It's sad, but your comments point out how many of the interviewers out there are incompetent or unqualified for what they're doing. They do themselves and their firms a disservice. There certainly are those out there who discredit everything the applicant says. At the same time, your responses also point out the animosity many applicants have toward the interviewers.
Most of the time, if you're interviewing with the actual project or team lead, they need to have that position filled as badly as you need a job. They've got a deadline to meet or a problem to have solved yesterday.
What you as an applicant represent is a risk of unknown quantity and quality. You're a risk to the project, the team's overall success, and to that hiring manager's career. The resume and interview process is nothing more than measuring that risk and lowering the consequences of the choice.
As an applicant, that should be your object. Recognize the employer's risk and show that you can minimize it. Evaluate it objectively. Put your list of goods in the perspective of their risks and tell them how those items are going to reduce their exposure. When your list covers most of his risk, you get the job. But sadly, with most of the hiring people out there, they can't do the matching for you. That's what the interview is about.
I've been working in IT since '92. I've had seven jobs. Three have been contracts in the last two years. I've had only about a dozen interviews, and three of them I've told them, "I'm not your man." I start my eighth position when this contract ends in three weeks.
I think the key to my easy job hunting is recognizing the risk factor and objective analysis of my abilities. I'm not an ass-kisser or a bullsh*tter. I'm a 'WYSIWYG' kind of guy. I go for the jobs I think I can do and that I really want. When I get there I tell them why I can do it and how I'll go about it. And I do my homework on the company and the hiring manager before I get there, if I can.
I've posted below my last year's experience as a 10-year IT vet in the contracting market. I was laid off last spring and am now finishing an extended contract. I've got a verbal offer for my next job, so I'm one of the lucky.
I've interviewed for four positions in the last two weeks. Two were a Java and server side developer. One an infrastructure C/C++, CORBA developer. The one I got the offer from is for a Senior Business Analyist.
Each of the interviewers lamented that they had over 100 resumes to go through, and most of the people were kidding themselves. Some were dot-commers who had a year or two of client-side development and thought they made the web work. Others were java guys who thought they could solve real middleware problems inside a JVM.
Many though, and two of the managers had the same comment, had no real enterprise-class experience. They had experience, but not with working in a large-scale, diverse environment.
Skills only get you so far. So you're a certified Java developer, architech, or whatever. If all you've done is a notepad application you've not really seen much. If all you've done is one web site or a simple app it's not likely that you're going to manage on a business app with 300 tables averaging 25-100 million rows and 5000 users, all functioning in SEC, FDA, or FCC regulations.
That's why in the job market Oracle experience trumps MySQL. It's why Weblogic or Websphere trumps Apache and Tomcat. And it's why HP-UX and Solaris trump Linux (for now). Most often when you've worked with the big, expensive tools you've seen a project worth knowing about.
For those of you out there still looking, try to qualify your experience as well as quantify. Why is your four years of Java or web work worth talking about more than someone else's? What did your year and a half with a startup teach you, and why is that important to someone you're trying to get to hire you? Find that and make your resume tell it to whomever is looking at it.
Skills are easy to come by. Character, insight, and work habits that make a good team member are harder to find. If you've got it, flaunt it! If not, work on that burger flipping technique. They're checking all your references, and a lot that you may not know about.
Re:A little dose of reality never hurt anyone.
on
The Laid-off Techie
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· Score: 1
What insight! What sagely wisdom! I certainly think should stop what you're doing and start your own career marketing firm!
Do you honestly think that a laid-off IT veteran has anything to do with PC techs? You who, with such insight, surely gasp at the $50 to insert a memory upgrade or $75 to install a CD-ROM at one of these chain stores? Do you want to replace those $8.75/hr guys with an $80k/yr IT pro? Get a grip.
Where do you think UNIX guys were 10-15 years ago? Windows guys were stomping all over them with job offers and dollars. VB guys were driving the Porches then. C/C++ guys were crying. Java wasn't even a wet dream then. Maybe those UNIX guys should have treated Windows as a discipline? Maybe they should have kept a M$ book or two under their pillow?
I know a lot more cocky pricks out of work right now than Windows guys. For your sake, I hope your job is secure.
Build your career, not just skills
on
The Laid-off Techie
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· Score: 2, Informative
I'm in the 10th year of my software development career. I've done large-scale custom middleware for most of that, and web architecture and development for the last two. Last spring I was laid off from my contracting position with a major employer, one of its first round of cuts. I was at least given two weeks of notice. I spent that two weeks calling people I knew, hitting all the local employment sites on the web, and stopping by to see what the big firms around had to offer. This was the start of the big down turn.
I was lucky at that time to move into another contract, and even fortunate enough to keep my $100k pay rate. This contract though was not in my core skill set, and I was not doing a good job at it. I used my networking skills to learn of another project at the firm that was having trouble and that needed my skills. I consulted on their floundering project a bit while I floundered on mine, and eventually got myself transferred. Now nearly a year later we're fielding a groundbreaking project that's going to have a big impact on a national pharmaceutical distribution firm.
Alas, that contract is done, and I'm being pushed into the market again, at still a worse time. I've seen this coming though, and I've spent the time to know the market. I know what people are making. I know that there are over 100 other contractors in my field applying for every job that I see. I know they're getting $15-20/hr less today than last year on bill rates. I know some of them have been out there for months.
That's why I've done the same calling, the same web searching, the same drive-by interviewing. I've done the planning for when I'm done here in three weeks and am a month from selling off the car and the house to downsize my own liabilities. I've spent the last couple of months making giant payments on other things to lower monthly outlay. I've started my wife looking for a job and daycare for the two-year-old boy.
And today, I've heard from old colleagues, I should hear that I'm being offered a position that is at once a career step up and a salary step down. From being a highly paid contractor I'm going back to corporate life as a senior business analyst, the guy who whips sales people back to reality and IT folks into a frenzy to keep sales people selling. It's what I want to do, but it's not going to pay me as well. And I'm goign to be working in a couple weeks, which is a good thing.
I've gotten that position by managing my career in the local IT environment. I keep in touch with old colleagues and managers. I read in the papers and keep up on the firms. I know their challenges and their objectives before I go in for the interview. I find out who the managers are and I learn who they've worked with, who they've promoted, and who they've canned. I know whose coat tails they're riding. I find out what technology the firm is using, and what technology battles are going on. If you can't find out which side of those your prospective manager is on, you've gotta find a comfortable spot on the fence and find out which way to lean when you can.
The bottom line is that Skills Are Not Enough! At least 75 of the 100 people applying for the job have the skills. Fifty are probably experts. To land the job you've got to offer more. You've got to show insight and planning. Today you've got to be an industry expert, not just a technology expert. You've got to show them that you're going to keep them from making the same mistakes that you made at your last job. Most of all, I think, you MUST make them believe that you're taking the job not because you're about to lose your car and your home, but because you want to be a part of that firm. You need to be part of the firm because that's what's going to make your career grow. And if that's the case, then you're fortunate. If you're up on the local scene you're more likely to find that.
You were reading a press article, not a journal article or even an abstract, and certainly not the lab books.
Such contentions as yours are common, and understandable. Still, if I were the author or the scientists involved, I would be at least disappointed, or at worst insulted, that you totally preclude the integrity of the research. Do you really think they're making wild, totally unsubstantiated claims? Those claims are their work, their careers.
I'm not saying that all claims are to be taken at face value. There are certainly hucksters out there who'll take you for what you're worth. But I think that considering the source, the research institution, and the real content of the article should at least prompt you to find more info before making any judgment of their presentation.
Latency is far more than just transit times. You have to add protocol handshaking, buffering, and I don't remember what else. I think just getting the connection established was 2.5 seconds. I worked for a company wanting to do intranet over satellite. We designed a multicast solution that looked like TCP on each end, but really used connectionless communication for transit. Problem there was that TCP is higher priority than UDP on those networks, and the UDP gets dumped easily if there is any threat to the connected sockets.
Hughes has had this type of device for at least 5 years. I worked for a major securities firm who used Hughes for its satellite networking. I wrote a lot of their network delivery system. We had a couple of 'fly-away' dishes that we used for disaster recovery. These items at the time had 512Mb/s uplink speed. You could set it up in a couple hours. We used one in Oklahoma after a huge snowstorm collapsed the branch building, and again in Flordia after some of the hurricanes.
We have. My consulting firm has a guarantee of service, and it's had to pay off a few times. When it appears that a consultant isn't making the grade the client comes to the firm and we try to resolve the issue. If we can't and it's determined that it's truly hurt the client then one of two things happens. Either we put someone in to fix the problem at our expense or we refund at least a good portion of the contract cost.
This kind of arrangement requires a lot of cooperation between client and consultant and the firm. It also requires a lot of communication. We've got to understand their real needs and their risks, and we've got to know our consultants. The client has to be honest about its position, and the consultant has to be honest about his understanding and capabilities. This level of service is what's made our firm and its consultants one of the most respected in our area, and what's allowed us to call for some of the highest rates as well.
I've been in the business for almost ten years now, the last several as a contractor with a firm. I'm considering going independent and have just done all the homework on this.
Before you start, consider your risks, the level of security you need, and then expand that assessment to the next five years.
I'm married with a young boy, so I can't imagine taking any extra risk. That has pushed me to start an S-Corporation and have an accountant manage the bills, payroll, taxes, etc. I figured out what it costs net for my family to live and had the accountant work backward from that to figure minimum bill rates. I had him figure in retirement and insurances, etc. It gives me a great picture of what it's going to take for me to be successful without question.
For an individual who's not married, no real responsibilities of home and health and all that, you might be money ahead to be a sole proprietorship and simply pay income tax. Save the accountant and attorney fees, invest what you want. Spend the rest.
I'd suggest having a qualified law firm handle the incorporation. If your charter isn't right and it gets challenged for some reason you'll have BIG headaches in tax court and who knows what else. Spend the $1500-$2000 to get it done right.
There's an organization called the Independent Computer Consultants Organization that can help with a lot of things, including contract drafts, etc. Membership isn't that bad, like $150-$200 for an individual or small firm.
Do the work up front. Surprises are always costly, and they generally leave your customer unwilling to do business again. And as an independent of any type, that's the biggest mistake to make. One bad customer can take a dozen with him if he's connected.
What effort? Did the CPU manufacturers ask the researchers to come up with something new? Those researchers found an opportunity and are pursuing it.
With all the effor to keep floor clean, wouldn't you think they'd find a way to stop all that dust from hitting the ground rather than developing new vacuums or brooms? That problem has been around for centuries.
With all that effort to keep shoes on, wouldn't you think they'd develop something other than strings to keep them on? Think how much energy is wasted tying shoes every day! And then you have to do it several times for some shoes!
On a less flippant note, the people who design processors are engineers. They're professionals. Do you think they're lazy? Stupid? Ignorant? What do you think it is that makes them avoid the heat issue? I tend to think it's a difficult problem, and that there are other problems that are more important. If they could fix it simply they would. If it were of paramount importance they would get rid of the heat.
When heat is the problem keeping them from making a product that is useful and marketable they'll change it. Until then they focus on other things, and they make you buy a heat managment accessory.
I've been running the Tiger MP with dual Thunderbird 1Ghz/266 for about a month now.
I've got it set up with 512Mb registered DDR, twin WD 40Gb 7200RPM drives, cheapo AdvanSys SCSI-2 with 2 9Gb drives, NEC 16x burner, 52x CD-ROM. I've got a GForce2 GTS/32Mb as primary display and and Vodoo 4 PCI running a secondary monitor. Sound is a Creative SB Live value. I've also got a Hauppage TV tuner card in it. Network card is Intel Pro 10/100 board. I'm running RedHat 7.2 and Windows 2000 server on dual boot. I installed a 500w power supply to run all that.
So far it's been rock solid. Not a hitch. I've got two Thermaltake Volcano 5 coolers stuck on with Arctic Silver, plus two 80mm case fans. Temperature has not been a problem at all.
I'm not a gamer, so I can't say how it'll do with that. Mostly I built it cause I have a yearly hardware allowance to burn. It's sweet when you're burning and want to do other stuff as well.
Hopefully in ten years there won't be a kernel any longer. I'm hoping there aren't even PCs as we know them. The architecture isn't holding up. Surely in 30 years of PC evolution someone's going to come up with a better idea.
Being thread-safe doesn't really apply to an application. An application is either multi-threaded or not. Thread-safe applies to operations within an application. And thread-safe on one processor is the same as thread-safe on any number of processors. If it's got threading problems it's going to find them on one processor as well.
Commercialism generally only lasts until something new is there of which to be taken advantage. This is literature that's been around for generations. A few months of being shoved in the commercial spotlight isn't going to hurt it. It has history to stand on that's far deeper than the movie can affect.
No, you can still do it later
on
Wiring A New House?
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· Score: 2, Informative
As most connected home owners know, you can get cables about anywhere you need them, one way or another. And if you can't, most good electricians can. I've helped my dad, a licensed electrician, do some crazy stuff to get wires where they need to go.
If you're building a house, put in a wiring closet. Wire all your phone, cableTV, network, and home-theater connections into that location. You can get some fine management stations at most home centers. Make it in a central position in the lower level, and make sure there's a way to get wiring to second floors if necessary. One good way to do that is to put a 3" conduit next to a heat duct or air return or something similar. If you can, put a junction box somewhere on the second floor as well. Whatever the case, extend the conduit through to a junction box in the ceiling. Put several pull strings in alongside the existing cables.
Also, make sure you have a cable raceway on the ceiling in the basement (if you have one) so that if you finish the lower level you have a way to get cables through the ceiling.
Most home setups don't use the 10Mb/s to capacity, much less 100Mb/s. Can't see a good reason to even think about fiber yet.
But then, bridges have been around for centuries. How many bridges built in the first 30 years of bridge building were so reliable?
Of course, there are examples of early stone bridges standing for centuries. How old is your simple 4-function calculator? If it weren't neglected, would it still work?
I've developed enterprise class network software for about 7 years. Some of it has thousands of machines distributing files, some is messaging middleware. Some has dialup, frame relay, and sattelite networking.
In every case one thing is the same. Until you go live you cannot know exactly how it will behave. There is no way to simulate production behavior exactly in any test lab. Most often I at least had a single UNIX platform, not the screwed up Windows and PC arena to write for.
There's no way to test every motherboard, video, OS combination. At some point you have to decide that you've done enough, and that you'll resolve some percentage of what's left, and some you'll just have to punt on. It's unfortunate, but it's business. You have to know that what you're spending is going to pay off. I don't think support for Win95 is something I'd pay for.
Your idea of staying late earlier is silly. You can't fix things you don't know about, and I promise that not even weeks of additional testing will show you what's going to happen on release day.
These companies are in the business of writing massive software used by an incredibly huge user base. They deal with every different type of hardware and OS that M$ and the PC world puts out.
I know many of you are disappointed that one night or a week of your life wasn't as you expected. Many of you won't get to play until you upgrade some aspect of your system. Most of you will get over it and adapt. The others of you, well, Verant probably just doesn't care. And they dont' have to. They've got the other 99% of their customers to live off of. And 85% of those are probably happy.
Most slashdot readers are far from serious commercial developers. Most are simply over-opinionated hackers with too many of their own half-baked ideas to stump. I believe you do have a valid point, but not really one worth mentioning. Pet crusades generally aren't. It's like the blokes continually posting about the poor grammar or spelling in one's post. Valid but pointless.
You just answered the question. If you know it's DES, or even AES, you know something about how to break it, or at least the magnitude. The biggest threat to security is knowing what security steps were taken. The gov may not use anything more sophisticated, but just that it's not well known makes it better.
RJ45 jacks are just wires and connectors. Just put a RJ45 jack on one end of the sound cable from the source and one on the end of the speaker cables. Then plug it into the wall and make the right wiring closet connections. It wouldn't be a high-power solution though. CAT5 isn't very big cable. I have heard of people using CAT5 for speaker cable, though I don't know how or why.
The web fails as an information medium because people's most frequent questions when finding online information are "Where do I start?" and "Where do I go from here?"
As you might have learned once or more in any practical science or statistics class, Data is meaningless! For data to be useful it must be filtered and organized into information. The web has tons of data, but overall a very low percentage of it is usable information.
This is very evident in the overwhelming use of search portals -- Google, Yahoo, NorthernLignt, whatever. They put a very thin film of organization on web data. The sad fact is that the organization is hardly trustworthy.
Imagine all the books you've ever seen stacked in a warehouse. That's the web right now. The early idea was to organize web content using TLDs and meaningful URLs. You all know how successful that's been. The web needs meaningful, navigable data content organization.
Libraries have developed a marvelous content organization scheme. I can go to any library of any size, look in a master list for the topic call number, and then look at the numbers on the ends of the stacks and find any book in a matter of minutes. The only drawback is that a book may be in use, a drawback that the web will elminate. That very same numbering system should be immediately applicable to any web content. It's all there, folks. We just need to find a way to adapt it to online content.
This isn't a new problem. The libraries have done it for nearly a century now. Here's the queston. How do we implement it?
Slashdot Mirror
It's sad, but your comments point out how many of the interviewers out there are incompetent or unqualified for what they're doing. They do themselves and their firms a disservice. There certainly are those out there who discredit everything the applicant says. At the same time, your responses also point out the animosity many applicants have toward the interviewers.
Most of the time, if you're interviewing with the actual project or team lead, they need to have that position filled as badly as you need a job. They've got a deadline to meet or a problem to have solved yesterday.
What you as an applicant represent is a risk of unknown quantity and quality. You're a risk to the project, the team's overall success, and to that hiring manager's career. The resume and interview process is nothing more than measuring that risk and lowering the consequences of the choice.
As an applicant, that should be your object. Recognize the employer's risk and show that you can minimize it. Evaluate it objectively. Put your list of goods in the perspective of their risks and tell them how those items are going to reduce their exposure. When your list covers most of his risk, you get the job. But sadly, with most of the hiring people out there, they can't do the matching for you. That's what the interview is about.
I've been working in IT since '92. I've had seven jobs. Three have been contracts in the last two years. I've had only about a dozen interviews, and three of them I've told them, "I'm not your man." I start my eighth position when this contract ends in three weeks.
I think the key to my easy job hunting is recognizing the risk factor and objective analysis of my abilities. I'm not an ass-kisser or a bullsh*tter. I'm a 'WYSIWYG' kind of guy. I go for the jobs I think I can do and that I really want. When I get there I tell them why I can do it and how I'll go about it. And I do my homework on the company and the hiring manager before I get there, if I can.
I've posted below my last year's experience as a 10-year IT vet in the contracting market. I was laid off last spring and am now finishing an extended contract. I've got a verbal offer for my next job, so I'm one of the lucky.
I've interviewed for four positions in the last two weeks. Two were a Java and server side developer. One an infrastructure C/C++, CORBA developer. The one I got the offer from is for a Senior Business Analyist.
Each of the interviewers lamented that they had over 100 resumes to go through, and most of the people were kidding themselves. Some were dot-commers who had a year or two of client-side development and thought they made the web work. Others were java guys who thought they could solve real middleware problems inside a JVM.
Many though, and two of the managers had the same comment, had no real enterprise-class experience. They had experience, but not with working in a large-scale, diverse environment.
Skills only get you so far. So you're a certified Java developer, architech, or whatever. If all you've done is a notepad application you've not really seen much. If all you've done is one web site or a simple app it's not likely that you're going to manage on a business app with 300 tables averaging 25-100 million rows and 5000 users, all functioning in SEC, FDA, or FCC regulations.
That's why in the job market Oracle experience trumps MySQL. It's why Weblogic or Websphere trumps Apache and Tomcat. And it's why HP-UX and Solaris trump Linux (for now). Most often when you've worked with the big, expensive tools you've seen a project worth knowing about.
For those of you out there still looking, try to qualify your experience as well as quantify. Why is your four years of Java or web work worth talking about more than someone else's? What did your year and a half with a startup teach you, and why is that important to someone you're trying to get to hire you? Find that and make your resume tell it to whomever is looking at it.
Skills are easy to come by. Character, insight, and work habits that make a good team member are harder to find. If you've got it, flaunt it! If not, work on that burger flipping technique. They're checking all your references, and a lot that you may not know about.
What insight! What sagely wisdom! I certainly think should stop what you're doing and start your own career marketing firm!
Do you honestly think that a laid-off IT veteran has anything to do with PC techs? You who, with such insight, surely gasp at the $50 to insert a memory upgrade or $75 to install a CD-ROM at one of these chain stores? Do you want to replace those $8.75/hr guys with an $80k/yr IT pro? Get a grip.
Where do you think UNIX guys were 10-15 years ago? Windows guys were stomping all over them with job offers and dollars. VB guys were driving the Porches then. C/C++ guys were crying. Java wasn't even a wet dream then. Maybe those UNIX guys should have treated Windows as a discipline? Maybe they should have kept a M$ book or two under their pillow?
I know a lot more cocky pricks out of work right now than Windows guys. For your sake, I hope your job is secure.
I'm in the 10th year of my software development career. I've done large-scale custom middleware for most of that, and web architecture and development for the last two. Last spring I was laid off from my contracting position with a major employer, one of its first round of cuts. I was at least given two weeks of notice. I spent that two weeks calling people I knew, hitting all the local employment sites on the web, and stopping by to see what the big firms around had to offer. This was the start of the big down turn.
I was lucky at that time to move into another contract, and even fortunate enough to keep my $100k pay rate. This contract though was not in my core skill set, and I was not doing a good job at it. I used my networking skills to learn of another project at the firm that was having trouble and that needed my skills. I consulted on their floundering project a bit while I floundered on mine, and eventually got myself transferred. Now nearly a year later we're fielding a groundbreaking project that's going to have a big impact on a national pharmaceutical distribution firm.
Alas, that contract is done, and I'm being pushed into the market again, at still a worse time. I've seen this coming though, and I've spent the time to know the market. I know what people are making. I know that there are over 100 other contractors in my field applying for every job that I see. I know they're getting $15-20/hr less today than last year on bill rates. I know some of them have been out there for months.
That's why I've done the same calling, the same web searching, the same drive-by interviewing. I've done the planning for when I'm done here in three weeks and am a month from selling off the car and the house to downsize my own liabilities. I've spent the last couple of months making giant payments on other things to lower monthly outlay. I've started my wife looking for a job and daycare for the two-year-old boy.
And today, I've heard from old colleagues, I should hear that I'm being offered a position that is at once a career step up and a salary step down. From being a highly paid contractor I'm going back to corporate life as a senior business analyst, the guy who whips sales people back to reality and IT folks into a frenzy to keep sales people selling. It's what I want to do, but it's not going to pay me as well. And I'm goign to be working in a couple weeks, which is a good thing.
I've gotten that position by managing my career in the local IT environment. I keep in touch with old colleagues and managers. I read in the papers and keep up on the firms. I know their challenges and their objectives before I go in for the interview. I find out who the managers are and I learn who they've worked with, who they've promoted, and who they've canned. I know whose coat tails they're riding. I find out what technology the firm is using, and what technology battles are going on. If you can't find out which side of those your prospective manager is on, you've gotta find a comfortable spot on the fence and find out which way to lean when you can.
The bottom line is that Skills Are Not Enough! At least 75 of the 100 people applying for the job have the skills. Fifty are probably experts. To land the job you've got to offer more. You've got to show insight and planning. Today you've got to be an industry expert, not just a technology expert. You've got to show them that you're going to keep them from making the same mistakes that you made at your last job. Most of all, I think, you MUST make them believe that you're taking the job not because you're about to lose your car and your home, but because you want to be a part of that firm. You need to be part of the firm because that's what's going to make your career grow. And if that's the case, then you're fortunate. If you're up on the local scene you're more likely to find that.
You were reading a press article, not a journal article or even an abstract, and certainly not the lab books.
Such contentions as yours are common, and understandable. Still, if I were the author or the scientists involved, I would be at least disappointed, or at worst insulted, that you totally preclude the integrity of the research. Do you really think they're making wild, totally unsubstantiated claims? Those claims are their work, their careers.
I'm not saying that all claims are to be taken at face value. There are certainly hucksters out there who'll take you for what you're worth. But I think that considering the source, the research institution, and the real content of the article should at least prompt you to find more info before making any judgment of their presentation.
Latency is far more than just transit times. You have to add protocol handshaking, buffering, and I don't remember what else. I think just getting the connection established was 2.5 seconds. I worked for a company wanting to do intranet over satellite. We designed a multicast solution that looked like TCP on each end, but really used connectionless communication for transit. Problem there was that TCP is higher priority than UDP on those networks, and the UDP gets dumped easily if there is any threat to the connected sockets.
Hughes has had this type of device for at least 5 years. I worked for a major securities firm who used Hughes for its satellite networking. I wrote a lot of their network delivery system. We had a couple of 'fly-away' dishes that we used for disaster recovery. These items at the time had 512Mb/s uplink speed. You could set it up in a couple hours. We used one in Oklahoma after a huge snowstorm collapsed the branch building, and again in Flordia after some of the hurricanes.
We have. My consulting firm has a guarantee of service, and it's had to pay off a few times. When it appears that a consultant isn't making the grade the client comes to the firm and we try to resolve the issue. If we can't and it's determined that it's truly hurt the client then one of two things happens. Either we put someone in to fix the problem at our expense or we refund at least a good portion of the contract cost.
This kind of arrangement requires a lot of cooperation between client and consultant and the firm. It also requires a lot of communication. We've got to understand their real needs and their risks, and we've got to know our consultants. The client has to be honest about its position, and the consultant has to be honest about his understanding and capabilities. This level of service is what's made our firm and its consultants one of the most respected in our area, and what's allowed us to call for some of the highest rates as well.
I've been in the business for almost ten years now, the last several as a contractor with a firm. I'm considering going independent and have just done all the homework on this.
Before you start, consider your risks, the level of security you need, and then expand that assessment to the next five years.
I'm married with a young boy, so I can't imagine taking any extra risk. That has pushed me to start an S-Corporation and have an accountant manage the bills, payroll, taxes, etc. I figured out what it costs net for my family to live and had the accountant work backward from that to figure minimum bill rates. I had him figure in retirement and insurances, etc. It gives me a great picture of what it's going to take for me to be successful without question.
For an individual who's not married, no real responsibilities of home and health and all that, you might be money ahead to be a sole proprietorship and simply pay income tax. Save the accountant and attorney fees, invest what you want. Spend the rest.
I'd suggest having a qualified law firm handle the incorporation. If your charter isn't right and it gets challenged for some reason you'll have BIG headaches in tax court and who knows what else. Spend the $1500-$2000 to get it done right.
There's an organization called the Independent Computer Consultants Organization that can help with a lot of things, including contract drafts, etc. Membership isn't that bad, like $150-$200 for an individual or small firm.
Do the work up front. Surprises are always costly, and they generally leave your customer unwilling to do business again. And as an independent of any type, that's the biggest mistake to make. One bad customer can take a dozen with him if he's connected.
A valid point. Try a case filter. They're out there.
Or stop smoking. Keep the cats and dogs out of the computer room. Maybe move away from the salt mine next door that's kicking up all that dust.
What effort? Did the CPU manufacturers ask the researchers to come up with something new? Those researchers found an opportunity and are pursuing it.
With all the effor to keep floor clean, wouldn't you think they'd find a way to stop all that dust from hitting the ground rather than developing new vacuums or brooms? That problem has been around for centuries.
With all that effort to keep shoes on, wouldn't you think they'd develop something other than strings to keep them on? Think how much energy is wasted tying shoes every day! And then you have to do it several times for some shoes!
On a less flippant note, the people who design processors are engineers. They're professionals. Do you think they're lazy? Stupid? Ignorant? What do you think it is that makes them avoid the heat issue? I tend to think it's a difficult problem, and that there are other problems that are more important. If they could fix it simply they would. If it were of paramount importance they would get rid of the heat.
When heat is the problem keeping them from making a product that is useful and marketable they'll change it. Until then they focus on other things, and they make you buy a heat managment accessory.
What's so hard to understand about that?
I've been running the Tiger MP with dual Thunderbird 1Ghz/266 for about a month now.
I've got it set up with 512Mb registered DDR, twin WD 40Gb 7200RPM drives, cheapo AdvanSys SCSI-2 with 2 9Gb drives, NEC 16x burner, 52x CD-ROM. I've got a GForce2 GTS/32Mb as primary display and and Vodoo 4 PCI running a secondary monitor. Sound is a Creative SB Live value. I've also got a Hauppage TV tuner card in it. Network card is Intel Pro 10/100 board. I'm running RedHat 7.2 and Windows 2000 server on dual boot. I installed a 500w power supply to run all that.
So far it's been rock solid. Not a hitch. I've got two Thermaltake Volcano 5 coolers stuck on with Arctic Silver, plus two 80mm case fans. Temperature has not been a problem at all.
I'm not a gamer, so I can't say how it'll do with that. Mostly I built it cause I have a yearly hardware allowance to burn. It's sweet when you're burning and want to do other stuff as well.
Hopefully in ten years there won't be a kernel any longer. I'm hoping there aren't even PCs as we know them. The architecture isn't holding up. Surely in 30 years of PC evolution someone's going to come up with a better idea.
Being thread-safe doesn't really apply to an application. An application is either multi-threaded or not. Thread-safe applies to operations within an application. And thread-safe on one processor is the same as thread-safe on any number of processors. If it's got threading problems it's going to find them on one processor as well.
Commercialism generally only lasts until something new is there of which to be taken advantage. This is literature that's been around for generations. A few months of being shoved in the commercial spotlight isn't going to hurt it. It has history to stand on that's far deeper than the movie can affect.
As most connected home owners know, you can get cables about anywhere you need them, one way or another. And if you can't, most good electricians can. I've helped my dad, a licensed electrician, do some crazy stuff to get wires where they need to go.
If you're building a house, put in a wiring closet. Wire all your phone, cableTV, network, and home-theater connections into that location. You can get some fine management stations at most home centers. Make it in a central position in the lower level, and make sure there's a way to get wiring to second floors if necessary. One good way to do that is to put a 3" conduit next to a heat duct or air return or something similar. If you can, put a junction box somewhere on the second floor as well. Whatever the case, extend the conduit through to a junction box in the ceiling. Put several pull strings in alongside the existing cables.
Also, make sure you have a cable raceway on the ceiling in the basement (if you have one) so that if you finish the lower level you have a way to get cables through the ceiling.
Most home setups don't use the 10Mb/s to capacity, much less 100Mb/s. Can't see a good reason to even think about fiber yet.
Software Engineering is a myth.
But then, bridges have been around for centuries. How many bridges built in the first 30 years of bridge building were so reliable?
Of course, there are examples of early stone bridges standing for centuries. How old is your simple 4-function calculator? If it weren't neglected, would it still work?
I've developed enterprise class network software for about 7 years. Some of it has thousands of machines distributing files, some is messaging middleware. Some has dialup, frame relay, and sattelite networking.
In every case one thing is the same. Until you go live you cannot know exactly how it will behave. There is no way to simulate production behavior exactly in any test lab. Most often I at least had a single UNIX platform, not the screwed up Windows and PC arena to write for.
There's no way to test every motherboard, video, OS combination. At some point you have to decide that you've done enough, and that you'll resolve some percentage of what's left, and some you'll just have to punt on. It's unfortunate, but it's business. You have to know that what you're spending is going to pay off. I don't think support for Win95 is something I'd pay for.
Your idea of staying late earlier is silly. You can't fix things you don't know about, and I promise that not even weeks of additional testing will show you what's going to happen on release day.
These companies are in the business of writing massive software used by an incredibly huge user base. They deal with every different type of hardware and OS that M$ and the PC world puts out.
I know many of you are disappointed that one night or a week of your life wasn't as you expected. Many of you won't get to play until you upgrade some aspect of your system. Most of you will get over it and adapt. The others of you, well, Verant probably just doesn't care. And they dont' have to. They've got the other 99% of their customers to live off of. And 85% of those are probably happy.
Better yet . . . FREE BEER!
Your name isn't very specific. I'd think it meant Power IN the Future. Perhaps it's not ready for prime time yet?
Most slashdot readers are far from serious commercial developers. Most are simply over-opinionated hackers with too many of their own half-baked ideas to stump. I believe you do have a valid point, but not really one worth mentioning. Pet crusades generally aren't. It's like the blokes continually posting about the poor grammar or spelling in one's post. Valid but pointless.
And Windows is a serious name? It does make a serious statement about the security level, I guess.
I guess your name is probably Barney Fife. I think you take yourself seriously while everyone else probably laughs at you.
You just answered the question. If you know it's DES, or even AES, you know something about how to break it, or at least the magnitude. The biggest threat to security is knowing what security steps were taken. The gov may not use anything more sophisticated, but just that it's not well known makes it better.
RJ45 jacks are just wires and connectors. Just put a RJ45 jack on one end of the sound cable from the source and one on the end of the speaker cables. Then plug it into the wall and make the right wiring closet connections. It wouldn't be a high-power solution though. CAT5 isn't very big cable. I have heard of people using CAT5 for speaker cable, though I don't know how or why.
The web fails as an information medium because people's most frequent questions when finding online information are "Where do I start?" and "Where do I go from here?"
As you might have learned once or more in any practical science or statistics class, Data is meaningless! For data to be useful it must be filtered and organized into information. The web has tons of data, but overall a very low percentage of it is usable information.
This is very evident in the overwhelming use of search portals -- Google, Yahoo, NorthernLignt, whatever. They put a very thin film of organization on web data. The sad fact is that the organization is hardly trustworthy.
Imagine all the books you've ever seen stacked in a warehouse. That's the web right now. The early idea was to organize web content using TLDs and meaningful URLs. You all know how successful that's been. The web needs meaningful, navigable data content organization.
Libraries have developed a marvelous content organization scheme. I can go to any library of any size, look in a master list for the topic call number, and then look at the numbers on the ends of the stacks and find any book in a matter of minutes. The only drawback is that a book may be in use, a drawback that the web will elminate. That very same numbering system should be immediately applicable to any web content. It's all there, folks. We just need to find a way to adapt it to online content.
This isn't a new problem. The libraries have done it for nearly a century now. Here's the queston. How do we implement it?