Hello, fellow Markham resident! Nice to run across your post:)
I live in Markham too, work just on the Richmond Hill side of the border off 16th avenue. And yep, I can think of 3 Timmie's within short driving distance from any given location around here!
I look out the window and I see Compaq, Black & Decker, Levi's and a bunch of other cool companies' head offices. You can now probably guess almost exactly where I am right now.
That's it. What'll it take to get companies like mine to roll out Linux instead of Windows? Well, surely the cost of Linux is a lot more attractive than the idea of rolling out new Windows machines (W2K here, mostly). I'm a Linux user. I love it, especially on the server (and we have a number of Linux servers now at my company).
But our company has an investment made in infrastructure that it can't just throw away. One example - as much as I don't like it, we have Exchange handle email. Not just email, but more importantly, the calendar functionality, which lets us book meetings, meeting rooms and equipment (ie one of the projectors). We can exchange meeting requests/responses. We can look at each other's calendars to see who's available when, or where somebody is at any given time. In a larger company, this is very important because we can't keep tabs on everybody all the time.
So far there's been plenty of email clients available for Linux. There's been plenty of programs that can do calendars. But it's besides the point:
If a company like mine goes to Linux, they will have to have the ability to phase that change in, and thus retain compatibility with the existing tools and services that we use. Those who switch to Linux need to be able to share their data with the folks that stay with Windows, and vice-versa.
StarOffice gives us everything we need in terms of processing Word documents and Excel spreadsheets reasonably well. But until there's a compatible alternative to Outlook (all of it) that can connect to Exchange and handle the calendar functionality, you won't be able to convince anyone here to change over. As much as I love Linux, I can't switch my desktop machine over because I, like most everybody else in my company, rely on Outlook, as evil as that is.
Give me the opportunity and I'll switch - I've already switched a number of our servers to Linux, including all servers which run the application I develop. Give me a decent Linux alternative to Outlook, and I'm certain I could convert most of the company to Linux for their desktops.
I hope you realize that the cost of living up here is not the same as it is for people in the states.
Salaries, for example. Programmers up here (in T.O.) earn, on average, between 50-85k CANADIAN depending on seniority. It's RARE to get paid higher than that - I certainly don't (I am paid slightly above the middle of that range, FYI). I keep hearing about programmers in the U.S. earning the same amount, but in US Dollars!
Add to that the 1/3 the government slices off the top in income tax, and when you convert the amount of money I earn in US dollars, it starts to look like I'm approaching the poverty line.
I have relatives from the U.S. who love the exchange rate and how cheap everything is here. Particularly the restaurants. Trouble is, I'm not
benefitting from that 'cheapness'. Everything is as expensive as it's always been, but our U.S. counterparts have their stronger dollar as an advantage.
Everything is relative. $50 Canadian to me looks very much like $50 US looks to you.
I hope you realize that the cost of living up here is not the same as it is for people in the states.
Salaries, for example. Programmers up here (in T.O.) earn, on average, between 50-85k CANADIAN depending on seniority. It's RARE to get paid higher than that - I certainly don't (I am paid slightly above the middle of that range, FYI). I keep hearing about programmers in the U.S. earning the same amount, but in US Dollars!
Add to that the 1/3 the government slices off the top in income tax, and when you convert the amount of money I earn in US dollars, it starts to look like I'm approaching the poverty line.
I have relatives from the U.S. who love the exchange rate and how cheap everything is here. Particularly the restaurants. Trouble is, I'm not benefitting from that 'cheapness'. Everything is as expensive as it's always been, but our U.S. counterparts have their stronger dollar as an advantage.
Everything is relative. $50 Canadian to me looks very much like $50 US looks to you.
You should use RH 7.2 instead. It comes with kernel 2.4.7 or something, but can (and should) be upgraded to RedHat's kernel 2.4.9 via up2date. The RedHat kernel is quite stable and fast.
Quake 3, with the Urban Terror total conversion. Very realistic, very fun and addictive. I love the way the maps look like everyday places, and the characters look very human. And the real guns.
Roller Coaster Tycoon. This sim-style game where you build a theme park and design your own coasters is probably the most addictive game I've ever played. Hours go by without me even realizing it. Lots of fun.
Don't discount the Compaq line of SmartArray controllers. I've been using one for 2 years without a hitch. Supports everything you need them to do (I'm using the Smart/2P controller in my server). Never had a single problem with it. You can find these on eBay really cheap too.
I mean, besides the many ways you can script the installation process, there's certainly ways that you can image the completed installation and just copy that image to all machines with the same hardware configuration.
And yes, it can be done easily and relatively cheaply. I used to work for a consulting firm that used this process to upgrade about 3000 machines at one company over just a few weekends. Basically identified the different hardware configurations (I think they had about 8), and we ran around with floppies that booted and imaged the machine from a central server (which had a copy made previously from an installation done by hand).
Each floppy was configured to grab a different image from the server (identified by machine model). Each person in our team was responsible for upgrading all machines in one wing of one floor of one of their buildings. When done, a new wing was assigned to be done.
Each machine took about 10-15 minutes to image, but we didn't sit there and wait until they were done. We just identified machine, inserted floppy, move on to next one, then come back later to retrieve the floppy.
All of this was done with Norton Ghost to image a bunch of Windows installations, and it worked wonderfully. I'm sure it can be done just as easily with Linux installations too.
Try the iButton. It's a Java-based little button that can be placed on a keychain (or ring, or watch, or wallet). I imagine they're probably simple enough to program with, and probably difficult to hack. I believe they all come with a unique identifier that can be accessed which cannot be overwritten, unlike with a mag-card which can easily be copied and forged.
Should be relatively trivial to write a program to interface with a database every time it's touched to your terminal, depending on what sort of transaction you wish to take place.
I never said you have to have ONLY one gifted programmer, nor did I say the 'primadonna' system is good.
All I'm saying is that it's logical that different people have different abilities, and the gifted ones need to take the lead and make certain that the code has good design.
Yes, it's stupid to have full dependency on the 'primadonna', as you put it. But, without good leadership, your codebase will become a mess very quickly. Proper design will eliminate redundancy in code and will make debugging much easier. Many programmers do not understand how to begin designing a large system. This isn't work that can be done by one and only one person - a group of 'core' developers is best, and will oversee the work of the whole.
Once the design is more-or-less defined, everyone can go to work. The gifted programmer is less needed now.
Having a 'primadonna' is unacceptable for long-term stability of a project. It is the opposite side of my previous argument, where NOT having a gifted programmer take leadership of a project in its initial stages will kill the project in the long term.
In my work situation, this design work is actually a partnership of TWO people. Neither are 'primadonna', and neither are so indispensible that having them leave would kill the project. But it is recognized that they understand the 'big picture' better than the less talented (or less experienced) programmers do.
Let's face it - Linux and most large-scale projects evolve under a 'leadership' of the most talented and programmers. They are the ones responsible for designing the layout of the code, and how (more or less) the whole picture will work. At least, more so in the beginning than now. Inevitably, though, you have the people at the top of your 'programmer pyramid' who decide which code to commit or not. Not one person, but not the whole mass either. You can write anything you want to plug into the kernel, but the kernel design was NOT defined by you (you meaning most people).
This is a question that I face at work all the time.
The reality is that you CAN make use of mediocre programmers too, but you need to be careful.
The gifted programmer can take the lead of any coding that goes on and write the core components. That gifted programmer should also design the layout of the code and properly set up the abstraction of appropriate components. The mediocre programmers can then be assigned some of the easier programming tasks, while the gifted programmer resumes efforts on the more difficult ones.
You'll never get away from having programmers of different skill levels working together. But - every project should have at least one gifted programmer to lead the way. The rest of the programmers can still be useful, and can catch each other's mistakes. They might even catch a mistake in the gifted programmer's code the odd time. When you're coding in a rush, mistakes happen.
The same person looking at the same code over and over again will get used to seeing that code and sometimes silly mistakes might take a while to uncover, because after time it starts to 'look right'. No matter how gifted a programmer is, mistakes happen. It's how efficiently you can find and correct them that counts.
That was my first reaction when I read the headline. I've seen many examples of developers not properly abstracting their code, and instead of making general-purpose functions which can be used over and over again, the code may be littered with a dozen variations of the same function. Or perhaps having similar code in one routine executing over and over again rather than being in a function where it belongs in the first place.
If this code is produced in a rush and hasn't been thought out properly (and if you're alone working at this kind of pace this probably is the case), then I'm afraid to see what this code looks like.
I'm willing to bet that this is the case to some degree, because with only one person working on it there is no peer review to catch this sort of thing, and the emphasis will always be to get the program to 'just work', not to keep the code clean.
I know when I'm the only person working on something it takes a *lot* of discipline to keep the code clean and maintainable. In the back of your mind you figure that since you'll be maintaining it, it doesn't matter how it looks. Well... looking at your code in 6 months, you'll have no idea why you did things that way and why it works. Hopefully the code is at least commented to give him a clue.
Ok - it's boxing day and now it's finally snowing in Toronto. I can still see the grass, but it looks like by the time the day is through it might be covered.
I know what you mean. FYI in English it's called the 'greenhouse effect', regarding the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere playing hell with our climate.
Sounds weird. Perhaps a better question to ask - is anyone having a NORMAL winter this year?
That's exactly where I was three years ago! Same height, same weight! I always was the skinny guy in school, and never could seem to gain any weight.
All I can say is be careful what you wish for. Don't go out of your way to try to gain weight - you'll find it's difficult to stop!
My point - three years later, I'm sitting here weighing 170. I wish it was muscular weight, but no, I've got a gut that I've got to get rid of. It came on slowly - I was proud when I hit 155, then 160. Then I wanted to slow it down, but the damn weight kept on coming!
Weird in Toronto too
on
Merry Christmas
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Looking out my window, I see green grass. REALLY green, like it's spring. I live near Toronto, Canada.
We haven't had ANY snow this year, although everything to the north, south, east and west has gotten some. Maybe a few snowflakes a few days ago, but nothing that stayed on the ground for longer than a couple of hours. I don't even know if the snowthrower works yet (haven't started it up at all). Shovel hasn't left the wall yet. It's like we live in a bubble around here. Sorta throws the Canadian weather stereotypes in the trash, I suppose.
I've had good experiences with http://www.alldomains.com. They're cheap, and have pretty much exactly what you're looking for. Check out their 'd-gear' package - only about $25 per year.
I used this for about 2 years, but now I run my own servers instead so it wasn't necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not make the next shift encompass both technologies?
So you're suggesting they use a purple laser instead?
*ducks*
Hello, fellow Markham resident! Nice to run across your post :)
I live in Markham too, work just on the Richmond Hill side of the border off 16th avenue. And yep, I can think of 3 Timmie's within short driving distance from any given location around here!
I look out the window and I see Compaq, Black & Decker, Levi's and a bunch of other cool companies' head offices. You can now probably guess almost exactly where I am right now.
My name is Indigo Montoya. You stole my RF shielding. Prepare to die!
*ducks*
That's it. What'll it take to get companies like mine to roll out Linux instead of Windows? Well, surely the cost of Linux is a lot more attractive than the idea of rolling out new Windows machines (W2K here, mostly). I'm a Linux user. I love it, especially on the server (and we have a number of Linux servers now at my company).
But our company has an investment made in infrastructure that it can't just throw away. One example - as much as I don't like it, we have Exchange handle email. Not just email, but more importantly, the calendar functionality, which lets us book meetings, meeting rooms and equipment (ie one of the projectors). We can exchange meeting requests/responses. We can look at each other's calendars to see who's available when, or where somebody is at any given time. In a larger company, this is very important because we can't keep tabs on everybody all the time.
So far there's been plenty of email clients available for Linux. There's been plenty of programs that can do calendars. But it's besides the point:
If a company like mine goes to Linux, they will have to have the ability to phase that change in, and thus retain compatibility with the existing tools and services that we use. Those who switch to Linux need to be able to share their data with the folks that stay with Windows, and vice-versa.
StarOffice gives us everything we need in terms of processing Word documents and Excel spreadsheets reasonably well. But until there's a compatible alternative to Outlook (all of it) that can connect to Exchange and handle the calendar functionality, you won't be able to convince anyone here to change over. As much as I love Linux, I can't switch my desktop machine over because I, like most everybody else in my company, rely on Outlook, as evil as that is.
Give me the opportunity and I'll switch - I've already switched a number of our servers to Linux, including all servers which run the application I develop. Give me a decent Linux alternative to Outlook, and I'm certain I could convert most of the company to Linux for their desktops.
I don't think that's what he meant.
From the console, it would be extremely nice if there was a way that one could read a SINGLE character, without the user having to press Enter/Return.
I've run across this issue ever since Java 1.0, and so far there doesn't seem to be a way to do this. Perhaps there never will.
Why not just get one of these?
It's got everything you want, in a PC the size of a CD player.
I hope you realize that the cost of living up here is not the same as it is for people in the states.
Salaries, for example. Programmers up here (in T.O.) earn, on average, between 50-85k CANADIAN depending on seniority. It's RARE to get paid higher than that - I certainly don't (I am paid slightly above the middle of that range, FYI). I keep hearing about programmers in the U.S. earning the same amount, but in US Dollars!
Add to that the 1/3 the government slices off the top in income tax, and when you convert the amount of money I earn in US dollars, it starts to look like I'm approaching the poverty line.
I have relatives from the U.S. who love the exchange rate and how cheap everything is here. Particularly the restaurants. Trouble is, I'm not
benefitting from that 'cheapness'. Everything is as expensive as it's always been, but our U.S. counterparts have their stronger dollar as an advantage.
Everything is relative. $50 Canadian to me looks very much like $50 US looks to you.
I hope you realize that the cost of living up here is not the same as it is for people in the states.
Salaries, for example. Programmers up here (in T.O.) earn, on average, between 50-85k CANADIAN depending on seniority. It's RARE to get paid higher than that - I certainly don't (I am paid slightly above the middle of that range, FYI). I keep hearing about programmers in the U.S. earning the same amount, but in US Dollars!
Add to that the 1/3 the government slices off the top in income tax, and when you convert the amount of money I earn in US dollars, it starts to look like I'm approaching the poverty line.
I have relatives from the U.S. who love the exchange rate and how cheap everything is here. Particularly the restaurants. Trouble is, I'm not benefitting from that 'cheapness'. Everything is as expensive as it's always been, but our U.S. counterparts have their stronger dollar as an advantage.
Everything is relative. $50 Canadian to me looks very much like $50 US looks to you.
It never fails. I just finished downloading and installing 0.9.7 yesterday :)
Sigh.
If you're using a fresh install, stop now.
You should use RH 7.2 instead. It comes with kernel 2.4.7 or something, but can (and should) be upgraded to RedHat's kernel 2.4.9 via up2date. The RedHat kernel is quite stable and fast.
Quake 3, with the Urban Terror total conversion. Very realistic, very fun and addictive. I love the way the maps look like everyday places, and the characters look very human. And the real guns.
Roller Coaster Tycoon. This sim-style game where you build a theme park and design your own coasters is probably the most addictive game I've ever played. Hours go by without me even realizing it. Lots of fun.
Funny... they didn't mention 'sky hooks' either. You'd think they could keep their terminology straight.
Don't discount the Compaq line of SmartArray controllers. I've been using one for 2 years without a hitch. Supports everything you need them to do (I'm using the Smart/2P controller in my server). Never had a single problem with it. You can find these on eBay really cheap too.
At least, according to King Arthur (Monty Python)
You haven't heard of imaging?
I mean, besides the many ways you can script the installation process, there's certainly ways that you can image the completed installation and just copy that image to all machines with the same hardware configuration.
And yes, it can be done easily and relatively cheaply. I used to work for a consulting firm that used this process to upgrade about 3000 machines at one company over just a few weekends. Basically identified the different hardware configurations (I think they had about 8), and we ran around with floppies that booted and imaged the machine from a central server (which had a copy made previously from an installation done by hand).
Each floppy was configured to grab a different image from the server (identified by machine model). Each person in our team was responsible for upgrading all machines in one wing of one floor of one of their buildings. When done, a new wing was assigned to be done.
Each machine took about 10-15 minutes to image, but we didn't sit there and wait until they were done. We just identified machine, inserted floppy, move on to next one, then come back later to retrieve the floppy.
All of this was done with Norton Ghost to image a bunch of Windows installations, and it worked wonderfully. I'm sure it can be done just as easily with Linux installations too.
Slander, defamation, hate speech, lawsuit threats?
I hear Bernard Shifman might have some knowledge pertaining to this...
Try the iButton. It's a Java-based little button that can be placed on a keychain (or ring, or watch, or wallet). I imagine they're probably simple enough to program with, and probably difficult to hack. I believe they all come with a unique identifier that can be accessed which cannot be overwritten, unlike with a mag-card which can easily be copied and forged.
Should be relatively trivial to write a program to interface with a database every time it's touched to your terminal, depending on what sort of transaction you wish to take place.
I never said you have to have ONLY one gifted programmer, nor did I say the 'primadonna' system is good.
All I'm saying is that it's logical that different people have different abilities, and the gifted ones need to take the lead and make certain that the code has good design.
Yes, it's stupid to have full dependency on the 'primadonna', as you put it. But, without good leadership, your codebase will become a mess very quickly. Proper design will eliminate redundancy in code and will make debugging much easier. Many programmers do not understand how to begin designing a large system. This isn't work that can be done by one and only one person - a group of 'core' developers is best, and will oversee the work of the whole.
Once the design is more-or-less defined, everyone can go to work. The gifted programmer is less needed now.
Having a 'primadonna' is unacceptable for long-term stability of a project. It is the opposite side of my previous argument, where NOT having a gifted programmer take leadership of a project in its initial stages will kill the project in the long term.
In my work situation, this design work is actually a partnership of TWO people. Neither are 'primadonna', and neither are so indispensible that having them leave would kill the project. But it is recognized that they understand the 'big picture' better than the less talented (or less experienced) programmers do.
Let's face it - Linux and most large-scale projects evolve under a 'leadership' of the most talented and programmers. They are the ones responsible for designing the layout of the code, and how (more or less) the whole picture will work. At least, more so in the beginning than now. Inevitably, though, you have the people at the top of your 'programmer pyramid' who decide which code to commit or not. Not one person, but not the whole mass either. You can write anything you want to plug into the kernel, but the kernel design was NOT defined by you (you meaning most people).
This is a question that I face at work all the time.
The reality is that you CAN make use of mediocre programmers too, but you need to be careful.
The gifted programmer can take the lead of any coding that goes on and write the core components. That gifted programmer should also design the layout of the code and properly set up the abstraction of appropriate components. The mediocre programmers can then be assigned some of the easier programming tasks, while the gifted programmer resumes efforts on the more difficult ones.
You'll never get away from having programmers of different skill levels working together. But - every project should have at least one gifted programmer to lead the way. The rest of the programmers can still be useful, and can catch each other's mistakes. They might even catch a mistake in the gifted programmer's code the odd time. When you're coding in a rush, mistakes happen.
The same person looking at the same code over and over again will get used to seeing that code and sometimes silly mistakes might take a while to uncover, because after time it starts to 'look right'. No matter how gifted a programmer is, mistakes happen. It's how efficiently you can find and correct them that counts.
That was my first reaction when I read the headline. I've seen many examples of developers not properly abstracting their code, and instead of making general-purpose functions which can be used over and over again, the code may be littered with a dozen variations of the same function. Or perhaps having similar code in one routine executing over and over again rather than being in a function where it belongs in the first place.
If this code is produced in a rush and hasn't been thought out properly (and if you're alone working at this kind of pace this probably is the case), then I'm afraid to see what this code looks like.
I'm willing to bet that this is the case to some degree, because with only one person working on it there is no peer review to catch this sort of thing, and the emphasis will always be to get the program to 'just work', not to keep the code clean.
I know when I'm the only person working on something it takes a *lot* of discipline to keep the code clean and maintainable. In the back of your mind you figure that since you'll be maintaining it, it doesn't matter how it looks. Well... looking at your code in 6 months, you'll have no idea why you did things that way and why it works. Hopefully the code is at least commented to give him a clue.
Ok - it's boxing day and now it's finally snowing in Toronto. I can still see the grass, but it looks like by the time the day is through it might be covered.
One can hope, anyway.
I know what you mean. FYI in English it's called the 'greenhouse effect', regarding the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere playing hell with our climate.
Sounds weird. Perhaps a better question to ask - is anyone having a NORMAL winter this year?
LOL
That's exactly where I was three years ago! Same height, same weight! I always was the skinny guy in school, and never could seem to gain any weight.
All I can say is be careful what you wish for. Don't go out of your way to try to gain weight - you'll find it's difficult to stop!
My point - three years later, I'm sitting here weighing 170. I wish it was muscular weight, but no, I've got a gut that I've got to get rid of. It came on slowly - I was proud when I hit 155, then 160. Then I wanted to slow it down, but the damn weight kept on coming!
Looking out my window, I see green grass. REALLY green, like it's spring. I live near Toronto, Canada.
We haven't had ANY snow this year, although everything to the north, south, east and west has gotten some. Maybe a few snowflakes a few days ago, but nothing that stayed on the ground for longer than a couple of hours. I don't even know if the snowthrower works yet (haven't started it up at all). Shovel hasn't left the wall yet. It's like we live in a bubble around here. Sorta throws the Canadian weather stereotypes in the trash, I suppose.
Merry Christmas to all!
I've had good experiences with http://www.alldomains.com. They're cheap, and have pretty much exactly what you're looking for. Check out their 'd-gear' package - only about $25 per year.
I used this for about 2 years, but now I run my own servers instead so it wasn't necessary.