Re:_Did_ anyone ever get fired for buying IBM?
on
IT Myths
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· Score: 1
We were kind of small while our competitor was big, fat, and lazy. They'd decided that they were so far ahead in the market that they could get snooty about their position. Suffice it to say, we ate their lunch.:-)
Re:Many projects don't fail, they rust in place
on
IT Myths
·
· Score: 1
You should of course listen to where the customer wants to take the product. Then assume that what they told you is completely wrong. Design for what they told you, and any place in the system you could reasonably see them changing it. They'll still get you in several areas, but I can guarantee that you'll be far less hurt by these than the complete system redesign you'd need otherwise.
Re:Other IT Myths
on
IT Myths
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
1. It was apparently out of print for many years and has only been reprinted fairly recently.
2. Almost no one here knows anything that Asimov wrote other than his Robot works.
"Lost" may be stretching it slightly, but then I don't have a whole lot of space in 120 characters.:-)
Re:Many projects don't fail, they rust in place
on
IT Myths
·
· Score: 1
Didn't I just make that point? Sheesh people. Turn down the knee-jerk response time.
Re:_Did_ anyone ever get fired for buying IBM?
on
IT Myths
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I know a second hand account. Apparently, a competitor of a company I worked for tended to be a bit impatient with their MIS Vice President. So they'd hire a new one, see no results in a short time, then fire him. Rinse and repeat. One of the VPs attempted a conversion to 100% IBM. He was sacked for his efforts.
Re:Other IT Myths
on
IT Myths
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The real difference is that this mechanism is in place to prevent companies from hiring younger inexperienced engineers just to cut costs.
Ouch. That struck a nerve. Everyone who's seen companies hire Junior incompetents over Senior Engineers, raise your hand.
Re:Many projects don't fail, they rust in place
on
IT Myths
·
· Score: 5, Informative
If the customer anticipates any future modifications and upgrades, I think that ought to be mentioned in the inital functional specifications, so that the developers can make sufficient room for such accomodations.
BZZZT! Wrong answer. A good software architect holds one law above all else: "The customer doesn't actually know what they want!" This means that you need to code as defensively as possible. If it's your baby that you coded from scratch, you should be able to do a good job of this. Just make sure your systems are separated, your code is clean, and just about any new feature you can think of can be plugged in.
The part that sucks is when you inherit someone else's mess, then try to whip it into a usable system that can be adjusted to the customer's needs. While I've seen plenty of well written Open Source projects (although MOST are still crap), I have never seen even ONE existing business system that was well written from the get-go. Every last one of them ended up needing a complete overhaul to get it up to snuff. It's even worse when you have no idea what your company even does. (Eventually got that worked out, thank God.)
That's correct. Check your state tax form sometime. Most states have a field where you're supposed to enter out of state purchases. This is then used to reduce the amount returned to you, or help calculate how much you owe. Just about everyone I know ignores this field.
Really. Microsoft was the at the forefront of OS's, but Linux still managed to be developed.
Linux was developed as a "cool" project, not as an alternative to Microsoft. When Linux was first developed, Microsoft had all of DOS on the market. Napster, OTOH, was developed as an easy option to swap music. Why was it a success? Because there was no easier way to get music!
I stopped trusting anything mail-in when I was a kid. You see, Kellogg had this "special offer" on the side of their box that claimed you could get a FREE Darkwing Duck knapsack with X number of proofs of purchase, and a few dollars shipping and handling. Being the big DW fans we were, my siblings and I all dutifully at our cereal, snagged our UPCs, and sent in the money (a lot for a kid!).
Never saw nothin'
They basically ripped us off! All FIVE of us! I was pretty upset over that, and have since always pretended that rebates and offers don't exist. Sure, if I can get money from a rebate, great! But if the price before rebate isn't a good deal by itself, I shop elsewhere.
#1) The RIAA is an enforcement agency. That is what they do. They do not distibute works.
Fine. The music industry as a whole. I referred to the RIAA because they supposedly represent the recording industry. (Thus "Recording Industry Association of America");-)
#2) Please tell me how ANY business model can compete with FREE distribution.
Simple. Make it easier to buy than to steal. Remember how hard it was to get MP3s before Napster came along? That would have been a perfect opportunity for an iTunes like service! They wouldn't have even needed to screw around with DRM or fancy software interfaces! They could have just provided MP3s for download from a website at a cost of $0.99 - $1.50 per. The end result would have been that MP3 sharing would have stayed a difficult thing (like warez of the time) and P2P would have never come on the scene.
Instead, they tried to stifle any form of online music and called all digital copies "piracy". Napster then comes along and steals their thunder. And they were surprised... why?
When you could release a program as shareware and actualy have people register rather then crack it.
Pfff! As if that ever existed! I remember friends swapping floppies of registered shareware back before PCs even had modems! Of course, I was pretty naive. I would ask, "Isn't that wrong?" and get the response, "It's no biggie, we're just sharing with friends!"
With that firmly ingrained in our heads, this proved even back then that any business model that involved easily reproduced goods should be careful to take their reproduction into account. i.e. Make it easier for people to pay for stuff than steal it, and try to target markets that actually have money to spend!
The RIAA failed when they tried to stop MP3s instead of being the originators of an online MP3 service. Now iTunes is saving their butts by picking up the remaining pieces of what would have been complete destruction for the music industry.
I don't want to go faster than people can read, but I can make it busier I guess
Hmm... maybe I'm just a really fast reader, but I manage to skim through the text before it even finishes fading in. Perhaps you should fade it in faster, then have it skew a few times before finally skewing into disappearing. That way you can keep it on the screen about the same time you are now, but the viewer realizes that there's more to come.
Just a suggestion, but you might want to make it a bit more clear that the first three chapters are available for free. For example, add a pulsating button to the flash animation that says "Read it for FREE >>".
Also, you probably want to speed up your animation. I understand that you're going for a certain "atmosphere", but the attention span of web surfers is just too damn small to wait. Using your "interference" effect to make the text disappear would help as well. Making it just disappear makes people think the show is over.
Otherwise, your site looks nice! You just have to work on getting the info in front of people.:-)
Why the hell was this modded as a troll? Do you see any trolling in there? No? Do you see a valid opinion? Yes? Oh, well that explains it. Can't have any free thinkers on Slashdot. No siree. Got to stick with the [Borg] Collective groupthink.
No sexbots? No flying cars? What horrible vision of the future is this!?
I know William Shatner is the best Science Fiction author ever *cough*bull*cough*shit*wheeze*, but you REALLY need to lay off the Tek there man. That stuff is screwing with your head.
I think it's more of a problem of "not enough technology" combined with "not gonna replace the current infrastructure". Your average home is extremely "feature complete" and has very little need of advanced computers controlling it. Thus you'd need to create a true breakthrough in technology to make people WANT to put these in their homes. What does that mean?
For one, we'd need voice recognition that WORKS. Forget walking to the nearest wall like Captain Kirk, we need it Picard style! "Computer, play some Mozart" or "Lights, 70 percent". Even more than that, we need the home to do things that make our lives easier. e.g. "Computer, vacuum the living room." or "Computer, make some coffee." These are things that are currently beyond our ability to deliver in a consumer product (no matter how much the consumer is willing to pay).
Where do I think we'll be in 2014? Much like we are today. We'll still drive cars, but hydrogen will have begun to replace gasoline. Broadband internet access will permeate the airwaves, allowing us to surf the net, listen to our favorite radio, and watch television on demand anywhere. Public schools will continue to suck as they always have, and people in general will finally get over their irrational fears of all thing nuclear. With those fears out of the way, private corporations will profit from various space expeditions to mine precious materials, tourism, military space-cruiser contracts, and offers to build equipment for Mars settlers. Yep, the future looks bright to me.:-)
This seems to be pretty standard with Science Fiction authors (although I can't fathom why). Try navigating Baen's website sometime for a perfect example of a functional but aesthetically poor website.
Somehow that doesn't surprise me. I can just see your boss, "What do you need an expensive frame buffer for? It's just data! It's not like we're doing graphics or anything. Besides, (insert kissup here) says that we can do everything we need with a simple line printer!":-)
I'm also driving at this point. I don't care what they say about "random" security checks, but my family and I are ALWAYS flagged. Ok, I'm a born American. My wife is originally from Russia. We've got kids in tow. Yep, we look like your typical terrorists. (NOT!):-/
I think the only way to fix this lousy excuse for security is to state that we won't use planes until they fix the problem. For me, that means I'm driving. (Hey, road trips are fun!) For others, it might mean that they build themselves a plane. Others still might go for private charters. Whatever works best for you.
Of course, we wouldn't NEED this security if everyone carried guns like the founding fathers intended. So a terrorists pulls out his handgun. (Uzis are not the type of thing that a "normal" security scan would allow on the plane as carry on.) Whoop-de-do. Watch as three hundred other passengers pull out handguns, knives, and other assorted weaponry. If that terrorist thinks he's going to last longer than two seconds in a fire-fight, he's got another thing coming. That, my friends, is democracy in action!;-)
For those of you who don't have a GMail account (and therefore can't see the above link), it simply says:
Features and more What's on your webmail wish list? (1,000 MB? Check.)
done! - Address book import we'll try - Opera support we'll try - Ability to send messages with HTML formatting we'll try - POP3 access working on it - Plain HTML version of Gmail working on it - Ability to save a draft working on it - More robust contacts list working on it - Automatic message forwarding
It's just an example. Not meant in any way to be indicitive of a real problem. My only point is that so-called "hackers" such as these have no respect for science or the furtherment of mankind.
Slashdot Mirror
We were kind of small while our competitor was big, fat, and lazy. They'd decided that they were so far ahead in the market that they could get snooty about their position. Suffice it to say, we ate their lunch. :-)
You should of course listen to where the customer wants to take the product. Then assume that what they told you is completely wrong. Design for what they told you, and any place in the system you could reasonably see them changing it. They'll still get you in several areas, but I can guarantee that you'll be far less hurt by these than the complete system redesign you'd need otherwise.
1. It was apparently out of print for many years and has only been reprinted fairly recently.
:-)
2. Almost no one here knows anything that Asimov wrote other than his Robot works.
"Lost" may be stretching it slightly, but then I don't have a whole lot of space in 120 characters.
Didn't I just make that point? Sheesh people. Turn down the knee-jerk response time.
I know a second hand account. Apparently, a competitor of a company I worked for tended to be a bit impatient with their MIS Vice President. So they'd hire a new one, see no results in a short time, then fire him. Rinse and repeat. One of the VPs attempted a conversion to 100% IBM. He was sacked for his efforts.
The real difference is that this mechanism is in place to prevent companies from hiring younger inexperienced engineers just to cut costs.
Ouch. That struck a nerve. Everyone who's seen companies hire Junior incompetents over Senior Engineers, raise your hand.
If the customer anticipates any future modifications and upgrades, I think that ought to be mentioned in the inital functional specifications, so that the developers can make sufficient room for such accomodations.
BZZZT! Wrong answer. A good software architect holds one law above all else: "The customer doesn't actually know what they want!" This means that you need to code as defensively as possible. If it's your baby that you coded from scratch, you should be able to do a good job of this. Just make sure your systems are separated, your code is clean, and just about any new feature you can think of can be plugged in.
The part that sucks is when you inherit someone else's mess, then try to whip it into a usable system that can be adjusted to the customer's needs. While I've seen plenty of well written Open Source projects (although MOST are still crap), I have never seen even ONE existing business system that was well written from the get-go. Every last one of them ended up needing a complete overhaul to get it up to snuff. It's even worse when you have no idea what your company even does. (Eventually got that worked out, thank God.)
That's correct. Check your state tax form sometime. Most states have a field where you're supposed to enter out of state purchases. This is then used to reduce the amount returned to you, or help calculate how much you owe. Just about everyone I know ignores this field.
Really. Microsoft was the at the forefront of OS's, but Linux still managed to be developed.
Linux was developed as a "cool" project, not as an alternative to Microsoft. When Linux was first developed, Microsoft had all of DOS on the market. Napster, OTOH, was developed as an easy option to swap music. Why was it a success? Because there was no easier way to get music!
I stopped trusting anything mail-in when I was a kid. You see, Kellogg had this "special offer" on the side of their box that claimed you could get a FREE Darkwing Duck knapsack with X number of proofs of purchase, and a few dollars shipping and handling. Being the big DW fans we were, my siblings and I all dutifully at our cereal, snagged our UPCs, and sent in the money (a lot for a kid!).
Never
saw
nothin'
They basically ripped us off! All FIVE of us! I was pretty upset over that, and have since always pretended that rebates and offers don't exist. Sure, if I can get money from a rebate, great! But if the price before rebate isn't a good deal by itself, I shop elsewhere.
#1) The RIAA is an enforcement agency. That is what they do. They do not distibute works.
;-)
Fine. The music industry as a whole. I referred to the RIAA because they supposedly represent the recording industry. (Thus "Recording Industry Association of America")
#2) Please tell me how ANY business model can compete with FREE distribution.
Simple. Make it easier to buy than to steal. Remember how hard it was to get MP3s before Napster came along? That would have been a perfect opportunity for an iTunes like service! They wouldn't have even needed to screw around with DRM or fancy software interfaces! They could have just provided MP3s for download from a website at a cost of $0.99 - $1.50 per. The end result would have been that MP3 sharing would have stayed a difficult thing (like warez of the time) and P2P would have never come on the scene.
Instead, they tried to stifle any form of online music and called all digital copies "piracy". Napster then comes along and steals their thunder. And they were surprised... why?
not to mention the lashback of "realplayer" proportions.
Lashback of realplayer proportions? What are you tal buffering...
When you could release a program as shareware and actualy have people register rather then crack it.
Pfff! As if that ever existed! I remember friends swapping floppies of registered shareware back before PCs even had modems! Of course, I was pretty naive. I would ask, "Isn't that wrong?" and get the response, "It's no biggie, we're just sharing with friends!"
With that firmly ingrained in our heads, this proved even back then that any business model that involved easily reproduced goods should be careful to take their reproduction into account. i.e. Make it easier for people to pay for stuff than steal it, and try to target markets that actually have money to spend!
The RIAA failed when they tried to stop MP3s instead of being the originators of an online MP3 service. Now iTunes is saving their butts by picking up the remaining pieces of what would have been complete destruction for the music industry.
I don't want to go faster than people can read, but I can make it busier I guess
Hmm... maybe I'm just a really fast reader, but I manage to skim through the text before it even finishes fading in. Perhaps you should fade it in faster, then have it skew a few times before finally skewing into disappearing. That way you can keep it on the screen about the same time you are now, but the viewer realizes that there's more to come.
Just a suggestion, but you might want to make it a bit more clear that the first three chapters are available for free. For example, add a pulsating button to the flash animation that says "Read it for FREE >>".
:-)
Also, you probably want to speed up your animation. I understand that you're going for a certain "atmosphere", but the attention span of web surfers is just too damn small to wait. Using your "interference" effect to make the text disappear would help as well. Making it just disappear makes people think the show is over.
Otherwise, your site looks nice! You just have to work on getting the info in front of people.
Why the hell was this modded as a troll? Do you see any trolling in there? No? Do you see a valid opinion? Yes? Oh, well that explains it. Can't have any free thinkers on Slashdot. No siree. Got to stick with the [Borg] Collective groupthink.
No sexbots? No flying cars? What horrible vision of the future is this!?
I know William Shatner is the best Science Fiction author ever *cough*bull*cough*shit*wheeze*, but you REALLY need to lay off the Tek there man. That stuff is screwing with your head.
I think it's more of a problem of "not enough technology" combined with "not gonna replace the current infrastructure". Your average home is extremely "feature complete" and has very little need of advanced computers controlling it. Thus you'd need to create a true breakthrough in technology to make people WANT to put these in their homes. What does that mean?
:-)
For one, we'd need voice recognition that WORKS. Forget walking to the nearest wall like Captain Kirk, we need it Picard style! "Computer, play some Mozart" or "Lights, 70 percent". Even more than that, we need the home to do things that make our lives easier. e.g. "Computer, vacuum the living room." or "Computer, make some coffee." These are things that are currently beyond our ability to deliver in a consumer product (no matter how much the consumer is willing to pay).
Where do I think we'll be in 2014? Much like we are today. We'll still drive cars, but hydrogen will have begun to replace gasoline. Broadband internet access will permeate the airwaves, allowing us to surf the net, listen to our favorite radio, and watch television on demand anywhere. Public schools will continue to suck as they always have, and people in general will finally get over their irrational fears of all thing nuclear. With those fears out of the way, private corporations will profit from various space expeditions to mine precious materials, tourism, military space-cruiser contracts, and offers to build equipment for Mars settlers. Yep, the future looks bright to me.
This seems to be pretty standard with Science Fiction authors (although I can't fathom why). Try navigating Baen's website sometime for a perfect example of a functional but aesthetically poor website.
Somehow that doesn't surprise me. I can just see your boss, "What do you need an expensive frame buffer for? It's just data! It's not like we're doing graphics or anything. Besides, (insert kissup here) says that we can do everything we need with a simple line printer!" :-)
I'm also driving at this point. I don't care what they say about "random" security checks, but my family and I are ALWAYS flagged. Ok, I'm a born American. My wife is originally from Russia. We've got kids in tow. Yep, we look like your typical terrorists. (NOT!) :-/
;-)
I think the only way to fix this lousy excuse for security is to state that we won't use planes until they fix the problem. For me, that means I'm driving. (Hey, road trips are fun!) For others, it might mean that they build themselves a plane. Others still might go for private charters. Whatever works best for you.
Of course, we wouldn't NEED this security if everyone carried guns like the founding fathers intended. So a terrorists pulls out his handgun. (Uzis are not the type of thing that a "normal" security scan would allow on the plane as carry on.) Whoop-de-do. Watch as three hundred other passengers pull out handguns, knives, and other assorted weaponry. If that terrorist thinks he's going to last longer than two seconds in a fire-fight, he's got another thing coming. That, my friends, is democracy in action!
Mac user, right here! Using GMail with Mozilla!
Supposedly Google has fixed GMail so that it works with Safari. Unfortunately, I'm still on OS X 10.2, so I can't verify this.
Features and more
What's on your webmail wish list? (1,000 MB? Check.)
It's just an example. Not meant in any way to be indicitive of a real problem. My only point is that so-called "hackers" such as these have no respect for science or the furtherment of mankind.
WooHoo!!! Finally answered after all these years of argument! If we ever bump into each other IRL, remind me to buy you dinner! :D