Or, there's the opposite point of view. Make friends with people all over the place you work. I've done this and it works great.
Where I used to work, my boss was my friend (we became friends before he was my boss) and the sysadmin was my friend. This meant a really pleasant working environment. A boss who is wiling to listen to reason and even the occasional excuse, but one who knows I'm not trying to screw him over. A sysadmin who is willing to listen when I say "I think the network is screwy". I hung out with both these guys after work and on weekends, and it never caused problems.
At the place I work now, there are 3 team leaders, and I'm good friends with the other two. We've been there the longest and get along really well. It's really convenient to be able to present a united front to management, to back eachother up, and to have someone to talk to when someone on your team is a real problem.
I think your first two rules (never trust anyone at work, never make friends with people at work) are ways to make your job unpleasant. Who's more likely to stab you in the back, a friend or an "associate"?
I think your third rule makes good sense, however. It's great (for you and the other person) while things work out, although it may bother, annoy, or sicken other people at work. But if ever you break up, you have to see your ex every day, perhaps flirting with other co-workers, etc.
Stupid slashdot lameness filter. Shouldn't a geek site support a means of posting source code??
Gee, you mean like being able to generate an app that causes a BSOD using a java-like syntax?
All kidding aside, there are some cool ideas in the language. Support for enumeration is one. Currently most enum-type things in Java are done with integers, and so you have to do bounds checking whenever you get a value. The foreach operator is another nice one. It's a minor change, but it makes certain loops much quicker to write and much more readable. I also like operator overloading. It has never seemed right that in Java "+" concatenates strings, which are objects, but they're the only special object in the system. I admit that in C++ doing operator overloading properly can be hard, but it's a really convenient OO feature.
The C# way of multiple interface implementation seems like it could be good, but will mostly just cause programmer errors.
public interface ITeller
{
void Next ();
}
public interface IIterator
{
void Next ();
}
public class Clark : ITeller, IIterator
{
void ITeller.Next () {
}
void IIterator.Next () {
}
}
To me that just looks like a bug waiting to happen. Under occasional circumstances it means you can do something you couldn't otherwise do, but this just looks dangerous to me.
Mostly though I look at C# and say to myself: "Shouldn't a language that was designed years after Java be better than Java?". Java got rid of the preprocessor. This is a good thing, C# brings it back. That's a bad thing. (I know, conditional compilation is nice, but don't do it with a preprocessor, ick!) And what about reflection and dynamic class loading? Those are some sweet features, especially in a networked language, but in C# they're missing/gutted.
And then there's just wierd-ass syntax pollution:
[AuthorAttribute ("Ben Albahari")]
class A
{
[Localizable(true)]
public String Text {
get {return text;
} ...
}
}
I can accept the strange getter/setter method, though I think it's dumb. It's just vb-like, with a strange and confusing mix of methods, functions and subroutines. But what's with that array-like crap? Btw, that's also how synchronized methods are declared.
I wonder if Sun would ever agree to put some of the nice features into Java, or if the language is essentially frozen, and they're going to work on the APIs.
Btw, the MSXML parser? It's certainly MS, and certainly not XML.
It might be a better idea to support research into strong encryption, good protocols, etc. Maybe. But this is a pretty good idea. Think of all the boneheaded things they could have done instead: outlawed tools that could potentially break encryption. Outlawed computers that don't pass a "security audit" which required that all security-related source code be closed (effectively killing off Linux). Or worse still, done nothing and left sensitive government data floating around on the Internet, weakly encrypted.
This isn't a half-bad idea. A private network is still of course vulnerable, but it's like putting a fence around your property. People might still end up on your property, but they'd have a lot harder time explaining why they're there, rather than just "uh, I just got lost".
Or Canadian? Remember us? The big country to the north of you? The really big one? We use the dollar sign too, and we have provinces, not states. Sure, we spell things strangely but we're not that bad...
Actually, more than just complaining about it. When doing a tight roll pilots would press against the stick with all their might. I've heard that observers could actually see the planes twitch in a regular beat in response to the heartbeat in the hand of the pilot flying the plane, presumably because they were pressing so hard.
What would people consider a good, cheap laptop, and where would you get it?
My guess for minimal requirements would be:
1024x768 screen (maybe more? I've never owned a laptop so I don't know what's too hard to read
8 GB+ hard drive (I can store most stuff on a server, but I figure I want at least that much for mobility, sound reasonable?)
10 MB Ethernet access as a minimum, wireless as an option (I'm guessing both of these can be handled by PCMCIA cards, is there a reason to go for builtin?)
Durable case (If I got a laptop it would travel in a bike courier bag sometimes, a duffel bag other times -- it would need to be somewhat durable)
It would have to be able to run Linux (RedHat with KDE ideally)
Relatively light -- I bike to/from work so the lighter the better
... Am I missing anything?
I could imagine using this machine to write code, but probably generally not to build major projects. The speed of the CPU wouldn't be a major issue, and as long as there was a decent amount of memory, (say 128 MB) that would be ok.
Would an Apple iBook be an option? I like the concept of OSX, and I hear X.1 is reasonably fast, but would it be on an iBook? Are they really durable or do they just look like it because of the titanium shell? Do PPC linux distros run on that hardware? Is it any less open than a typical PC-type laptop?
As for where to get it, I wouldn't mind getting a used laptop, I'm not looking for cutting-edge, state of the art. Is there anything to look out for in buying a used laptop? Is it reasonably easy to find good used laptops? How about good used Apple laptops?
Uh, someone obviously doesn't know anything about archeology. After you get your PhD in Archeology, you become a professor. After you become a professor you have to go on all kinds of adventures recovering lost artifacts from all the corners of the earth. Haven't you ever seen Indiana Jones or Relic Hunter? I personally am satisfied with my job as a computer programmer (if you wonder what that is, see such informative films as Hackers and Swordfish)
Microsoft is a huge commercial company that wants external developers to use its OS and write applications for it. They can actually afford to pay people a salary to document. The fact they sell MSDN subscriptions (and they're damn expensive) just emphasizes this.
If you don't understand a Linux interface, you can look at the source code. MS has to document their interfaces, because without the documentation the programmer knows nothing about the system!
If there were a big enough developer community for Linux that could afford to pay for documentation, I'm sure you'd see a LDN too. I actually think it would pay for a company like RedHat to create something like this. They already have the Red Hat Network, but that's geared towards System Administrators. They should create a developer program too. Or maybe O'Reilly should do it. They're the unnofficial documenter of Open Source software already.
I have some doubts it will work, but I say go for it. Get your parents, kids, friends, bosses and enemies to go for it too.
Since the world is so worried about economic downturns and job losses right now, try to focus on how just slapping MS on the wrist is horrible for the economy.
Microsoft has maintained a 25% to 40% profit margin because of their illegal activities. They could easily afford a hefty fine. This fine could help stimulate the economy.
No punitive measures have been used, despite their being found guilty of a crime. This is just wrong.
Most restrictions on their behaviour restrict activities that are already illegal.
If MS were not a monopoly, there would be competition. Competition normally means new jobs and benefits the consumer as well.
Other suggestions are welcome. Also, thank your state for not caving. And if your state isn't involved, get them involved.
Actually I looked into this yesterday and posted
a comment about it. MS isn't the most profitable company in the world (as in, the one making the most profits in pure dollars). They're not the one with the biggest revenues, and they have relatively few assets. But I'm sure they have the largest profit margin of any company of a comparable size, in June 2000 their pre-tax profit margin was 60%!!
Huh??? Were most people's parents rich lawyers who created a trust fund for them, negotiated licencing deals with IBM for their software, etc? Uh, Bill Gates is much richer than his parents, but his parents were much richer than my parents, and much richer than the average American too.
Depends on what you mean by harm. If a bully demands your lunch money every day for "protection" and you always pay, and are never attacked -- where's the harm?
If you can build a substantial case for how consumers have benefited from Microsoft's monopoly, I'd like to see it. What benefits could consumers have received? It's not like the price of Windows has gone down, or you've received a "good deal" on software from Microsoft.
The main damage I see to consumers is in the lack of alternatives to MS software. If they want a stable, user-friendly, consumer OS that runs on PC hardware, what choices do they have? If they want a word processor that produces decent HTML, what can they use? This is all due to having to use mediocre MS software. This is a direct result of the MS monopoly, and of their illegal tactics used to maintain that monopoly.
I agree the penalty should fit the crime. Since the crime that they have been found guilty of committing is "violating anti-trust laws", a.k.a. illegally maintaining their monopoly, they should lose the ability to do these illegal things. In other words, they should lose their monopoly. A fair settlement would be 100% disclosure on Windows APIs, limited source code releases (with no restrictions), and the breaking of their illegal deals with PC manufacturers.
Actually something somewhat similar has happened. I was thinking of the "Easter Egg" in Maxis' "SimCopter". I remember hearing a lot of people rushed out to buy the game (otherwise not a huge success) to see this easter egg.
Unfortuantely, where I've been buying my CD-RWs is Canada, and the last time I bought some (months ago) they were $1.50 CDN each, and that was a good deal.
As for consumer electronics, I meant devices like the "Philipes CD-Recorder" which won't work with the cheap CD-RWs, only the expensive, highly-taxed versions.
Of course we know that. The problem is that "the Law" is not a place for "things that make sense". Consider writeable CDs. Some are dirt cheap, $1 each or so. Others are $10 or more. The difference, a few bits on the CD itself? The $10 kind are the only kind that work in consumer electronics and are designed for copying music. This makes two CDs that are physically essentially identical into two different products that are taxed and priced differently.
The problem is what to do about mixed media. A DVD that contains "pc-friendly" (ha) software is a movie with software on it. What about music CDs that have some fun "interact with the band" software goodies on them? It might be sold in a music store next to music cds, but is it "music", is it more "music" than "software"? Finally, what if one of these cds was originally intended as a mainly music item, but the software happens to be so cool that people buy it just for the software and ignore the music entirely.
Basically, even though Microsoft has approx 1/10th the revenues of each of the top 3 corporations in the world (the others are Wal-Mart and GM) it has approx half the profits they do.
In June 2000 Microsoft's pre tax profit margin was 60.2%. After taxes it was 41.0%. Seeing as Bill Gates owns 13.3% of Microsoft, every dollar spent on a Microsoft Product -- actually let's make it every $100 because $1 won't buy anything MS sells. For every $100 you spend on a MS product, Bill Gates gets on average $5.33.
There are sites that try to
try to put is wealth in perspective. This is the google cached version (don't wanna melt the poor guy's server) but it's pretty much up to date.
Well obviously they should choose some paragons of industry. Perhaps people off the Forbes top 10 list. Self-made people who understand the computer business. People like say Bill Gates,
Steve Ballmer and Paul Allen.
Seriously. As far as I know the "findings of law" from Judge Jackson's part of this affair still hold up. That basically means that the defendant has been found guilty of criminal actions, and put on some kind of probation, but if he/she violates that probation, the probation will continue longer.
OJ may have the title for "most obvious perversion of justice by a single man", but I think MS just got it for perversion by a corporation.
If I ever get found guilty of a crime I'll have to suggest this one to the judge. "Your Honour, I'll agree to do 5 years of community service, but if I decide not to do that community service, I agree you can pretend I'm doing it for 2 years longer. Sound good?"
Slashdot Mirror
Or, there's the opposite point of view. Make friends with people all over the place you work. I've done this and it works great.
Where I used to work, my boss was my friend (we became friends before he was my boss) and the sysadmin was my friend. This meant a really pleasant working environment. A boss who is wiling to listen to reason and even the occasional excuse, but one who knows I'm not trying to screw him over. A sysadmin who is willing to listen when I say "I think the network is screwy". I hung out with both these guys after work and on weekends, and it never caused problems.
At the place I work now, there are 3 team leaders, and I'm good friends with the other two. We've been there the longest and get along really well. It's really convenient to be able to present a united front to management, to back eachother up, and to have someone to talk to when someone on your team is a real problem.
I think your first two rules (never trust anyone at work, never make friends with people at work) are ways to make your job unpleasant. Who's more likely to stab you in the back, a friend or an "associate"?
I think your third rule makes good sense, however. It's great (for you and the other person) while things work out, although it may bother, annoy, or sicken other people at work. But if ever you break up, you have to see your ex every day, perhaps flirting with other co-workers, etc.
Stupid slashdot lameness filter. Shouldn't a geek site support a means of posting source code??
Gee, you mean like being able to generate an app that causes a BSOD using a java-like syntax?
All kidding aside, there are some cool ideas in the language. Support for enumeration is one. Currently most enum-type things in Java are done with integers, and so you have to do bounds checking whenever you get a value. The foreach operator is another nice one. It's a minor change, but it makes certain loops much quicker to write and much more readable. I also like operator overloading. It has never seemed right that in Java "+" concatenates strings, which are objects, but they're the only special object in the system. I admit that in C++ doing operator overloading properly can be hard, but it's a really convenient OO feature.
The C# way of multiple interface implementation seems like it could be good, but will mostly just cause programmer errors.
public interface ITeller
{
void Next ();
}
public interface IIterator
{
void Next ();
}
public class Clark : ITeller, IIterator
{
void ITeller.Next () {
}
void IIterator.Next () {
}
}
To me that just looks like a bug waiting to happen. Under occasional circumstances it means you can do something you couldn't otherwise do, but this just looks dangerous to me.
Mostly though I look at C# and say to myself: "Shouldn't a language that was designed years after Java be better than Java?". Java got rid of the preprocessor. This is a good thing, C# brings it back. That's a bad thing. (I know, conditional compilation is nice, but don't do it with a preprocessor, ick!) And what about reflection and dynamic class loading? Those are some sweet features, especially in a networked language, but in C# they're missing/gutted.
And then there's just wierd-ass syntax pollution:
[AuthorAttribute ("Ben Albahari")]
...
class A
{
[Localizable(true)]
public String Text {
get {return text;
}
}
}
I can accept the strange getter/setter method, though I think it's dumb. It's just vb-like, with a strange and confusing mix of methods, functions and subroutines. But what's with that array-like crap? Btw, that's also how synchronized methods are declared.
I wonder if Sun would ever agree to put some of the nice features into Java, or if the language is essentially frozen, and they're going to work on the APIs.
Btw, the MSXML parser? It's certainly MS, and certainly not XML.
It might be a better idea to support research into strong encryption, good protocols, etc. Maybe. But this is a pretty good idea. Think of all the boneheaded things they could have done instead: outlawed tools that could potentially break encryption. Outlawed computers that don't pass a "security audit" which required that all security-related source code be closed (effectively killing off Linux). Or worse still, done nothing and left sensitive government data floating around on the Internet, weakly encrypted.
This isn't a half-bad idea. A private network is still of course vulnerable, but it's like putting a fence around your property. People might still end up on your property, but they'd have a lot harder time explaining why they're there, rather than just "uh, I just got lost".
Or Canadian? Remember us? The big country to the north of you? The really big one? We use the dollar sign too, and we have provinces, not states. Sure, we spell things strangely but we're not that bad...
Actually, more than just complaining about it. When doing a tight roll pilots would press against the stick with all their might. I've heard that observers could actually see the planes twitch in a regular beat in response to the heartbeat in the hand of the pilot flying the plane, presumably because they were pressing so hard.
What would people consider a good, cheap laptop, and where would you get it?
My guess for minimal requirements would be:
I could imagine using this machine to write code, but probably generally not to build major projects. The speed of the CPU wouldn't be a major issue, and as long as there was a decent amount of memory, (say 128 MB) that would be ok.
Would an Apple iBook be an option? I like the concept of OSX, and I hear X.1 is reasonably fast, but would it be on an iBook? Are they really durable or do they just look like it because of the titanium shell? Do PPC linux distros run on that hardware? Is it any less open than a typical PC-type laptop?
As for where to get it, I wouldn't mind getting a used laptop, I'm not looking for cutting-edge, state of the art. Is there anything to look out for in buying a used laptop? Is it reasonably easy to find good used laptops? How about good used Apple laptops?
Good gawd! Just what I need, another 2 keys on my keyboard, cuz you know that most people would never ever be able to enter a ® symbol any other way.
Uh, someone obviously doesn't know anything about archeology. After you get your PhD in Archeology, you become a professor. After you become a professor you have to go on all kinds of adventures recovering lost artifacts from all the corners of the earth. Haven't you ever seen Indiana Jones or Relic Hunter? I personally am satisfied with my job as a computer programmer (if you wonder what that is, see such informative films as Hackers and Swordfish)
Er, CR-Rs is what I meant. Brain freeze.
There is no competition, MS is a monopoly. Microsoft produces no high-quality software, only mediocre software.
"Poppycock" huh?
Microsoft is a huge commercial company that wants external developers to use its OS and write applications for it. They can actually afford to pay people a salary to document. The fact they sell MSDN subscriptions (and they're damn expensive) just emphasizes this.
If you don't understand a Linux interface, you can look at the source code. MS has to document their interfaces, because without the documentation the programmer knows nothing about the system!
If there were a big enough developer community for Linux that could afford to pay for documentation, I'm sure you'd see a LDN too. I actually think it would pay for a company like RedHat to create something like this. They already have the Red Hat Network, but that's geared towards System Administrators. They should create a developer program too. Or maybe O'Reilly should do it. They're the unnofficial documenter of Open Source software already.
I have some doubts it will work, but I say go for it. Get your parents, kids, friends, bosses and enemies to go for it too.
Since the world is so worried about economic downturns and job losses right now, try to focus on how just slapping MS on the wrist is horrible for the economy.
Other suggestions are welcome. Also, thank your state for not caving. And if your state isn't involved, get them involved.
Actually I looked into this yesterday and posted a comment about it. MS isn't the most profitable company in the world (as in, the one making the most profits in pure dollars). They're not the one with the biggest revenues, and they have relatively few assets. But I'm sure they have the largest profit margin of any company of a comparable size, in June 2000 their pre-tax profit margin was 60%!!
Huh??? Were most people's parents rich lawyers who created a trust fund for them, negotiated licencing deals with IBM for their software, etc? Uh, Bill Gates is much richer than his parents, but his parents were much richer than my parents, and much richer than the average American too.
Depends on what you mean by harm. If a bully demands your lunch money every day for "protection" and you always pay, and are never attacked -- where's the harm?
If you can build a substantial case for how consumers have benefited from Microsoft's monopoly, I'd like to see it. What benefits could consumers have received? It's not like the price of Windows has gone down, or you've received a "good deal" on software from Microsoft.
The main damage I see to consumers is in the lack of alternatives to MS software. If they want a stable, user-friendly, consumer OS that runs on PC hardware, what choices do they have? If they want a word processor that produces decent HTML, what can they use? This is all due to having to use mediocre MS software. This is a direct result of the MS monopoly, and of their illegal tactics used to maintain that monopoly.
I agree the penalty should fit the crime. Since the crime that they have been found guilty of committing is "violating anti-trust laws", a.k.a. illegally maintaining their monopoly, they should lose the ability to do these illegal things. In other words, they should lose their monopoly. A fair settlement would be 100% disclosure on Windows APIs, limited source code releases (with no restrictions), and the breaking of their illegal deals with PC manufacturers.
Yup. Unfortunately these days it is.
Actually something somewhat similar has happened. I was thinking of the "Easter Egg" in Maxis' "SimCopter". I remember hearing a lot of people rushed out to buy the game (otherwise not a huge success) to see this easter egg.
Unfortuantely, where I've been buying my CD-RWs is Canada, and the last time I bought some (months ago) they were $1.50 CDN each, and that was a good deal.
As for consumer electronics, I meant devices like the "Philipes CD-Recorder" which won't work with the cheap CD-RWs, only the expensive, highly-taxed versions.
What I meant was the "Philips CD-Recorder" and such things. Non-PC based CD writers. They don't accept PC format blank CDs, only the expensive kind.
Of course we know that. The problem is that "the Law" is not a place for "things that make sense". Consider writeable CDs. Some are dirt cheap, $1 each or so. Others are $10 or more. The difference, a few bits on the CD itself? The $10 kind are the only kind that work in consumer electronics and are designed for copying music. This makes two CDs that are physically essentially identical into two different products that are taxed and priced differently.
The problem is what to do about mixed media. A DVD that contains "pc-friendly" (ha) software is a movie with software on it. What about music CDs that have some fun "interact with the band" software goodies on them? It might be sold in a music store next to music cds, but is it "music", is it more "music" than "software"? Finally, what if one of these cds was originally intended as a mainly music item, but the software happens to be so cool that people buy it just for the software and ignore the music entirely.
I posted this to the MS story. It's a bit about how huge MS is.
Some random financial facts about Microsoft, compared against the biggest company in the world (by revenue) Exxon Mobil. Scary Stuff:
Basically, even though Microsoft has approx 1/10th the revenues of each of the top 3 corporations in the world (the others are Wal-Mart and GM) it has approx half the profits they do.
In June 2000 Microsoft's pre tax profit margin was 60.2%. After taxes it was 41.0%. Seeing as Bill Gates owns 13.3% of Microsoft, every dollar spent on a Microsoft Product -- actually let's make it every $100 because $1 won't buy anything MS sells. For every $100 you spend on a MS product, Bill Gates gets on average $5.33.
There are sites that try to try to put is wealth in perspective. This is the google cached version (don't wanna melt the poor guy's server) but it's pretty much up to date.
Actually they're nowhere near the richest company in the world. They're number 201 on the fortune 500 list.
With revenues of only $22,956 million a year, they're a tenth the size of Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart or GM. The top 3 on the list.
Well obviously they should choose some paragons of industry. Perhaps people off the Forbes top 10 list. Self-made people who understand the computer business. People like say Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Paul Allen.
Seriously. As far as I know the "findings of law" from Judge Jackson's part of this affair still hold up. That basically means that the defendant has been found guilty of criminal actions, and put on some kind of probation, but if he/she violates that probation, the probation will continue longer.
OJ may have the title for "most obvious perversion of justice by a single man", but I think MS just got it for perversion by a corporation.
If I ever get found guilty of a crime I'll have to suggest this one to the judge. "Your Honour, I'll agree to do 5 years of community service, but if I decide not to do that community service, I agree you can pretend I'm doing it for 2 years longer. Sound good?"