Why is legal liability for faulty software such a bad thing? I just don't understand why so many/.'ers are so against this.
Every other profession is legally liable for what they do. If a construction company builds a block of flats that collapses...they are possibly legally liable (depending on why it collapsed). If a doctor removes your heart when they were meant to remove your appendix, they are legally liable.
There is no difference for Software Engineers. If we make and market a product, we should be liable if it doesn't do what we claim it does! If we work for a company, they are liable. If we work for ourselves, we are liable.
In this case, does Microsoft have a duty of care when releasing a product that the product is reasonable secure? After Microsoft found its product had a major defect, did they recall the product? Did they do enough to tell people who bought their products how to fix it? I don't know the answer to these questions, and I assume a judge will decide.
"Normal" products are "recalled" when a major defect is found. When they recall the product, they need to make every effort to tell their customers that the product is recalled. This often means letters, phone calls, and lots of advertising. More and more software products are critical to buisnesses or even life. It seems resonable that if the product has a major defect, the creator needs to make every effort to fix the defect and inform users about it. Is it resonable to ask Microsoft to do this? Do they do it?
It doesn't make sense. At all. But we are not talking about death, but money.
Also, there is a fine for jaywalking. It depends on where you are, but $100 is not unusual.
If I jaywalk 1 million times (and get caught each time), I will get 1 million fines for a total of $100,000,000. Do you think that is fair?
If you do the crime, you should pay the fine. Of course, a judge can rule that I should only pay $1000, as I have learnt my lesson. But thats a different story.
Once again we've come to the last page of a codec comparison and are asking the dreaded question "which is best?". I think we can rule out two codecs right away: mpegable AVI because it's currently unusable, and 3ivX because it returned clips with serious quality degradation. So we're left with 5 out of 7.
I cannot shake off the feeling that DivX5 hasn't made so much progress since the last comparison. It still has a tendency to smooth out details and the only major news is an application that allows you to manually adjust bitrate settings and multipass encoding (the benefits if this is still under dispute if you follow the discussions in the DivX5 forum). DivX5 is certainly a stable product and is rather easy to use and the fact that there are DivX certified hardware devices will certainly help to increase its proliferation, but it fails to claim first place in any scenario. It also didn't deliver a too impressive performance in the animated movie scenario.
RealVideo9 has not made any significant progress since the last test, either. I did never notice the bugs they were having during my last test, so the new release mostly came down to speed improvements for me, and the first test on animated materials. Personally I prefer codecs that retain more details than RV9 but that's just a personal preference. If "no blocks" is all you care about RV9 might just be your thing. Don't forget that it's proprietary (chances that any standalone player will eventually play it are extremely small), that it's not very editable and that your audio format choice is rather limited as well. Last but not least its rate control still leaves a lot of room for improvement.
SBC seems to finally have found its match. It has to share the "most details" throne with XviD while clearly being beaten when it comes to animated features.
With WMV9 Microsoft has finally managed what they've tried for almost 3 years (I still recall my first codec comparison... I tested WMV7 and found that it did not perform better - in fact rather worse - than plain DivX3 at the time), that is join the top league. With its financial power Microsoft might be able to get some hardware support, but I still think it's more likely that a real standard (MPEG-4) will make the race. In any case, WMV9 delivered a reasonable performance in all scenarios, except for rate control and speed.
Last but not least, XviD has made a big step forward. It was able to catch up with DivX3 on the detail level and the only things I can criticize are QPel effects (which really aren't that visible when you use the built-in postprocessing, which by the way requires that you get the best CPU available), the two glitches I found (and which I've already submitted to the developers, hoping that they will soon be fixed) and that fact that its new features have decimated encoding speed. XviD playback is also supported by most hardware DivX/MPEG4 players so you might be able to play your rips on a standalone device which is certainly a bonus (make sure not to use any modulated quantizers though, they are not specs compliant).
In conclusion: When encoding regular movies, if you look for a quick and dirty average solution DivX5 is your fix. If you're an SBC guru, want maximal details at high speed you can still stick to SBC, if you want details and are not worried about the alpha status and speed you should give XviD a shot. DivX5 and XviD also offer standalone playback capability on selected devices. If you don't worry about details too much and prefer to remain almost blockfree you should give RV9 a shot, or alternatively WMV9. Interestingly, the lead developer of XviD has offered to send me a build that would perform just like RV9.. I might take up that offer one day when I'm bored.
For animated features, the two proprietary solutions deliver good results with XviD pulling slightly ahead.
If you type the following search string into Google -- "request catalog name address city state zip" -- you'll get links to over 250,000 (the exact number varies) Web forms where you can type in your information and receive a catalog in the mail. Or, if you follow where this is going, you can type in the information of anyone you want. If you're a little bit clever with Perl (or any other scripting language), you can write a script that will automatically harvest the pages and fill in someone's information on all 250,000 forms.... When you're done, voila! It's Slashdot's attack, fully automated and dutifully executed by the U.S. Postal Service.
What's the chance of setting up a perl script to automatically find Junk Mail Kings and sign them up for the service? I'm sure many of these 250,000 would be junk mail kings. Just set them on each other!
Though environmentally bad in the short term, if it shuts them down in the long term, it would save a heck of a lot of trees!
sometimes, sometimes not. As a fairly relaxed team, we tend to use any excuse to get down to the pub for a "team building excerise", though we more often then not pay for it ourselves.
It is a thorny issue. Should they charge for turning up to a work lunch (assuming its not a working lunch)? What about if it's the Christmas party held on Friday on a yaught on Sydney Harbour? What if its a night function?
To a certain degree, I can see them charging if it is a work party during work time. Certainly if it is compulsory. But also remember that if it is a work party during work time, often "normal" employees will skip it and go home early. Kinda cynical if they go just to get paid.
They were also the ones that never delivered their part of the bargain (ie: hardware).
According to http://amiga.emugaming.com/c.html, the CHRP was meant to be a platform for all PowerPC hardware. Not just Apple's. Certainly PowerComputing and Motorolla had plans for the CHRP, though I suspect they were never released as their licenses were pulled.
I can't find anything confirming that other hardware companies were going to ship CHRP...I thought IBM were too. Was Apple the only CHRP hardware manufacturer, and did it fail because Apple didn't deliver? I've always understood that it failed cause no-one ported their OSes to it.
This brings me to my second point, that for the small costs involved in, for example,..., inviting contractors/temps to employee parties, all of these small bonuses we enjoy while working, are tiny in comparison to potential gains in productivity.
It depends on the contractor. I know contractors who would come to work christmas parties, and lunches....and charge their time.
Along similar lines, I also know contractors who when they think about the project whilst in the shower would charge the time.
Now, I love most of the contractors I have worked with (except for scum from one company who just tried to take *our* work away from us and do us out of a job), and I really love them attending lunches, parties, dinners etc etc. But I'm not convinced that at our work christmas party they should be getting $250 an hour to drink our grog.
Remeber the good old days and the promise of CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform.). It seemed like such a good idea but just never took off when apple killed macos for CHRP.
Remember that the last company to pull out of the CHRP was Apple. The CHRP was long dead before they pulled out. In the begining Windows, OS2, MacOS and various other OSes were meant to run on the CHRP.
OS2 died, Microsoft pulled out, and the CHRP was just Apple opening up its *hardware* market to cloners. Not suprisingly, Apple lost bucketloads of money, pulled out of the CHRP, killed the cloners, and is now profitable.
Trackable info is GOLD. Take the following which happened to a guy I know at the same company I'm contracted to...
interesting story...and there is no doubt that trackable info is gold....but in your story surely it didn't make a difference. The guy still lost his position even though he could prove everything!
The gist of my friends comments on Apple/Sony is that Sony will be phasing out Windows and moving to a UNIX OS. We already know they are using Linux for the PS2.
You almost had me...but seriously, the PS2 uses Linux? The grain of truth is that Sony released a version of linux for the PS2. You could use this version of Linux to bone up your ps2 dev skills, without spending $100,000 on a proper dev kit (and getting approval from Sony Legal).
So yes, you can get Linux for the PS2, but NO, PS2's don't "use" linux.
Sony is a *big* company, with many divisions, with many different views on the world. When you say "Sony" are moving to OS X, what do you mean? Are you suggesting that the Sony laptops will move to OS X?
I'm a former MS manager. You should never manage anyone. You show an abysmal knowledge of good management, and you suck as a human.
From your post, you believe that:
You should have been way too busy to be concerned about sexist comments in the intern newsgroup - internal news groups set up for interns should not be used.
If you complained to HR about ANYTHING as an intern, you sealed your fate that day.
- Reporting abuse to HR about anything is a fireable offence. Interns should just shut up and accept anything that is thrown at them.
Your complaint seems to be much more focused on interpersonal relations then on your WORK
- Personal relationships don't matter at work.
There are no bad jobs, just bad employees.
- There is no such thing as bad jobs, just bad employees.
Here is a realitity check for you:
- Internal news servers are set up to be used and are part of your company policy. If such groups are being used to harrass females, they should complain.
- That interns should have to put up with any amount of sexual harrasment or assault and not complain is just wrong and illegal. This isn't software we are talking about, but real people potentially suffering real abuse. You may not sexually harrase people yourself, but your attitude condones it.
- Personal relationships do matter at work. It matters because it effects how we view and enjoy work. Any good HR person should be able to tell you that. Any good manager should know that it matters.
- There are workers in Indonesia being paid $1 a day to make shoes for some company. They often working 12 hours day every day, sometimes with a gun pointed at them. Explain to these workers that they should not whinge, cause there ain't no such thing as a bad job, just bad employees.
- That she decided to tell us about personal relationships at MS when she worked there does not mean she did not work, did not try, or did not learn. But it does show why she didn't enjoy her job.
I can understand why you posted anonymously, as I doubt if MS knew your real views they would allow you to remain as an employee. I hope that most MS managers aren't like you. I doubt they are.
I have seen at least one manager go to jail for condoning sexual harrassment. I have personally been involved with at least two managers being fired for abusing their employees.
I sincerly hope you get taken down some day. If you really believe your views are acceptable, tell us who you are. Then we can see if your company agrees to.
Don't get me wrong, 'yay' for doing things for the hell of it, but what's the point of this past that?
Simple. I'm a developer who works with set top boxes and interactive TV. We wanted to do a proof of concept using the PS2 as a STB (Set Top Box). The POC would do things like digital TV, VOD (Video On Demand), and Interactive TV.
A Sony PS2 Dev kit will cost you $100,000 USD. A Sony Linux Kit will cost you $150. You also can't get a dev kit unless your work has been "OKed" by Sony in Japan. They will OK games work....but will rarely other stuff....certainly without lots of negotiation etc.
So we bought 5 ps2s and Linux kits. Sure, we missed out on a lot of sampe code, dev help, and all sorts of stuff, Inside of 6 months our dev team had a working POC. Digital TV (off cable/Sat), VOD, games downloads, as well as some sorts of iTV. I'm sure we could have done it in 4 months if we had Sony support...but it would have taken 6 months just to get the OK (in fact, we are still waiting for it). Sony (and others) loved our demos. Talked big time the possibilities. Lots of talk. No action.
Anyway, 4 days ago our project was buried as our company has decided that Cable TV ain't their core buisness.
Our code is now rotting away in CVS, never to see the light of day. And it was cool stuff. Such is life.
Ironically, as TVs become smarter & more like computers, the less we are going to trust them.
totally. I haven't seen any data suggesting people trust their TVs less, but I suspect it may happen. Some iTV deployments have really bad security..and if a few bad things happen and are publicised, things may change. When people start not being able to record TV shows, or are forced to watch Adverts rather then fast forwarding, etc etc...I suspect they may become not so happy with their TVs.
Most bugs in commercial code exist because the coders work under pressure to a deadline they didn't even have a hand in making. Not because they're bad coders. The quality of the coders is nearly irrelevant, which is why MS can employ so many of the best coders in the world and still turn out crap product.
Many other bugs are introduced as part of the basic architecture by *marketing,* not the coders.(Can you say Outlook Express? I knew you could)
This isn't about good code. It's about marketing product.
hear!! hear!!
And don't forget how many bugs are added through requirement changing half-way through development.
Marketer: Hows the work going?
Programmer: Great! Have almost finish an alpha, almost ready for testing phase...as per plan and spec.
M: awesome! Oh, by the way...I also need it to send SMSes alerting us when a customer needs something or rather...
P: umm...not in the spec.
M: wasn't it? well it was meant to be in the spec.
P: You signed off on the spec. It doesn't have it in it.
M: Well I'm telling you now it needs it.
At this point the programmer generally goes one of two ways.
- They can be helpful, offering to see if they can throw something together in a few days. This is often done by helpful programmers or those who like to show off. Often they underestimate how hard it really is, how long it will take, and how it changes the rest of the project. But because nothing is in writing, and it is last minute...they put themselves in a bad position, hammered by costs, times, and reliability problems.. They also opened the door, and in the future the marketer will continue to add things at the last moment. It is a bad downward spiral into insanity.
- they can piss off the marketer (and possibly big people in the company). Say they won't do it until they have a change request. They need the changes speced out, and then need to reply in writing how this changes the project. It adds an extra week to dev time, test time, etc etc. They need the changes (including extra time and costs) signed off by everyone involved. In the end this is a much better way...it teaches the marketer their "I just need..." costs money and time. And makes sure things are done right.
I can envision that same graph in MS, where "security" and "compalints/bad PR" are the two curves...
Welcome to reality. Companies do this every day, in all sorts of areas. Price, Security, Quality, Functionality, Time to Market, support, phone staff, outlets, regions to sell it in etc etc. All sorts of things go into deciding how and when to release a product (be it a piece of software or a teddy-bear).
Companies that don't make these hard decisions, no matter how great their product will eventually be or how commited to quality they are...will go bust. You make no money while developing a product, only when selling it.
90% of product development takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
How can "Trustworthy Computing" ever be achieved? Ironically, the more that some people trust their computers, the more others will distrust them.
The same way "Trustworth TV Watching" can be achieved. At the moment the computer is still "new" to our homes. They have only really been around our homes for 5-10 years (if that). We have had TVs in our homes since the 60s.
I won't be suprised if it takes us 30-40 years to make computers worthy to be trusted, as well as for us to actually trust them.
I work in iTV (interactive TV), and there have been surveys showing that 86% of Australians distrust ordering Pizza off the internet, but 92% of them trust ordering Pizza from their TVs (as part of an iTV trial we did). The difference is that the TV is a trusted family member (sad but true).
I spent a long time on the phone the other day to the ACCC and the Copyright Council only to discover that there is absolutely NO copies allowed under Austrlian law of music
DANG!!!
you are right! Well, at least according to the Australian Copywrite Council.
Check out: http://www.copyright.org.au/PDF/InfoSheets/G 070.pd f
I'm not sure I believe it yet, but according to that "information sheet", it is illegal for me to copy MY CD onto a tape so I can listen to it in my car (which doesn't have a CD player). It is also illegal for me to MP3 my CDs, or make up "mix" CDs from my own CDs.
I am so blown away by this. I have always attempted to do "right" by the law, thinking it was fair (you know..not stealing other peoples stuff etc). But now...what do I do? Do I continue to follow the law, or do what I think is "fair"?
This just can't be right. I mean, according to their "info" sheet, the ipod is used illegally through-out Australia, cause you can't copy music for any reason (except for students doing research).
At the moment, I refuse to believe that this info sheet is right.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is legal liability for faulty software such a bad thing? I just don't understand why so many /.'ers are so against this.
Every other profession is legally liable for what they do. If a construction company builds a block of flats that collapses...they are possibly legally liable (depending on why it collapsed). If a doctor removes your heart when they were meant to remove your appendix, they are legally liable.
There is no difference for Software Engineers. If we make and market a product, we should be liable if it doesn't do what we claim it does! If we work for a company, they are liable. If we work for ourselves, we are liable.
In this case, does Microsoft have a duty of care when releasing a product that the product is reasonable secure? After Microsoft found its product had a major defect, did they recall the product? Did they do enough to tell people who bought their products how to fix it? I don't know the answer to these questions, and I assume a judge will decide.
"Normal" products are "recalled" when a major defect is found. When they recall the product, they need to make every effort to tell their customers that the product is recalled. This often means letters, phone calls, and lots of advertising. More and more software products are critical to buisnesses or even life. It seems resonable that if the product has a major defect, the creator needs to make every effort to fix the defect and inform users about it. Is it resonable to ask Microsoft to do this? Do they do it?
It doesn't make sense. At all. But we are not talking about death, but money.
Also, there is a fine for jaywalking. It depends on where you are, but $100 is not unusual.
If I jaywalk 1 million times (and get caught each time), I will get 1 million fines for a total of $100,000,000. Do you think that is fair?
If you do the crime, you should pay the fine. Of course, a judge can rule that I should only pay $1000, as I have learnt my lesson. But thats a different story.
From the site...
Conclusion
Once again we've come to the last page of a codec comparison and are asking the dreaded question "which is best?". I think we can rule out two codecs right away: mpegable AVI because it's currently unusable, and 3ivX because it returned clips with serious quality degradation. So we're left with 5 out of 7.
I cannot shake off the feeling that DivX5 hasn't made so much progress since the last comparison. It still has a tendency to smooth out details and the only major news is an application that allows you to manually adjust bitrate settings and multipass encoding (the benefits if this is still under dispute if you follow the discussions in the DivX5 forum). DivX5 is certainly a stable product and is rather easy to use and the fact that there are DivX certified hardware devices will certainly help to increase its proliferation, but it fails to claim first place in any scenario. It also didn't deliver a too impressive performance in the animated movie scenario.
RealVideo9 has not made any significant progress since the last test, either. I did never notice the bugs they were having during my last test, so the new release mostly came down to speed improvements for me, and the first test on animated materials. Personally I prefer codecs that retain more details than RV9 but that's just a personal preference. If "no blocks" is all you care about RV9 might just be your thing. Don't forget that it's proprietary (chances that any standalone player will eventually play it are extremely small), that it's not very editable and that your audio format choice is rather limited as well. Last but not least its rate control still leaves a lot of room for improvement.
SBC seems to finally have found its match. It has to share the "most details" throne with XviD while clearly being beaten when it comes to animated features.
With WMV9 Microsoft has finally managed what they've tried for almost 3 years (I still recall my first codec comparison... I tested WMV7 and found that it did not perform better - in fact rather worse - than plain DivX3 at the time), that is join the top league. With its financial power Microsoft might be able to get some hardware support, but I still think it's more likely that a real standard (MPEG-4) will make the race. In any case, WMV9 delivered a reasonable performance in all scenarios, except for rate control and speed.
Last but not least, XviD has made a big step forward. It was able to catch up with DivX3 on the detail level and the only things I can criticize are QPel effects (which really aren't that visible when you use the built-in postprocessing, which by the way requires that you get the best CPU available), the two glitches I found (and which I've already submitted to the developers, hoping that they will soon be fixed) and that fact that its new features have decimated encoding speed. XviD playback is also supported by most hardware DivX/MPEG4 players so you might be able to play your rips on a standalone device which is certainly a bonus (make sure not to use any modulated quantizers though, they are not specs compliant).
In conclusion: When encoding regular movies, if you look for a quick and dirty average solution DivX5 is your fix. If you're an SBC guru, want maximal details at high speed you can still stick to SBC, if you want details and are not worried about the alpha status and speed you should give XviD a shot. DivX5 and XviD also offer standalone playback capability on selected devices. If you don't worry about details too much and prefer to remain almost blockfree you should give RV9 a shot, or alternatively WMV9. Interestingly, the lead developer of XviD has offered to send me a build that would perform just like RV9.. I might take up that offer one day when I'm bored.
For animated features, the two proprietary solutions deliver good results with XviD pulling slightly ahead.
yep...Marathon is a biggie.
Can't remember which one in particular...but I do remember being scared silly when playing it in a darkened room with stereo up loud.
Last time I checked, all of those CDs came postage paid
What about the cost to the environment caused by junk mailers?
Why? With physical spam, the costs are the sender's burden, not the recievers.
What about the damage to our environment caused by junk mail?
This has been discussed before. You aren't charged for the cost of AOL cd delivery, so it's not the same as spam.
What about the damage to our environment caused by junk mail?
mmmmmmmmm....
in that case the script would have to be more complicated than previously thought.
1) Collect Web forms where you can sign up to receive mail.
2) Filter based on if that company sends unrequested junk mail or not (is there some sort of junk mailer DB somewhere?)
3) Find companies Snail Mail details.
4) Sign each junk mail company up to other junk mail companies mailing list.
If you type the following search string into Google -- "request catalog name address city state zip" -- you'll get links to over 250,000 (the exact number varies) Web forms where you can type in your information and receive a catalog in the mail. Or, if you follow where this is going, you can type in the information of anyone you want. If you're a little bit clever with Perl (or any other scripting language), you can write a script that will automatically harvest the pages and fill in someone's information on all 250,000 forms.
What's the chance of setting up a perl script to automatically find Junk Mail Kings and sign them up for the service? I'm sure many of these 250,000 would be junk mail kings. Just set them on each other!
Though environmentally bad in the short term, if it shuts them down in the long term, it would save a heck of a lot of trees!
You mean your work parties are not DURING work?
sometimes, sometimes not. As a fairly relaxed team, we tend to use any excuse to get down to the pub for a "team building excerise", though we more often then not pay for it ourselves.
It is a thorny issue. Should they charge for turning up to a work lunch (assuming its not a working lunch)? What about if it's the Christmas party held on Friday on a yaught on Sydney Harbour? What if its a night function?
To a certain degree, I can see them charging if it is a work party during work time. Certainly if it is compulsory. But also remember that if it is a work party during work time, often "normal" employees will skip it and go home early. Kinda cynical if they go just to get paid.
oh well....tis a thorny issue.
They were also the ones that never delivered their part of the bargain (ie: hardware).
According to http://amiga.emugaming.com/c.html, the CHRP was meant to be a platform for all PowerPC hardware. Not just Apple's. Certainly PowerComputing and Motorolla had plans for the CHRP, though I suspect they were never released as their licenses were pulled.
I can't find anything confirming that other hardware companies were going to ship CHRP...I thought IBM were too. Was Apple the only CHRP hardware manufacturer, and did it fail because Apple didn't deliver? I've always understood that it failed cause no-one ported their OSes to it.
ahh...
fair enough. I guess I was expecting his company to believe him, rather than the problem causing person.
This brings me to my second point, that for the small costs involved in, for example,
It depends on the contractor. I know contractors who would come to work christmas parties, and lunches....and charge their time.
Along similar lines, I also know contractors who when they think about the project whilst in the shower would charge the time.
Now, I love most of the contractors I have worked with (except for scum from one company who just tried to take *our* work away from us and do us out of a job), and I really love them attending lunches, parties, dinners etc etc. But I'm not convinced that at our work christmas party they should be getting $250 an hour to drink our grog.
Remeber the good old days and the promise of CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform.). It seemed like such a good idea but just never took off when apple killed macos for CHRP.
Remember that the last company to pull out of the CHRP was Apple. The CHRP was long dead before they pulled out. In the begining Windows, OS2, MacOS and various other OSes were meant to run on the CHRP.
OS2 died, Microsoft pulled out, and the CHRP was just Apple opening up its *hardware* market to cloners. Not suprisingly, Apple lost bucketloads of money, pulled out of the CHRP, killed the cloners, and is now profitable.
Trackable info is GOLD. Take the following which happened to a guy I know at the same company I'm contracted to...
interesting story...and there is no doubt that trackable info is gold....but in your story surely it didn't make a difference. The guy still lost his position even though he could prove everything!
The gist of my friends comments on Apple/Sony is that Sony will be phasing out Windows and moving to a UNIX OS. We already know they are using Linux for the PS2.
You almost had me...but seriously, the PS2 uses Linux? The grain of truth is that Sony released a version of linux for the PS2. You could use this version of Linux to bone up your ps2 dev skills, without spending $100,000 on a proper dev kit (and getting approval from Sony Legal).
So yes, you can get Linux for the PS2, but NO, PS2's don't "use" linux.
Sony is a *big* company, with many divisions, with many different views on the world. When you say "Sony" are moving to OS X, what do you mean? Are you suggesting that the Sony laptops will move to OS X?
I'm a former MS manager.
You should never manage anyone. You show an abysmal knowledge of good management, and you suck as a human.
From your post, you believe that:
You should have been way too busy to be concerned about sexist comments in the intern newsgroup
- internal news groups set up for interns should not be used.
If you complained to HR about ANYTHING as an intern, you sealed your fate that day.
- Reporting abuse to HR about anything is a fireable offence. Interns should just shut up and accept anything that is thrown at them.
Your complaint seems to be much more focused on interpersonal relations then on your WORK
- Personal relationships don't matter at work.
There are no bad jobs, just bad employees.
- There is no such thing as bad jobs, just bad employees.
Here is a realitity check for you:
- Internal news servers are set up to be used and are part of your company policy. If such groups are being used to harrass females, they should complain.
- That interns should have to put up with any amount of sexual harrasment or assault and not complain is just wrong and illegal. This isn't software we are talking about, but real people potentially suffering real abuse. You may not sexually harrase people yourself, but your attitude condones it.
- Personal relationships do matter at work. It matters because it effects how we view and enjoy work. Any good HR person should be able to tell you that. Any good manager should know that it matters.
- There are workers in Indonesia being paid $1 a day to make shoes for some company. They often working 12 hours day every day, sometimes with a gun pointed at them. Explain to these workers that they should not whinge, cause there ain't no such thing as a bad job, just bad employees.
- That she decided to tell us about personal relationships at MS when she worked there does not mean she did not work, did not try, or did not learn. But it does show why she didn't enjoy her job.
I can understand why you posted anonymously, as I doubt if MS knew your real views they would allow you to remain as an employee. I hope that most MS managers aren't like you. I doubt they are.
I have seen at least one manager go to jail for condoning sexual harrassment. I have personally been involved with at least two managers being fired for abusing their employees.
I sincerly hope you get taken down some day. If you really believe your views are acceptable, tell us who you are. Then we can see if your company agrees to.
Don't get me wrong, 'yay' for doing things for the hell of it, but what's the point of this past that?
Simple. I'm a developer who works with set top boxes and interactive TV. We wanted to do a proof of concept using the PS2 as a STB (Set Top Box). The POC would do things like digital TV, VOD (Video On Demand), and Interactive TV.
A Sony PS2 Dev kit will cost you $100,000 USD. A Sony Linux Kit will cost you $150. You also can't get a dev kit unless your work has been "OKed" by Sony in Japan. They will OK games work....but will rarely other stuff....certainly without lots of negotiation etc.
So we bought 5 ps2s and Linux kits. Sure, we missed out on a lot of sampe code, dev help, and all sorts of stuff, Inside of 6 months our dev team had a working POC. Digital TV (off cable/Sat), VOD, games downloads, as well as some sorts of iTV. I'm sure we could have done it in 4 months if we had Sony support...but it would have taken 6 months just to get the OK (in fact, we are still waiting for it). Sony (and others) loved our demos. Talked big time the possibilities. Lots of talk. No action.
Anyway, 4 days ago our project was buried as our company has decided that Cable TV ain't their core buisness.
Our code is now rotting away in CVS, never to see the light of day. And it was cool stuff. Such is life.
Mechanical engineers have been around a lot longer then programmers.
And not much to do with regulation. There are plenty of things that aren't regulated and aren't as dodgy as programing.
I still think its more to do the fact that Software Dev is an emerging industry/skill.
If architects would build houses like programmers build programs, the first woodpecker which comes along would destroy our civilisation.
funny.
but an unfair comparison. Architects have a profession going back tens of thousands of years. Software Developers go back decades.
Ironically, as TVs become smarter & more like computers, the less we are going to trust them.
totally. I haven't seen any data suggesting people trust their TVs less, but I suspect it may happen. Some iTV deployments have really bad security..and if a few bad things happen and are publicised, things may change. When people start not being able to record TV shows, or are forced to watch Adverts rather then fast forwarding, etc etc...I suspect they may become not so happy with their TVs.
Most bugs in commercial code exist because the coders work under pressure to a deadline they didn't even have a hand in making. Not because they're bad coders. The quality of the coders is nearly irrelevant, which is why MS can employ so many of the best coders in the world and still turn out crap product.
Many other bugs are introduced as part of the basic architecture by *marketing,* not the coders.(Can you say Outlook Express? I knew you could)
This isn't about good code. It's about marketing product.
hear!! hear!!
And don't forget how many bugs are added through requirement changing half-way through development
Marketer: Hows the work going?
Programmer: Great! Have almost finish an alpha, almost ready for testing phase...as per plan and spec.
M: awesome! Oh, by the way...I also need it to send SMSes alerting us when a customer needs something or rather...
P: umm...not in the spec.
M: wasn't it? well it was meant to be in the spec.
P: You signed off on the spec. It doesn't have it in it.
M: Well I'm telling you now it needs it.
At this point the programmer generally goes one of two ways.
- They can be helpful, offering to see if they can throw something together in a few days. This is often done by helpful programmers or those who like to show off. Often they underestimate how hard it really is, how long it will take, and how it changes the rest of the project. But because nothing is in writing, and it is last minute...they put themselves in a bad position, hammered by costs, times, and reliability problems.. They also opened the door, and in the future the marketer will continue to add things at the last moment. It is a bad downward spiral into insanity.
- they can piss off the marketer (and possibly big people in the company). Say they won't do it until they have a change request. They need the changes speced out, and then need to reply in writing how this changes the project. It adds an extra week to dev time, test time, etc etc. They need the changes (including extra time and costs) signed off by everyone involved. In the end this is a much better way...it teaches the marketer their "I just need..." costs money and time. And makes sure things are done right.
I can envision that same graph in MS, where "security" and "compalints/bad PR" are the two curves...
Welcome to reality. Companies do this every day, in all sorts of areas. Price, Security, Quality, Functionality, Time to Market, support, phone staff, outlets, regions to sell it in etc etc. All sorts of things go into deciding how and when to release a product (be it a piece of software or a teddy-bear).
Companies that don't make these hard decisions, no matter how great their product will eventually be or how commited to quality they are...will go bust. You make no money while developing a product, only when selling it.
90% of product development takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
How can "Trustworthy Computing" ever be achieved? Ironically, the more that some people trust their computers, the more others will distrust them.
The same way "Trustworth TV Watching" can be achieved. At the moment the computer is still "new" to our homes. They have only really been around our homes for 5-10 years (if that). We have had TVs in our homes since the 60s.
I won't be suprised if it takes us 30-40 years to make computers worthy to be trusted, as well as for us to actually trust them.
I work in iTV (interactive TV), and there have been surveys showing that 86% of Australians distrust ordering Pizza off the internet, but 92% of them trust ordering Pizza from their TVs (as part of an iTV trial we did). The difference is that the TV is a trusted family member (sad but true).
I spent a long time on the phone the other day to the ACCC and the Copyright Council only to discover that there is absolutely NO copies allowed under Austrlian law of music
DANG!!!
you are right! Well, at least according to the Australian Copywrite Council.
Check out:
http://www.copyright.org.au/PDF/InfoSheets/
I'm not sure I believe it yet, but according to that "information sheet", it is illegal for me to copy MY CD onto a tape so I can listen to it in my car (which doesn't have a CD player). It is also illegal for me to MP3 my CDs, or make up "mix" CDs from my own CDs.
I am so blown away by this. I have always attempted to do "right" by the law, thinking it was fair (you know..not stealing other peoples stuff etc). But now...what do I do? Do I continue to follow the law, or do what I think is "fair"?
This just can't be right. I mean, according to their "info" sheet, the ipod is used illegally through-out Australia, cause you can't copy music for any reason (except for students doing research).
At the moment, I refuse to believe that this info sheet is right.
I'll keep looking.