let me put human death in perspective: 6 billion people here. There will be 6 billion deaths in the next 60 years (check avg life expectancy. That runs to 100 million per year. that mean roughly 275,000 deaths per day.
Now, if this guy was a mafioso, involved in spamming people all over the world, costing the global economy billions annually in lost productivity...
Don't feel so bad for him.
Yesterday, did you think of those 275,000 deaths? Are you going to think about the 275,000 deaths tomorrow? Then don't cry too much over this one.
Oh, since I have three clients clamoring ceaselessly leaving me email after email and voice mail after voice mail about how much work they need done...
I stopped handing out my card to people. I am tired of saying to people: "No, I like my job, no, I'm not interested, etc."
You know, it's better to hire 1 guy 1t 1 million per year who is worth it than 100 people at $10K/yr. Yes they can code faster. But can they code smarter?
I say that a programmer who has the spacial breadth to come up with oo and a programming language can pro... Say, name 1 programming language "made in india" that's in widespread use... Didn't think so.
I'm a programmer for a fortune 500. You have to explain the code to the project managers.
Code in comment rule of mine: 1 line of comment per line of code, max.
Other rule of mine: If you can't explain your program to a project manager, he's not going to be able to explain it to other people.
Value added: Ah, if you the coder don't know why you're writing the code, how do you know you're doing it right? The recs? I'm lucky if I have a screenshot with hand-drawn lines.
if you program in python, say, and you understand the python interpreter, but can't speak in a meeting about what value added your program provides, you're still in the wrong industry.
Actually, MS probably wants to stop the brain drain from MS to other companies. It's not really other companies it wants to scare, but its own employees from leaving.
See related the problem that MS is having recruiting sufficiently well. The US army not meeting its recruitment goals I can understand with the war and such, but MS? There's a problem that does not meet the eye.
Of course, if Google wins this one (and they have the cash to fight it), they can probably look fowrad to hiring a bunch of other people from MS... This might make it entirely worthwhile for them.
But that's still better than writing scritps for automating tasks, like claning up directories and converting excel documents into xml. That's really for the geeks.
Oh, and don't get me started on learning some esoteric language bindings because PHB got a great contract from a large vendor that repackaged 1989 client-server code into broken HTML3.2
But once you get to the linux world and learn enough to get productive in python or ruby, then the fun begins... But it's a long road, that also does not include the university. Rather, it's the grinding through man pages from the cli and googling mailing list postings from 1999. Not for the faint of heart, and therefore definitely not for the geeks.
But when the cost of living is high enough that the money in the bank does not increase while you're not going out to eat but once a week and not going to the movies at all and not taking the occasional day off to go up the coast, then I tell you that there's not enough money. The money is the only reason I work at the company. If I had $20M in the bank, I would not step foot in the place or even return the phone calls. Let's not forget that.
I don't care about the perks. I'll pay for lunch. I'll pay for a massage, for my car detailing, for my ice cream. I'll pay for that, because you will pay me to do your computer work.
That's the way it goes: Cash in my pocket, or I'm gone. My phone company, the government, and the mortgage company all want cash only. I gotta have it to give to them.
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The stuff is not plugged in to the network. It's wireless.
They can tell them not to bring it back, sure. Also, they still can't crack the encryption (legally) even just to find out if there is theft going on.
If theft is suspected, that's what the FBI is for, and they can go get a wiretap order from the judge.
Finally, the business should not be running wireless. It's insecure, it's been demonstrated insecure, and it's been demonstrated hard to guard and easy to penetrate.
I'm going to have to agree. If it's an employee's own computer, with its own wireless card, you can't legally take it. Just like you can't take their cell phone or wallet or car keys. You'd have to prove that it's interfering materially with your business and that's going to be really hard to do as the spectrum for wireless is not only unlicensed, but also under the FCC's jurisdiction and not yours.
Likewise, if you believe the employee is doing something illegal, you can fire him/her. If the employee's performance is less than adequate, you can fire them. But you won't be able to take the laptop or the wireless card, since it isn't yours to take. I bet he can also claim that unless you block all 802.11g or b or a (as the case may be) signals in the building/set of offices, it would be discriminatory to block his. And that's going to be hard to do because you, in fact, may not block such signals (under FCC regulation). Finally, I would be very careful about cracking the encryption. Encrypted signals create the expectation of privacy, and you may be in violation of a whole bunch of laws. What if he's using the encrypted signal to keep track of his/her spouse's (insert medical device) to monitor his/her (insert medical condition) recovery?
Marketing, manufacturing, warehousing, logistics also fall prey to management stupidity.
Management: Ship these 400 crates tomorrow. I don't care how you do it. Guy at dock: Can I have a forklift, two flatbeds, and two helpers? Management: No. Use the van. Guy at dock: That ain't gonna work. Management: We have faith in you!!! Go team!!! See you tomorrow!!! Ship those crates!!! Woo hoo!!! (management team goes back to air-conditioned office) Guy at dock: Morons...
If it takes an act of congress and a 15 email thread for an engineer to get real access to proper server, this kind of things will happen.
Everything that goes on in a company, good or bad, is management's doing.
The other thing is that they had backed up his hard drive, before mirroring, after he left. Is that common practice at many companies? My little finger is tingling with the "it's all company data, so yes." Can anyone confirm/deny?
We're in the same boat as far as management, of course, and things get 'broken', 'accidentally', when pre-pre-dev environments 'suddenly' and 'inexplicably' fail. Then they leave us alone for a few minutes for productionalization (it's a good word in meetings, trust me. Who can argue against productionalization?)
I use bugzilla to take care of projects issues. When mgmt ask what I am working on, I just drop the forty page long view on their desk. That, and productionalization, have saved me from many a frustration.
You know what I found the best intro to linux to new people? Viruses:
Noob: Hey, I have a virus on my pc, can you help me? Me: Get norton antivirus. Noob: How much is it? Me: $50, plus $30 every year after that. Noob: Really? That's a lot! Me: Try this disk. (I hand them the knoppix cd)
By the time the virus(es) has taken down their machine, there's nothing to do but reinstall (from the dreaded oem recovery disk) so their data is hosed anyway. They have nothing to lose.
Just because 99% of americans can't drive a car with the steering wheel on the right side of the car doesn't mean the cars 500 million drivers in the world (japan, UK, india) drive are "doomed to fail". They fill the need of those who drive them.
Also, the postal service in the US has cars with the steering wheels on the right, for different reasons. You don't hear about people getting postal service jobs asking for a leftie, do you?
It's all about the right tool for the job.
As far as granny: If is preconfigured and ready to go, like knoppix, with 1 appplication (firefox) all configured nicely to boot, launch, autologin to user granny, autolauch firefox and go to msn.com, yahoo.com, or aol.com, with a cron to apt-get update \n apt-get upgrade \n apt-get autoclean (or your variant) monthly, then I would have no problem getting granny that software.
And for me, better: I would get no more of these calls: "Sonny, the puter ain't workin', I need my email today!"
Slashdot Mirror
Coincidentally, when I think of the fanbois, I think about death too...
Even more coincidentally, the "repeated bludgeoning to the head" kind of death...
Ok, I'll stop now.
let me put human death in perspective:
6 billion people here. There will be 6 billion deaths in the next 60 years (check avg life expectancy.
That runs to 100 million per year.
that mean roughly 275,000 deaths per day.
Now, if this guy was a mafioso, involved in spamming people all over the world, costing the global economy billions annually in lost productivity...
Don't feel so bad for him.
Yesterday, did you think of those 275,000 deaths? Are you going to think about the 275,000 deaths tomorrow? Then don't cry too much over this one.
Oh, since I have three clients clamoring ceaselessly leaving me email after email and voice mail after voice mail about how much work they need done...
I stopped handing out my card to people. I am tired of saying to people: "No, I like my job, no, I'm not interested, etc."
You know, it's better to hire 1 guy 1t 1 million per year who is worth it than 100 people at $10K/yr. Yes they can code faster. But can they code smarter?
I say that a programmer who has the spacial breadth to come up with oo and a programming language can pro... Say, name 1 programming language "made in india" that's in widespread use... Didn't think so.
I'm a programmer for a fortune 500. You have to explain the code to the project managers.
Code in comment rule of mine: 1 line of comment per line of code, max.
Other rule of mine: If you can't explain your program to a project manager, he's not going to be able to explain it to other people.
Value added: Ah, if you the coder don't know why you're writing the code, how do you know you're doing it right? The recs? I'm lucky if I have a screenshot with hand-drawn lines.
if you program in python, say, and you understand the python interpreter, but can't speak in a meeting about what value added your program provides, you're still in the wrong industry.
I'll reply to self because I had a thought: "Do we have to say this in 2005? This is not 1997 anymore... "
Persist to database, use username/password with session cookie. Use session-variable, generated directory, etc.
No need for cygwin. Python runs fine under xp.
Of note: python try: except: construct works much better than vbs' on error. Trust me.
You can even py2exe to make them windows executables.
also, with pythonwin, you can use com objects from python, and update things in mssql or ms access.
yes, i've done this. It works great.
Actually, MS probably wants to stop the brain drain from MS to other companies. It's not really other companies it wants to scare, but its own employees from leaving.
See related the problem that MS is having recruiting sufficiently well. The US army not meeting its recruitment goals I can understand with the war and such, but MS? There's a problem that does not meet the eye.
Of course, if Google wins this one (and they have the cash to fight it), they can probably look fowrad to hiring a bunch of other people from MS... This might make it entirely worthwhile for them.
las sentence should read: "Not for the faint of heart, and therefore definitely just for the geeks."
sowwy
But that's still better than writing scritps for automating tasks, like claning up directories and converting excel documents into xml. That's really for the geeks.
Oh, and don't get me started on learning some esoteric language bindings because PHB got a great contract from a large vendor that repackaged 1989 client-server code into broken HTML3.2
But once you get to the linux world and learn enough to get productive in python or ruby, then the fun begins... But it's a long road, that also does not include the university. Rather, it's the grinding through man pages from the cli and googling mailing list postings from 1999. Not for the faint of heart, and therefore definitely not for the geeks.
Or, as in my case, the download is on my usb ram drive, and gets installed lots of places (as in every pc I get my hands over).
Why?
Is someone treading on your trademark?
Boxen
I think the project would have gotten more attention by making it technical too:
New and Emergent World models Through Individual, Technical and Social Learning.
Well in that case a window should be female.
because in french, and I am a native speaker (went k-12 in fr), it's "La Fenetre"
"La" is feminine.
But when the cost of living is high enough that the money in the bank does not increase while you're not going out to eat but once a week and not going to the movies at all and not taking the occasional day off to go up the coast, then I tell you that there's not enough money. The money is the only reason I work at the company. If I had $20M in the bank, I would not step foot in the place or even return the phone calls. Let's not forget that.
I don't care about the perks. I'll pay for lunch. I'll pay for a massage, for my car detailing, for my ice cream. I'll pay for that, because you will pay me to do your computer work.
That's the way it goes: Cash in my pocket, or I'm gone. My phone company, the government, and the mortgage company all want cash only. I gotta have it to give to them.
Could it just possibly be that the absolute absence of trailer parks reduces the chance of tornadoes to zero, making these dust-devils instead?
Ah, I'll go finish my coffee before attempting more humor...
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But wait, if you call today, you'll also get 30% off our Enhanced Titanium Adobe-feel roof, providing NSA-grade penetration security in style!
All our products come with build-in machine gun mounts, and are blast and impact proof up to 300 kg of TNT.
When you care about the safety of your family, you protect it with "Armored Homes"!
Call your representative TODAY to take advantage of this great offer!
The stuff is not plugged in to the network. It's wireless.
They can tell them not to bring it back, sure. Also, they still can't crack the encryption (legally) even just to find out if there is theft going on.
If theft is suspected, that's what the FBI is for, and they can go get a wiretap order from the judge.
Finally, the business should not be running wireless. It's insecure, it's been demonstrated insecure, and it's been demonstrated hard to guard and easy to penetrate.
I'm going to have to agree. If it's an employee's own computer, with its own wireless card, you can't legally take it. Just like you can't take their cell phone or wallet or car keys. You'd have to prove that it's interfering materially with your business and that's going to be really hard to do as the spectrum for wireless is not only unlicensed, but also under the FCC's jurisdiction and not yours.
Likewise, if you believe the employee is doing something illegal, you can fire him/her. If the employee's performance is less than adequate, you can fire them. But you won't be able to take the laptop or the wireless card, since it isn't yours to take. I bet he can also claim that unless you block all 802.11g or b or a (as the case may be) signals in the building/set of offices, it would be discriminatory to block his. And that's going to be hard to do because you, in fact, may not block such signals (under FCC regulation). Finally, I would be very careful about cracking the encryption. Encrypted signals create the expectation of privacy, and you may be in violation of a whole bunch of laws. What if he's using the encrypted signal to keep track of his/her spouse's (insert medical device) to monitor his/her (insert medical condition) recovery?
I would run it by a good lawyer first.
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly, but it's not IT only.
Marketing, manufacturing, warehousing, logistics also fall prey to management stupidity.
Management: Ship these 400 crates tomorrow. I don't care how you do it.
Guy at dock: Can I have a forklift, two flatbeds, and two helpers?
Management: No. Use the van.
Guy at dock: That ain't gonna work.
Management: We have faith in you!!! Go team!!! See you tomorrow!!! Ship those crates!!! Woo hoo!!!
(management team goes back to air-conditioned office)
Guy at dock: Morons...
A couple of things:
The business needs drive IT needs.
If it takes an act of congress and a 15 email thread for an engineer to get real access to proper server, this kind of things will happen.
Everything that goes on in a company, good or bad, is management's doing.
The other thing is that they had backed up his hard drive, before mirroring, after he left. Is that common practice at many companies? My little finger is tingling with the "it's all company data, so yes." Can anyone confirm/deny?
We're in the same boat as far as management, of course, and things get 'broken', 'accidentally', when pre-pre-dev environments 'suddenly' and 'inexplicably' fail. Then they leave us alone for a few minutes for productionalization (it's a good word in meetings, trust me. Who can argue against productionalization?)
I use bugzilla to take care of projects issues. When mgmt ask what I am working on, I just drop the forty page long view on their desk. That, and productionalization, have saved me from many a frustration.
correction, s/encrypted/compressed/
You know what I found the best intro to linux to new people? Viruses:
Noob: Hey, I have a virus on my pc, can you help me?
Me: Get norton antivirus.
Noob: How much is it?
Me: $50, plus $30 every year after that.
Noob: Really? That's a lot!
Me: Try this disk. (I hand them the knoppix cd)
By the time the virus(es) has taken down their machine, there's nothing to do but reinstall (from the dreaded oem recovery disk) so their data is hosed anyway. They have nothing to lose.
I keep knoppix cds around just for that.
I'll give you a fresh analogy:
Just because 99% of americans can't drive a car with the steering wheel on the right side of the car doesn't mean the cars 500 million drivers in the world (japan, UK, india) drive are "doomed to fail". They fill the need of those who drive them.
Also, the postal service in the US has cars with the steering wheels on the right, for different reasons. You don't hear about people getting postal service jobs asking for a leftie, do you?
It's all about the right tool for the job.
As far as granny: If is preconfigured and ready to go, like knoppix, with 1 appplication (firefox) all configured nicely to boot, launch, autologin to user granny, autolauch firefox and go to msn.com, yahoo.com, or aol.com, with a cron to apt-get update \n apt-get upgrade \n apt-get autoclean (or your variant) monthly, then I would have no problem getting granny that software.
And for me, better: I would get no more of these calls: "Sonny, the puter ain't workin', I need my email today!"
See?