By your logic, we can ignore red lights and pass through them without slowing down since we never actually get hit.
Until we do.
Astronomers know that these objects have missed us, but that's not what interests them. The guy running the red light probably has a good idea how many near misses he has had, but astronomers really don't because there's never been more than a very poorly funded effort to find these objects. So they track the near misses, especially the very near misses. From the orbital mechanics, we know that anything that gets within 100x the distance between the earth and moon *can* hit us, and something as close as this object *will* eventually hit us even if we got lucky this time.
As an aside, this is similar to the QA technique where you deliberately introduce 10 or 20 bugs into the source code and track how many are caught by the testers. If they only found 3 of 20 bugs, but they reported finding 30 bugs in total, you can be fairly confident that there are 170 other bugs in your code including the 17 you introduced.
This is arguably *the* most critical problem
on
Version Fatigue
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't know who this AC is, but my friends and I are very much aware of the consequences of constantly changing the way you do things.
Our focus was on development, specifically why MS developers seem to have arrested development at about the level of 2 years of real experience. This isn't a slam against them - this was so widespread that we knew it had to be environmental.
We eventually figured out that the problem was Microsoft's constant reinvention of the wheel. We focused on the GUI, and compared the fact that we had been using the same libraries for a decade (Xlib for low-level routines, Motif for lists, menus, etc.), while in the same time MS Windows had released something like 4 separate, and incompatible, graphics libraries.
This mean that while we were able to build on our prior experience - and more importantly build on other organization's experiences as we brought in new employees with fresh ideas - the MS shops were constantly struggling to "stay in place" and there was essentially no institutional memory.
To be honest, I think much of the problems with MS Windows applications can be traced to this. After 10+ years of Unix experience, most people have been bitten by a fair number of "it could never happen" errors, and they instinctively take care to avoid a repeat. A MS Windows developer has probably seen as many errors, but how do you map the solution for a library three generations ago to the current one?
You should learn more about the world. It's an interesting place.
"Construction loans" are commonplace and not a big deal. And since you asked, the banks make sure that you have the personal resources to continue living in an apartment or current house if/when the construction takes longer than expected.
Speaking of money, you "don't lay out cash" to anyone in the construction business. You may provide a small deposit, but the normal practice is that they do the work, file a lien against the property, the work is signed off by the local building inspectors, you write them a check and they release the lien. Your construction loan undoubtably requires that all work pass inspection before subcontractors can be paid.
If your house falls apart during the next decade or three, the lawyers will be looking at the inspections, not guarantees. Guarantees usually refer to cosmetic and minor problems (cracked tile, stuck doors, unstained woodwork) that anyone who acted as general contractor can have fixed by a subcontractor (either under the subcontractor's warranty, or as new work).
Additionally, "guarantees" normally refer to work produced for sale to others. I suspect that most of those laws have exemptions for individuals who acted as their own general contractor for a house they occupied for a specified period of time - they're exempt as long as they disclose that they acted as general contractor for their own house.
Finally, if you bothered to read the original article you would see that they estimated 6 months for completion, but it took 7.5 months because of repeated problems with the roof trusses. This delayed interior work since you can't finish drywall, etc., without a roof.
I didn't say that the IT sector unemployment was 66%, I said that it was among my circle of friends and that I therefore had to put a lot of weight into the 25% unemployment cited by economists. But even they will be quick to admit that the 25% figure is a gross overgeneralization since "IT" includes "Bob, the IT guy" at small businesses and cable TV installers in addition to programmers, DBAs and sysadmins.
Finally, "all statistics are lies" is crap. Plenty of statistics are accurate, but they're misapplied by people trying to push a point. (E.g., using the overall unemployment rate when the discussion was of IT-sector unemployment.) Or they're based on false or changing assumptions. If you keep this in mind, statistics are very useful.
The *overall* unemployment was 5.8%, but unemployment figures usually vary by sector and location.
In the metro Denver area, the figure I've heard (very quietly) is that unemployment in the IT fields is around 25%. But again that varies by subsector and experience, and the market seems to be preferring less experienced developers, with almost all companies are extremely "brand" conscious. Some of these cases are extreme - one company has been advertising for "java" or "embedded" developers for 6 months, but unless you have at least 3 years of experience on a specific "set-top" box in the consumer cable TV market you're not worth talking to. In some cases it's clear the company is just trying to rehire laid-off employees, but almost all publicly announced positions have some type of mandatory application experience.
Among my immediate friends and acquaintances, *two* are still working in the IT field. Another is a certified Oracle DBA decorating cakes in a supermarket (last I heard), another is getting into marketing, a third is talking about opening a sub franchise store in the Middle East, and I'm signed up for some sysadmin training so I can get past the "ten years of related experience, but never in my job title" barrier. That's 66% unemployment, far beyond the unemployment rate in the great depression.
But there is good news! Bush is trying to streamline the H1B visa process so the big companies can bring in even more foreign workers, since these companies have found it so hard to find qualified candidates. Why, how can any company be expected to find local talent when a single ad on Monster or Dice may bring in a thousand resumes?
First, fire the manager who got you into this situation. If you've "been doing it this way for years," fire the manager who left this system in place. (If that manager just left and the new guy realizes there's a problem and that's why you're asking this, then obviously there's no action taken against him.)
I'm not being bloodthirsty here - anything short of this will leave people doubtful that upper management is serious that this is *the* biggest problem your company faces today, and people will continue to do what they've been doing for anything but the most trivial problems. Senior management needs to send an unambiguous signal that the status quo is unacceptable.
Second, rotate the primes and secondaries as others have suggested, but with a twist. Rotate the secondaries first, and their sole responsibility is to write a list of questions - a long list of questions - about everything that "surprises" them or that needs to be documented somewhere. (An example of the latter is "what are the partitions, what are their sizes, and how was this size determined?"
They turn over their questions to the primes who spend a few weeks documenting the answers while the secondaries cover for their old prime, and this documentation is provided to the next set of secondaries rotated in to ask questions. Lather, rinse, repeat.
By the third time around (maybe 3 months?) you'll have documentation that actually covers almost everything someone will need to get up to speed on the peculiarities of a particular project, and the primaries can start rotating while the secondaries answer any remaining questions.
Finally, I'm deliberately putting the emphasis on the secondaries here because one of the classic problems with your old setup is that it can cause the secondaries's skills to stagnate if the prime handles all of the "hard" or "interesting" problems. You need to give the secondaries room to grow, even if it increases your turnover rate because they're competent enough to be hired as primes at other companies.
You hurt your own argument - you saw examples of poor RFQ because they omitted pertinent facts.
Needed: one SCSI hard disk with external case and power supply. Internal hard disks are unaccepable due to lack of space and power with the cabinet.
Needed: one flat-screen display suitable for use in a high magnetic field. CRT (and plasma?) displays are unacceptable due to environmental interference with their display.
In the case at question, it's easy to write the RFQ. Needed: one OS and office application suite capable of supporting email, basic text processing, spreadsheet, databases and web browsers. Compatibility with existing document format is desirable, but shall not be a disqualifying factor if the new format is sufficiently self-documenting to eliminate "lock-in."....
Close, but that's not how software companies would build bridges:
"I need a bridge built in this location to move some things across the river. Our marketing guys say we need to get traffic on it with a month, and don't worry about it collapsing because it's more important that we get people lined up to use our bridge than to actualy get them across the river - that can wait for Bridge 2.0. Finally, we've already decided to use recycled steel (up to one ton, no more) 'cause I got a nice dinner at the local tittie-bar from their salesman - I don't want to hear any crap about tested structural steel and high-tension bolts. The decision has already been made, as has the placement of the piers. (A real professional can build on loose sand and clay, so I don't want to hear any more whining.) If you don't want to play by my rules (but take the blame when you can't meet my schedule or arbitrary restriction), we'll blacklist you as "unmanagable."
I gotta ask - are these crippled CDs still compliant with the appropriate CD specifications, or are they doing their own thing and counting on the public remaining ignorant and apathetic?
Under the Fair Use rules established years ago, I have a right to an archival copy in case the original is destroyed, and no EULA can force me to "treat the original media as the archival disc for the purpose of compliance with Federal laws." If I buy a "CD-ROM," I expect to be able to make a usable archival copy at my own expense, and that includes burning it to a single CD or storing it in a collection of ISO images on a larger hard disk.
Do you think they approved the disc without verifying all libraries, resources, etc., were present and properly named? (Okay, this *is* Microsoft but work with me here)
If we can expect them to perform that level of checking, why can't we expect them to run a virus checker at the same time?
It's an optimization problem. They have to balance the savings of paying you under market with the costs of finding and training your replacement if you decide that you've been so underpaid that you're not willing to consider counter-offers when you get an offer from another company. And you will, sooner or later.
But what complicates this decision is that a person who feels that they have been treated fairly will give you a chance to renegotiate - you can get the benefits of lower pay today and no recruitment/retraining costs in the future. If they feel that you've been abusive, they'll walk out the door without looking back and you'll incur those new expenses.
One point that seems to be overlooked is that the people with a bad reputation for "chasing the money" are going after relatively small sums - 10%, maybe 15% at the most. While this isn't inconsequential, most of us would happily trade 10% of our salary for better benefits, a less stressful commute, etc.
But when you're in the 50% range, *nobody* will challenge you for putting the money first. (Well, I've known a few asshole bosses who would try to guilt you, but nobody else would give them any credence.) That's too much of a jump to ignore.
Unfortunately, the same thing applies to counteroffers. If your boss offers you a 10% counteroffer, it's easy to justify as compensation for some thin raises during the past few years. If your boss offers you a 50% counteroffer, you'll soon be resentful because you'll realize how much you were underpaid before, your peers may become resentful, etc. It's a bad situation all around.
It's only the end of the story since the city decided not to pursue it. Depending on how aggressive the city is (also known as "why you never leave the junker in the rich part of town"), they could have:
1) sued you for the removal fee, plus collection costs. Since this involves a motor vehicle, it could be put down as an unpaid motor vehicle fine and you won't be able to renew your driver's license until you pay the fine. (After the recent interstate compact to crack down on truck drivers with multiple licenses, a lot of people are having to pay decades-old fines for long forgotten tickets in order to renew their DL.)
2) issued a summons for littering, abandonment, whatever. The fine, needless to say, is the same as the removal fee. When you fail to show, they could issue a bench warrant so the next time you're pulled over for any reason you're arrested. You rarely get out early if you're being held on a "failure to appear" warrant.
3) finally, they could have added this fee to the "must collect" list for your next vehicle registration. Even if you ride the bus for the next 5 years, when you buy another car you can't get the plates until you pay the removal fee for the old car.
Most jurisdictions haven't bothered pursuing these cases since, frankly, there's no money in it. Anyone who has such a bad clunker that they're abandoning it instead of trading it in won't be able to easily pay the fines.
But now that the country is in a "Law & Order" mindset and middle-America is paying for long-forgotten tickets, I wouldn't be surprised to see these fees being added to the "must pay or else" list.
Those are easements, and most properties have numerous easements.
You own the road to the middle of the street, but there's an easement for the road and sidewalk. If you're in more rural areas, you may have an easement for your neighbor's driveway. There's an easement for your utilities (phone, power, gas, water, sewer, cable tv, etc.), and these companies can dig up your garden or tear down your hot tub if you put it over that easement. You usually can't build a permanent structure within N feet of the property line.
I'm in a townhouse, and our property extends into two adjacent creek beds/flood control channels, including the bike paths. The city will run a snow plow over the paths, but we're responsible for replacing downed trees.
I didn't say you couldn't offer software for free, I said it may not be possible to offer it and then *totally* walk away from it.
As an analogy, I've released some packages under both GPL and BSD licenses. If I discover I've made some horribly wrong assumption, I can and will make a honest effort to fix it, to contact people I know are using it, etc.
But when something is put into the public domain, I not only give up all of my rights to it, I'm announcing that I have no intention of maintaining it either. Not even if it turns out my supersecret encryption engine can be trivially cracked by something that's not widely known to the public, but is well known by the people who like to crack supersecret encryption.
*That* was the point I was making - software may be something that you can't just walk away from.
P.S., if you leave your car in your own (closed) garage you haven't abandoned it, by definition. However some (urban) jurisdictions or HOAs do require that all vehicles stored on your property be runnable, properly licensed and insured, etc.
In many urban jurisdictions, you can't store a non-runnable car on your own property. Not even in your backyard, because it's considered an "attractive nuisance." Even in a rural area, if it's leaking oil the local environmental protection agencies may pay a visit.
Other examples are old refrigerators and freezers (must remove door from hinges to prevent children from climbing in and closing the door), and now I think you need to have the freon removed as well. You must have fences around pools, etc.
If you have your own forest, *and you haven't properly marked it "no trespassing*, then I believe people have the right to cross your land as long as they don't interfere with your livestock or other operations. At least in the west with old "free range" laws. But if you've been using it as an illegal dump, done illegal mining, or created some other nonobvious danger and you haven't warned others than you better believe you're liable. Even if your land is posted "no trespassing," if you have a shallow stream kayakers and canoeists usually have a right to passage and right to landing. You can stop them from having a picnic, but can't stop them from making necessary repairs or rebalancing their watercraft.
And for the record, it's *falsely* yelling fire in a theater that was used as an analogy in that famous WW-I case. Only an idiot would argue against warning people of a real fire in an era predating non-flammable upholstery (theaters could go from a spark to raging inferno in a matter of seconds), but likewise only an asshole would yell fire knowing that the ensuing panic would also injure many people.
Others have skirted around this, but I'll tell you point blank.
You're being set up as the patsy, the guy who will be fired "for cause" and to the relief of the real assholes, the next time things go wrong. And they will go wrong with the parameters you're currently working under.
This is normally a non-winnable situation. All you can do is recommend, in writing, that a central server with good backups be set up, employees instructed to save their work to that server (which is backed up), and that compliance is a line item on their review and (most importantly) you are God and twice a year your job is to "crash" their system and give them a temporary replacement to ensure that they have backed up their files. It is important that you can do this at any time, without challenge, even immediately prior to deadlines and vacations. After all, fires, gas leaks, ceiling collapses, etc. don't follow your business schedule either, and if people know they can cut corners when it matters most they will.
As others have pointed out, this test is actually performed by making an early morning raid and putting a cardboard flame on their box. Part of the test is how long it takes them to report the problem, and if they cheat by turning on the machine (or "losing" the flame) then you have the authority to file a written reprimand with HR for interference with a test designed to verify compliance with policy. This is in addition to a second written reprimand for failing to perform backups, and HR will be instructed to remind the employee that they will be fired "for cause" on a third reprimand. If they're going to expose the company to massive financial loss due to lost files, despite clearly established policy and need, there's no point in keeping them around.
But management won't do that (if they understood how serious this is, you won't have lost data earlier) and you'll be unable to force people to back up their files to a network drive, to keep systems up so a distributed backup will work, etc., and you will be the guy who's fired for failure to follow policy when the next disk crash occurs.
You can't abandon cars or real property
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What Is Public Domain?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Why does he think you can put code into the public domain?
You can't abandon a car, you'll eventually be tracked down and made to pay for proper disposal. Same thing with real property - you will be tracked down and hit with cleanup fees for any toxic wastes you left behind.
Is software really any different? Think about it - most software is of no lasting consequence, but some of it can cause a lot of damage (Microsoft Outlook Express, Microsoft IIS, others) before the producer may be tempted to just abandon it and (hopefully) all associated liabilities.
I know we usually compare source code to books, but as some Federal judges like to point out (while denying it the full protection of the First Amendment) it also has an active component. A cookbook can be put into the public domain, but a cookbook doesn't create a fire or health hazard as it attempts to prepare the meals it describes.
Maybe the people uncomfortable with truly public domain software are aware of something that we're missing....
Ironically, even though the shows generally avoid story arcs (and it's usually a disaster when they do), the series has some of the best continuity on television. Unlike some other shows I could mention, you don't watch episodes in frustration as the characters forget an easy solution covered in an earlier episode.
But the series as a whole is on an arc to support the possible spinoff series Stargate: Atlantis.
Hey Homer, the NSA doesn't release its own crypto because it believes in security through obscurity.
It doesn't release them because the other guys could use the same crypto. And this violates the NSA charter because either 1) they know how to crack the code, but others could figure that out also and thus they've failed to protect US interests, or 2) they don't know how to crack the code, so they've aided others to work against US interests.
Either way, they'll going to catch a lot of heat if they provide information, much less if they remain silent (modulo their responsibilities). That's a no-brainer.
I consider this pretty basic, but I remember some junior coworkers blown away by
<tt>something | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn</tt>
On the coding level, I constantly use the regex library (with extended regular expressions) and profiling. There are a lot of places where a single well-designed RE can eliminate many lines of code, and profiling can help you ensure that you close all files you open, free all memory you malloc, etc.
I'm not sure how "voluntary" many of these sales were. They weren't compelled, in the sense that property is occasionally condemned for a new road or public facility, but that's about all you can say about it.
Imagine for a moment that you're the owner of a local station (or small chain), and someone like Clear Channel decides they want your radio station. You're making enough to meet payroll, sponsor some community events, but you don't have deep cash reserves. Then CC comes in and tells you to sell for a lowball price.
You refuse - and they tell all of your advertisers that there's a new sheriff in town. If they sign exclusive agreements with CC stations, they get an ad rate substantially lower than what you can offer. It's far below cost to CC also, but they can pull in money from other stations nationwide.
But if they don't agree to that exclusive agreement, they're blacklisted by CC stations. Accounts are closed (even if that involves penalties), and even after they're removed from the blacklist (when CC is the only game in town) they'll never get prefered customer rates.
How long do you think you'll hold onto customers? A few may say with you, but anyone running ads on multiple stations will be forced to dump you. And all CC needs to do to target your advertisers is hire an intern to listen to your station and jot down what ads they hear.
This isn't an abusive monopoly since CC doesn't yet have a monopoly in that market, but it's as unfair as an unlimited stakes poker game where one player has $100 and another has $1000, and you can't not play.
You can go a step further - don't bother with setting up a new compression layer, just encrypt it with existing tools. Most encryption routines compress it first, to make cryptanalysis more difficult (and for performance, since there's less data to encrypt), but this is partially offset by the continuing need for 7-bit safe transport layers.
Life is not that simple. All databases are limited by the size of the basic block, and if you can't fit your data into that block performance takes a hit.
With PostgreSQL this a compile-time option, default 8k and it can go up to 32k.
It *is* possible to store larger items, esp. if they're 'TOASTable' or blobs, but this often just pushes the problem of dealing with thousands of files onto the database. Only now it's a lot harder to figure out why performance sucks.
Does this mean that database solutions won't work? Of course not. But it does mean that simple solutions won't scale well when you're dealing with massive amounts of data.
Slashdot Mirror
By your logic, we can ignore red lights and pass through them without slowing down since we never actually get hit.
Until we do.
Astronomers know that these objects have missed us, but that's not what interests them. The guy running the red light probably has a good idea how many near misses he has had, but astronomers really don't because there's never been more than a very poorly funded effort to find these objects. So they track the near misses, especially the very near misses. From the orbital mechanics, we know that anything that gets within 100x the distance between the earth and moon *can* hit us, and something as close as this object *will* eventually hit us even if we got lucky this time.
As an aside, this is similar to the QA technique where you deliberately introduce 10 or 20 bugs into the source code and track how many are caught by the testers. If they only found 3 of 20 bugs, but they reported finding 30 bugs in total, you can be fairly confident that there are 170 other bugs in your code including the 17 you introduced.
I don't know who this AC is, but my friends and I are very much aware of the consequences of constantly changing the way you do things.
Our focus was on development, specifically why MS developers seem to have arrested development at about the level of 2 years of real experience. This isn't a slam against them - this was so widespread that we knew it had to be environmental.
We eventually figured out that the problem was Microsoft's constant reinvention of the wheel. We focused on the GUI, and compared the fact that we had been using the same libraries for a decade (Xlib for low-level routines, Motif for lists, menus, etc.), while in the same time MS Windows had released something like 4 separate, and incompatible, graphics libraries.
This mean that while we were able to build on our prior experience - and more importantly build on other organization's experiences as we brought in new employees with fresh ideas - the MS shops were constantly struggling to "stay in place" and there was essentially no institutional memory.
To be honest, I think much of the problems with MS Windows applications can be traced to this. After 10+ years of Unix experience, most people have been bitten by a fair number of "it could never happen" errors, and they instinctively take care to avoid a repeat. A MS Windows developer has probably seen as many errors, but how do you map the solution for a library three generations ago to the current one?
You should learn more about the world. It's an interesting place.
"Construction loans" are commonplace and not a big deal. And since you asked, the banks make sure that you have the personal resources to continue living in an apartment or current house if/when the construction takes longer than expected.
Speaking of money, you "don't lay out cash" to anyone in the construction business. You may provide a small deposit, but the normal practice is that they do the work, file a lien against the property, the work is signed off by the local building inspectors, you write them a check and they release the lien. Your construction loan undoubtably requires that all work pass inspection before subcontractors can be paid.
If your house falls apart during the next decade or three, the lawyers will be looking at the inspections, not guarantees. Guarantees usually refer to cosmetic and minor problems (cracked tile, stuck doors, unstained woodwork) that anyone who acted as general contractor can have fixed by a subcontractor (either under the subcontractor's warranty, or as new work).
Additionally, "guarantees" normally refer to work produced for sale to others. I suspect that most of those laws have exemptions for individuals who acted as their own general contractor for a house they occupied for a specified period of time - they're exempt as long as they disclose that they acted as general contractor for their own house.
Finally, if you bothered to read the original article you would see that they estimated 6 months for completion, but it took 7.5 months because of repeated problems with the roof trusses. This delayed interior work since you can't finish drywall, etc., without a roof.
WTF??
I didn't say that the IT sector unemployment was 66%, I said that it was among my circle of friends and that I therefore had to put a lot of weight into the 25% unemployment cited by economists. But even they will be quick to admit that the 25% figure is a gross overgeneralization since "IT" includes "Bob, the IT guy" at small businesses and cable TV installers in addition to programmers, DBAs and sysadmins.
Finally, "all statistics are lies" is crap. Plenty of statistics are accurate, but they're misapplied by people trying to push a point. (E.g., using the overall unemployment rate when the discussion was of IT-sector unemployment.) Or they're based on false or changing assumptions. If you keep this in mind, statistics are very useful.
The *overall* unemployment was 5.8%, but unemployment figures usually vary by sector and location.
In the metro Denver area, the figure I've heard (very quietly) is that unemployment in the IT fields is around 25%. But again that varies by subsector and experience, and the market seems to be preferring less experienced developers, with almost all companies are extremely "brand" conscious. Some of these cases are extreme - one company has been advertising for "java" or "embedded" developers for 6 months, but unless you have at least 3 years of experience on a specific "set-top" box in the consumer cable TV market you're not worth talking to. In some cases it's clear the company is just trying to rehire laid-off employees, but almost all publicly announced positions have some type of mandatory application experience.
Among my immediate friends and acquaintances, *two* are still working in the IT field. Another is a certified Oracle DBA decorating cakes in a supermarket (last I heard), another is getting into marketing, a third is talking about opening a sub franchise store in the Middle East, and I'm signed up for some sysadmin training so I can get past the "ten years of related experience, but never in my job title" barrier. That's 66% unemployment, far beyond the unemployment rate in the great depression.
But there is good news! Bush is trying to streamline the H1B visa process so the big companies can bring in even more foreign workers, since these companies have found it so hard to find qualified candidates. Why, how can any company be expected to find local talent when a single ad on Monster or Dice may bring in a thousand resumes?
Your company needs to do two things.
First, fire the manager who got you into this situation. If you've "been doing it this way for years," fire the manager who left this system in place. (If that manager just left and the new guy realizes there's a problem and that's why you're asking this, then obviously there's no action taken against him.)
I'm not being bloodthirsty here - anything short of this will leave people doubtful that upper management is serious that this is *the* biggest problem your company faces today, and people will continue to do what they've been doing for anything but the most trivial problems. Senior management needs to send an unambiguous signal that the status quo is unacceptable.
Second, rotate the primes and secondaries as others have suggested, but with a twist. Rotate the secondaries first, and their sole responsibility is to write a list of questions - a long list of questions - about everything that "surprises" them or that needs to be documented somewhere. (An example of the latter is "what are the partitions, what are their sizes, and how was this size determined?"
They turn over their questions to the primes who spend a few weeks documenting the answers while the secondaries cover for their old prime, and this documentation is provided to the next set of secondaries rotated in to ask questions. Lather, rinse, repeat.
By the third time around (maybe 3 months?) you'll have documentation that actually covers almost everything someone will need to get up to speed on the peculiarities of a particular project, and the primaries can start rotating while the secondaries answer any remaining questions.
Finally, I'm deliberately putting the emphasis on the secondaries here because one of the classic problems with your old setup is that it can cause the secondaries's skills to stagnate if the prime handles all of the "hard" or "interesting" problems. You need to give the secondaries room to grow, even if it increases your turnover rate because they're competent enough to be hired as primes at other companies.
C opy
R estricted
A nd
P rotected
discs
not CPOA discs.
You hurt your own argument - you saw examples of poor RFQ because they omitted pertinent facts.
Needed: one SCSI hard disk with external case and power supply. Internal hard disks are unaccepable due to lack of space and power with the cabinet.
Needed: one flat-screen display suitable for use in a high magnetic field. CRT (and plasma?) displays are unacceptable due to environmental interference with their display.
In the case at question, it's easy to write the RFQ. Needed: one OS and office application suite capable of supporting email, basic text processing, spreadsheet, databases and web browsers. Compatibility with existing document format is desirable, but shall not be a disqualifying factor if the new format is sufficiently self-documenting to eliminate "lock-in."....
Close, but that's not how software companies would build bridges:
"I need a bridge built in this location to move some things across the river. Our marketing guys say we need to get traffic on it with a month, and don't worry about it collapsing because it's more important that we get people lined up to use our bridge than to actualy get them across the river - that can wait for Bridge 2.0. Finally, we've already decided to use recycled steel (up to one ton, no more) 'cause I got a nice dinner at the local tittie-bar from their salesman - I don't want to hear any crap about tested structural steel and high-tension bolts. The decision has already been made, as has the placement of the piers. (A real professional can build on loose sand and clay, so I don't want to hear any more whining.) If you don't want to play by my rules (but take the blame when you can't meet my schedule or arbitrary restriction), we'll blacklist you as "unmanagable."
I gotta ask - are these crippled CDs still compliant with the appropriate CD specifications, or are they doing their own thing and counting on the public remaining ignorant and apathetic?
Under the Fair Use rules established years ago, I have a right to an archival copy in case the original is destroyed, and no EULA can force me to "treat the original media as the archival disc for the purpose of compliance with Federal laws." If I buy a "CD-ROM," I expect to be able to make a usable archival copy at my own expense, and that includes burning it to a single CD or storing it in a collection of ISO images on a larger hard disk.
They can be expected to verify the ISO image.
Do you think they approved the disc without verifying all libraries, resources, etc., were present and properly named? (Okay, this *is* Microsoft but work with me here)
If we can expect them to perform that level of checking, why can't we expect them to run a virus checker at the same time?
It's an optimization problem. They have to balance the savings of paying you under market with the costs of finding and training your replacement if you decide that you've been so underpaid that you're not willing to consider counter-offers when you get an offer from another company. And you will, sooner or later.
But what complicates this decision is that a person who feels that they have been treated fairly will give you a chance to renegotiate - you can get the benefits of lower pay today and no recruitment/retraining costs in the future. If they feel that you've been abusive, they'll walk out the door without looking back and you'll incur those new expenses.
One point that seems to be overlooked is that the people with a bad reputation for "chasing the money" are going after relatively small sums - 10%, maybe 15% at the most. While this isn't inconsequential, most of us would happily trade 10% of our salary for better benefits, a less stressful commute, etc.
But when you're in the 50% range, *nobody* will challenge you for putting the money first. (Well, I've known a few asshole bosses who would try to guilt you, but nobody else would give them any credence.) That's too much of a jump to ignore.
Unfortunately, the same thing applies to counteroffers. If your boss offers you a 10% counteroffer, it's easy to justify as compensation for some thin raises during the past few years. If your boss offers you a 50% counteroffer, you'll soon be resentful because you'll realize how much you were underpaid before, your peers may become resentful, etc. It's a bad situation all around.
It's only the end of the story since the city decided not to pursue it. Depending on how aggressive the city is (also known as "why you never leave the junker in the rich part of town"), they could have:
1) sued you for the removal fee, plus collection costs. Since this involves a motor vehicle, it could be put down as an unpaid motor vehicle fine and you won't be able to renew your driver's license until you pay the fine. (After the recent interstate compact to crack down on truck drivers with multiple licenses, a lot of people are having to pay decades-old fines for long forgotten tickets in order to renew their DL.)
2) issued a summons for littering, abandonment, whatever. The fine, needless to say, is the same as the removal fee. When you fail to show, they could issue a bench warrant so the next time you're pulled over for any reason you're arrested. You rarely get out early if you're being held on a "failure to appear" warrant.
3) finally, they could have added this fee to the "must collect" list for your next vehicle registration. Even if you ride the bus for the next 5 years, when you buy another car you can't get the plates until you pay the removal fee for the old car.
Most jurisdictions haven't bothered pursuing these cases since, frankly, there's no money in it. Anyone who has such a bad clunker that they're abandoning it instead of trading it in won't be able to easily pay the fines.
But now that the country is in a "Law & Order" mindset and middle-America is paying for long-forgotten tickets, I wouldn't be surprised to see these fees being added to the "must pay or else" list.
Those are easements, and most properties have numerous easements.
You own the road to the middle of the street, but there's an easement for the road and sidewalk. If you're in more rural areas, you may have an easement for your neighbor's driveway. There's an easement for your utilities (phone, power, gas, water, sewer, cable tv, etc.), and these companies can dig up your garden or tear down your hot tub if you put it over that easement. You usually can't build a permanent structure within N feet of the property line.
I'm in a townhouse, and our property extends into two adjacent creek beds/flood control channels, including the bike paths. The city will run a snow plow over the paths, but we're responsible for replacing downed trees.
I didn't say you couldn't offer software for free, I said it may not be possible to offer it and then *totally* walk away from it.
As an analogy, I've released some packages under both GPL and BSD licenses. If I discover I've made some horribly wrong assumption, I can and will make a honest effort to fix it, to contact people I know are using it, etc.
But when something is put into the public domain, I not only give up all of my rights to it, I'm announcing that I have no intention of maintaining it either. Not even if it turns out my supersecret encryption engine can be trivially cracked by something that's not widely known to the public, but is well known by the people who like to crack supersecret encryption.
*That* was the point I was making - software may be something that you can't just walk away from.
P.S., if you leave your car in your own (closed) garage you haven't abandoned it, by definition. However some (urban) jurisdictions or HOAs do require that all vehicles stored on your property be runnable, properly licensed and insured, etc.
In many urban jurisdictions, you can't store a non-runnable car on your own property. Not even in your backyard, because it's considered an "attractive nuisance." Even in a rural area, if it's leaking oil the local environmental protection agencies may pay a visit.
Other examples are old refrigerators and freezers (must remove door from hinges to prevent children from climbing in and closing the door), and now I think you need to have the freon removed as well. You must have fences around pools, etc.
If you have your own forest, *and you haven't properly marked it "no trespassing*, then I believe people have the right to cross your land as long as they don't interfere with your livestock or other operations. At least in the west with old "free range" laws. But if you've been using it as an illegal dump, done illegal mining, or created some other nonobvious danger and you haven't warned others than you better believe you're liable. Even if your land is posted "no trespassing," if you have a shallow stream kayakers and canoeists usually have a right to passage and right to landing. You can stop them from having a picnic, but can't stop them from making necessary repairs or rebalancing their watercraft.
And for the record, it's *falsely* yelling fire in a theater that was used as an analogy in that famous WW-I case. Only an idiot would argue against warning people of a real fire in an era predating non-flammable upholstery (theaters could go from a spark to raging inferno in a matter of seconds), but likewise only an asshole would yell fire knowing that the ensuing panic would also injure many people.
You're being set up as the patsy, the guy who will be fired "for cause" and to the relief of the real assholes, the next time things go wrong. And they will go wrong with the parameters you're currently working under.
This is normally a non-winnable situation. All you can do is recommend, in writing, that a central server with good backups be set up, employees instructed to save their work to that server (which is backed up), and that compliance is a line item on their review and (most importantly) you are God and twice a year your job is to "crash" their system and give them a temporary replacement to ensure that they have backed up their files. It is important that you can do this at any time, without challenge, even immediately prior to deadlines and vacations. After all, fires, gas leaks, ceiling collapses, etc. don't follow your business schedule either, and if people know they can cut corners when it matters most they will.
As others have pointed out, this test is actually performed by making an early morning raid and putting a cardboard flame on their box. Part of the test is how long it takes them to report the problem, and if they cheat by turning on the machine (or "losing" the flame) then you have the authority to file a written reprimand with HR for interference with a test designed to verify compliance with policy. This is in addition to a second written reprimand for failing to perform backups, and HR will be instructed to remind the employee that they will be fired "for cause" on a third reprimand. If they're going to expose the company to massive financial loss due to lost files, despite clearly established policy and need, there's no point in keeping them around.
But management won't do that (if they understood how serious this is, you won't have lost data earlier) and you'll be unable to force people to back up their files to a network drive, to keep systems up so a distributed backup will work, etc., and you will be the guy who's fired for failure to follow policy when the next disk crash occurs.
Why does he think you can put code into the public domain?
You can't abandon a car, you'll eventually be tracked down and made to pay for proper disposal. Same thing with real property - you will be tracked down and hit with cleanup fees for any toxic wastes you left behind.
Is software really any different? Think about it - most software is of no lasting consequence, but some of it can cause a lot of damage (Microsoft Outlook Express, Microsoft IIS, others) before the producer may be tempted to just abandon it and (hopefully) all associated liabilities.
I know we usually compare source code to books, but as some Federal judges like to point out (while denying it the full protection of the First Amendment) it also has an active component. A cookbook can be put into the public domain, but a cookbook doesn't create a fire or health hazard as it attempts to prepare the meals it describes.
Maybe the people uncomfortable with truly public domain software are aware of something that we're missing....
Ironically, even though the shows generally avoid story arcs (and it's usually a disaster when they do), the series has some of the best continuity on television. Unlike some other shows I could mention, you don't watch episodes in frustration as the characters forget an easy solution covered in an earlier episode.
But the series as a whole is on an arc to support the possible spinoff series Stargate: Atlantis.
Hey Homer, the NSA doesn't release its own crypto because it believes in security through obscurity.
It doesn't release them because the other guys could use the same crypto. And this violates the NSA charter because either 1) they know how to crack the code, but others could figure that out also and thus they've failed to protect US interests, or 2) they don't know how to crack the code, so they've aided others to work against US interests.
Either way, they'll going to catch a lot of heat if they provide information, much less if they remain silent (modulo their responsibilities). That's a no-brainer.
I consider this pretty basic, but I remember some junior coworkers blown away by
<tt>something | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn</tt>
On the coding level, I constantly use the regex library (with extended regular expressions) and profiling. There are a lot of places where a single well-designed RE can eliminate many lines of code, and profiling can help you ensure that you close all files you open, free all memory you malloc, etc.
I'm not sure how "voluntary" many of these sales were. They weren't compelled, in the sense that property is occasionally condemned for a new road or public facility, but that's about all you can say about it.
Imagine for a moment that you're the owner of a local station (or small chain), and someone like Clear Channel decides they want your radio station. You're making enough to meet payroll, sponsor some community events, but you don't have deep cash reserves. Then CC comes in and tells you to sell for a lowball price.
You refuse - and they tell all of your advertisers that there's a new sheriff in town. If they sign exclusive agreements with CC stations, they get an ad rate substantially lower than what you can offer. It's far below cost to CC also, but they can pull in money from other stations nationwide.
But if they don't agree to that exclusive agreement, they're blacklisted by CC stations. Accounts are closed (even if that involves penalties), and even after they're removed from the blacklist (when CC is the only game in town) they'll never get prefered customer rates.
How long do you think you'll hold onto customers? A few may say with you, but anyone running ads on multiple stations will be forced to dump you. And all CC needs to do to target your advertisers is hire an intern to listen to your station and jot down what ads they hear.
This isn't an abusive monopoly since CC doesn't yet have a monopoly in that market, but it's as unfair as an unlimited stakes poker game where one player has $100 and another has $1000, and you can't not play.
You can go a step further - don't bother with setting up a new compression layer, just encrypt it with existing tools. Most encryption routines compress it first, to make cryptanalysis more difficult (and for performance, since there's less data to encrypt), but this is partially offset by the continuing need for 7-bit safe transport layers.
Life is not that simple. All databases are limited by the size of the basic block, and if you can't fit your data into that block performance takes a hit.
With PostgreSQL this a compile-time option, default 8k and it can go up to 32k.
It *is* possible to store larger items, esp. if they're 'TOASTable' or blobs, but this often just pushes the problem of dealing with thousands of files onto the database. Only now it's a lot harder to figure out why performance sucks.
Does this mean that database solutions won't work? Of course not. But it does mean that simple solutions won't scale well when you're dealing with massive amounts of data.