Am I the only astonished that you haven't gotten a Macintosh yet? I used to "be you", but I bailed on that crap after Windows 3.11 and never looked back.
Excellent points, all around. I've undergone a similar transformation where the bridge between my online writing and day to day life are complementary. I should hope that a future employer may see my participation in technical forums as token evidence of my qualification and passion for technology.
Another former race-cyclist here... I concur 100%. I think every sport fanatic delves into improving equipment given that it is easier than improving fitness. I've been soundly trounced by people on lesser machines.
It is also telling that the average speed of the Tour de France is scarcely different today than it was 25 years ago. The equipment has improved dramatically, but it makes little difference.
I'm not sure if it will be in the standard distribution, but the Mozilla XForms Extension works nicely for simple applications. Personally, I'm keeping my eye on this extension, but I'm building my XForms applications with Orbeon Presentation Server, which translates XForms to HTML forms on the server side.
1) I'd rather be judged on the quality my work than my current compliance with someone elses nebulous and undefined idea of style.
Style is inherently hard to define, as is quality of work. These are qualitative things, mostly, and there is no way around it. People judge on appearances as an aspect of the whole package. Why not make a good impression on both fronts?
2) Define what 'dress like a professional' means. Many professionals appropriately wear diving gear, space suits or military uniforms. All of which would be more innapropriate than jeans at my place of work.
I think a professional dresses like they care about what they are doing and who they are interacting with. A suit isn't the only professional garment, but when most people in IT (I'm one of 'em) wear a t-shirt instead of a polo shirt, it is unprofessional. It varies from place to place, but a baseline rule might be that any article of clothing you might conceivably sleep while wearing (like t-shirts or sweat pants) aren't professional looking.
3) Your arrogant statement about 'common sense' bugs me.
Well, your comment about conformist proles bugs me too, but I think we just come at this issue with a different set of preferences and bias. That is okay.
4) I'd rather work somewhere where I can be acknolwedged as a human individual than a conformist prole.
I think you confuse dressing well with conformity. Truth be told, if you want to break with the crowd, wearing something nice is a good way to do it these days. Dressing in jeans and t-shirts is a fine way to follow the crowd in many IT shops. Either way, I think most people are recognized as humans regardless of what they wear. A professional garment doesn't turn someone into a soul-less person.
5) The times in my life I have been most screwed over has always been by someone in professional clothing. I don't trust people that need to hide behind their appearance, and don't wish to appear to be one of those types of people.
This makes about as much sense as assigning blame according to the skin color of people who screwed you over. I hope you can see that your data set may be small or incomplete to draw such a conclusion.
Just to clarify, I don't expect everybody to start wearing a suit. I just happen to think that many of us in IT hold ourselves back over stupid things. It isn't a violation of anyone's dignity or constitutional rights to dress a little more professionally, yet when reading over the defiant commentary on slashdot in defense of sloven clothing, you would think this was something worth fighting for. It isn't. A polo shirt and pressed pants aren't going to hurt anybody.
Its what I DO when I'm at work that should matter, NOT what I wear.
Part of what you do at work is to interact with others. IT is increasingly becoming a more social career, requiring cross functional interaction. I wrote the following some time back, which may clarify things a bit:
Many of the very people who argue that they shouldn't be judged on appearances at work are often among the most fastidious when it comes to dressing for a night on the town. So, appearances shouldn't matter, except when they should. Interesting.
While it may seem bureaucratic to enforce standards for clothing at work, there is some empirical evidence that people are more productive when they dress for work. You might be the exception, but by and large, if people dress at work the same way they when lounging about, it shouldn't be a surprise if performance in the workplace suffers. Either way, one's fashion says something oneself. It baffles me why so many people in IT rebel so strongly against common sense wisdom to dress like a professional. Who knows... maybe some of the complaints about being treated unprofessionally would be alleviated if coworkers viewed IT in a better light.
This sounds like an opportunity for you to become an editor and to contribute something, but while you go about doing so, be sure to document the horrors of capitalism as well. Or at the very least, don't be surprised if the light of truth shines both ways.
(additionally, most leftists will take issue with the notion that they are sympathetic with communism)
I'll add to this that wikipedia entries have the added benefit of giving someone checking your citation the ability to look at the historical version. The wayback machine (web.archive.org) helps in some ways to do this for general sites, but the wiki model is really good about exposing its history.
You bring up a good point. In my group, we use Lucene to index XML files because there is a good deal of metadata that (for legitimate reasons I won't go into here) doesn't make it into the HTML presentation that google and human readers see. In order to use the search interface for effective research, thereby using the metadata, a Lucene index was most helpful.
That said, for most projects you are better off to just use a google search, but there are times when knowing the structural properties of your data gives you more control over the search.
New technologies will continue to be developed to target more accurately because that generates better results. I repeat: IT GENERATES BETTER RESULTS
You sir, are a brave soul to say this around here, but let me point out that advertising is simply an effort to plant desire within a person that may not have existed previously. I'll further add that most advertising is a band aid for a weak product or service. For example, Harvard doesn't need to advertise because everyone knows it is good, but every two-bit community college has ads on the radio and flyers in the postal mailbox.
I have been a founder and part owner of a software company, albeit rather small, and these days I work in the public sector managing software projects. I too took some exception with Joel's presumption that the best software development gigs are with software companies. From my limited experiencing in both environments, I find the diversity of interests outside of a pure software company refreshing.
My question is, does the presence of advertising on an otherwise ordinary web log make it look more credible to the average web surfer?
You raise a good topic. While it is possible that a site uses ad-revenue to cover bandwidth and hosting fees, it may or may not be necessary. If people are used to reading mainstream news sites, of which some blogs are part of, they may feel uneasy about the lack of ads on small blogs.
This reminds me of a some critiques of Moscow shortly after the fall of Communism in the early 90s. When western visitors starting to go to Moscow they declared that Red Square was a dismal place, but once some commercial interests put up some advertising visitors starting to say it looked more cheery. Go figure.
I guess if people expect ads they may feel comfortable with them. Personally, I find that ads help me to know if a content provider may be on the take. I read a lot of sources, but some of my favorites are ad-free and I hope they can remain so.
The market is reacting to instability. It is a pretty normal reaction, but most savvy investors won't dump their holdings. In fact, they will probably snatch up some good picks.
That said, I take issue with the notion that we should just go on about our lives as usual, supposing that the usual is greed-mongering on the stock market. I don't think it is that odd to disrupt consumerism for a moment to consider the tragedy of bombings in a public place.
Thanks for the clarification. I hesitated when I wrote that, and should have double checked my facts. All the examples I've worked this so far have been with XML content.
I work on a digital humanities project (and I also work down the hall from the Fedora folks). We are in the process of ingesting our 20,000+ object repository into Fedora. Most of it involves XSL acrobatics, but I'll spare the details.
Fedora is oriented toward digital library work, which I suspect has some carry over with archival work at NARA. They would be wise to look at it, but I'll say from our personal experience, it is a major task to get our materials into Fedora. I don't mean this in any way to speak ill of the project or its staff. The system is designed primarily to work with XML source material, but as NARA has stated, they are faced with 16,000 different file formats.
I think NARA is basically screwed if the goal is to save everything. I'll be interested to see how they pare down the list and set priorities.
I used to work at the Library of Congress, where we built software for metadata capture in a project to digitize analog films and audio recordings. Many of these source objects were films that were literally turning to acid on the shelf. Our estimates said it would take 70 years at peak production to digitize everything, yet many films would be ruined in less than 20 years. If the experience at the Library bears any resemblance to NARA, the first job is to prioritize.
If you were running a company in America (which, btw, you are free to do in a capitalist society, if you are fed up being a "lowly worker"), you would be the CEO. Would you outsource yourself? Does this make ANY sense?
I'm saying that shareholders of large companies, like IBM, are missing out on a great deal. They have no scruples about shafting 13k people out of a job to save a buck, so surely they must be willing to let the CEO go. As another person said in this mini-thread, there are tons of MBA programs in India. It makes rational financial sense, unless of course the CEO and the board of directors are just perpetuating their own over-inflated wages. Sounds like cronyism to me if they aren't willing to outsource the execs.
For what it is worth, I've been a business owner. I was the CTO of our rather small operation. Small businesses are the vanguard against outsourcing since it is only economical for the big players.
I've worked in the private sector and now I work at a major research University, building software for literary criticism for the humanities department. My background in CS, which implies a great deal of mental acrobatics to be the project manager for this type of stuff. Every day is intriguing and I love the work, but I think most people would run and hide from this sort of task.
There is a big difference between working at a teaching college and research institution, the latter typically defined as universities with larger graduate programs, high reputation and a steady flow of grant money. Put simply, there is more money at the latter, but I'm sure there are some exceptions.
The University environment is a more relaxed than the private sector, but don't let people lull you into thinking it s a cake walk. There are deadlines and people put in some late nights and weekends to get things done.
The best part is that you work among smart people. The worst part is that you work among smart people.;) As CS/engineering types, our mentality is focussed toward technique and concrete matters of what can be accomplished with technology, whereas researchers are after a seemingly mythological thing called "insight." Get used to being baffled by the intensity of the domain logic. Drinking from the firehose is the name of the game, but if make a good-faith effort it can be very rewarding -- if not financially, then most certainly personally.
As one of those people who use an email program as a filing cabinet, let me explain it for you. I've been a system administrator, programmer and now I'm a project manager. Therefore, I've become gradually evil, but don't hold that against me for the time being. I used to say the same stuff as you are saying now, but here's the real rub... inbox.mbx is a file.
I know it takes up resources, but my email message contains a lot of context. I can search for any number of mental cues (who sent the email, part of a subject, phrase in the message, etc) that hones in on what I'm really looking for. The whole email becomes a type of metadata, but if I save the file off on my hard drive (which I also do for some things) it can be harder to find things, especially when they fit into two or more hierarchies.
I used to develop complex taxonomies to maintain my computer. Now that search technologies (thank you Mac spotlight!) have matured, it actually works to use my mailbox as a storage device. It saves me time and effort, which is a legitimate use of technology. I know it isn't quite this easy, but I would direct energy into upgrading the SAN than to tell users to not do something that works.
I may have been a little dramatic with my language. Basically Red Hat pumped a lot of money into the Fedora name but neglected to check if it was in use. They want UVa and Cornell to change the name of their product, even though it was in circulation for five years before Red Hat came along.
I dig Linux and generally think Red Hat is a cool company, but they aren't winning friends by sending their legal teams after researchers at Universities.
"The proposed patents common, which mimics the Creative Commons licensing scheme for creative works including art and music, is designed to enable developers to exchange ideas with fewer concerns about patent infringement. and Red Hat's efforts to lobby for patent reform in the U.S. and Europe."
For all this good talk about respecting people's creative energy and IP reform, they are at present trampling on the real Fedora project's rights.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only astonished that you haven't gotten a Macintosh yet? I used to "be you", but I bailed on that crap after Windows 3.11 and never looked back.
Excellent points, all around. I've undergone a similar transformation where the bridge between my online writing and day to day life are complementary. I should hope that a future employer may see my participation in technical forums as token evidence of my qualification and passion for technology.
I often think of how I'd just like to see their face when I place a copy of their search results in front of them.
This is fair game, in my opinion, only if you find something which contradicts the persons resume.
Another former race-cyclist here... I concur 100%. I think every sport fanatic delves into improving equipment given that it is easier than improving fitness. I've been soundly trounced by people on lesser machines.
It is also telling that the average speed of the Tour de France is scarcely different today than it was 25 years ago. The equipment has improved dramatically, but it makes little difference.
I'm not sure if it will be in the standard distribution, but the Mozilla XForms Extension works nicely for simple applications. Personally, I'm keeping my eye on this extension, but I'm building my XForms applications with Orbeon Presentation Server, which translates XForms to HTML forms on the server side.
I have some responses in-line below.
1) I'd rather be judged on the quality my work than my current compliance with someone elses nebulous and undefined idea of style.
Style is inherently hard to define, as is quality of work. These are qualitative things, mostly, and there is no way around it. People judge on appearances as an aspect of the whole package. Why not make a good impression on both fronts?
2) Define what 'dress like a professional' means. Many professionals appropriately wear diving gear, space suits or military uniforms. All of which would be more innapropriate than jeans at my place of work.
I think a professional dresses like they care about what they are doing and who they are interacting with. A suit isn't the only professional garment, but when most people in IT (I'm one of 'em) wear a t-shirt instead of a polo shirt, it is unprofessional. It varies from place to place, but a baseline rule might be that any article of clothing you might conceivably sleep while wearing (like t-shirts or sweat pants) aren't professional looking.
3) Your arrogant statement about 'common sense' bugs me.
Well, your comment about conformist proles bugs me too, but I think we just come at this issue with a different set of preferences and bias. That is okay.
4) I'd rather work somewhere where I can be acknolwedged as a human individual than a conformist prole.
I think you confuse dressing well with conformity. Truth be told, if you want to break with the crowd, wearing something nice is a good way to do it these days. Dressing in jeans and t-shirts is a fine way to follow the crowd in many IT shops. Either way, I think most people are recognized as humans regardless of what they wear. A professional garment doesn't turn someone into a soul-less person.
5) The times in my life I have been most screwed over has always been by someone in professional clothing. I don't trust people that need to hide behind their appearance, and don't wish to appear to be one of those types of people.
This makes about as much sense as assigning blame according to the skin color of people who screwed you over. I hope you can see that your data set may be small or incomplete to draw such a conclusion.
Just to clarify, I don't expect everybody to start wearing a suit. I just happen to think that many of us in IT hold ourselves back over stupid things. It isn't a violation of anyone's dignity or constitutional rights to dress a little more professionally, yet when reading over the defiant commentary on slashdot in defense of sloven clothing, you would think this was something worth fighting for. It isn't. A polo shirt and pressed pants aren't going to hurt anybody.
Its what I DO when I'm at work that should matter, NOT what I wear.
Part of what you do at work is to interact with others. IT is increasingly becoming a more social career, requiring cross functional interaction. I wrote the following some time back, which may clarify things a bit:
Many of the very people who argue that they shouldn't be judged on appearances at work are often among the most fastidious when it comes to dressing for a night on the town. So, appearances shouldn't matter, except when they should. Interesting.
While it may seem bureaucratic to enforce standards for clothing at work, there is some empirical evidence that people are more productive when they dress for work. You might be the exception, but by and large, if people dress at work the same way they when lounging about, it shouldn't be a surprise if performance in the workplace suffers. Either way, one's fashion says something oneself. It baffles me why so many people in IT rebel so strongly against common sense wisdom to dress like a professional. Who knows... maybe some of the complaints about being treated unprofessionally would be alleviated if coworkers viewed IT in a better light.
This sounds like an opportunity for you to become an editor and to contribute something, but while you go about doing so, be sure to document the horrors of capitalism as well. Or at the very least, don't be surprised if the light of truth shines both ways.
(additionally, most leftists will take issue with the notion that they are sympathetic with communism)
I'll add to this that wikipedia entries have the added benefit of giving someone checking your citation the ability to look at the historical version. The wayback machine (web.archive.org) helps in some ways to do this for general sites, but the wiki model is really good about exposing its history.
I had the same conclusion when I read the article. I wrote up an analysis which is pretty similar.
You bring up a good point. In my group, we use Lucene to index XML files because there is a good deal of metadata that (for legitimate reasons I won't go into here) doesn't make it into the HTML presentation that google and human readers see. In order to use the search interface for effective research, thereby using the metadata, a Lucene index was most helpful.
That said, for most projects you are better off to just use a google search, but there are times when knowing the structural properties of your data gives you more control over the search.
New technologies will continue to be developed to target more accurately because that generates better results. I repeat: IT GENERATES BETTER RESULTS
You sir, are a brave soul to say this around here, but let me point out that advertising is simply an effort to plant desire within a person that may not have existed previously. I'll further add that most advertising is a band aid for a weak product or service. For example, Harvard doesn't need to advertise because everyone knows it is good, but every two-bit community college has ads on the radio and flyers in the postal mailbox.
I have been a founder and part owner of a software company, albeit rather small, and these days I work in the public sector managing software projects. I too took some exception with Joel's presumption that the best software development gigs are with software companies. From my limited experiencing in both environments, I find the diversity of interests outside of a pure software company refreshing.
My question is, does the presence of advertising on an otherwise ordinary web log make it look more credible to the average web surfer?
You raise a good topic. While it is possible that a site uses ad-revenue to cover bandwidth and hosting fees, it may or may not be necessary. If people are used to reading mainstream news sites, of which some blogs are part of, they may feel uneasy about the lack of ads on small blogs.
This reminds me of a some critiques of Moscow shortly after the fall of Communism in the early 90s. When western visitors starting to go to Moscow they declared that Red Square was a dismal place, but once some commercial interests put up some advertising visitors starting to say it looked more cheery. Go figure.
I guess if people expect ads they may feel comfortable with them. Personally, I find that ads help me to know if a content provider may be on the take. I read a lot of sources, but some of my favorites are ad-free and I hope they can remain so.
The market is reacting to instability. It is a pretty normal reaction, but most savvy investors won't dump their holdings. In fact, they will probably snatch up some good picks.
That said, I take issue with the notion that we should just go on about our lives as usual, supposing that the usual is greed-mongering on the stock market. I don't think it is that odd to disrupt consumerism for a moment to consider the tragedy of bombings in a public place.
Thanks for the clarification. I hesitated when I wrote that, and should have double checked my facts. All the examples I've worked this so far have been with XML content.
I work on a digital humanities project (and I also work down the hall from the Fedora folks). We are in the process of ingesting our 20,000+ object repository into Fedora. Most of it involves XSL acrobatics, but I'll spare the details.
Fedora is oriented toward digital library work, which I suspect has some carry over with archival work at NARA. They would be wise to look at it, but I'll say from our personal experience, it is a major task to get our materials into Fedora. I don't mean this in any way to speak ill of the project or its staff. The system is designed primarily to work with XML source material, but as NARA has stated, they are faced with 16,000 different file formats.
I think NARA is basically screwed if the goal is to save everything. I'll be interested to see how they pare down the list and set priorities.
I used to work at the Library of Congress, where we built software for metadata capture in a project to digitize analog films and audio recordings. Many of these source objects were films that were literally turning to acid on the shelf. Our estimates said it would take 70 years at peak production to digitize everything, yet many films would be ruined in less than 20 years. If the experience at the Library bears any resemblance to NARA, the first job is to prioritize.
If you were running a company in America (which, btw, you are free to do in a capitalist society, if you are fed up being a "lowly worker"), you would be the CEO. Would you outsource yourself? Does this make ANY sense?
I'm saying that shareholders of large companies, like IBM, are missing out on a great deal. They have no scruples about shafting 13k people out of a job to save a buck, so surely they must be willing to let the CEO go. As another person said in this mini-thread, there are tons of MBA programs in India. It makes rational financial sense, unless of course the CEO and the board of directors are just perpetuating their own over-inflated wages. Sounds like cronyism to me if they aren't willing to outsource the execs.
For what it is worth, I've been a business owner. I was the CTO of our rather small operation. Small businesses are the vanguard against outsourcing since it is only economical for the big players.
When will the capitalists start outsourcing the CEOs job? When that happens I'll believe the free market cheerleaders.
I've worked in the private sector and now I work at a major research University, building software for literary criticism for the humanities department. My background in CS, which implies a great deal of mental acrobatics to be the project manager for this type of stuff. Every day is intriguing and I love the work, but I think most people would run and hide from this sort of task.
;) As CS/engineering types, our mentality is focussed toward technique and concrete matters of what can be accomplished with technology, whereas researchers are after a seemingly mythological thing called "insight." Get used to being baffled by the intensity of the domain logic. Drinking from the firehose is the name of the game, but if make a good-faith effort it can be very rewarding -- if not financially, then most certainly personally.
There is a big difference between working at a teaching college and research institution, the latter typically defined as universities with larger graduate programs, high reputation and a steady flow of grant money. Put simply, there is more money at the latter, but I'm sure there are some exceptions.
The University environment is a more relaxed than the private sector, but don't let people lull you into thinking it s a cake walk. There are deadlines and people put in some late nights and weekends to get things done.
The best part is that you work among smart people. The worst part is that you work among smart people.
... at webmaster@mail.acme.com to let him know that I enjoyed his article. I hope it makes it through the filter.
As one of those people who use an email program as a filing cabinet, let me explain it for you. I've been a system administrator, programmer and now I'm a project manager. Therefore, I've become gradually evil, but don't hold that against me for the time being. I used to say the same stuff as you are saying now, but here's the real rub... inbox.mbx is a file.
I know it takes up resources, but my email message contains a lot of context. I can search for any number of mental cues (who sent the email, part of a subject, phrase in the message, etc) that hones in on what I'm really looking for. The whole email becomes a type of metadata, but if I save the file off on my hard drive (which I also do for some things) it can be harder to find things, especially when they fit into two or more hierarchies.
I used to develop complex taxonomies to maintain my computer. Now that search technologies (thank you Mac spotlight!) have matured, it actually works to use my mailbox as a storage device. It saves me time and effort, which is a legitimate use of technology. I know it isn't quite this easy, but I would direct energy into upgrading the SAN than to tell users to not do something that works.
I may have been a little dramatic with my language. Basically Red Hat pumped a lot of money into the Fedora name but neglected to check if it was in use. They want UVa and Cornell to change the name of their product, even though it was in circulation for five years before Red Hat came along.
I dig Linux and generally think Red Hat is a cool company, but they aren't winning friends by sending their legal teams after researchers at Universities.
"The proposed patents common, which mimics the Creative Commons licensing scheme for creative works including art and music, is designed to enable developers to exchange ideas with fewer concerns about patent infringement. and Red Hat's efforts to lobby for patent reform in the U.S. and Europe."
For all this good talk about respecting people's creative energy and IP reform, they are at present trampling on the real Fedora project's rights.
So, how did you like gigli?