It applies because it's essentially about removing waste in a process, i.e. making it more efficient. That can apply in any kind of process, whether it's manufacturing, a computer program, a service delivery process or whatever. For example, it could identify that several of the project management systems used and maintained to track the service being delivered aren't adding any value, but are just bureaucracy. It could identify that the communication path between the service delivery organisation and the client isn't particularly efficient, as all requests are routed through a key account manager (expensive) whereas they could be equally as well handled by an administrator (cheap).
A lot of process improvement methodologies have come from the manufacturing world, as there's real, solid applications there that can demonstrate the methodology's effectiveness, e.g. you can answer "after doing this, are we producing more widgets for less money?". It's sometimes a bit of a leap to apply some of this thinking to non-manufacturing processes, but that's why they're a toolset that need tailoring to the particular task at hand, rather than a fixed process.
I've never read Cringely's stuff before, but he does seem to have missed a key point in his article. He calls it "IBM's mysterious LEAN program" as if LEAN itself is the project. If you read the reply from IBM, they point out that they're using the LEAN methodology and not that this project is called LEAN. He also says that "the very essence of LEAN is foreign hiring", which is tripe.
He's deliberately scaremongering by using the term out of context to suggest that it is the title of a project that's synonymous with cutbacks, knowing that most people won't be aware that LEAN means something else entirely. Maybe he should read up on the LEAN methodology first before he starts worrying people by writing all this nonsense.
The two word review ("Shit Sandwich") was for their album Shark Sandwich, not Lick My Lovepump. That was the beautiful piano ballad in D-minor (the saddest of all the keys).
Erm. You've used the word "European", but I think you meant "French". Or maybe "Spanish".
In the UK you get a mandated 4 weeks holiday a year, but a lot of places do give 5. I wish for the joys of a 35 hour week. Our limit, unless you choose to be exempt, is 48 hours per week (monitored across a 12 week period). Only unionised employees have very good job protection, and they should expect to give a ton of their salary away for the pleasure of being used in political games by the union leaders.
Yes, we get more vacation than the US, but we also get paid less and taxed more. And you can't even buy Mountain Dew here.
Most companies' telecommuting / working from home policies state that you can't work from home to look after kids. Being a parent to kids during the day is a full-time job and by saying that you need to be there you're essentially saying that you need to be there to do things other than work. There's also the variable nature of kids, e.g. some days you might get a full day's work done, others you might spend all day looking after a sick kid. There's normally other processes / allowances for sickness.
The usual suggested solution is to instead work reduced hours (e.g. 9-3) or reduced days (Tuesday-Thursday), with extra vacation for during the school holidays.
Actually, far more than 30* the licensing cost. We generally take a figure of $80k per head p/a when we look at internal costs.
But get it in perspective - we're talking about a contract worth several (toward tens of) millions of dollars per year. This is not a cost that is just accepted and it is not insignificant. Saving a million dollars on that contract can easily provide for either significant savings on the bottom line or the provision of an extra 10-15 sales people, who would each be expected to bring in $250k+ per year in sales.
I get the feeling that a lot of people don't realise that big companies pay for the Microsoft tools and think that they just use them because they feel they're "supposed" to. They cost a hell of a lot of money and when used properly, they do a rather nice job.
Personally, I've just requisitioned a PC so that I can put some distro of Linux on there (not sure what yet) and evaluate the Open Source offerings. I already use Apache, MySQL and PHP as my standard prototyping and personal development tools, so I'm interested in seeing what's on offer on Linux for "normal" PC users, as I haven't used it since 1999 when I was at university (Red Hat and IRIX on SGIs, at the time).
Erm, I know we shouldn't feed trolls, but you clearly don't understand a couple of key points here.
Firstly - "chickenfeed" on Windows and MS Office? Are you insane? Have you ever been involved in procurement for the Microsoft tools? I'm guessing not, as then you'd realise just how expensive it is to provide Windows, Office and a few other bits and bobs for a 10,000+ strong userbase. Either that or you're Bill Gates and several million dollars is chickenfeed to you.
Secondly - yes, Excel is a popular platform, but not just amongst managers. It's one of the few tools that most office based employees use on a regular basis, far more so than Word, Access and in quite a lot of cases even more so than the web. I know plenty of users who don't have a clue how to use websites and find them intimidating but are still comfortable with Excel, as they have to do their reporting through it and use it for home accounts etc. As such, while it's not an ideal platform for developers, interoperability and much more, it is pretty damned useful for putting out straightforward productivity tools that don't scare the general public.
So, about 300 people a year are going to turn up for the reverse experience of bungee jumping. And each one of them's going to spend a shitlot of money on tourist products? "New Mexico was so bad I left the planet!" t-shirts? Unless they're planning to sell replica spaceships that actually go into space at $3m per boat, what the hell are they going to do to make tourist money?
Of course that's the only time Linux users call support, because they're all absolute experts in everything to do with the Linux OS and all software that runs on it... Get a grip, you tool - there's some people who just use Linux you know, not everyone's a geeky sysadmin.
So, assume I've previously been convicted of a sex offence. I am now rehabilitated and would never considering doing anything like that again, and am on the sex offenders register. I want to get my life back on track, and have found that I like MySpace and other social networking sites as a way to meet people / share music / read blogs / find out about cool things happening in my town. To ensure that I can use it without accusations of grooming kids for sex offences, I make MySpace etc clearly aware that I am on the sex offenders register and that my actions on MySpace etc are totally traceable to ensure I don't do anything dodgy.
Therefore, I can re-integrate slowly into society, approving people to make checks on me so I can prove I'm not a potential re-offender.
This will help make people who've committed crimes more able to re-integrate safely, which is a good thing. It will not stop potential sex offenders grooming kids, but so what, very little will without infringing the rights of everyone else.
True - it's much more important for Linux users to be able to look at the Bellagio from above in Google Earth than it is to have a 100MPG hybrid vehicle..
It's actually not that hard - some time in 1998 I wrote a PC to C64 conversion program that allowed you to write content for a C64 diskmag in Word, run a short C++ program and it would create a C64 disk image that could be put into an emulator / copied directly onto a C64 disk.
As long as they can get a 5.25 inch drive it should be easy enough - C64 disk format is pretty straightforward..
The article poster, and a fair few people commenting, are suggesting that since the site may have been run by nasty old men from Iraq's flunkies, rather than bona fide students, that it's fine to take it down...
So what you're saying is that freedom of expression is fine - as long as the people are expressing a viewpoint that you concur with?
No matter who the authors are it's still taking someone's freedom of expression away - you shouldn't be able to pick and choose who can express themselves freely, and the US Government definitely shouldn't be deciding that!!!
Sounds like it was a pretty dull thing to do, but reasonably interesting results. I would question though that the "bugs" they found would seem to be pure programming bugs, since they just analysed the source code. The majority of bugs found in systems are usually found by actually using the software and often come about as a result of either unexpected circumstances, unexpected input or compatability issues. Merely reporting the straight programming errors really isn't the same thing.
Also "Windows XP, by comparison, contains about 40 million lines of code, with new bugs found on a frequent basis" isn't exactly very scientific either. How frequent? How severe? XP has been released for roughly 3 years. According to the poster, it's roughly 8 times the size of the code these guys analysed, in which they found 985 errors. So to be at the same level, that would allow for around 7880 bugs, or about 8-10 bugs being found per day since its release. Is that the frequency that's implied here?
It sounds like a good bit of initial research, but probably only just to Bachelors degree level. They need to apply this research correctly in fair comparisons to other operating systems before the results they came up with are meaningful.
My company uses Peoplesoft a hell of a lot for accounts, HR and so on. A refund would be utterly useless, as the cost of the software itself is nothing compared to the cost associated with implementing and integrating a brand new general ledger, HR system and so on..
The BBC, one of the world's most visited news sites, has a big feature about Firefox which was temporarily on its front page, so I guess quite a lot of people came over because of that, too...
Sounds like our places have exactly the same issues! Our WSSO only works from your own laptop or desktop, and only if your screen saver settings are set to be passworded and turn on after 10 minutes. It's safe to say that caused a lot of arguments, particularly from people working in labs/manufacturing who run an experiment, go back to the computer, type something, go away for 5-10 minutes again, come back and so on, as they're sick of retyping their passwords.
But the thing it is succeeding in doing is making people far more aware of the security of their own computer - after all, most people use their work computers to store personal stuff, whether it's correct to or not, then disappear off to lunch for an hour. Now that we have WSSO people are far more aware of exactly what they've done when they've signed into Windows and tend to lock there computers when they walk away - a previously unheard of thing to do!!
Agreed though about the cross application SSO - it's be a godsend. We've also worked with some external companies (travel providers etc) to extend our domain/trusts to their eSolutions so that we don't have to log into the Extranet sites either...
I'd like our company to switch to Firefox as in my own, personal, valueless opinion and experience, I find it to be faster at rendering pages and less likely to crash than Internet Explorer. But this is purely my own opinion and experience, and results may vary. No animals were harmed in the making of this comment.
You can do something with Active Directory to enable single sign on so that your browser can use your Windows credentials to figure out who you are.
An example being that I log into my laptop on the corporate network in the morning, but then never need to log into our Intranet. It uses my Active Directory credentials to figure out who I am, so displays my own customised and personalised Intranet settings.
I'm not too sure how it works but it's very handy!
Is anyone working on Single Signon for the Firefox/Mozilla platform? We're stuck using IE here as well as we've integrated Netegrity's Siteminder with Windows Single Sign On into the whole Active Directory thing (i.e. sign into your Windows computer and from that IE can figure out who you are so personalises our Intranet) but I'd rather we could get over to Firefox simply cos it's faster and less buggy!
Oh, and then other people in the company wouldn't sniff at me for using it!!
Totally agree - people think of storage in terms of bytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes and petabytes. Throwing "bits" in there is just confusing and seems designed to make people think they mean gigabytes.
If you think back to the story a while back about people being able to read words with the letters jumbled as long as the first and last letters are correct and they know some of the context, this seems to take advantage of that - people's minds that are scan reading it will see "g....b..." in relation to storage and their mind will immediately associate it with gigabytes.
Slashdot Mirror
It applies because it's essentially about removing waste in a process, i.e. making it more efficient. That can apply in any kind of process, whether it's manufacturing, a computer program, a service delivery process or whatever. For example, it could identify that several of the project management systems used and maintained to track the service being delivered aren't adding any value, but are just bureaucracy. It could identify that the communication path between the service delivery organisation and the client isn't particularly efficient, as all requests are routed through a key account manager (expensive) whereas they could be equally as well handled by an administrator (cheap).
A lot of process improvement methodologies have come from the manufacturing world, as there's real, solid applications there that can demonstrate the methodology's effectiveness, e.g. you can answer "after doing this, are we producing more widgets for less money?". It's sometimes a bit of a leap to apply some of this thinking to non-manufacturing processes, but that's why they're a toolset that need tailoring to the particular task at hand, rather than a fixed process.
I've never read Cringely's stuff before, but he does seem to have missed a key point in his article. He calls it "IBM's mysterious LEAN program" as if LEAN itself is the project. If you read the reply from IBM, they point out that they're using the LEAN methodology and not that this project is called LEAN. He also says that "the very essence of LEAN is foreign hiring", which is tripe.
He's deliberately scaremongering by using the term out of context to suggest that it is the title of a project that's synonymous with cutbacks, knowing that most people won't be aware that LEAN means something else entirely. Maybe he should read up on the LEAN methodology first before he starts worrying people by writing all this nonsense.
And here's the obligatory Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing
The two word review ("Shit Sandwich") was for their album Shark Sandwich, not Lick My Lovepump. That was the beautiful piano ballad in D-minor (the saddest of all the keys).
Erm. You've used the word "European", but I think you meant "French". Or maybe "Spanish".
In the UK you get a mandated 4 weeks holiday a year, but a lot of places do give 5. I wish for the joys of a 35 hour week. Our limit, unless you choose to be exempt, is 48 hours per week (monitored across a 12 week period). Only unionised employees have very good job protection, and they should expect to give a ton of their salary away for the pleasure of being used in political games by the union leaders.
Yes, we get more vacation than the US, but we also get paid less and taxed more. And you can't even buy Mountain Dew here.
Most companies' telecommuting / working from home policies state that you can't work from home to look after kids. Being a parent to kids during the day is a full-time job and by saying that you need to be there you're essentially saying that you need to be there to do things other than work. There's also the variable nature of kids, e.g. some days you might get a full day's work done, others you might spend all day looking after a sick kid. There's normally other processes / allowances for sickness.
The usual suggested solution is to instead work reduced hours (e.g. 9-3) or reduced days (Tuesday-Thursday), with extra vacation for during the school holidays.
Actually, far more than 30* the licensing cost. We generally take a figure of $80k per head p/a when we look at internal costs.
But get it in perspective - we're talking about a contract worth several (toward tens of) millions of dollars per year. This is not a cost that is just accepted and it is not insignificant. Saving a million dollars on that contract can easily provide for either significant savings on the bottom line or the provision of an extra 10-15 sales people, who would each be expected to bring in $250k+ per year in sales.
I get the feeling that a lot of people don't realise that big companies pay for the Microsoft tools and think that they just use them because they feel they're "supposed" to. They cost a hell of a lot of money and when used properly, they do a rather nice job.
Personally, I've just requisitioned a PC so that I can put some distro of Linux on there (not sure what yet) and evaluate the Open Source offerings. I already use Apache, MySQL and PHP as my standard prototyping and personal development tools, so I'm interested in seeing what's on offer on Linux for "normal" PC users, as I haven't used it since 1999 when I was at university (Red Hat and IRIX on SGIs, at the time).
Erm, I know we shouldn't feed trolls, but you clearly don't understand a couple of key points here.
Firstly - "chickenfeed" on Windows and MS Office? Are you insane? Have you ever been involved in procurement for the Microsoft tools? I'm guessing not, as then you'd realise just how expensive it is to provide Windows, Office and a few other bits and bobs for a 10,000+ strong userbase. Either that or you're Bill Gates and several million dollars is chickenfeed to you.
Secondly - yes, Excel is a popular platform, but not just amongst managers. It's one of the few tools that most office based employees use on a regular basis, far more so than Word, Access and in quite a lot of cases even more so than the web. I know plenty of users who don't have a clue how to use websites and find them intimidating but are still comfortable with Excel, as they have to do their reporting through it and use it for home accounts etc. As such, while it's not an ideal platform for developers, interoperability and much more, it is pretty damned useful for putting out straightforward productivity tools that don't scare the general public.
So, about 300 people a year are going to turn up for the reverse experience of bungee jumping. And each one of them's going to spend a shitlot of money on tourist products? "New Mexico was so bad I left the planet!" t-shirts? Unless they're planning to sell replica spaceships that actually go into space at $3m per boat, what the hell are they going to do to make tourist money?
"This ain't a trailer. It's a space trailer!"
There's always 8008.... Nice memories of upside down calculators..
Of course that's the only time Linux users call support, because they're all absolute experts in everything to do with the Linux OS and all software that runs on it... Get a grip, you tool - there's some people who just use Linux you know, not everyone's a geeky sysadmin.
As regards the GPS tracking of cars, over 1.7 million people have now signed the petition against it. Sign up here:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/
Cheers,
Paul.
So, assume I've previously been convicted of a sex offence. I am now rehabilitated and would never considering doing anything like that again, and am on the sex offenders register. I want to get my life back on track, and have found that I like MySpace and other social networking sites as a way to meet people / share music / read blogs / find out about cool things happening in my town. To ensure that I can use it without accusations of grooming kids for sex offences, I make MySpace etc clearly aware that I am on the sex offenders register and that my actions on MySpace etc are totally traceable to ensure I don't do anything dodgy.
Therefore, I can re-integrate slowly into society, approving people to make checks on me so I can prove I'm not a potential re-offender.
This will help make people who've committed crimes more able to re-integrate safely, which is a good thing. It will not stop potential sex offenders grooming kids, but so what, very little will without infringing the rights of everyone else.
True - it's much more important for Linux users to be able to look at the Bellagio from above in Google Earth than it is to have a 100MPG hybrid vehicle..
Jeez... Get some perspective!
It's actually not that hard - some time in 1998 I wrote a PC to C64 conversion program that allowed you to write content for a C64 diskmag in Word, run a short C++ program and it would create a C64 disk image that could be put into an emulator / copied directly onto a C64 disk.
As long as they can get a 5.25 inch drive it should be easy enough - C64 disk format is pretty straightforward..
Paul.
You mean like the fact that Lilly Allen is at number 1 in the UK charts, purely through viral marketing and word of mouth?
So yeah, a guy representing 0.2% of the country demanded a meeting with their Prime Minister giving two week's notice that he would be arriving?
I can't even book time with a plumber to fix a leaky tap in the next two weeks, never mind a Prime Minister!
The article poster, and a fair few people commenting, are suggesting that since the site may have been run by nasty old men from Iraq's flunkies, rather than bona fide students, that it's fine to take it down...
So what you're saying is that freedom of expression is fine - as long as the people are expressing a viewpoint that you concur with?
No matter who the authors are it's still taking someone's freedom of expression away - you shouldn't be able to pick and choose who can express themselves freely, and the US Government definitely shouldn't be deciding that!!!
Sounds like it was a pretty dull thing to do, but reasonably interesting results. I would question though that the "bugs" they found would seem to be pure programming bugs, since they just analysed the source code. The majority of bugs found in systems are usually found by actually using the software and often come about as a result of either unexpected circumstances, unexpected input or compatability issues. Merely reporting the straight programming errors really isn't the same thing.
Also "Windows XP, by comparison, contains about 40 million lines of code, with new bugs found on a frequent basis" isn't exactly very scientific either. How frequent? How severe? XP has been released for roughly 3 years. According to the poster, it's roughly 8 times the size of the code these guys analysed, in which they found 985 errors. So to be at the same level, that would allow for around 7880 bugs, or about 8-10 bugs being found per day since its release. Is that the frequency that's implied here?
It sounds like a good bit of initial research, but probably only just to Bachelors degree level. They need to apply this research correctly in fair comparisons to other operating systems before the results they came up with are meaningful.
My company uses Peoplesoft a hell of a lot for accounts, HR and so on. A refund would be utterly useless, as the cost of the software itself is nothing compared to the cost associated with implementing and integrating a brand new general ledger, HR system and so on..
The BBC, one of the world's most visited news sites, has a big feature about Firefox which was temporarily on its front page, so I guess quite a lot of people came over because of that, too...
Sounds like our places have exactly the same issues! Our WSSO only works from your own laptop or desktop, and only if your screen saver settings are set to be passworded and turn on after 10 minutes. It's safe to say that caused a lot of arguments, particularly from people working in labs/manufacturing who run an experiment, go back to the computer, type something, go away for 5-10 minutes again, come back and so on, as they're sick of retyping their passwords.
But the thing it is succeeding in doing is making people far more aware of the security of their own computer - after all, most people use their work computers to store personal stuff, whether it's correct to or not, then disappear off to lunch for an hour. Now that we have WSSO people are far more aware of exactly what they've done when they've signed into Windows and tend to lock there computers when they walk away - a previously unheard of thing to do!!
Agreed though about the cross application SSO - it's be a godsend. We've also worked with some external companies (travel providers etc) to extend our domain/trusts to their eSolutions so that we don't have to log into the Extranet sites either...
OK - I apologise for my comment..
I'd like our company to switch to Firefox as in my own, personal, valueless opinion and experience, I find it to be faster at rendering pages and less likely to crash than Internet Explorer. But this is purely my own opinion and experience, and results may vary. No animals were harmed in the making of this comment.
You can do something with Active Directory to enable single sign on so that your browser can use your Windows credentials to figure out who you are.
An example being that I log into my laptop on the corporate network in the morning, but then never need to log into our Intranet. It uses my Active Directory credentials to figure out who I am, so displays my own customised and personalised Intranet settings.
I'm not too sure how it works but it's very handy!
Is anyone working on Single Signon for the Firefox/Mozilla platform? We're stuck using IE here as well as we've integrated Netegrity's Siteminder with Windows Single Sign On into the whole Active Directory thing (i.e. sign into your Windows computer and from that IE can figure out who you are so personalises our Intranet) but I'd rather we could get over to Firefox simply cos it's faster and less buggy!
Oh, and then other people in the company wouldn't sniff at me for using it!!
Totally agree - people think of storage in terms of bytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes and petabytes. Throwing "bits" in there is just confusing and seems designed to make people think they mean gigabytes.
If you think back to the story a while back about people being able to read words with the letters jumbled as long as the first and last letters are correct and they know some of the context, this seems to take advantage of that - people's minds that are scan reading it will see "g....b..." in relation to storage and their mind will immediately associate it with gigabytes.