. And then they spent the rest of their lives with comp sci.
So yeah, you don't need to study comp sci. You can also study maths and then spend the rest of your life with comp sci. Eventually, you'll get to the same level of expertise which comp sci students were at after four years of university.
Yeah. Making the user or inhabitant happy is absolutely a function of an application or a building! If a building kills the soul of its inhabitants, it's not functional.
Being able to actually live in a place is part of its function. If it's fucking ugly, it's not functional.
I think the example I brought up is pretty simple; I switched from a hierarchical, folder-based mail client to using gmail exclusively precisely because this is a case which occurs so often (and also because search works so well in gmail - I actually tend to ignore structure and go straight for search most of the time - it's easy to combine tags and search, too, like a shell for mail organization).
You're right, it's usually possible to fit mails into folder structures in a way that has each mail in one or at most two places. It's just that tagging is an even more natural way of doing this, instead of pretending that mails are structured in a folder hierarchy only to then put them into more than one place because there often is not one specific place in a hierarchy where they belong.
To each his own, I guess, but claiming that tags are inferior to folder hierarchies is at best a matter of taste.
Right, which is why you start with a folder hierarchies and map to tags. ;)
But wasn't the original question which was a superset of the other? :-)
But this is exactly where you are when you don't use folders, and only use tags: you can't map tags into sensible folder hierarchies. (sorry for the double reply, too, only saw that it was the same answer after already replying to the other one :-)
hard links don't really solve that particular problem, unless you forego hierarchy, which leaves you where you started out.
I studied at ETH Zuerich, and we sure as hell didn't learn anything about faith-based systems like Agile or Extreme Programming. ETH is an engineering university; no arts or humanities are taught. If you study software engineering at ETH Zuerich, you absolutely learn about software design, about project management, and about how 95% of a software project is maintenance and support. You will also learn language design, you'll learn how to write compilers, and you'll learn electronic engineering and chip design as part of the software engineering course.
Obviously, no university will produce fully-formed anything, no matter what you study. I doubt that is possible at all, so it's kind of unfair to hold it against universities.
In IT, universities don't train Engineers, they train Craftsmen.
Depends on the university.
I think it's quite amusing that Dare starts with:
Recently I've been bumping into more and more people who've either left Google to come to Microsoft or got offers from both companies and picked Microsoft over Google
No shit! Dare, you're working at Microsoft! What did you expect to happen, that you bump into people working at Google who just happen to hang out in Microsoft's cafeteria?
You need to Archive mails if you want an empty inbox. This is indeed not obvious, but it'll fix your issue, and can be automated.
English has absurd spelling rules. It's pretty flexible, but the reason it's the dominant language has nothing to do with its qualities: World-wide pop culture and computer literature is in English, and most of the early Internet's content was (and still is) in English, hence it's popularity.
Mail 1: labela, labelb
Mail 2: labelb, labelc
Mail 3: labelc, labela
How would that look in a folder structure?