This is probably the best article I've ever seen about managing technical teams. I sent a link to my manager (who is one of the good ones) and I hope she passes it around. Thanks to the submitter.
This may seem like trolling but I mean it as a legitimate question. If I repeatedly call the police to report that stuff has been stolen from the seat of my car, and they keep finding that I park my car on busy streets with the windows open, eventually they are going to stop responding to my calls. If the digital content industry insists on trafficking in materials that are extremely simple to copy and redistribute, why should the public pay good money to have the justice system process their endless complaints of losses? It seems more rational to tell them that if they can't protect their assets better they should get into a different line of business.
"Occasionally breathless tone" is an understatement. Take a look at some of the other training material. The whole site has a Reefer Madness tone, as if it was produced by the same person who directed anti-commie films in the 1950s. I wonder if government training material in general has been given the "War On [fill in the blank]" treatment.
My basement computer lair shares a wall with a storage room, so I've been thinking about cutting a hole and ducting the computer fans through it, basically using the computers to heat the storeroom. There is already a heat vent in that room but I have it dampered down. Any pros and cons to doing that? We don't have air conditioning since Seattle is rarely hot enough for it. Piping computer heat out of the house would seem like a waste of energy the other 95% of the time.
Goldendale Observatory is a small public observatory. Since it's not booked up by astronomers doing studies, you don't just tour the facility and then peek through the telescope and leave. Instead most of the time is spent looking at things. Groups are small and the volunteer guides, who are knowledgeable amateur astronomers, will point the telescope at whatever you want. Last time I was there nobody else had any requests, so I asked the guide to show us some stars with distinct colors. He launched right into an impromptu sky tour of 6 or 7 good ones. I really like that place. About 15 miles south is an interesting full-size concrete replica of Stonhenge, built by a concrete industry tycoon after WWI.
The first half of Alien was a well-produced space story with interesting character interactions and nice effects. But the second half devolved into a very typical Friday-the-13th scenario, in which the characters wander off one by one into the spooky darkness and get killed. The main departure from convention was that the sole survivor wasn't a shy female virgin. Harry Dean Stanton even did the classic horror movie death maneuver: walk into a dark room, look up at the ceiling while slowly turning around, and end up backing into the monster. This director was hailed as a genius? Come on.
Cringely is always interesting to read, but I think he was having an off day when he wrote this. He says Google depends on Microsoft because most Google ad traffic comes from web browsers on PCs running Windows, so destroying Microsoft wouldn't be in Google's interest. But this is absurd. Google would get the same traffic if Windows disappeared overnight and all PCs suddenly became Linux boxes or Macs, or for that matter became internet nodes running a web OS. Cringely says Bing has primarily affected Google's competition rather than Google itself, but then he says "Google is too busy defending its own turf to seriously encroach on Microsoftâ(TM)s." I get the feeling he wrote this column on an airplane while waiting for the movie to start.
The idea of a Google OS has been floating around for years. When someone at Google first said, "Let's write our own OS," I seriously doubt that it was because someone had asked, "How can we keep Microsoft on its toes?" Microsoft's vast OS licensing revenue is an obvious target for a company with Google's resources and skill set. Cringely assumes Google would give away its OS, but this isn't a requirement. Google could simply undercut Microsoft's price and still make a ton of money, while forcing Microsoft to cut its own prices in its primary profit center. Microsoft has done this repeatedly in markets where Linux has threatened Windows, and Linux has never had anything like Google's marketing resources.
Even if Google's sights are set only on the handheld market and not on destroying Microsoft, that could change if their web OS becomes successful. It would be naive to think Microsoft takes this possibility lightly, or that the competition between the two companies is a largely pointless series of feints and counterfeints.
Now That's some creative thinking. I've been trying to figure out a practical use for this technology other than the article's lame example of turning off the ringer when you're in a meeting. Recognizing sounds that might be important -- baby crying, doorbell, other phone, barking dog -- so you can listen to something else. Nice idea.
I'm 54, and although I still write code for a living my personal experience has been that keeping up with the latest and greatest in recent years has become decreasingly fun and increasingly a pain in the ass. I still love writing code and am still good at it, but I'm tired of learning how to do it a different way every 5 years. Learning my first few programming languages and dev environments was fun and exciting. Now it's just like awww jeez, not this again?
I can't address the advantages and disadvantages of being purely a manager, but in the Project Lead roles I've been in I have always done less work and felt less stress than as a developer. Bottom line, managers don't have bug lists. If I were more organized and had a higher tolerance for people droning in meetings, I'd go for a management job in a second. As a manager you can always assign yourself some of the design or coding duties in a project if you really really want to. And you can certainly continue to do dev on your own time just for the love of it. Contribute to opensource projects, that sort of thing. Conversely, being a programmer and doing management as a hobby isn't really an option.
If you're amenable to the actual work of management, and you seem to be, I would wholeheartedly say go for it.
For years I've been saying that when video phones get into widespread use someone smarter than me will create software that filters your image in real time to look like a spiffed up version of yourself, or any avatar you want. The avatar would faithfully reproduce your expressions and mouth movements as you talk. You could even enhance your voice if you wanted to. Lots of people wouldn't want to use a video phone because they would have to worry about how they look all the time. Realistic, realtime avatars would eliminate that adoption barrier.
On the surface the idea of taxing individuals for road use seems like a fair way to pay for roads, but it's really not. Almost all road use has a business purpose, either direct (commuting, shipping, providing services...) or indirect (shopping, going to a restaurant...). The general public, not just the person who does the driving, benefits from all this activity, so why meter the driving and tax the driver? A general sales tax on consumption of goods and services accomplishes the same result without the surveillance and overhead.
His job choice isn't really the topic here, but like you I can't help wondering why anyone in his right mind would take a job like that. If he's willing to put up with the hours and the commute, you would think he would be more than willing to relocate so he can have a life.
Dude, it's their website. They can do whatever they want with it. There were no political schemes going on here, just people doing what they thought was best to protect the life of one guy. I like that this happened entirely without government interference, just two factions vying to get their way, and I'm glad the Wikipedia/Times faction won. I would have done exactly the same thing.
In my opinion the whole association between search engines and "contributory infringement" is smoke and mirrors. If the yellow pages gives the address of a pawn shop, do they share the guilt if the shop sells stolen property? No. If Flickr shows a photo of a fruit stand with racks of fruit out in front of the store, do they share the guilt when somebody runs by and snatches fruit off the rack? No. Does Google Maps share the guilt if they show a Ferrari parked out on the street and somebody steals the Ferrari? Hell the Fuck No. Information that can be used to commit crimes is all over the place and always has been. The information has never been the crime and never has been. Contributory infringement isn't a legal principle, it's an extortion tactic.
It's like every other kind of law enforcement in that the level of response should match the reasonably perceived level of danger and the level of confidence that it actually exists. If one kid says another kid has a loaded gun in his underwear, it makes sense to me to search the suspected kid but also come down hard on the whistleblower if the accusation turns out to be a lie. In this case it sounds like the school officials had only a vague idea of what they were looking for.
"No one has the right to know who goes in and out my front door," agreed David Mowrer...
Wait a second. If anybody walking down the street can see who goes in and out Dave's front door, how is that private? Inside the door it's Dave's private world, but out in public it's, well... "public."
The difference I see between a surveillance camera and a person standing on the sidewalk is that when you see a person nearby it makes you consciously aware that you're in public, but when you are on a seemingly deserted street it feels sort of private. That sense of privacy is an illusion, but it is one we're accustomed to. A neon orange sign on every camera would solve that issue for me, but I don't know about the people who expect their right to privacy to extend into public places.
How can we ban outdoor surveillance cameras without banning other kinds of photography in public? We've discussed on Slashdot numerous times the rights of photographers to snap pictures of public buildings, copyrighted art and other things that are out in plain sight. Are we going to grant that freedom only to photographers who are physically present, and if so why?
A newspaper subscription doesn't entitle you to everything the newspaper company publishes. For example, you don't automatically get the various foreign language editions. Regional editions often contain different material. It seems to me that the only problem here is the subscriber's attitude.
People simply imposing their will on the rest is far more common than any "by the people" form of government. When a bunch of big guys with sticks say, "We're in charge, now go make me a sammich," the traditional response of the average person has been to bow down and go make the sammich. Most of us who live in societies that have some form of coercion built in to keep the authorities at bay didn't have to fight for that privilege. Our ancestors did. We grew up taking it for granted that our "rights" are obvious, inviolable and somehow self-sustaining. But they're not. Situations like this should teach us how unhealthy that kind of complacency is.
Slashdot Mirror
... is that it's a more productive use of people's time than playing the Lottery. Higher odds of actually getting any money out of it.
This is probably the best article I've ever seen about managing technical teams. I sent a link to my manager (who is one of the good ones) and I hope she passes it around. Thanks to the submitter.
This may seem like trolling but I mean it as a legitimate question. If I repeatedly call the police to report that stuff has been stolen from the seat of my car, and they keep finding that I park my car on busy streets with the windows open, eventually they are going to stop responding to my calls. If the digital content industry insists on trafficking in materials that are extremely simple to copy and redistribute, why should the public pay good money to have the justice system process their endless complaints of losses? It seems more rational to tell them that if they can't protect their assets better they should get into a different line of business.
Wish I'd had the guts to leave something like that behind. /former MSIT drone
"Occasionally breathless tone" is an understatement. Take a look at some of the other training material. The whole site has a Reefer Madness tone, as if it was produced by the same person who directed anti-commie films in the 1950s. I wonder if government training material in general has been given the "War On [fill in the blank]" treatment.
My basement computer lair shares a wall with a storage room, so I've been thinking about cutting a hole and ducting the computer fans through it, basically using the computers to heat the storeroom. There is already a heat vent in that room but I have it dampered down. Any pros and cons to doing that? We don't have air conditioning since Seattle is rarely hot enough for it. Piping computer heat out of the house would seem like a waste of energy the other 95% of the time.
Three more words: Sarah Connor Chronicles. /shudder
Goldendale Observatory is a small public observatory. Since it's not booked up by astronomers doing studies, you don't just tour the facility and then peek through the telescope and leave. Instead most of the time is spent looking at things. Groups are small and the volunteer guides, who are knowledgeable amateur astronomers, will point the telescope at whatever you want. Last time I was there nobody else had any requests, so I asked the guide to show us some stars with distinct colors. He launched right into an impromptu sky tour of 6 or 7 good ones. I really like that place. About 15 miles south is an interesting full-size concrete replica of Stonhenge, built by a concrete industry tycoon after WWI.
The first half of Alien was a well-produced space story with interesting character interactions and nice effects. But the second half devolved into a very typical Friday-the-13th scenario, in which the characters wander off one by one into the spooky darkness and get killed. The main departure from convention was that the sole survivor wasn't a shy female virgin. Harry Dean Stanton even did the classic horror movie death maneuver: walk into a dark room, look up at the ceiling while slowly turning around, and end up backing into the monster. This director was hailed as a genius? Come on.
Cringely is always interesting to read, but I think he was having an off day when he wrote this. He says Google depends on Microsoft because most Google ad traffic comes from web browsers on PCs running Windows, so destroying Microsoft wouldn't be in Google's interest. But this is absurd. Google would get the same traffic if Windows disappeared overnight and all PCs suddenly became Linux boxes or Macs, or for that matter became internet nodes running a web OS. Cringely says Bing has primarily affected Google's competition rather than Google itself, but then he says "Google is too busy defending its own turf to seriously encroach on Microsoftâ(TM)s." I get the feeling he wrote this column on an airplane while waiting for the movie to start.
The idea of a Google OS has been floating around for years. When someone at Google first said, "Let's write our own OS," I seriously doubt that it was because someone had asked, "How can we keep Microsoft on its toes?" Microsoft's vast OS licensing revenue is an obvious target for a company with Google's resources and skill set. Cringely assumes Google would give away its OS, but this isn't a requirement. Google could simply undercut Microsoft's price and still make a ton of money, while forcing Microsoft to cut its own prices in its primary profit center. Microsoft has done this repeatedly in markets where Linux has threatened Windows, and Linux has never had anything like Google's marketing resources.
Even if Google's sights are set only on the handheld market and not on destroying Microsoft, that could change if their web OS becomes successful. It would be naive to think Microsoft takes this possibility lightly, or that the competition between the two companies is a largely pointless series of feints and counterfeints.
Now That's some creative thinking. I've been trying to figure out a practical use for this technology other than the article's lame example of turning off the ringer when you're in a meeting. Recognizing sounds that might be important -- baby crying, doorbell, other phone, barking dog -- so you can listen to something else. Nice idea.
I'm 54, and although I still write code for a living my personal experience has been that keeping up with the latest and greatest in recent years has become decreasingly fun and increasingly a pain in the ass. I still love writing code and am still good at it, but I'm tired of learning how to do it a different way every 5 years. Learning my first few programming languages and dev environments was fun and exciting. Now it's just like awww jeez, not this again?
I can't address the advantages and disadvantages of being purely a manager, but in the Project Lead roles I've been in I have always done less work and felt less stress than as a developer. Bottom line, managers don't have bug lists. If I were more organized and had a higher tolerance for people droning in meetings, I'd go for a management job in a second. As a manager you can always assign yourself some of the design or coding duties in a project if you really really want to. And you can certainly continue to do dev on your own time just for the love of it. Contribute to opensource projects, that sort of thing. Conversely, being a programmer and doing management as a hobby isn't really an option.
If you're amenable to the actual work of management, and you seem to be, I would wholeheartedly say go for it.
For years I've been saying that when video phones get into widespread use someone smarter than me will create software that filters your image in real time to look like a spiffed up version of yourself, or any avatar you want. The avatar would faithfully reproduce your expressions and mouth movements as you talk. You could even enhance your voice if you wanted to. Lots of people wouldn't want to use a video phone because they would have to worry about how they look all the time. Realistic, realtime avatars would eliminate that adoption barrier.
On the surface the idea of taxing individuals for road use seems like a fair way to pay for roads, but it's really not. Almost all road use has a business purpose, either direct (commuting, shipping, providing services...) or indirect (shopping, going to a restaurant...). The general public, not just the person who does the driving, benefits from all this activity, so why meter the driving and tax the driver? A general sales tax on consumption of goods and services accomplishes the same result without the surveillance and overhead.
Wow! Thanks for posting that. I had no idea this type of toy was available, and so cheap. You solved an upcoming birthday dilemma for me!
His job choice isn't really the topic here, but like you I can't help wondering why anyone in his right mind would take a job like that. If he's willing to put up with the hours and the commute, you would think he would be more than willing to relocate so he can have a life.
Dude, it's their website. They can do whatever they want with it. There were no political schemes going on here, just people doing what they thought was best to protect the life of one guy. I like that this happened entirely without government interference, just two factions vying to get their way, and I'm glad the Wikipedia/Times faction won. I would have done exactly the same thing.
In my opinion the whole association between search engines and "contributory infringement" is smoke and mirrors. If the yellow pages gives the address of a pawn shop, do they share the guilt if the shop sells stolen property? No. If Flickr shows a photo of a fruit stand with racks of fruit out in front of the store, do they share the guilt when somebody runs by and snatches fruit off the rack? No. Does Google Maps share the guilt if they show a Ferrari parked out on the street and somebody steals the Ferrari? Hell the Fuck No. Information that can be used to commit crimes is all over the place and always has been. The information has never been the crime and never has been. Contributory infringement isn't a legal principle, it's an extortion tactic.
Glad somebody got that! /my post, accidentally anonymous
I give myself a little pep talk. I tell myself that if Michael Jackson can keep going so can I.
It's like every other kind of law enforcement in that the level of response should match the reasonably perceived level of danger and the level of confidence that it actually exists. If one kid says another kid has a loaded gun in his underwear, it makes sense to me to search the suspected kid but also come down hard on the whistleblower if the accusation turns out to be a lie. In this case it sounds like the school officials had only a vague idea of what they were looking for.
"No one has the right to know who goes in and out my front door," agreed David Mowrer...
Wait a second. If anybody walking down the street can see who goes in and out Dave's front door, how is that private? Inside the door it's Dave's private world, but out in public it's, well... "public."
The difference I see between a surveillance camera and a person standing on the sidewalk is that when you see a person nearby it makes you consciously aware that you're in public, but when you are on a seemingly deserted street it feels sort of private. That sense of privacy is an illusion, but it is one we're accustomed to. A neon orange sign on every camera would solve that issue for me, but I don't know about the people who expect their right to privacy to extend into public places.
How can we ban outdoor surveillance cameras without banning other kinds of photography in public? We've discussed on Slashdot numerous times the rights of photographers to snap pictures of public buildings, copyrighted art and other things that are out in plain sight. Are we going to grant that freedom only to photographers who are physically present, and if so why?
A newspaper subscription doesn't entitle you to everything the newspaper company publishes. For example, you don't automatically get the various foreign language editions. Regional editions often contain different material. It seems to me that the only problem here is the subscriber's attitude.
Get off Ray's lawn!!!1!
People simply imposing their will on the rest is far more common than any "by the people" form of government. When a bunch of big guys with sticks say, "We're in charge, now go make me a sammich," the traditional response of the average person has been to bow down and go make the sammich. Most of us who live in societies that have some form of coercion built in to keep the authorities at bay didn't have to fight for that privilege. Our ancestors did. We grew up taking it for granted that our "rights" are obvious, inviolable and somehow self-sustaining. But they're not. Situations like this should teach us how unhealthy that kind of complacency is.