I've worked as a contractor at many companies in the past five years, and some of them used H1-B's while others just outsourced work to "subsidiaries" in India. The H1-B's were largely pretty decent (this was during the dotcom boom when companies were really struggling to fill cubes) though generally not as adept at the business analysis side of development. The code we got back from outsourcing would've embarrassed the students at the local community college's "intro to programming" class. It was invariably horribly convoluted and bug ridden. On the off chance it would actually run without a major rewrite, it was usually wildly unstable. You get what you pay for.
More content free than Katz. I guess Taco and crew didn't become A-geeks via the internet. Nor did Matt Drudge. I'll accept that the/. guys aren't pure publicity hounds, but Drudge? Glen Reynolds? Andrew Sullivan? Josh Marshall? Any writer for Slate or Salon? This guy did less research than Katz ever has.
I think we've been taking the wrong approach. We should encourage this sort of thing. Until normal everyday Joe/Jane Sixpacks start getting sued/fined en masse for daring to watch a DVD on a non-MPAA approved machine, things are not going to get better. The laws have to start hurting the average person before the sheeple start raising a stink. When the congresspeople feel pressure from the people they allegedly represent, they will make symbolic gestures towards restoring fair use and other rights that they normally consider to be superfluous. Not that I think it will ultimately ever get better. We are now the Corporate States of America and we better get used to it. Our elected "representatives" are owned and operated by industry to the detriment of every single taxpayer. Welcome to Nu-Perfect America.
Technically, not all the same type of dopey deejays. Just one DJ who prerecords everything. Travel between two Clear Channel cities and you'll find that it's the same DJ in both cities. Media consolidation is the number one reason for decline in album sales, not p2p. Clear channel is destroying music, Time/universal/sony are destroying movies/television/news. Welcome to the brave new world.
If I had mod points, I'd up parent to this. I've been using computers every day for 10 years now and I think I played Quake a few times several years ago. I don't own a single game.
Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea
on
Professors vs. WiFi
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Technology is not good. Technology is technology. It is neither good nor evil. Like any other tool, it can be used for many different things. In the examples you give, technology isn't the solution. Better teachers is the solution. You're trying to apply a technological solution to a sociological problem and it doesn't work. Yes, wi can be used to great advantage in schools and it should be. Kids surfing porn/slashdot/etc during class is not integral to the education process.
The teacher could even bring his own laptop, add their AIM screen names to his AIM account, and talk to students via AIM
Um, they're all in the same room, why on earth would that be of any use to anyone? They don't need their computer with them at all times to add someone to their AIM list unless they are incapable of writing it down on a piece of paper (a distinct possibility in our age of techno-worship).
This is college not highschool, a teacher cannot try to blame the students for lack of attention, students pay you with THEIR money so that you can get their attention, these people want to learn and pay to learn, if you arent doing a good job and they think your lecture is a complete waste of time they dont have to pay attention.
Have you been to college? I knew many students who felt that since they were paying to attend, they should be guaranteed passing grades and shouldn't have to be bothered with things like homework or tests or showing up. My dad taught college for 30+ years and in the last 10 I can't count the number of parents who had the same attitude. "We're paying your salary, you have to give him a passing grade even if he never came to class."
Passing classes SHOULD involve paying attention
on
Professors vs. WiFi
·
· Score: 1
I've been out of college for a while now, but I seem to recall that in order to pass classes it was necessary to not only show up but to actually pay attention to what was going on. I suppose it's really a plus for students to have the ability to check mail while waiting for everyone else to settle in and class to get started, but I can't think of a legitimate reason outside of that why you would need net access during class. In the long run, the students who spend class time playing online instead of paying attention will end up being the C students rather than the A students. After 12 years in the Real World (tm) I'm beginning to see the value of GPA. If I have two candidates for a job and all else is equal, I'm going with the one who had the higher GPA, because they obviously worked enough and cared enough to not just coast by doing the minimum amount of work necessary to pass. I don't want to work with people who are going to coast.
I think that from a historical significance perspective, this is not a Bad Thing(tm). Allow the museums etc first shot at those wrecks of historical interest before the vultures descend.
People are too set in their ways, and even those who aren't would rather that someone else make the sacrifice as they sit back and enjoy the comfortable familiarity while waiting for "things to get better."
If I had mod points, you'd get one. I'd rather have someone give a subscription to KRUD to their local library than buy me some geek toy I'll play with for a week and then forget about. There are a lot of great projects out there. Support them. It may be something some guy developed and put out there for free, not even asking for donations, but if you use it and benefit from it, send him (or her) ten bucks for the non-specific-winter-observance-of-your-choice season.
Yes, they will. It will be very painful, as they will rewrite the UML tools in C# and repurpose all the other tools to be.Net tools instead of Java tools (J# Builder, etc) killing off one of the best sources of Java development tools. I think the Borland purchase would help MSFT much more in the fight against Java than a purchase of Rational would help in the fight against IBM.
I am delighted to tell you that IBM and Rational Software have announced a definitive agreement for IBM to purchase Rational. This is a very exciting time for both companies and builds on the extensive business relationship we have had for over 20 years.
You and other Inner Circle customers are telling us that you need to further integrate your application development environment. This acquisition will allow IBM to give you the tools to develop, integrate and manage your business processes. Rational's software development platform -- including software engineering best practices and products for analysis, modeling, development, testing and configuration management -- complements IBM's WebSphere application development tools to help customers develop higher quality software in less time.
Rational's solid leadership capabilities in application lifecycle management tools, along with IBM's industry-leading e-business infrastructure products, makes for a winning combination. IBM and Rational share a common objective in providing customers with best practices, tools, and services designed to improve individual developer productivity and overall application development efficiency. Customers can begin using Rational's solutions at any stage of e-business adoption, which can increase the productivity and success of your development projects.
IBM provides the most comprehensive set of e-business technologies and product offerings in the industry. IBM middleware interoperates across the broadest set of platforms used in enterprises today. We will continue to develop the Rational solutions for multiple platforms, including.Net, J2EE, Linux and real-time/embedded systems. The next logical progression of e-business adoption is to systematically integrate systems and applications across enterprises, which is where Rational offers great value when combined with IBM software.
IBM intends to retain the Rational brand and establish the Rational division within IBM Software Group led by Mike Devlin, Rational's current CEO. As with other business acquisitions of this nature, this one will require government regulatory approval and the agreement of Rational's shareholders.
IBM and Rational are impressive as separate entities. Together, with our complementary e-business technologies and commitment to customer success, we can provide even greater value to you.
Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to expanding our relationship with you in the future.
>The answer to the market dominance of Office isn't to prosecute Microsoft for playing unfairly.
Actually, it is. When a monopoly abuses their power , the solution is to prosecute. That's what happened. Microsoft was found guilty of abusing monopoly power. The fact that the justice department decided to not even slap MSFT on the wrist is seperate issue.
Women in Crichton Books
on
Prey
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
>She's the always-working cold bitch
That sums up pretty much every female in every one of his books. Crichton is like Lucas, he has some great ideas, interesting twists, and generally strong plots. His character development, particularly of women, barely qualifies as one dimensional. His dialogue is laughable at best. He should come up with the ideas and let other people who can actually write do the writing part.
MBU (Mac Business Unit) does quite well on it's own (and actually has little if any interaction with the rest of the company, from what I've heard). It's the one business unit that really puts out high quality work, IMHO.
RMS has stated in the past that there are many battles out there more important than software, but that there are also people out there more qualified than he to fight those battles. He chose software because no one else was doing it and he was (and is) capable of doing a very good job at it.
Hmmm, I've got 95g worth right now, and I haven't started in on my classical CDs/LPs or Jazz or Blues yet. Based on my rock/pop collection, I figure when all my Classical/Jazz/Blues are on there, it will be about 350g. That's not including at least 60 titles I haven't bought yet that I want (King Crimson has been releasing several albums/year lately that I haven't caught up with, and I only half about half of Zappa's catalog thus far, add to that great older albums being released on CD for the first time...).
Um, yea. I'm trying to figure out how you think that MS Press, Hardware, PC Games, etc etc are profitable. Read Microsoft's own 10Q. They state in black and white that all those divisions all lost money. You have an interesting, if wildly inaccurate, interpretation of the word "profitable".
I work with about 15 developers plus miscellaneous (sp?) tech writers, dba's, pm's, etc etc. There are probably 20 gov't employees I deal with on a regular basis outside this group. About 2 of them care what OS they use. They all use Windows (NT) because that is what is mandated by the LAN Support Group (A contract company, not government employees). I chose to install Linux on my workstation and no one seems to care. Of the other two who actually care what OS they're on, one is installing Linux on Monday, the other is already running Win XP.
I would argue that company policy is what keep a lot of people on Windows, and convenience (it's already there, it doesn't involve having to actually do anything) keep everyone else there. At least in the US, we are constantly pounded in the head with advertising encouraging us to be as passive as possible, so people always take the path that involves the least immediate effort on their part.
There's no guarantee that Bill Wyman (the Stones bassist) even knows this is happening. It sounds like a lawyer trying to drum up business and bill his client for something (I could be wrong, it's just a hunch).
Disclaimer: I'm not defending the bassist because I'm a fan of the Stones or him personally, I personally don't like their music at all.
I've been on several conference calls with IBM where people were expressing similar sentiments about App server versions. IBM is pushing to release new versions of WebSphere every year at the same time, and their top tier customers (we're called the Inner Circle, which I find entertaining) are pushing strongly back saying they want at least 18 months and would prefer 2 years between App Server major versions.
My wife and I both use our iMac (G3 500, 256M RAM) for multimedia work (she does voice work, I do graphics and some audio) and OSX outperforms OS9.2 on the same system. I don't find it slow for anything. I use Linux on my main box, she uses Win2K, and the OSX holds it's own just fine.
Slashdot Mirror
I've worked as a contractor at many companies in the past five years, and some of them used H1-B's while others just outsourced work to "subsidiaries" in India. The H1-B's were largely pretty decent (this was during the dotcom boom when companies were really struggling to fill cubes) though generally not as adept at the business analysis side of development. The code we got back from outsourcing would've embarrassed the students at the local community college's "intro to programming" class. It was invariably horribly convoluted and bug ridden. On the off chance it would actually run without a major rewrite, it was usually wildly unstable. You get what you pay for.
"your head of state is a corrupt weasel"
That's not fair. Weasels are relatively respecatble and honorable creatures.
More content free than Katz. I guess Taco and crew didn't become A-geeks via the internet. Nor did Matt Drudge. I'll accept that the /. guys aren't pure publicity hounds, but Drudge? Glen Reynolds? Andrew Sullivan? Josh Marshall? Any writer for Slate or Salon? This guy did less research than Katz ever has.
I used Ximian Desktop right up to the day I installed Red Hat 8.0. Which Ximian doesn't support yet. As soon as XD supports RH8, I'm using it again.
I think we've been taking the wrong approach. We should encourage this sort of thing. Until normal everyday Joe/Jane Sixpacks start getting sued/fined en masse for daring to watch a DVD on a non-MPAA approved machine, things are not going to get better. The laws have to start hurting the average person before the sheeple start raising a stink. When the congresspeople feel pressure from the people they allegedly represent, they will make symbolic gestures towards restoring fair use and other rights that they normally consider to be superfluous. Not that I think it will ultimately ever get better. We are now the Corporate States of America and we better get used to it. Our elected "representatives" are owned and operated by industry to the detriment of every single taxpayer. Welcome to Nu-Perfect America.
Technically, not all the same type of dopey deejays. Just one DJ who prerecords everything. Travel between two Clear Channel cities and you'll find that it's the same DJ in both cities. Media consolidation is the number one reason for decline in album sales, not p2p. Clear channel is destroying music, Time/universal/sony are destroying movies/television/news. Welcome to the brave new world.
If I had mod points, I'd up parent to this. I've been using computers every day for 10 years now and I think I played Quake a few times several years ago. I don't own a single game.
Kids surfing porn/slashdot/etc during class is not integral to the education process.
The teacher could even bring his own laptop, add their AIM screen names to his AIM account, and talk to students via AIM
Um, they're all in the same room, why on earth would that be of any use to anyone? They don't need their computer with them at all times to add someone to their AIM list unless they are incapable of writing it down on a piece of paper (a distinct possibility in our age of techno-worship).
This is college not highschool, a teacher cannot try to blame the students for lack of attention, students pay you with THEIR money so that you can get their attention, these people want to learn and pay to learn, if you arent doing a good job and they think your lecture is a complete waste of time they dont have to pay attention.
Have you been to college? I knew many students who felt that since they were paying to attend, they should be guaranteed passing grades and shouldn't have to be bothered with things like homework or tests or showing up. My dad taught college for 30+ years and in the last 10 I can't count the number of parents who had the same attitude. "We're paying your salary, you have to give him a passing grade even if he never came to class."
I've been out of college for a while now, but I seem to recall that in order to pass classes it was necessary to not only show up but to actually pay attention to what was going on. I suppose it's really a plus for students to have the ability to check mail while waiting for everyone else to settle in and class to get started, but I can't think of a legitimate reason outside of that why you would need net access during class. In the long run, the students who spend class time playing online instead of paying attention will end up being the C students rather than the A students. After 12 years in the Real World (tm) I'm beginning to see the value of GPA. If I have two candidates for a job and all else is equal, I'm going with the one who had the higher GPA, because they obviously worked enough and cared enough to not just coast by doing the minimum amount of work necessary to pass. I don't want to work with people who are going to coast.
I think that from a historical significance perspective, this is not a Bad Thing(tm). Allow the museums etc first shot at those wrecks of historical interest before the vultures descend.
People are too set in their ways, and even those who aren't would rather that someone else make the sacrifice as they sit back and enjoy the comfortable familiarity while waiting for "things to get better."
Got news for ya: It won't get better. Ever.
If I had mod points, you'd get one. I'd rather have someone give a subscription to KRUD to their local library than buy me some geek toy I'll play with for a week and then forget about. There are a lot of great projects out there. Support them. It may be something some guy developed and put out there for free, not even asking for donations, but if you use it and benefit from it, send him (or her) ten bucks for the non-specific-winter-observance-of-your-choice season.
Yes, they will. It will be very painful, as they will rewrite the UML tools in C# and repurpose all the other tools to be .Net tools instead of Java tools (J# Builder, etc) killing off one of the best sources of Java development tools. I think the Borland purchase would help MSFT much more in the fight against Java than a purchase of Rational would help in the fight against IBM.
To Our Valued Inner Circle Customers:
.Net,
I am delighted to tell you that IBM and Rational Software have announced a
definitive agreement for IBM to purchase Rational. This is a very exciting
time for both companies and builds on the extensive business relationship
we have had for over 20 years.
You and other Inner Circle customers are telling us that you need to
further integrate your application development environment. This
acquisition will allow IBM to give you the tools to develop, integrate and
manage your business processes. Rational's software development platform
-- including software engineering best practices and products for analysis,
modeling, development, testing and configuration management -- complements
IBM's WebSphere application development tools to help customers develop
higher quality software in less time.
Rational's solid leadership capabilities in application lifecycle
management tools, along with IBM's industry-leading e-business
infrastructure products, makes for a winning combination. IBM and Rational
share a common objective in providing customers with best practices, tools,
and services designed to improve individual developer productivity and
overall application development efficiency. Customers can begin using
Rational's solutions at any stage of e-business adoption, which can
increase the productivity and success of your development projects.
IBM provides the most comprehensive set of e-business technologies and
product offerings in the industry. IBM middleware interoperates across the
broadest set of platforms used in enterprises today. We will continue to
develop the Rational solutions for multiple platforms, including
J2EE, Linux and real-time/embedded systems. The next logical progression
of e-business adoption is to systematically integrate systems and
applications across enterprises, which is where Rational offers great value
when combined with IBM software.
IBM intends to retain the Rational brand and establish the Rational
division within IBM Software Group led by Mike Devlin, Rational's current
CEO. As with other business acquisitions of this nature, this one will
require government regulatory approval and the agreement of Rational's
shareholders.
IBM and Rational are impressive as separate entities. Together, with our
complementary e-business technologies and commitment to customer success,
we can provide even greater value to you.
Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to expanding our
relationship with you in the future.
Best regards,
>The answer to the market dominance of Office isn't to prosecute Microsoft for playing unfairly.
Actually, it is. When a monopoly abuses their power , the solution is to prosecute. That's what happened. Microsoft was found guilty of abusing monopoly power. The fact that the justice department decided to not even slap MSFT on the wrist is seperate issue.
>She's the always-working cold bitch
That sums up pretty much every female in every one of his books. Crichton is like Lucas, he has some great ideas, interesting twists, and generally strong plots. His character development, particularly of women, barely qualifies as one dimensional. His dialogue is laughable at best. He should come up with the ideas and let other people who can actually write do the writing part.
MBU (Mac Business Unit) does quite well on it's own (and actually has little if any interaction with the rest of the company, from what I've heard). It's the one business unit that really puts out high quality work, IMHO.
RMS has stated in the past that there are many battles out there more important than software, but that there are also people out there more qualified than he to fight those battles. He chose software because no one else was doing it and he was (and is) capable of doing a very good job at it.
Hmmm, I've got 95g worth right now, and I haven't started in on my classical CDs/LPs or Jazz or Blues yet. Based on my rock/pop collection, I figure when all my Classical/Jazz/Blues are on there, it will be about 350g. That's not including at least 60 titles I haven't bought yet that I want (King Crimson has been releasing several albums/year lately that I haven't caught up with, and I only half about half of Zappa's catalog thus far, add to that great older albums being released on CD for the first time...).
Um, yea. I'm trying to figure out how you think that MS Press, Hardware, PC Games, etc etc are profitable. Read Microsoft's own 10Q. They state in black and white that all those divisions all lost money. You have an interesting, if wildly inaccurate, interpretation of the word "profitable".
I work with about 15 developers plus miscellaneous (sp?) tech writers, dba's, pm's, etc etc. There are probably 20 gov't employees I deal with on a regular basis outside this group. About 2 of them care what OS they use. They all use Windows (NT) because that is what is mandated by the LAN Support Group (A contract company, not government employees). I chose to install Linux on my workstation and no one seems to care. Of the other two who actually care what OS they're on, one is installing Linux on Monday, the other is already running Win XP.
I would argue that company policy is what keep a lot of people on Windows, and convenience (it's already there, it doesn't involve having to actually do anything) keep everyone else there. At least in the US, we are constantly pounded in the head with advertising encouraging us to be as passive as possible, so people always take the path that involves the least immediate effort on their part.
Give me convenience or give me death.
There's no guarantee that Bill Wyman (the Stones bassist) even knows this is happening. It sounds like a lawyer trying to drum up business and bill his client for something (I could be wrong, it's just a hunch).
Disclaimer: I'm not defending the bassist because I'm a fan of the Stones or him personally, I personally don't like their music at all.
Helen Caldicott once asked what was the greater crime: The robbing of a bank, or the founding of a bank.
Steal 100 dollars and you're a crook, steal a hundred million and you're a financier.
I've been on several conference calls with IBM where people were expressing similar sentiments about App server versions. IBM is pushing to release new versions of WebSphere every year at the same time, and their top tier customers (we're called the Inner Circle, which I find entertaining) are pushing strongly back saying they want at least 18 months and would prefer 2 years between App Server major versions.
My wife and I both use our iMac (G3 500, 256M RAM) for multimedia work (she does voice work, I do graphics and some audio) and OSX outperforms OS9.2 on the same system. I don't find it slow for anything. I use Linux on my main box, she uses Win2K, and the OSX holds it's own just fine.