Being a techie won't make a good manager, but a good manager being a techie will probably result in a great manager. Its my personal belief that to be able to manage people well, you need to know what their job is, and what better way than to have done it yourself at one point? Your manager would then actually be able to manage a group without guessing and screwing everyone over. You may also be able to have an actual meaningful conversation with them without wasting your time by dumbing down the conversation to something they can understand. Not everyone is cut out to be a manager though, so don't be too quick to adopt any techie that wants to be one.:)
Last year (during my senior year), we had a class that did almost exactly this. We worked on one major project for basically a semester and a half. It started around November and we had to present our project in May. The general idea of the class was to come up with a project, or pick one of the projects the professor had come up with. After that, the whole class split into 4 groups (about 10 people per group). We went throughout the entire software development cycle from coming up with requirements documents, development plans, delivery dates, cost estimation, etc. By May we were supposed to have something that was ready to be delivered to the customer, along with any documentation or anything else that would be needed. I'd say all in all it was a rather interesting experience and I'd like to think it somewhat prepared us for the real world of software development.
Its true, other projects are experiencing this...
on
The Future of NetBSD
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· Score: 3, Interesting
One such example, in my honest opinion, is Gentoo. I was a developer for about a year and a half before I finally called it quits. The major problem that I saw with Gentoo, and is the problem with NetBSD apparently, is that there is no main driving force to give the project direction. One of the great strengths of Gentoo is that there are many people working on things to scratch everyone's itch, but there is no general goal, and that is what leads to all of the flamewars. Everyone has their own idea of what Gentoo should be, and since there is no one to decide it, some people are content with arguing over it until the project dies from stagnation.
The best way to solve this, as I see it, is to adopt the idea of having a permanent "steering committee" for the project. Some major projects already do this, and it provides the central authority/leadership that is needed for any large scale project. Most developers/contributors don't want to deal with the politics that come from not having a central leadership, and there are the vocal few that will make it a living hell for everyone else.
I used to be a firm believer in letting projects govern themselves, but since I've been part of one that operates that way, I see the problems that come from that type of system, and they are crippling.
"In an election where more people voted than ever before we should stop and think what we have accomplished."
My question is, how many of these people that went out to vote, actually knew the issues? All of these voter campaigns were going on telling people to go "Vote or Die" (or that they didn't vote in 2000 and should now), while they should have been saying, "Learn about the issues, and how they affect you, then vote". How many of the people that voted actually voted on the issues, and not whether or not the candidate had their exact religious beliefs?
I see computers as existing in 3 categories currently, and I really don't think we need to break it up anymore than that.
We have your "Value" systems, your "Business" systems, and then your "Gamer/Bleeding edge" boxes. Value is the lowest end hardware that is currently available without being ancient, while business systems are normally a little more powerful so those inpatient business types don't have to wait for Word to load, and then you have your gamers that feel the need to buy the fastest of everything on the market currently and then overclock it.
Sure, this is all still relative to the times, but it will always be that way.
They already have one based off of Anaconda. I have no problem making things easier...I just don't think it should be their ultimate priority to try and become like Mandrake or something like that, and if they want to go that path, I'd hope they would keep the old way of installing.
I completely agree with you. I love how Gentoo is currently and I don't think they should start changing to try and pull in more users. Many are already coming with how the distro works now. There are distros out there that make it easy to install and keep up to date for the normal user, one such distro that comes to mind is Mandrake. Let them keep their market share, and Gentoo keep theirs. There's no reason to fix what isn't broke.
Currently by our limited view of how life has come to be what it is and evolved, we believe water to be essential to the existence of life. Does this mean that there can be other forms of life that don't require water? Sure, its a good way to find life that is like that which we are accustomed to, but perhaps there are other forms of life that don't require the presence of water. I don't claim to be a scientist...just food for thought:)
Yes, it is a great waste of bandwidth. I don't think anyone can deny that fact, but atleast Netgear seems to be willing to work with them to resolve the problem. They could have just turned their head the other way and not admitted that there was a problem. Instead they are working to come to an agreeable solution with the University of Wisconsin, which is a step in the right direction I believe. I'm not saying that this mistake is not a bad thing, but atleast they are trying to resolve it.
It seems that things like this are like science fiction to many and are not taken seriously. This is a subject that should be taken more seriously and given some true thought. It shouldn't be left on the back burner until we find something of danger. Governments and people always miss where the true danger lies though, and focus too much on little things.
OpenOffice.org still has its problems of handling files made with MS Office, atleast in my experience. I've had documents that don't get formatted correctly at all by OO.org which show up fine in MS Office. And as many others have said, they are making a huge change here and might have applications that they still need to use or have not found alternatives for, and given time, I'm sure they'll find something that accomplishes the same thing or more.
Its also probably safe to assume that they are making the change to linux for a reason other than PR. To the normal Joe Schmoe, he could care less what OS they use. They obviously saw an advantage to using linux or they would have stayed with the status quo.
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Being a techie won't make a good manager, but a good manager being a techie will probably result in a great manager. Its my personal belief that to be able to manage people well, you need to know what their job is, and what better way than to have done it yourself at one point? Your manager would then actually be able to manage a group without guessing and screwing everyone over. You may also be able to have an actual meaningful conversation with them without wasting your time by dumbing down the conversation to something they can understand. Not everyone is cut out to be a manager though, so don't be too quick to adopt any techie that wants to be one. :)
Last year (during my senior year), we had a class that did almost exactly this. We worked on one major project for basically a semester and a half. It started around November and we had to present our project in May. The general idea of the class was to come up with a project, or pick one of the projects the professor had come up with. After that, the whole class split into 4 groups (about 10 people per group). We went throughout the entire software development cycle from coming up with requirements documents, development plans, delivery dates, cost estimation, etc. By May we were supposed to have something that was ready to be delivered to the customer, along with any documentation or anything else that would be needed. I'd say all in all it was a rather interesting experience and I'd like to think it somewhat prepared us for the real world of software development.
For anyone that is curious, this was at Stevens Institute of Technology
One such example, in my honest opinion, is Gentoo. I was a developer for about a year and a half before I finally called it quits. The major problem that I saw with Gentoo, and is the problem with NetBSD apparently, is that there is no main driving force to give the project direction. One of the great strengths of Gentoo is that there are many people working on things to scratch everyone's itch, but there is no general goal, and that is what leads to all of the flamewars. Everyone has their own idea of what Gentoo should be, and since there is no one to decide it, some people are content with arguing over it until the project dies from stagnation.
The best way to solve this, as I see it, is to adopt the idea of having a permanent "steering committee" for the project. Some major projects already do this, and it provides the central authority/leadership that is needed for any large scale project. Most developers/contributors don't want to deal with the politics that come from not having a central leadership, and there are the vocal few that will make it a living hell for everyone else.
I used to be a firm believer in letting projects govern themselves, but since I've been part of one that operates that way, I see the problems that come from that type of system, and they are crippling.
Looked up the patent quick, its from September 4, 1997. Here's a link to it: http://tinyurl.com/3ohgu
Just more software patents that hurt everyone, in my opinion.
"In an election where more people voted than ever before we should stop and think what we have accomplished."
My question is, how many of these people that went out to vote, actually knew the issues? All of these voter campaigns were going on telling people to go "Vote or Die" (or that they didn't vote in 2000 and should now), while they should have been saying, "Learn about the issues, and how they affect you, then vote".
How many of the people that voted actually voted on the issues, and not whether or not the candidate had their exact religious beliefs?
I see computers as existing in 3 categories currently, and I really don't think we need to break it up anymore than that.
We have your "Value" systems, your "Business" systems, and then your "Gamer/Bleeding edge" boxes. Value is the lowest end hardware that is currently available without being ancient, while business systems are normally a little more powerful so those inpatient business types don't have to wait for Word to load, and then you have your gamers that feel the need to buy the fastest of everything on the market currently and then overclock it.
Sure, this is all still relative to the times, but it will always be that way.
They already have one based off of Anaconda. I have no problem making things easier...I just don't think it should be their ultimate priority to try and become like Mandrake or something like that, and if they want to go that path, I'd hope they would keep the old way of installing.
I completely agree with you. I love how Gentoo is currently and I don't think they should start changing to try and pull in more users. Many are already coming with how the distro works now. There are distros out there that make it easy to install and keep up to date for the normal user, one such distro that comes to mind is Mandrake. Let them keep their market share, and Gentoo keep theirs. There's no reason to fix what isn't broke.
Currently by our limited view of how life has come to be what it is and evolved, we believe water to be essential to the existence of life. Does this mean that there can be other forms of life that don't require water? Sure, its a good way to find life that is like that which we are accustomed to, but perhaps there are other forms of life that don't require the presence of water. I don't claim to be a scientist...just food for thought :)
Yes, it is a great waste of bandwidth. I don't think anyone can deny that fact, but atleast Netgear seems to be willing to work with them to resolve the problem. They could have just turned their head the other way and not admitted that there was a problem. Instead they are working to come to an agreeable solution with the University of Wisconsin, which is a step in the right direction I believe. I'm not saying that this mistake is not a bad thing, but atleast they are trying to resolve it.
It seems that things like this are like science fiction to many and are not taken seriously. This is a subject that should be taken more seriously and given some true thought. It shouldn't be left on the back burner until we find something of danger. Governments and people always miss where the true danger lies though, and focus too much on little things.
OpenOffice.org still has its problems of handling files made with MS Office, atleast in my experience. I've had documents that don't get formatted correctly at all by OO.org which show up fine in MS Office. And as many others have said, they are making a huge change here and might have applications that they still need to use or have not found alternatives for, and given time, I'm sure they'll find something that accomplishes the same thing or more.
Its also probably safe to assume that they are making the change to linux for a reason other than PR. To the normal Joe Schmoe, he could care less what OS they use. They obviously saw an advantage to using linux or they would have stayed with the status quo.