My local dr's office recently upgraded
on
Digital Doctoring
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· Score: 4
To a new everything, so that now there is a complete PC (Windows) in every office that brings up your history, the works...and even sends prescriptions over to the pharmacy for pickup. Of course, when they implemented it at first there were tremendous problems (like 3 hour lines for drugs) but they seem to have worked it out now. I'm just afraid that I'm going to go in there for something serious one day and his machine is going to crash in the middle of something important, thus giving Blue Screen of Death a whole new meaning. (Ok, I bet I'm not the first one to say that.:))
But seriously, is a simple solution to simply get n- of the machines you already had? You didn't go from 12 to 120 people, you went to 19. Get another machine. Put it on the other side of the floor or something.
My company was free coffee, but it is up on the 13th floor (6 floors and an elevator change above us) in the cafeteria, which has limited hours. Most people go downstairs to the lobby where they have to pay in order to get the good stuff. The people on the floor would prefer cheap soda (or tonic, for those of us in New England).
I work for a big mutual fund company. I make a good salary, but there's no stock options, and no ping pong table. Since I'm a hiring manager I regularly have to compete with the dotcoms to get some talent in here. (And I've lost some that was already in here, too.)
My question is, how many times will you let yourself get screwed, while searching for the pot of gold? You don't get no stock options if you get fired in 6 months (or if the company tanks in 3 months). Repeat as necessary. But my company has never failed to meet my payroll.
Is it all about the pot of gold? Is that why people put themselves through it? Can everybody working at a dot com right now actually *believe* in the mission of that company? Hell, some of them don't even have a mission. Many are pretty blatant about saying stuff like "Hang out and make a presence of ourselves for a year, and then get bought out." Everybody agrees that the work is hell, you're treated like crap, and you'll be lucky to ever see your stock options mature. So why do it?
My favorite was when one of our engineers left because "a buddy of his" (Joe Random Guy he knew at college) was creating a startup. What was their planned revenue stream? Didn't have one. what was the technology? NT boxen (this guy hated NT). Was there even a product? Not that he could explain to us -- something about enabling other people's web sites yadda yadda. Was he at least going as an officer or something? Nope, just a senior engineer. In other words, there was no reason at all for him to go except for the promise of some money (this was one of the ones whose plan was to simply exist until someone bought them). Within a month he was contacting other people at the company and trying to get them to join him. Within two months he was gone from that company and had joined another dot com. Of course, the new dotcom he joined was something called Akamai, so he's doing ok.:)
Wow, you know, I totally missed the part that said "open source developers", I thought you were talking about people that worked for you. So, most of my comments don't really apply. Sorry about that!!
Some things that have worked for me in the past, in varying degrees:
Hearing the president of the company mention me, by name, during his state-of-the-company speech.
Letting me get published. Many companies don't the engineers do things like this, but it's a great way to be recognized in your industry.
Letting me speak at conferences. Another big recognition factor.
Letting my name show up in the press. The most hated PHB in my company right now is the guy who, while he was here, instituted the "My name and my name only shows up in the press releases" rule. He once even referred to me as "The Wiz" in an interview rather than say my name. UG.
Random bonuses. It's always nice to just get a big wad of cash, especially when it's not on a fixed company schedule. It says "You're so appreciated that we're breaking the rules."
On that same note, anything that feels like "Well yes, we have rules, but we're breaking them for you."
Things that don't work:
Embarrassing displays. At the christmas party don't have an awards ceremony and make your best engineers stand up in front of all their coworkers. No better way to say "Hey, you people sitting down, you're not doing a very good job!"
It was one thing for the president to mention my name -- most of the hundreds of people listening probably don't even know me -- but if he'd called me up on stage or something that would have sucked.
Anything that blatantly mucks with team morale. While walking over to a team outing and crossing the street, a VP once yelled "Ok, everybody form a circle around Duane in case a car comes!" That's charming -- telling people that they have value as human shields. Not too funny. I don't know if any of the other guys cared, but it made me feel lousy.
Non-perk perks. "Have a PalmV with Omnisky!" doesn't really work if it's just a loaner, and worse if you have to sign up for the service yourself and then request a reimbursement check every month.
You can rent a movie to see if you like it. If you do, and want to see it again, you can choose to buy it.
We have that now, it's called the library. But people apparently don't want to use them anymore? People's complaint really seems to be "I demanded that you make it as easy as possible for me to buy things (hence the One-Click idea), now I'm demanding that you make it equally easier for me to fix it when I make a mistake by buying something that I didn't really want." The only thing that's really wrong with the library these days is that people don't want to get up and go get things, they want them delivered to their door. Yet when Circuit City came up with DivX, which supposedly was going to make it easy for you to "return" a video (i.e. by just throwing it away), it got stomped mercilessly.
So we've got authors who want to get paid for their work. And we've got readers who don't want to get stuck with paying for a book they didn't like. Perhaps the best solution would be for Amazon to invent (and patent, of course:)) some sort of library mechanism where you could rent a book? What would people think of that?
I think that a key issue with open source anything is that you're starting with the assumption that the audience knows such a thing exists even though there is no store they can walk into, no package they can hold in their hands. It's true for software right now, which is probably one reason my dad doesn't run open source software -- he'd simply have no idea where to begin looking.
I expect that a similar problem would occur with textbooks. Since it would cost money to print them, I assume that your open source books would be online/downloadable in some sort of format. Where? Will a school be able to designate a single site where they can tell students "Ok, go here and download all your books?" or will all teachers have their own personal favorites, sending students all around the net looking? What happens to the student that runs Linux who needs to hit a site that only runs on Windows/IE in order to get a book? What will the standard be that determines which open source projects are acceptible classroom material? I would expect that in at least some instances books need to have some sort of certification or seal of approval before teachers bring them into the classroom.
Will you need DOC files for history, PDF for sociology and RB (Rocket eBook) for calculus? A recent slashdot article asked about the frightening prospect of having a standard (such as DOC) that could outlive the software that it's dependent upon, but if you gave teachers their way you're likely to find that DOC is what they'd prefer to use. Remember these are writers, not net geeks. (The time I tried to send in a magazine article in Wordperfect format because I'd written it on Linux, I got screamed at by my editor. It was a Linux article!)
And can you imagine the traffic jam when the vast majority of your freshman class all tries to print out all of their textbooks on the network printer simultaneously?
Wow. Hostile. I never said half the things you accuse me of. The original post started by saying that he can pursue degree A or B for what looks like the same pay, ultimately. This is what I was addressing. I pointed out that you should start by figuring out what it is you love, and then do that, and that if you are *just* doing CS because of the money, then please get out and let those of us that are doing it because we love it have the jobs. No where did I say that making money was a bad thing. I like the fact that I make money. But it's a coincidence. I am one of the lucky ones that can make money doing what I would naturally have done anyway.
I'm sorry that your college experience was ridiculously easy. All that says to me is that you went to the wrong school. That's not the fault of school in general, some are just better than others. I don't know your situation at all, so I have no idea if you could have transferred elsewhere upon realizing that it was too easy for you, but I assume you didn't do that.
Sorry you felt insulted, that wasn't the intent. Apparently you've never actually seen me insult somebody, I tend to make it fairly obvious.
Things like this (and helix-update, another neat toy) are vital if we ever expect to get Joe User working with Linux. I bang my head against the screen every time someone says "Package? Why don't you just compile the source?" Say it with me...the majority of the population are not programmers....if you make an OS that is only for programmers, then you will never get market share...
Besides, anybody who says that compiling their own source automatically makes them better understand their machine must not ever execute those "make install" scripts. If an automated process puts 100 files across 12 directories on your machine, and you tell me you can keep track of them all in your head for 100 software packages, I don't believe you.
It's the announcement in the first place. If you say a year in advance "It'll be out in December", then it's your own damn fault if you miss it. If you don't want people to yell at you and call you vapor for not living up to what you said, shut up about it. No matter how many godpoints Linus has, if he doesn't want to be held responsible for his predictions, then all he needs to do is stop making them.
If you're born to hack, then follow the path that seems best to you. I don't know many true hackers that like taking the easy way out. If you were planning a CS degree just because you think that's where the money is, do all the real CS's out there a favor and go take up archaeology or something.
If your goal is to educate yourself the way you think best by taking whatever path is open to you, then who cares what they call it? Let them call it whatever they want. I was told from the time I was about 10 years old that I'd "go to school for computers". Sure enough, I did. Of course, I also invented a new major (combining sociology and computers) along the way. The simple fact is that I care what I learned, not what they call it. I explain it to people in terms that make sense to me, I don't just say "Oh, I have a CS/SST degree" and let them lump me in with everybody else who has those initials. Many's the time I got into arguments with my "classmates" over the appropriate courses to take. "It's spring semester of our sophomore year, who do you have for database 101?" Well, I'm not taking that course. "What? All sophomore CS's take database 101 during spring semester! What did you take instead?" Shakespearean Tragedy. "WHAT? What kind of freak are you?"
The argument about whether true hackers need to get a college degree at all is a popular debate. Personally, I think they do. Not because it proves anything about their skills, but because among other things it proves responsibility, that you can start something and finish it because you see the longterm benefit even if you don't like it. But along your path to that degree, do whatever you please. Fill up your time with everything you can get your hands on. I used to cruise the bookstore at the start of each semester and buy books from classes I wasn't taking, because they looked interesting. Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut was the book that made me take up a sociology major. You never know what you'll find of value. You've still got time. Start blazing your own trail.
I can only relate what happened to me. Just over a year ago, our manager (quite a hacker in his own right) quit. Before leaving he even said "Don't bother offering the position to Duane, he doesn't want to manage." Which was true -- although I liked the idea of the responsibility of making decisions and assigning resources, I didn't want the headache of yearly reviews, budgets, vacation schedules and so on. So, when the boss called me in what he said was "You can have this position...or, you tell us the position you want." In short I ended up as the de-facto manager of the team anyway, still invited to all budget meetings and still requested for input on all employee reviews, but there's 3 other guys officially doing the job on paper. The moral of the story is that in a market like this, if you're good enough at your job, you can pretty much craft your own role.
Also, less than a year later I went to the boss and said "Damnit I want my own direct reports. I'm managing this crew anyway, but it sucks to not have any officially seniority on paper." So now I've got reports. Who knows, you might find that management isn't as bad as you think it is.
And I'll tell you why in one word : contrast. Forget the color, it's all about the black text on the white screen. Makes reading a pleasure! I can't stand to look at the green/black anymore.
Plus you've got the 8Meg and the rechargeable batteries, so the only real difference is the size. And since most people start life by wrapping their V in one of those big titanium cases, even that's not much.
You know, the more I thought about it the more I figure people are going to yell "Nobody is irreplaceable!" In a way, this is true. They will find somebody to fill your role, regardless. The question is how that role was defined. While you worked in it, the role was defined as "you". In that sense, you are irreplaceable. No matter who they hire, there will be things that you did that this person did not do, and vice versa. What they're going to replace is the template of the person in your role. That's easier to fill.
So please don't anybody come yelling at me for claiming to be irreplaceable. It's all a matter of how you look at it.
The technical portion of the interview should be fairly easy to structure. Look back on your recent past and find some questions that came up that you thought were interesting. Ask those.
Ask a few abstract ones (i.e. ones that you yourself don't know the answer to) and see where his thinking goes. See if you like it, if it follows how you would have thought.
"Chase him down a rathole." If every answer sounds perfect, go depth-first on him and keep getting more specific until you can get him to say "I don't know. I would have to look that up or ask somebody." People who refuse to admit that they don't know something are usually not great hires.
Figure out what you think your skills are that AREN'T technical. Good sense of humor? Casual attitude? Do you walk around and visit people alot, and keep morale high? Find out if he's got similar skills. One thing I've always thought to be true is that if it comes down only to the technical, then plenty of people could fill my role, and that it's the extras that a given person brings to the table that make him most valuable.
Realize that hiring your own replacement is something of an oxymoron. I personally look at jobs by saying "I will convince these people that I am the exact person they need for this role. I want them to throw away that paper that says 5 years java, 3 years unix, masters degree, blah blah and say wow, this is the exact guy we need." If I succeed, then there is no way that I could hire my replacement, short of convincing them that I am no longer the right person for the job anyway, and that this new guy is better. That's a weird way to approach it, I know, but it all depends on how confident you are in your position there. If you really believe that you contributed something unique to the place, then there's no shame in acknowledging that it can't be replaced.
For the record I was asked to do something similar, once, and write down the requirements that they should look for in my replacement. I couldn't do it. It's hard.
Expect to get a few chances at every problem before they solve it.
Take risks because they expect there to be a magic powerup or reward around the next corner.
Look for deterministic rules that can be applied equally well in repeated situations.
Scream bloody murder when a game comes out that doesn't have an instantaneous 'save game' feature (god help people who have to start the level over again).
CHEAT WHEN THEY CAN'T WIN. That was the whole idea of your original article, wasn't it?
I agree with the idea but not necessarily the ratio -- you're essentially saying that a good programmer is 9 times better than an average programmer? That makes for one hell of a curve, don't you think? That would also imply that the average programmer is 9 times better than a bad programmer. And you didn't even use the term "great" or "excellent".
I took a quick poll of my developers recently and asked "How busy do you feel you are on a scale of 1-10? Say a 5 or less is equal to I'm bored I need something to do, where a 9 or 10 is more like oh shoot even if i never leave my cube I still don't know if I'll meet my deadlines." The idea was that we were aiming for about an 8 for everybody. Some of my results:
One of my best programmers, who I know has a handful of very critical projects on him,immediately said "Oh, a 3. What else have you got?"
The more junior programmers had a tendency to say 5-6, whereas the senior programmers said 9. Is this because we loaded up the senior guys more? Or because the junior guys aren't as good at estimating their workload? I'm still not sure.
TOO MANY said "For bursts at a time, a 9, and then for longer periods a 3." THIS is what causes horrendous productivity, because during those 3 periods nobody wants to take on additional projects for fear that the 9s are going to kick back in and leave them in chaos.
So back on topic I'd suggest that ALL programmers should be spending about 70-80% of their day coding. If you have good coders, then the solution is not to let them be productive for less time during the day, but to give them more to keep them challenged. (I used to have a job where I played games 90% of the time because there was no challenging work to do. I *hated* that!)
You probably want to use the taginfo feature of cvs (look in your respository in the CVSROOT directory). In short you can specify a script to run before/after things get tagged. You could write a shell script to do pretty much whatever you want. I think.
I think one of the biggest communications problems I've seen between the groups is that most developers I know, when asked for an estimate, will answer something like "3 people 2 weeks". But what that really means to them is "3 programmers will have the code running in 2 weeks." It does not take into considering project managers, or support staff. Nor does it count QA time, or time to negotiate licensing with the third party vendor, or write the project agreement, and so on.
I have a guy on my team who very frequently answers questions with "Sure, that's easy, take me 2 seconds." Most often what that means is "I have an idea how I would do this." And then later, when the time is significantly greater than 2 seconds, it becomes "Well, yeah, if the so-n-so had worked the way it was supposed to, blah blah.." The art of the estimate is in being able to make allowances for things not working properly, since experience shows that they never do.
For a long time I was the guy that management feared taking into meetings because I answered all questions with "Yes". Of course, what I meant was "Yes, that can be done given adequate time and resources. It is technologically possible to do the thing you have asked of me." And of course my managers knew that that's NOT what marketing meant, they meant "Can we have it in reasonable time?" Reasonable being subject to interpretation, and not mine -- I didn't offer opinions on what was reasonable, I just said if it was possible.
Of course, the problem works in both directions. I know of a certain project manager who, when an engineer provides an estimate, is always the first one to say "Could I double that for QA?" It's quite possible (though unlikely!:)) that the developer in question has already factored that in. But, since he can't be sure, he has to play it conservative, and we end up taking 6 weeks for things that should really take 1 or 2.
Since becoming a manager (eep!) I've amended my logic and I now share it with my reports: "All things are technologically possible given infinite time and resources, therefore it doesn't make sense that somebody is asking you that. What they're asking is something is possible given real time and resources, so you need to factor in those variables."
Duane
(Once, at a meeting, a manager told me that I wasn't allowed to open my mouth unless the word coming out of it was "no". So I listened patiently as a marketing guy said "We were thinking that we could do X, Y and Z. Would that be a problem?" So I looked at him, looked at my manager, looked at the marketing guy and said "No.")
Re:Christmas isn't about presents
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Gifts For Geeks
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· Score: 5
You know, I used to think this way too, and then something occurred to me. I figure there's at least three (* somebody pointed out to me years ago that there's a fourth) stages of looking at Christmas (or gift giving in general):
Greed. Give me everything.
Anti-greed. "No, no, nothing for me...I just want to get everybody else things."
Other-awareness. Realizing that when you tell your mom not to buy you anything, that makes her *unhappy*, and that if you really want to concentrate on other people's happiness it won't kill you to make a Christmas list.
Anybody that tells me that having a christmas list means not thinking about other people's happiness, i point them to state 3. If it's evil to receive, then there's no point in giving.
Duane
P.S. The fourth state is "Now go do something nice for a total stranger, like volunteer at a soup kitchen, instead of thinking that your friends and family are the only ones that merit your help this year." Not a lot of people get to this one, unfortunately.
Start with Total Recall. Remove any hard scifi relationships (such as TR's connection to Philip K. Dick, was it?). Make it PG instead of R, so don't expect to see any gore, or Sharon Stone naked.
Then add heaps of product placement. When I first saw the XFL football game I thought it was a joke. Then when I saw the OnStar controlled vehicle I was rolling my eyes.
Lastly, take all of modern science EXCEPT cloning and send it backward a few years. Bio scanners today can differentiate between a living and dead thumb (that's one of the first questions that comes up!) but it's a vital part of this movie that they can't. He can drive a helicopter by remote control, yet when he needs to blow something up he has to light the fuse and run away.
This movie was all over the place. Even for an Ahnold movie, it was below par. I think his last good one was True Lies, personally. That seemed to have the right mix across the board.
You know, build a turtle that follows a black line, that kind of thing. I think the typical kit costs less than $99. RobotStore even sends me a catalog, with age-group recommendations on all the projects.
This is different/better(?) than the Lego Mindstorms approach because it actually involves connecting up some wires, soldering, all that good stuff.
Great book, part of our work library.
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Longitude
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· Score: 2
The few pictures alone explain more about the sort of leap of genius that happens in the tech world than anything the words could say. Evolution versus revolution, clearly described. The only problem I had with the book was I found the ending fairly anti- climatic. The story she spends most of the time telling is sort of done about 3/4 the way through and I didn't really care about the rest.
I think one thing people fear on hitting a government site is that the information they need once in a blue moon will be buried someplace they can't get at it. A great example is just before the recent election, I wanted to contact my city office to make sure I was registered and find my voting location. Couldn't find it for the life of me. Found several sites claiming to be the official city of quincy web site. Know how I solved the problem? Called the "main number" (which I got off the web site) and asked. It would have been nice if the month or so before the election they had right on the home page a link saying "Looking for information on voting/registering?"
Other ideas for timely government information include tax information around the beginning of the year, college/saving tips around September (Massachusetts has the U-fund, for example, that I'm sure people want to know about).
Localized info would be great, too. If I could go to a web site periodically and find out things like what road construction they're doing in my town, where they're putting new streetlights, things like that, I'd probably visit more frequently. But I won't necessarily go looking for it, ya know?
This question comes up alot. The steps seem simple enough:
Find a project you're interested in.
Download the source.
Compile and run it.
Find something that needs changing, be it a bug or feature.
Change/fix it.
Email the maintainers saying "Hi, I'm new at this, but I downloaded your project and saw a bug, so I fixed it. Here's the source."
Be amazed as maintainers write back to you saying "Wow! Thanks!"
Presto, you're an open source programmer.
That last bit will likely fail in one of three cases. Either you decide right off the bat to tackle one of the biggest projects out there (like Wine or Gnome or something) and you simply get lost in the shuffle, OR you pick a dead project whose maintainers are bored with it, or else the people running the project don't really have the spirit and don't want your help, they want all the glory for themselves.
Kindly do NOT fall into the trap of "Hmm, I want glory and fame right away, so I'll start my own project and then whine when nobody helps me." Not everybody can be the chief, somebody has to be the indians. Show that you're a real team player with some real integrity and desire to see the goals of open source succeed -- join a team. If it's the right kind of team you'll be welcomed right away. There's really nothing that magic about it.
Slashdot Mirror
To a new everything, so that now there is a complete PC (Windows) in every office that brings up your history, the works...and even sends prescriptions over to the pharmacy for pickup. Of course, when they implemented it at first there were tremendous problems (like 3 hour lines for drugs) but they seem to have worked it out now. I'm just afraid that I'm going to go in there for something serious one day and his machine is going to crash in the middle of something important, thus giving Blue Screen of Death a whole new meaning. (Ok, I bet I'm not the first one to say that. :))
My company was free coffee, but it is up on the 13th floor (6 floors and an elevator change above us) in the cafeteria, which has limited hours. Most people go downstairs to the lobby where they have to pay in order to get the good stuff. The people on the floor would prefer cheap soda (or tonic, for those of us in New England).
My question is, how many times will you let yourself get screwed, while searching for the pot of gold? You don't get no stock options if you get fired in 6 months (or if the company tanks in 3 months). Repeat as necessary. But my company has never failed to meet my payroll.
Is it all about the pot of gold? Is that why people put themselves through it? Can everybody working at a dot com right now actually *believe* in the mission of that company? Hell, some of them don't even have a mission. Many are pretty blatant about saying stuff like "Hang out and make a presence of ourselves for a year, and then get bought out." Everybody agrees that the work is hell, you're treated like crap, and you'll be lucky to ever see your stock options mature. So why do it?
My favorite was when one of our engineers left because "a buddy of his" (Joe Random Guy he knew at college) was creating a startup. What was their planned revenue stream? Didn't have one. what was the technology? NT boxen (this guy hated NT). Was there even a product? Not that he could explain to us -- something about enabling other people's web sites yadda yadda. Was he at least going as an officer or something? Nope, just a senior engineer. In other words, there was no reason at all for him to go except for the promise of some money (this was one of the ones whose plan was to simply exist until someone bought them). Within a month he was contacting other people at the company and trying to get them to join him. Within two months he was gone from that company and had joined another dot com. Of course, the new dotcom he joined was something called Akamai, so he's doing ok. :)
Duane
Wow, you know, I totally missed the part that said "open source developers", I thought you were talking about people that worked for you. So, most of my comments don't really apply. Sorry about that!!
- Hearing the president of the company mention me, by name, during his state-of-the-company speech.
- Letting me get published. Many companies don't the engineers do things like this, but it's a great way to be recognized in your industry.
- Letting me speak at conferences. Another big recognition factor.
- Letting my name show up in the press. The most hated PHB in my company right now is the guy who, while he was here, instituted the "My name and my name only shows up in the press releases" rule. He once even referred to me as "The Wiz" in an interview rather than say my name. UG.
- Random bonuses. It's always nice to just get a big wad of cash, especially when it's not on a fixed company schedule. It says "You're so appreciated that we're breaking the rules."
- On that same note, anything that feels like "Well yes, we have rules, but we're breaking them for you."
Things that don't work:- Embarrassing displays. At the christmas party don't have an awards ceremony and make your best engineers stand up in front of all their coworkers. No better way to say "Hey, you people sitting down, you're not doing a very good job!"
It was one thing for the president to mention my name -- most of the hundreds of people listening probably don't even know me -- but if he'd called me up on stage or something that would have sucked.
- Anything that blatantly mucks with team morale. While walking over to a team outing and crossing the street, a VP once yelled "Ok, everybody form a circle around Duane in case a car comes!" That's charming -- telling people that they have value as human shields. Not too funny. I don't know if any of the other guys cared, but it made me feel lousy.
- Non-perk perks. "Have a PalmV with Omnisky!" doesn't really work if it's just a loaner, and worse if you have to sign up for the service yourself and then request a reimbursement check every month.
DuaneWe have that now, it's called the library. But people apparently don't want to use them anymore? People's complaint really seems to be "I demanded that you make it as easy as possible for me to buy things (hence the One-Click idea), now I'm demanding that you make it equally easier for me to fix it when I make a mistake by buying something that I didn't really want." The only thing that's really wrong with the library these days is that people don't want to get up and go get things, they want them delivered to their door. Yet when Circuit City came up with DivX, which supposedly was going to make it easy for you to "return" a video (i.e. by just throwing it away), it got stomped mercilessly.
So we've got authors who want to get paid for their work. And we've got readers who don't want to get stuck with paying for a book they didn't like. Perhaps the best solution would be for Amazon to invent (and patent, of course :)) some sort of library mechanism where you could rent a book? What would people think of that?
d
I expect that a similar problem would occur with textbooks. Since it would cost money to print them, I assume that your open source books would be online/downloadable in some sort of format. Where? Will a school be able to designate a single site where they can tell students "Ok, go here and download all your books?" or will all teachers have their own personal favorites, sending students all around the net looking? What happens to the student that runs Linux who needs to hit a site that only runs on Windows/IE in order to get a book? What will the standard be that determines which open source projects are acceptible classroom material? I would expect that in at least some instances books need to have some sort of certification or seal of approval before teachers bring them into the classroom.
Will you need DOC files for history, PDF for sociology and RB (Rocket eBook) for calculus? A recent slashdot article asked about the frightening prospect of having a standard (such as DOC) that could outlive the software that it's dependent upon, but if you gave teachers their way you're likely to find that DOC is what they'd prefer to use. Remember these are writers, not net geeks. (The time I tried to send in a magazine article in Wordperfect format because I'd written it on Linux, I got screamed at by my editor. It was a Linux article!)
And can you imagine the traffic jam when the vast majority of your freshman class all tries to print out all of their textbooks on the network printer simultaneously?
I'm sorry that your college experience was ridiculously easy. All that says to me is that you went to the wrong school. That's not the fault of school in general, some are just better than others. I don't know your situation at all, so I have no idea if you could have transferred elsewhere upon realizing that it was too easy for you, but I assume you didn't do that.
Sorry you felt insulted, that wasn't the intent. Apparently you've never actually seen me insult somebody, I tend to make it fairly obvious.
d
Besides, anybody who says that compiling their own source automatically makes them better understand their machine must not ever execute those "make install" scripts. If an automated process puts 100 files across 12 directories on your machine, and you tell me you can keep track of them all in your head for 100 software packages, I don't believe you.
Duane
If your goal is to educate yourself the way you think best by taking whatever path is open to you, then who cares what they call it? Let them call it whatever they want. I was told from the time I was about 10 years old that I'd "go to school for computers". Sure enough, I did. Of course, I also invented a new major (combining sociology and computers) along the way. The simple fact is that I care what I learned, not what they call it. I explain it to people in terms that make sense to me, I don't just say "Oh, I have a CS/SST degree" and let them lump me in with everybody else who has those initials. Many's the time I got into arguments with my "classmates" over the appropriate courses to take. "It's spring semester of our sophomore year, who do you have for database 101?" Well, I'm not taking that course. "What? All sophomore CS's take database 101 during spring semester! What did you take instead?" Shakespearean Tragedy. "WHAT? What kind of freak are you?"
The argument about whether true hackers need to get a college degree at all is a popular debate. Personally, I think they do. Not because it proves anything about their skills, but because among other things it proves responsibility, that you can start something and finish it because you see the longterm benefit even if you don't like it. But along your path to that degree, do whatever you please. Fill up your time with everything you can get your hands on. I used to cruise the bookstore at the start of each semester and buy books from classes I wasn't taking, because they looked interesting. Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut was the book that made me take up a sociology major. You never know what you'll find of value. You've still got time. Start blazing your own trail.
Duane
Also, less than a year later I went to the boss and said "Damnit I want my own direct reports. I'm managing this crew anyway, but it sucks to not have any officially seniority on paper." So now I've got reports. Who knows, you might find that management isn't as bad as you think it is.
Duane
Oh, and the Omnisky modem. I'll give ya that.
So please don't anybody come yelling at me for claiming to be irreplaceable. It's all a matter of how you look at it.
"Chase him down a rathole." If every answer sounds perfect, go depth-first on him and keep getting more specific until you can get him to say "I don't know. I would have to look that up or ask somebody." People who refuse to admit that they don't know something are usually not great hires.
Figure out what you think your skills are that AREN'T technical. Good sense of humor? Casual attitude? Do you walk around and visit people alot, and keep morale high? Find out if he's got similar skills. One thing I've always thought to be true is that if it comes down only to the technical, then plenty of people could fill my role, and that it's the extras that a given person brings to the table that make him most valuable.
Realize that hiring your own replacement is something of an oxymoron. I personally look at jobs by saying "I will convince these people that I am the exact person they need for this role. I want them to throw away that paper that says 5 years java, 3 years unix, masters degree, blah blah and say wow, this is the exact guy we need." If I succeed, then there is no way that I could hire my replacement, short of convincing them that I am no longer the right person for the job anyway, and that this new guy is better. That's a weird way to approach it, I know, but it all depends on how confident you are in your position there. If you really believe that you contributed something unique to the place, then there's no shame in acknowledging that it can't be replaced.
For the record I was asked to do something similar, once, and write down the requirements that they should look for in my replacement. I couldn't do it. It's hard.
I took a quick poll of my developers recently and asked "How busy do you feel you are on a scale of 1-10? Say a 5 or less is equal to I'm bored I need something to do, where a 9 or 10 is more like oh shoot even if i never leave my cube I still don't know if I'll meet my deadlines." The idea was that we were aiming for about an 8 for everybody. Some of my results:
So back on topic I'd suggest that ALL programmers should be spending about 70-80% of their day coding. If you have good coders, then the solution is not to let them be productive for less time during the day, but to give them more to keep them challenged. (I used to have a job where I played games 90% of the time because there was no challenging work to do. I *hated* that!)
You probably want to use the taginfo feature of cvs (look in your respository in the CVSROOT directory). In short you can specify a script to run before/after things get tagged. You could write a shell script to do pretty much whatever you want. I think.
I have a guy on my team who very frequently answers questions with "Sure, that's easy, take me 2 seconds." Most often what that means is "I have an idea how I would do this." And then later, when the time is significantly greater than 2 seconds, it becomes "Well, yeah, if the so-n-so had worked the way it was supposed to, blah blah.." The art of the estimate is in being able to make allowances for things not working properly, since experience shows that they never do.
For a long time I was the guy that management feared taking into meetings because I answered all questions with "Yes". Of course, what I meant was "Yes, that can be done given adequate time and resources. It is technologically possible to do the thing you have asked of me." And of course my managers knew that that's NOT what marketing meant, they meant "Can we have it in reasonable time?" Reasonable being subject to interpretation, and not mine -- I didn't offer opinions on what was reasonable, I just said if it was possible.
Of course, the problem works in both directions. I know of a certain project manager who, when an engineer provides an estimate, is always the first one to say "Could I double that for QA?" It's quite possible (though unlikely! :)) that the developer in question has already factored that in. But, since he can't be sure, he has to play it conservative, and we end up taking 6 weeks for things that should really take 1 or 2.
Since becoming a manager (eep!) I've amended my logic and I now share it with my reports: "All things are technologically possible given infinite time and resources, therefore it doesn't make sense that somebody is asking you that. What they're asking is something is possible given real time and resources, so you need to factor in those variables."
Duane
(Once, at a meeting, a manager told me that I wasn't allowed to open my mouth unless the word coming out of it was "no". So I listened patiently as a marketing guy said "We were thinking that we could do X, Y and Z. Would that be a problem?" So I looked at him, looked at my manager, looked at the marketing guy and said "No.")
- Greed. Give me everything.
- Anti-greed. "No, no, nothing for me...I just want to get everybody else things."
- Other-awareness. Realizing that when you tell your mom not to buy you anything, that makes her *unhappy*, and that if you really want to concentrate on other people's happiness it won't kill you to make a Christmas list.
Anybody that tells me that having a christmas list means not thinking about other people's happiness, i point them to state 3. If it's evil to receive, then there's no point in giving.Duane
P.S. The fourth state is "Now go do something nice for a total stranger, like volunteer at a soup kitchen, instead of thinking that your friends and family are the only ones that merit your help this year." Not a lot of people get to this one, unfortunately.
Then add heaps of product placement. When I first saw the XFL football game I thought it was a joke. Then when I saw the OnStar controlled vehicle I was rolling my eyes.
Lastly, take all of modern science EXCEPT cloning and send it backward a few years. Bio scanners today can differentiate between a living and dead thumb (that's one of the first questions that comes up!) but it's a vital part of this movie that they can't. He can drive a helicopter by remote control, yet when he needs to blow something up he has to light the fuse and run away.
This movie was all over the place. Even for an Ahnold movie, it was below par. I think his last good one was True Lies, personally. That seemed to have the right mix across the board.
Ah well, politics here he come.
This is different/better(?) than the Lego Mindstorms approach because it actually involves connecting up some wires, soldering, all that good stuff.
The few pictures alone explain more about the sort of leap of genius that happens in the tech world than anything the words could say. Evolution versus revolution, clearly described. The only problem I had with the book was I found the ending fairly anti- climatic. The story she spends most of the time telling is sort of done about 3/4 the way through and I didn't really care about the rest.
Other ideas for timely government information include tax information around the beginning of the year, college/saving tips around September (Massachusetts has the U-fund, for example, that I'm sure people want to know about).
Localized info would be great, too. If I could go to a web site periodically and find out things like what road construction they're doing in my town, where they're putting new streetlights, things like that, I'd probably visit more frequently. But I won't necessarily go looking for it, ya know?
d
- Find a project you're interested in.
- Download the source.
- Compile and run it.
- Find something that needs changing, be it a bug or feature.
- Change/fix it.
- Email the maintainers saying "Hi, I'm new at this, but I downloaded your project and saw a bug, so I fixed it. Here's the source."
- Be amazed as maintainers write back to you saying "Wow! Thanks!"
Presto, you're an open source programmer.That last bit will likely fail in one of three cases. Either you decide right off the bat to tackle one of the biggest projects out there (like Wine or Gnome or something) and you simply get lost in the shuffle, OR you pick a dead project whose maintainers are bored with it, or else the people running the project don't really have the spirit and don't want your help, they want all the glory for themselves.
Kindly do NOT fall into the trap of "Hmm, I want glory and fame right away, so I'll start my own project and then whine when nobody helps me." Not everybody can be the chief, somebody has to be the indians. Show that you're a real team player with some real integrity and desire to see the goals of open source succeed -- join a team. If it's the right kind of team you'll be welcomed right away. There's really nothing that magic about it.