Responsible developers and the people and businesses who rely on them, however, consider a stable platform to be one that lasts on the order of 5-10 years minimum.
That is SO full of it that I don't know where to start. For example, I spent all week shelled into a BSD box in New York... BSD 4.8-RELEASE - April 3rd, 2003. Do you really want to try deploying on that platform w/o doing serious updates?
STABLE != FOSSILIZED; when you look at the application stack, sticking with something from 15 years ago means you can't even find too many people who can work with it without significant loss of productivity, or worse - project failure.
Release early, release often. What you're talking about is so last century. It's not practical when targets move so fast.
Actually, one of the theories about the great die-off after the dinosaurs involves just such a world-wide inversion as part of the mechanism for killing off more life than should have died just from a meteor strike and global winter..
The plankton are at the bottom of the food chain. Filter feeders die off because they no longer get enough plankton (picture eating 1 bite of food for every 10 bites of plastic in YOUR diet). The filter feeders die off, and so do all those above them. Next, we end up with dead zones and algae blooms. All those good plankton are now gone, and we have an expanding dead zone.
The lake example is pertinent. Methane and ammonia (both much more toxic gases) come from the anaerobic decomposition of dead stuff like, well, the animals that fed on the plankton, the animals that fed on the animals that fed on the plankton, etc. If that lake had contained a much smaller level of methane and ammonia than it did CO2, the results would have been the same - dead people everywhere.
The problem is that these are plankton-sized pieces of plastic, outnumbering plankton by a ratio of 10 to one, and doubling every decade. Plankton might be floating on the top of the ocean, but they're the bottom of the ocean food chain. If they collapse, the oceans die. If the oceans die, so do we, because the accumulation of toxic gases from decomposition will kill all life on the planet (we've seen this on a smaller scale, where lakes have died, the gases accumulate in solution at the bottom of the lake, then one day, the tipping point is reached, or an outside event causes the waters rise to the surface and suddenly release huge clouds of toxic gases, killing everything and everyone for miles around). Another article
1986: A deadly cloud of carbon dioxide sweeps down the slopes of an African volcano, smothering more than 1,700 people.
Volcanoes can kill in many ways, but this one is pretty weird. A volcanic lake in the West African nation of Cameroon degassed violently (you could say it burped, or worse) in the middle of the night. Carbon dioxide is odorless and heavier than air. Most of the victims died in their sleep.
Lake Nyos sits in the crater of a volcano that hadn't erupted in centuries... and probably didn't actually erupt the night of Aug. 21, 1986.
Lousy for real programmers. The Boost STL isn't thread-safe. It's "thread-safe" for values of threads where they're all read-only. That is *so* last century.
They don't have to be yes-men, since they'll still take lots of things for granted. They'll get used to their coworkers agreeing with them, and they'll take that as evidence that they're 100% correct about certain things. Then when they encounter an alternate opinion, they'll be quick to disregard it because of this confidence that comes with being agreed with all the time.
Surround yourself with disagreeable people
...
... and if you think this model doesn't work, look around you...
Riiiight... keep drinking the koolaid. Or have you conveniently forgotten all the problems with different 3-4d party Windows apps interfering not only with each other, but also with bringing down the OS?
A "stable platform over a reasonable time" is a couple of years. Software isn't like oak trees or fossils... it grows fast in the right environment. Of curse, you're welcome to return to Win9x or Win3x, or Win286 if you want "stable" (as in unchanging).
"Dependancy Hell" is also pretty much a non-issue with OpenSUSE. When there's a problem, the resolver either suggests a solution that works (usually by switching to an alternate package supplier, such as packman.de, who has the prerequisites) or you wait a few days, and the dependencies are fixed, as sevelopers push out their own updates into the repositories.
Try that with Windows. There is no "alternate package supplier".
You do not have to cooperate (not co-operate) again, but a reasonable search or re-search will get a warrant. And this is not what the Judge is saying. Essentially, 1's and 0's on your hard drive is not knowledge in your head and is discoverable evidence.
But the "ones and zeroes" they want aren't on the hard drive - they're in your head - the passkey. They HAVE the ones and zeroes that are on the hard drive. If you refuse a warrant to provide the contents inside a physical safe, they can force it open; they can't force the encrypted drive. The smart thing to do would have been to try to convince him that it was in his best interest to hook them up with his suppliers, and go after the source. If *he* is the source (porn producer), then they should have no major problem proving it, now that they know who to look for.
They screwed up. After all, what's more important, throwing a perv in jail for refusing to decrypt a drive, or going after the person producing the kiddie porn and putting a stop to it? So much for "think of the children." Throwing this guy in jail does nothing. Getting him to flip on his contacts (after all, it doesn't just miraculously materialize out of the aether) might have been useful.
.. and if you compile statically, you also don't need a package system, since there are now no external dependencies...
... but to claim that "a problem Windows doesn't have - massive amounts of intricate and interlinked software dependencies. " is a lie at best, since the whole antitrust case was on the way that IE was supposedly such a core component of the Windows OS, and that so many processes and programs depended on it, or libraries (dlls) that were part of it...
Remove all the dlls from your system - Windows won't even boot.
Since when have geographical boundaries *ever* been an obstacle to the US enforcing its laws wherever it pleases?
That's right - Vietnam was such a smashing US military success.
Iraq was "mission accomplished" how many years ago?
Afghanistan?
Trade cooperation is the only long-term model that works, which is why trade protectionism is just another way for the US to shoot itself in the foot, by
costly subsidizing of less efficient parts of industries (*cough* GM, Chrysler, Bank of America, Citi, *cough*), and
less clout for such things as influence over issues such as economic policy, human rights, environmental policy, etc.
How does that get rated "interesing". Par is the Latin word for equal (still used with that spelling for things like golf), and peer is the modern English derivative. The Romans came somewhat before the British Peerage.
We got the phrase "trial by a jury of your peers" from England, not Rome. Context counts.
I assume British Peers they are called that because they are expected to treat each other as equals, even if they have contempt for the poor suckers.
"Peers" were originally your betters, not your equals. Peers comes from the English peerage. A "jury of your peers" literally meant those who lorded it over you. Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount, and Baron. Don't see no commonfolk there, guv'nor.
'If Childs is convicted on the modem charges, then just about every network administrator in the world could be charged with the same "crime,"' Venezia writes
Even if convicted, the Childs case doesn't establish jurisprudence for 95% of the world.
The rot sets in from the top. Any other company, with this many blunders, the CEO would be invited to fall on his sword, or step down to "spend more time with their family."
People are insecure enough at their jobs already; telling everyone that there will be another round, with double the head loss, sends the "work even harder and maybe you'll be safe... for now" message. Not "we've made some hard decisions, lost some good people, those of us who are left have a job building the future of our business."
You don't get good work out of a demoralized, insecure workforce who are spending more time worrying about their resumes and performance reviews than actually producing value. Worse, people will hunker down and "not make waves" - for example, pointing out flaws that need to be fixed in processes - for fear of getting the "not a team player" black mark.
Balmer's office has to be ReZuned. Going forward, Microsoft would have been better off if the DoJ *had* split them into 3 or more companies. It's not like they would have to keep what's left of the former Entertainment Division alive. The XBox continues to bleed money (price cuts to move units, billion-dollar warranty recalls), while Nintendo continues to sell Wiis at their original price point.
Rumour has it that the 360 is the last Microsoft game console. The Wii still has lots of life in its' current incarnation, and the next gens' upgrade path is rather obvious - hi-def output (it's currently POTV - plain old TV). The 360 is already at 720p minimum for all games, so there's no "headroom" to grow a new "wow - this is NEW" factor.
Well, laying off 1400 (the actual number, when you include contract workers, was MUCH higher, btw...) and saying that there will be another round with several times as much, rather than "cut once, cut deep", is a real morale-killer. It just invites people to play politics to make sure they get good-enough reviews, and encourages those who can leave, to go; both result in mediocrity, as opposed to meritocracy.
I over-pay my bills all the time, but that's because I have a continuing relationship with my internet, cell phone, and utilities companies, so I like it that every few months I get a bill that says "this is a credit, don't pay it!"
That's different from the situation of the former employees, There's no ongoing relationship, they probably figured any overpayment was for other stuff that they were owed (vacation pay, etc), and that they had a legit right to it. They've probably also budgeted consequent to the revised amount, and are now doubly screwed. If it's a few hundred or thousand, microsoft should have written a nice letter stating that they have paid them an additional amount as a onetime assistance benefit because of the inconvenience of the layoffs, and gotten a pr boost. After all, if you can't fix it, feature it, right?
If it's in the tens of thousands (or more) per employee, then it shows just how out-of-whack Microsoft is.
Also, now that these are FORMER employees, maybe they should send back a demand letter for their back-pay for uncompensated overtime.
Microsoft has a history of abusing their employees.
They were taken to court a couple of decades back because they didn't want to pay their cleaners overtime.
They were taken to court over "perma-temps". Ask anyone from the "BOGUS. badge" time (people wearing badges that said BOGUS, which stood for "Bend Over, Grease Up Sucker, 'cuz I'm vested and you ain't") how bad it was.
They have a culture of abuse, including screaming at people, as well as paranoia - you have to be at your desk at least as long as your boss, or you're not a "team player" - but you don't get overtime.
A headhunter was looking for c/c++ programmers in the early '90s, and I told her I was interested - unless it was Microsoft. She wanted to know why. Even then, their "culture" was well-known.
Microsoft products are crappy for a reason. You treat people like crap, they're going to produce crap. After all, GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.
People need a life away from work. That's not being a "team player" or a "'softie."
They should learn The Toyota Way - quality as consequence. Then change their actions.
After a few months, we all got a letter from the unemployment office wanting the extra money back. Good luck with that, except I still owe them money and the debt never goes away.
You might want to check the statute of limitations. If there is no legal judgment, just an "administrative note" in your file somewhere, you may be in the clear in a few years.
Unsolicited packages that come in the mail addressed to you are yours to keep, free of any compensation or request for return. How is this different? Especially when there is no longer any contractural relationship between the parties (and they went out of their way to sign papers to that effect). Any over-payment, in that case, IS a gift. Also, as a gift, if it's below a certain amount ($13,000.00, it's tax-free.
And no, "Gifts from certain parties will always be taxed for U.S. Federal income tax purposes. Under Internal Revenue Code section 102(c)[3], gifts transferred by or for an employer to, or for the benefit of, an employee cannot be excluded from the gross income of the employee for Federal income tax purposes" doesn't apply - they're not employees, and weren't employees when they discovered the "gift." They can tell Microsoft to pound sand. Unless the amount is in the hundreds of thousands per employee, this was a stupid move. Oh wait - this is Balmer we're talking about. Zune Boy.
cut your losses and fire whoever in payroll screwed it up.
Why do you think the people in payroll screwed it up on purpose? They got to see some of their own names on the list of the soon-to-be walking dead while they were making up the pay.
So they zuned Microsoft back while they still could.
Slashdot Mirror
That is SO full of it that I don't know where to start. For example, I spent all week shelled into a BSD box in New York ... BSD 4.8-RELEASE - April 3rd, 2003. Do you really want to try deploying on that platform w/o doing serious updates?
STABLE != FOSSILIZED; when you look at the application stack, sticking with something from 15 years ago means you can't even find too many people who can work with it without significant loss of productivity, or worse - project failure.
Release early, release often. What you're talking about is so last century. It's not practical when targets move so fast.
Actually, one of the theories about the great die-off after the dinosaurs involves just such a world-wide inversion as part of the mechanism for killing off more life than should have died just from a meteor strike and global winter..
There's evidence for another one 55,000,000 years ago http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P3-30005525.html
I wasn't there for either one, but it would be nice to have a time machine to find out ...
The plankton are at the bottom of the food chain. Filter feeders die off because they no longer get enough plankton (picture eating 1 bite of food for every 10 bites of plastic in YOUR diet). The filter feeders die off, and so do all those above them. Next, we end up with dead zones and algae blooms. All those good plankton are now gone, and we have an expanding dead zone.
The lake example is pertinent. Methane and ammonia (both much more toxic gases) come from the anaerobic decomposition of dead stuff like, well, the animals that fed on the plankton, the animals that fed on the animals that fed on the plankton, etc. If that lake had contained a much smaller level of methane and ammonia than it did CO2, the results would have been the same - dead people everywhere.
How much do you want to bet that they collect less than their legal costs, never mind "PROFIT!"
This is for deterrence. Not that it will really deter spammers, because in Soviet Russia, spammers still facebook YOU!
... and Bloomberg?
Noticed you left them out when criticizing the sources. Do a serch - you'll find LOTS of related articles from the mainstream.
That worked out real well for that comunications satellite ...
We can't just keep treating the oceans as a huge septic tank.
Lousy for real programmers. The Boost STL isn't thread-safe. It's "thread-safe" for values of threads where they're all read-only. That is *so* last century.
More like "because we've already turned them into a huge sewer."
There's 10 million square miles of trash just in the Pacific.
Riiiight ... keep drinking the koolaid. Or have you conveniently forgotten all the problems with different 3-4d party Windows apps interfering not only with each other, but also with bringing down the OS?
A "stable platform over a reasonable time" is a couple of years. Software isn't like oak trees or fossils ... it grows fast in the right environment. Of curse, you're welcome to return to Win9x or Win3x, or Win286 if you want "stable" (as in unchanging).
"Dependancy Hell" is also pretty much a non-issue with OpenSUSE. When there's a problem, the resolver either suggests a solution that works (usually by switching to an alternate package supplier, such as packman.de, who has the prerequisites) or you wait a few days, and the dependencies are fixed, as sevelopers push out their own updates into the repositories.
Try that with Windows. There is no "alternate package supplier".
But the "ones and zeroes" they want aren't on the hard drive - they're in your head - the passkey. They HAVE the ones and zeroes that are on the hard drive. If you refuse a warrant to provide the contents inside a physical safe, they can force it open; they can't force the encrypted drive. The smart thing to do would have been to try to convince him that it was in his best interest to hook them up with his suppliers, and go after the source. If *he* is the source (porn producer), then they should have no major problem proving it, now that they know who to look for.
They screwed up. After all, what's more important, throwing a perv in jail for refusing to decrypt a drive, or going after the person producing the kiddie porn and putting a stop to it? So much for "think of the children." Throwing this guy in jail does nothing. Getting him to flip on his contacts (after all, it doesn't just miraculously materialize out of the aether) might have been useful.
.. and if you compile statically, you also don't need a package system, since there are now no external dependencies ...
... but to claim that "a problem Windows doesn't have - massive amounts of intricate and interlinked software dependencies. " is a lie at best, since the whole antitrust case was on the way that IE was supposedly such a core component of the Windows OS, and that so many processes and programs depended on it, or libraries (dlls) that were part of it ...
Remove all the dlls from your system - Windows won't even boot.
That's right - Vietnam was such a smashing US military success.
Iraq was "mission accomplished" how many years ago?
Afghanistan?
Trade cooperation is the only long-term model that works, which is why trade protectionism is just another way for the US to shoot itself in the foot, by
We got the phrase "trial by a jury of your peers" from England, not Rome. Context counts.
You assume wrong.
I don;'t think you know the meaning of that word.
"Peers" were originally your betters, not your equals. Peers comes from the English peerage. A "jury of your peers" literally meant those who lorded it over you. Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount, and Baron. Don't see no commonfolk there, guv'nor.
FTFA:
The rot sets in from the top. Any other company, with this many blunders, the CEO would be invited to fall on his sword, or step down to "spend more time with their family."
People are insecure enough at their jobs already; telling everyone that there will be another round, with double the head loss, sends the "work even harder and maybe you'll be safe ... for now" message. Not "we've made some hard decisions, lost some good people, those of us who are left have a job building the future of our business."
You don't get good work out of a demoralized, insecure workforce who are spending more time worrying about their resumes and performance reviews than actually producing value. Worse, people will hunker down and "not make waves" - for example, pointing out flaws that need to be fixed in processes - for fear of getting the "not a team player" black mark.
Balmer's office has to be ReZuned. Going forward, Microsoft would have been better off if the DoJ *had* split them into 3 or more companies. It's not like they would have to keep what's left of the former Entertainment Division alive. The XBox continues to bleed money (price cuts to move units, billion-dollar warranty recalls), while Nintendo continues to sell Wiis at their original price point.
Rumour has it that the 360 is the last Microsoft game console. The Wii still has lots of life in its' current incarnation, and the next gens' upgrade path is rather obvious - hi-def output (it's currently POTV - plain old TV). The 360 is already at 720p minimum for all games, so there's no "headroom" to grow a new "wow - this is NEW" factor.
Well, laying off 1400 (the actual number, when you include contract workers, was MUCH higher, btw ...) and saying that there will be another round with several times as much, rather than "cut once, cut deep", is a real morale-killer. It just invites people to play politics to make sure they get good-enough reviews, and encourages those who can leave, to go; both result in mediocrity, as opposed to meritocracy.
I over-pay my bills all the time, but that's because I have a continuing relationship with my internet, cell phone, and utilities companies, so I like it that every few months I get a bill that says "this is a credit, don't pay it!"
That's different from the situation of the former employees, There's no ongoing relationship, they probably figured any overpayment was for other stuff that they were owed (vacation pay, etc), and that they had a legit right to it. They've probably also budgeted consequent to the revised amount, and are now doubly screwed. If it's a few hundred or thousand, microsoft should have written a nice letter stating that they have paid them an additional amount as a onetime assistance benefit because of the inconvenience of the layoffs, and gotten a pr boost. After all, if you can't fix it, feature it, right?
If it's in the tens of thousands (or more) per employee, then it shows just how out-of-whack Microsoft is.
Also, now that these are FORMER employees, maybe they should send back a demand letter for their back-pay for uncompensated overtime.
Microsoft has a history of abusing their employees.
They were taken to court a couple of decades back because they didn't want to pay their cleaners overtime.
They were taken to court over "perma-temps". Ask anyone from the "BOGUS. badge" time (people wearing badges that said BOGUS, which stood for "Bend Over, Grease Up Sucker, 'cuz I'm vested and you ain't") how bad it was.
They have a culture of abuse, including screaming at people, as well as paranoia - you have to be at your desk at least as long as your boss, or you're not a "team player" - but you don't get overtime.
A headhunter was looking for c/c++ programmers in the early '90s, and I told her I was interested - unless it was Microsoft. She wanted to know why. Even then, their "culture" was well-known.
Microsoft products are crappy for a reason. You treat people like crap, they're going to produce crap. After all, GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.
People need a life away from work. That's not being a "team player" or a "'softie."
They should learn The Toyota Way - quality as consequence. Then change their actions.
You might want to check the statute of limitations. If there is no legal judgment, just an "administrative note" in your file somewhere, you may be in the clear in a few years.
Unsolicited packages that come in the mail addressed to you are yours to keep, free of any compensation or request for return. How is this different? Especially when there is no longer any contractural relationship between the parties (and they went out of their way to sign papers to that effect). Any over-payment, in that case, IS a gift. Also, as a gift, if it's below a certain amount ($13,000.00, it's tax-free.
And no, "Gifts from certain parties will always be taxed for U.S. Federal income tax purposes. Under Internal Revenue Code section 102(c)[3], gifts transferred by or for an employer to, or for the benefit of, an employee cannot be excluded from the gross income of the employee for Federal income tax purposes" doesn't apply - they're not employees, and weren't employees when they discovered the "gift." They can tell Microsoft to pound sand. Unless the amount is in the hundreds of thousands per employee, this was a stupid move. Oh wait - this is Balmer we're talking about. Zune Boy.
Why do you think the people in payroll screwed it up on purpose? They got to see some of their own names on the list of the soon-to-be walking dead while they were making up the pay.
So they zuned Microsoft back while they still could.