I am wondering why nobody has pointed this out but "lead software engineer" and "software director with the task to grow a new group" are two very different positions and the question OP should ask themselves is whether they want to get more into the "management" side of things and away from coding and if no more coding would be acceptable for them.
On the upside, especially as you are growing older these skills and experiences of managing and running things are much more marketable than being yet another coder in your 50s with young whippersnappers pushing into the market every year and giving you a run for all the available jobs.
Well, to be fair... what did you expect? I don't know any current technologies they could have squeezed in there that aren't already in there or that are pretty underwhelming anyway. It's not like the S3 is vastly superior or more "wowing" in any way. They are both pretty much at the cutting edge, what else could they have squeezed in there that would "wow" people??? Smartphones have been doing that xx% thinner/faster/smaller/wider peepee dance for a while now because there isn't much more they can do.
I do not want to down-play her role and importance but in accordance with what you said, I honestly doubt she constantly works 12-16 hours and is actually creative during all of that time. A lot of management work is just long hours, repetitive drone-work like meetings, summing stuff up in emails or just shaking hands, meeting people and the like. I cannot imagine she actually creates stuff and solves problems 16 hours a day, each day, for years on end.
As a European I find her use of "positive" rhetorics/manipulation to be worrying... like she is offering you something, namely a chance to do "what really matters to you" while at the same time she robs you blind of the biggest part of your free time and this fact isn't even part of the discussion. So you lose 4 to 6 hours free time each working day and get 1 or 2 hours back "to be with the kids". Sure, what a great trade-off for the employer. Sure she could do it in 1999 when she was in her early 20s, now she is 36 and I doubt she does 16 hours each day and if so then how long does she think she can keep it up? If work is all you have in life, sure you can invest the maximum of your available time in it but you know, for most people it is NOT all they have in life. I think this is recklessly endangering her own health and as someone in important positions like this, she actually OWES it to her company to take care of her health especially well.
And what a well-researched "opinion" to simply claim "burn out" does not exist.
Even then, there are ways to say bad things without saying bad things
There is a particular "code" used in references or certificates of employment you get when leaving your job here in central Europe - basically employers are not allowed to hinder you from finding a new job in any way, so they cannot say anything bad; instead they rely on very subtle differences and certain phrases to the point where you can read about this "code" in books and hear about it in trainings. An example would be saying you "always tried to do a good job", which sounds alright, right? But the code here is that is does not say "you always did an absolutely outstanding excellent job" so what they were actually saying is "you were frakking horrible", you never really did anything (hence "tried to.."). In another examples, there are certain key phrases, so if they are saying that you "always associated with your fellow employees" or something like that, then that can mean you are a mean drunk and/or sexually harassed colleagues. And there are techniques to leave things out, like not mentioning you were always polite to your superiors and customers but you were to your colleagues, then that could mean there were issues there.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_reference_letter#Language http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeitszeugnis#Zeugniscode
However, what I don't understand is why the subject of the story just didn't leave McDonalds. Honestly, you're in a city full of excellent, and sometimes inexpensive, cuisine. Why even go to McDonalds in the first place and why not leave when there's an altercation? Is the 20€ of McDs food worth the hassle?
Clearly you don't have kids who are hooked on Chicken Nuggets and Cheeseburgers...
Isn't that kinda the point? To make the TV show or movie look like just a window on another world?
But in this case you are filming something completely fake and want to make that look real and better definition and "crisper" images are working against you there.
And the other factor is what most of the viewers are used to - I had it happen to me, some movies on iTunes just looked too crisp and clear to the point where it just felt fake. This could have been a combination of all sorts of things but ultimately it being 1080p did not improve or change that, it still looked "fake" just with a clearer image. Same thing with 48fps.
This is not so much a technical issue but what people are used to from decades of low-resolution analog transmission.
I am just going to ignore that you listed Voyager, Buffy, Hercules and Friends as somehow positive examples; maybe when compared to the current reality crap.
But now we have/had: BSG, Dexter, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, The Shield, The Wire, Firefly, Top Gear etc... And these shows took tv shows to a whole new level in terms of story depth and production values. It is no wonder HBO, SHO et al. give hollywood a run for their money, or at least have them scared.
I recently wanted to start watching Voyager and I did not even make it through the first season as it was just horrible. Shallow, bland characters aside what I really, REALLY hated is how fake, inconsistent and completely stupid their stories were. In what I saw of S1 they had a chance to go home literally at the snap of a finger at least 3 or 4 times and in each one of those instances they conjured up some bull about violating the Prime Directive or it wouldn't be ethical or some other completely fake and conjured up excuse - only to frakk with the politics and fate of whole planets in the next episode and get involved in ANYTHING as long as it somehow helped the writers squeeze out a cheap story.
I also did not like the new "Enterprise" because of similar reasons and stopped watching even earlier in S1; bad, boring writing and even more shallow, bland characters - the most depth they could come up with was constantly showing Archer's doofus smirk/grin and his most important and deepest characteristic: he has a cute doggy! How adorable! And when they really wanted to develop characters and show incredible depth (hint: sarcasm) and "ingenuity" then they slapped yet another scene of "dinner in the captain's quarters" on there where, of course, nothing happens but blatant small talk and the ever-so-popular scene of seeing Archer cut up his food, yet again. A very popular scene for other characters as well, as they constantly show people sitting at a table cutting their food. I guess "Enterprise" was more a study of Archer's smirk and people's table manners. On top of that they completely twisted everything we have ever learned about the Vulcans and all of a sudden these were impulsive, arrogant, deceiving liars who would stop at nothing to frakk with humans.
Sometimes I can't quite believe the world we live in.
You mean a world where people are very, very passionate about a fantastic and thrilling story put into breath-taking pictures with beautiful sceneries and excellent actors portraying deep, actually interesting characters and people just cannot wait to see how it continues? And a world where a majority of internet users are from the States and you are pretty much bound to run into spoilers or as a fan won't be able to really participate in the fan communities because you are still waiting to see the latest episode? If you are not a TV show junkie, you probably cannot relate and that's OK but who are you to judge?
You may sneeze at this all you want - let's say you are a sports fan, are you satisfied with reading the results of a big game in tomorrow's newspaper? I doubt you are, thus a multi-billion-dollar industry does nothing but show live events. Is it really so strange that fans of a great TV shows are just as passionate and desperate about seeing the next episode? Welcome to the Western world of entertainment and consuming...
Not a fan of her policies, but it's ridiculous to hold politicians to absurdly high standards and react with cynicism when they fail them. That's not the way towards better politics and politicians.
So you are implying plagiarism is actually sort-of kinda ok and just a "no-no" without any real moral or ethical implications? Because last I checked holding scientific work by the standard of no-plagiarism is not an option and is not an "absurdly high/ridiculous standard" but the base line, the very foundation to start from. So do NOT belittle this as a trivial offense even though it might seem minor when compared to other not-so-uncommon offenses in politics.
Or, you know, they could simply install a little hardware on/off switch on the back or even better on the front so people could actually switch it off when they aren't using it that frequently. Would probably cost just a few cents more...
Do NOT read this as "Microsoft could have made the iPhone and not just let Apple do it"! Because they definitely tried dabbling in that market quite some time (years) with their Windows Mobile and CE and Pocket PCs in the very late 90s/turn of the millenium and with the HP/Compaq iPaq they even had a "nice" touch-device and it still sucked pretty hard. They were trying way too hard to give you a portable Windows with Start menu and everything and they failed to realize this doesn't work on a small device like that.
So Apple's claim to fame and success with the iPhone isn't so much a technological "paradigm-shift" as it shows how important trying at the right time is (and Apple tried before as well, and failed) and they sure tried at a time when a lot of technologies were "ready". And it shows they understood how to make a small "paradigm shift" happen in the way we want to use those devices - they actually came up with something that works on a portable device and weren't trying to just plug you a smaller MacOSX.
It also is a little disapointing as Apple could start a 4G network to compete with the big boys, use the money for more R&D, or pay their Foxconn employers more and educate them to work for Apple China through scholarships. But Apple did not want to take that risk.
For me it makes sense they didn't - they are sort of a "supplier" for Big Telco and Big Telco wouldn't be too friendly when their "supplier" suddenly competes in their market. Also, they have no reason to pay Foxconn more, they have said it countless times they are an international company and thus not a charity. Also, "working for Apple China" is probably impossible since Foxconn also manufactures for a lot of other smartphone, tablet and other electronics companies. Apple doesn't really own any factories there nor should they - foxconn obviously does great leveraging the same production lines for Samsung, htc and others. This is microchips, not heavy industry where one tiny screw might require a readjustment of the whole assembly line.
I think you might have it backwards... what this study could be saying is that immoral behavior and being greedy is obviously more likely to get you rich than being a law-abiding and moral, good citizen who does his 9-5 and pays his taxes. But what they found was that obviously those people who saw themselves as rich were also more likely to be immoral.
Ah yes, this must be the reason why most monasteries here in Europe are pretty much companies owning large portions of the land, woods and rivers and why the Vatican has such an abundance of gold, jewels, art etc...
ESR, one of the finest engineers behind the open source movement and much of the software we use everyday
Really, this guy is the "finest" we have to offer in terms of open source engineers? The guy who wrote pretty much nothing but "fetchmail" that was of a little significance? The guy who likes to present himself as if he was Linus' real hacker brother despite never having contributed to the kernel? I had really hoped he had FINALLY disappeared...
I'd like you to explain to me the relevance of being able to diddle of around on the command line of a potentially dangerous piece of machinery (try editing iptables on distant servers at >1000ms lag or fiddling with your boss's inbox!) while trying to just make it through your bleak sysadmin day, to competence in things like anticipation of incoming email traffic, interpreting luser behavior, observing uptime stats while reading slashdot and the like. The command line is simply an artefact of the invention of the computer having preceded the invention of the Apple-iWay-of-things to get the CPU and App power on the "road". There is simply no reason to believe that the ability to use it correlates to the ability to be a literate, civilized sysadmin or developer.
And before you start - long history of terminals and command lines ranging from Datapoint 3300 to contemporary terminal emulators, also long experience of GUIs ranging from Commodore to OS/2, and now OS X. I have also sysadmined/hacked extensively in the US and Europe, in both QWERTY and DVORAK. My conclusion? For a given skill level, the GUI is always safer because your attention is never distracted at a crucial moment. When you click, you click; no remembering the order and impact of arguments or commands. And its nice colors make me feel warm and fuzzy inside!
The ability of a sysadmin/hacker isn't measured in terms of her/his ability to vi/emacs/ed/generally use the command line.
Slashdot Mirror
I am wondering why nobody has pointed this out but "lead software engineer" and "software director with the task to grow a new group" are two very different positions and the question OP should ask themselves is whether they want to get more into the "management" side of things and away from coding and if no more coding would be acceptable for them.
On the upside, especially as you are growing older these skills and experiences of managing and running things are much more marketable than being yet another coder in your 50s with young whippersnappers pushing into the market every year and giving you a run for all the available jobs.
Well, to be fair... what did you expect? I don't know any current technologies they could have squeezed in there that aren't already in there or that are pretty underwhelming anyway. It's not like the S3 is vastly superior or more "wowing" in any way. They are both pretty much at the cutting edge, what else could they have squeezed in there that would "wow" people??? Smartphones have been doing that xx% thinner/faster/smaller/wider peepee dance for a while now because there isn't much more they can do.
I do not want to down-play her role and importance but in accordance with what you said, I honestly doubt she constantly works 12-16 hours and is actually creative during all of that time. A lot of management work is just long hours, repetitive drone-work like meetings, summing stuff up in emails or just shaking hands, meeting people and the like. I cannot imagine she actually creates stuff and solves problems 16 hours a day, each day, for years on end.
As a European I find her use of "positive" rhetorics/manipulation to be worrying... like she is offering you something, namely a chance to do "what really matters to you" while at the same time she robs you blind of the biggest part of your free time and this fact isn't even part of the discussion. So you lose 4 to 6 hours free time each working day and get 1 or 2 hours back "to be with the kids". Sure, what a great trade-off for the employer. Sure she could do it in 1999 when she was in her early 20s, now she is 36 and I doubt she does 16 hours each day and if so then how long does she think she can keep it up? If work is all you have in life, sure you can invest the maximum of your available time in it but you know, for most people it is NOT all they have in life. I think this is recklessly endangering her own health and as someone in important positions like this, she actually OWES it to her company to take care of her health especially well.
And what a well-researched "opinion" to simply claim "burn out" does not exist.
Even then, there are ways to say bad things without saying bad things
There is a particular "code" used in references or certificates of employment you get when leaving your job here in central Europe - basically employers are not allowed to hinder you from finding a new job in any way, so they cannot say anything bad; instead they rely on very subtle differences and certain phrases to the point where you can read about this "code" in books and hear about it in trainings. An example would be saying you "always tried to do a good job", which sounds alright, right? But the code here is that is does not say "you always did an absolutely outstanding excellent job" so what they were actually saying is "you were frakking horrible", you never really did anything (hence "tried to.."). In another examples, there are certain key phrases, so if they are saying that you "always associated with your fellow employees" or something like that, then that can mean you are a mean drunk and/or sexually harassed colleagues. And there are techniques to leave things out, like not mentioning you were always polite to your superiors and customers but you were to your colleagues, then that could mean there were issues there.
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_reference_letter#Language
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeitszeugnis#Zeugniscode
However, what I don't understand is why the subject of the story just didn't leave McDonalds. Honestly, you're in a city full of excellent, and sometimes inexpensive, cuisine.
Why even go to McDonalds in the first place and why not leave when there's an altercation? Is the 20€ of McDs food worth the hassle?
Clearly you don't have kids who are hooked on Chicken Nuggets and Cheeseburgers...
Isn't that kinda the point? To make the TV show or movie look like just a window on another world?
But in this case you are filming something completely fake and want to make that look real and better definition and "crisper" images are working against you there.
And the other factor is what most of the viewers are used to - I had it happen to me, some movies on iTunes just looked too crisp and clear to the point where it just felt fake. This could have been a combination of all sorts of things but ultimately it being 1080p did not improve or change that, it still looked "fake" just with a clearer image. Same thing with 48fps.
This is not so much a technical issue but what people are used to from decades of low-resolution analog transmission.
Sounds like they also want to integrate the results from full body scanners.
"People who enjoyed being seen naked in public also enjoyed these activities..."
Seinfeld, Friends, Quantum Leap, Star Trek TNG, Babylon 5, DS9, Voyager, Twilight Zone, X-Files, Sliders, Buffy, Angel, Xena, Hercules, Timetrax, Ren & Stimpy..........
I am just going to ignore that you listed Voyager, Buffy, Hercules and Friends as somehow positive examples; maybe when compared to the current reality crap.
But now we have/had: BSG, Dexter, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, The Shield, The Wire, Firefly, Top Gear etc... And these shows took tv shows to a whole new level in terms of story depth and production values. It is no wonder HBO, SHO et al. give hollywood a run for their money, or at least have them scared.
I recently wanted to start watching Voyager and I did not even make it through the first season as it was just horrible. Shallow, bland characters aside what I really, REALLY hated is how fake, inconsistent and completely stupid their stories were. In what I saw of S1 they had a chance to go home literally at the snap of a finger at least 3 or 4 times and in each one of those instances they conjured up some bull about violating the Prime Directive or it wouldn't be ethical or some other completely fake and conjured up excuse - only to frakk with the politics and fate of whole planets in the next episode and get involved in ANYTHING as long as it somehow helped the writers squeeze out a cheap story.
I also did not like the new "Enterprise" because of similar reasons and stopped watching even earlier in S1; bad, boring writing and even more shallow, bland characters - the most depth they could come up with was constantly showing Archer's doofus smirk/grin and his most important and deepest characteristic: he has a cute doggy! How adorable! And when they really wanted to develop characters and show incredible depth (hint: sarcasm) and "ingenuity" then they slapped yet another scene of "dinner in the captain's quarters" on there where, of course, nothing happens but blatant small talk and the ever-so-popular scene of seeing Archer cut up his food, yet again. A very popular scene for other characters as well, as they constantly show people sitting at a table cutting their food. I guess "Enterprise" was more a study of Archer's smirk and people's table manners. On top of that they completely twisted everything we have ever learned about the Vulcans and all of a sudden these were impulsive, arrogant, deceiving liars who would stop at nothing to frakk with humans.
Sometimes I can't quite believe the world we live in.
You mean a world where people are very, very passionate about a fantastic and thrilling story put into breath-taking pictures with beautiful sceneries and excellent actors portraying deep, actually interesting characters and people just cannot wait to see how it continues? And a world where a majority of internet users are from the States and you are pretty much bound to run into spoilers or as a fan won't be able to really participate in the fan communities because you are still waiting to see the latest episode? If you are not a TV show junkie, you probably cannot relate and that's OK but who are you to judge?
You may sneeze at this all you want - let's say you are a sports fan, are you satisfied with reading the results of a big game in tomorrow's newspaper? I doubt you are, thus a multi-billion-dollar industry does nothing but show live events. Is it really so strange that fans of a great TV shows are just as passionate and desperate about seeing the next episode? Welcome to the Western world of entertainment and consuming...
Not a fan of her policies, but it's ridiculous to hold politicians to absurdly high standards and react with cynicism when they fail them. That's not the way towards better politics and politicians.
So you are implying plagiarism is actually sort-of kinda ok and just a "no-no" without any real moral or ethical implications? Because last I checked holding scientific work by the standard of no-plagiarism is not an option and is not an "absurdly high/ridiculous standard" but the base line, the very foundation to start from. So do NOT belittle this as a trivial offense even though it might seem minor when compared to other not-so-uncommon offenses in politics.
Or, you know, they could simply install a little hardware on/off switch on the back or even better on the front so people could actually switch it off when they aren't using it that frequently. Would probably cost just a few cents more...
Do NOT read this as "Microsoft could have made the iPhone and not just let Apple do it"! Because they definitely tried dabbling in that market quite some time (years) with their Windows Mobile and CE and Pocket PCs in the very late 90s/turn of the millenium and with the HP/Compaq iPaq they even had a "nice" touch-device and it still sucked pretty hard. They were trying way too hard to give you a portable Windows with Start menu and everything and they failed to realize this doesn't work on a small device like that.
So Apple's claim to fame and success with the iPhone isn't so much a technological "paradigm-shift" as it shows how important trying at the right time is (and Apple tried before as well, and failed) and they sure tried at a time when a lot of technologies were "ready". And it shows they understood how to make a small "paradigm shift" happen in the way we want to use those devices - they actually came up with something that works on a portable device and weren't trying to just plug you a smaller MacOSX.
It also is a little disapointing as Apple could start a 4G network to compete with the big boys, use the money for more R&D, or pay their Foxconn employers more and educate them to work for Apple China through scholarships. But Apple did not want to take that risk.
For me it makes sense they didn't - they are sort of a "supplier" for Big Telco and Big Telco wouldn't be too friendly when their "supplier" suddenly competes in their market. Also, they have no reason to pay Foxconn more, they have said it countless times they are an international company and thus not a charity. Also, "working for Apple China" is probably impossible since Foxconn also manufactures for a lot of other smartphone, tablet and other electronics companies. Apple doesn't really own any factories there nor should they - foxconn obviously does great leveraging the same production lines for Samsung, htc and others. This is microchips, not heavy industry where one tiny screw might require a readjustment of the whole assembly line.
This was missing from the summary but the study precisely says that you are probably wrong and becoming rich WILL make you an asshole.
I think you might have it backwards... what this study could be saying is that immoral behavior and being greedy is obviously more likely to get you rich than being a law-abiding and moral, good citizen who does his 9-5 and pays his taxes. But what they found was that obviously those people who saw themselves as rich were also more likely to be immoral.
Ah yes, this must be the reason why most monasteries here in Europe are pretty much companies owning large portions of the land, woods and rivers and why the Vatican has such an abundance of gold, jewels, art etc...
ESR, one of the finest engineers behind the open source movement and much of the software we use everyday
Really, this guy is the "finest" we have to offer in terms of open source engineers? The guy who wrote pretty much nothing but "fetchmail" that was of a little significance? The guy who likes to present himself as if he was Linus' real hacker brother despite never having contributed to the kernel? I had really hoped he had FINALLY disappeared...
Shit We Deal With on a Daily Basis is so Serious the SOCA Brings Us Coffee Agency?
Shit We Deal With is so Serious the SOCA Brings Us Coffee Agency?
You forgot: "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the childr^h^h^h^hartists!!!"
Really Really Serious Organised Crime Agency?
Way More Serious than Serious Organised Crime Agency Agency?
"Hello officer, what seems to be the problem here?"
"plz u step into my office now"
I'd like you to explain to me the relevance of being able to diddle of around on the command line of a potentially dangerous piece of machinery (try editing iptables on distant servers at >1000ms lag or fiddling with your boss's inbox!) while trying to just make it through your bleak sysadmin day, to competence in things like anticipation of incoming email traffic, interpreting luser behavior, observing uptime stats while reading slashdot and the like. The command line is simply an artefact of the invention of the computer having preceded the invention of the Apple-iWay-of-things to get the CPU and App power on the "road". There is simply no reason to believe that the ability to use it correlates to the ability to be a literate, civilized sysadmin or developer.
And before you start - long history of terminals and command lines ranging from Datapoint 3300 to contemporary terminal emulators, also long experience of GUIs ranging from Commodore to OS/2, and now OS X. I have also sysadmined/hacked extensively in the US and Europe, in both QWERTY and DVORAK. My conclusion? For a given skill level, the GUI is always safer because your attention is never distracted at a crucial moment. When you click, you click; no remembering the order and impact of arguments or commands. And its nice colors make me feel warm and fuzzy inside!
The ability of a sysadmin/hacker isn't measured in terms of her/his ability to vi/emacs/ed/generally use the command line.