I am an Engineering Manager at "big Name" technology company. We do product development and I can't speak for the IS department. If a resume ends up on my desk that includes any certs I tend to round file it. Given the number of resumes that HR gets for any opening I have to cut through the chaf. If you have so much free time that you bother with certs then you are not a real engineer. I am interested in real technical experance and abilities. I am also interested in broader skills and abilites such as ability to think, plan, understand the ethic of the profession, understand business implications of engineering decisions, write and work with other people. A degree is important, and the broader the education the better. I've seen a MSEE from MIT wash out of his first job because he could not calibrate a power supply with a scope (no pratical experance) and I've seen a number of gifted code slingers wash out because they lack people, organizatinal and/or business skills. All else beign equal, I tend to hire a physics, engineering math grad over a CS grad for software tasks because they tend have broader experance and more rounded educations.
If you want to be a professional you have to pay your dues and get an education, gain experance (technical, prefessional and life) and then act with a greater level of responsability than just a certified *tool*
The real problem for Shareware is that is can not reach the IS department where the real money is located. IS departments are very carefull to Not violate any EULAs so they WILL pay for Shareware if it is the best solution for them. You need to look at it from your customer's perspective (I know this is a radical idea, but the software industry does have customers) Shareware authors need to have published policies for corporate sales including extended trials periods (3 to 12 months) after it has been qualified on an IS worker's sandbox. The author must also be prepared to give generous discounts for volume, accept PO and to not get paid for 90 to 120 days on the PO. And yes you have to generate a bill to these companies. In short, if you want to be in the Shareware business you need to be In Business and Act like a Business. If you act like some jerkwater hillbilly don't expect to get any business sales. If you don't follow your customers needs, including helping them pay for it in ways they are used to you are not going to sell any software.
The Wasington B & O tax is simple tax on gross sales (Like a sales tax only taken away from the sellers gross, not added directly to the buyers cost). B & O taxes were created, in part, to handle the case of wholesale as Washington sales taxes apply only at retail.
Seattle is simply saying that software is just the same as insurance claims processing, car repaire or airplane building. The tax laws also handle the case of making a part in one location, say Seatle, and shipping it to another location, say LA, where it gets included in a second product even if it is all don einside the same corporation. It's no different here. Tax laws handle internal transfers just fine.
As far a an income tax. Washington has among the most regresive taxes in the country and they are geting worse. We have a half-wit tax crusader who keeps cutting progressive taxes (progressive is a term of art that means the rich pay proportionally more) and then businesses bot to the legislature screaming that we need to fix our infrastructure so they are forced to raise regressive (regressive==the poor pay more) taxes such as sales taxes and gambling. And the voters are in no mood to use their brains.
We need better, broader education in this county, but that is off topic.
Rotterdam was flattened. And the Germans said thay'd flatten the other large city in the NL, Amsterdam if the Dutch didn't surender ASAP. In fact, if you walk around Rotterdam you may find less left standing than in Hiroshima. Halland standing up the the 3rd Reich makes about as much sense as Japan did standing up to atom bomb.
This was a simple case of surender and live to fight another day or die. Occupation was hell for the Dutch, but at least there are still Dutch.
Try reading some history, even the "Classic Comics Edition," for twit-wit's sake.
We have companies leaving Seattle because the town is wallling down around it it's ears. The roads are a mess. Boeing just moved it's HQ to Chi-town to avoid the trafic. And we all can see the rest of their assembly work following soon. If a city does not keep it's infrastructure up companies can not prosper, or even function. Seattle is sinking for lack of funds.
If a software company has many Seattle employees yet it sell nothing from it's Seattle location then it pays no Sales or B & O taxes (the taxin the article) and Washington has no income tax so why should this software company get a free ride while everyone else has to pick up the cost of roads, fire protection, etc???
Grow-up and stop free loading. We all have a responsability to where we live.
Washington State does not have an income tax, instead they use Property, Sales and Business and Occupation (B&O) Taxes. B & O taxes are what are described in the article. You can find a great deal of detail about Washington's B & O tax in this PDF and this PDF. B & O taxes varry by activity, but, in short, the statewide B & O for manufacturing is.00484 of gross sales. Cities.Counties can add local add-ons. I'm not sure what Seattle adds, but I expect not much.
Also, Seattle != Redmond as they are different cities.
Before WW2 Several US bus lines used large (apx 2m diameter) flywheels. The cool thing about these for transport is that you can use regenerative breaking to recover energery that would otherwise be lost to heat in breaking. For buses you can "trickle chanrge" them all night long. Also with a bus you can afford the overhead (mass and cost) of shielding. As long as you orient the axis vertically you have no problem with the gyro effect. In a true emergency you can also shut these flywheels down quicker than you might think using magnetic breaking (of course you're going to burnout your coils so it's a one time option) The flywheel buses worked especially well in Hilly Seattle. Of course Detroit bought up most of the metro lines and shut them down before 1950 but that's another issue.
Let's get real. The real problem here is that the record/movie companies are releasing their products in a format that is realily computer readable. Why did they do that? Because it was the fastest and cheapest way to build a critical mass. It's only now that there is that critical mass that they are crying foul. If these media companies are truely serious about preventing piracy they would stop publishing their products a a public format. They need to create a new form of player htat they feel is secure. Wrap patents and trade secrets around it and sell this new player to the public. They just need to stop selling CDs and DVDs. Come on Hollywood, if you are truely worried about poeple ripping off your DVDs, STOP selling DVDs, doh. Just don't put your garbage in my hardware. I don't want to watch your slop and I don't want to pay for your hardware in my general purpose computer using industry standsrd drives. If you don't kile my sand box, just take our toys and build your own sand box.
If you are making a site of any real importance do not use server side crap. Keep it simple HTML so that every one can use it AND it can be archived. If it is important enough to do right it is important enough to archive and made "real"
Mose drive mfgs will cast a clear cover that they will use for NON-WORKING sales demo units.
The commuting in heavy traffic test
on
Palm OS 5.0 Preview
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The real test of a PDA is can you accomplish primary tasks whle commuting in heavy traffic. Yes, I know doing so is likely to kill people, but the real success of the PalmOS is that you just might be able to check an appointment in heavy traffic without killing yourself. Try that with a laptop or PPC.
Well written PalmOS apps are usefull while standing. Ever try to look-up a phone number in your laptop while standing at a pay phone at the airport? It's not a plesant sight.
The PalmOS os for people on the go. If all you do is drive a desk don't bother with any PDA.
1) "Active Area" is where the Transisters and routs go
2) Bonding Pads. Any chip has to have pads as connection points. As bus widths go up so do the number of I/O pads. Even with inovative connection methods I/O takes up alot of real estate. The good news is that the features of I/O are large so they seldom are the cause of a bad chip so they are less often the reason of a chip process falure. One thing to keep in mind is that Pads must be of a minimum size and must be on teh outsde edge of the chip so that in a wide, but simple chip you can end up with "circled wagons" with a lot of empty space inside.
As far as I'm concerned Woz is a real hero of high tech. He did some truly revolutionary tech that worked at a human scale, found a partner who had what was required to get it to the masses, kept his sence of houmor and then took his winnings to become a volunteer teaching. This is a true winner.
Thanks Woz from a slightly jaded 40 year old engineer
In a moment of weakness I did the switch this week end on our WQorst dial-up. What a disaster. We only use the account a few hours a week to check email. My girl friend choose qwest as part of a package ($13.95/month). I spent the whole weekend trying to get email working. Finally I figured out that they had not activated the email account and I could not get that concept through to the MSN SOB support monkey and asked to speak to his supervisor. No joy, you can not speak to a supervisor and they will not give you a last name or other unique ID.
I called QWorst and frankly they had a friendly support folks who seemed to know what they were doing, she answered the phone with her employee ID. When I explained how unhappy I was with the switch she suggested that I should speak to her supervisor and tell him. BTW, the supervisoe explained that ALL of my personal data from QWorst was shared with MSN. For as unhappy as I am with QWorsts business practices I have to say that I always enjoyed good tech support.
That said, I'm dumping MSN and moving to eskimo.com, a local provider that has been around for 20 years. Yes Virginia, there was a thing called BBSs, Fido and other coolness, but I digress....
Strong crypto is a cheep and easy way to provide reasonable security. Their are other way that are even more secure.
One Time Pad. One time pads are about as secure as you can get if they are properly used. Anybody should be able to impliment one after a two week course of BASIC programming.
And don't forget the world war (rev 2.0) Code Talkers. They used a jargon version of their a Native American language that was unbroken by the Japanese. Languages used by small isolated populations make a great code system because their grammer and syntax tend to drift to a very complex state.
Combine a small tribal language with a One Time Pad and you have an rock-solid system that can be done by hand!
Yep, that's what we need. Goverment price supports to make sure those speculators who squatted on some half-wit name are able to get their condos in Maui. The system has worked well for farmers.
And don't forget real estate speculators who buy up some postage stamp of land next to a school and sue when they are stopped from putting in a toxic dump next to a school.
It must be the government's falt these yahoos:^)
are not rich. It's time for us, er.. I mean the government to pay-up.
Save the DotCom millionares NOW!! Give until it hurts.
Let's be real. If you look in the guts of a cell phone today you will see more MIPS in that phone than a PDA (PocketPCs incuded) As a person who lives with his Visor always at arms reach, a cost-effective and well designed PDA phone is a solid chioce for me. They also need to have versions with stanards besides GSM.
If I have to make a chioce of PDA or phone I take PDA every time!
This will be a major pain in the ass when Sony and Nintendo go to design their next gen consoles. The current and previous generations of consoles are built around SGI's project reality. It could, in an odd way, force the console makers to be truely inovative.
Slashdot Mirror
Positions are now open in our the Penn's new anti-smut office located in Trenton, N.J.
Applicant must display extensive knowledge of locations of smut on the Internet.
Applicant must be able to demonstrate the highest moral standards.
Applicant must be willing to commute to N.J. as smut access is blocked at the AG's main Penn. office
I am an Engineering Manager at "big Name" technology company. We do product development and I can't speak for the IS department. If a resume ends up on my desk that includes any certs I tend to round file it. Given the number of resumes that HR gets for any opening I have to cut through the chaf.
If you have so much free time that you bother with certs then you are not a real engineer. I am interested in real technical experance and abilities. I am also interested in broader skills and abilites such as ability to think, plan, understand the ethic of the profession, understand business implications of engineering decisions, write and work with other people. A degree is important, and the broader the education the better. I've seen a MSEE from MIT wash out of his first job because he could not calibrate a power supply with a scope (no pratical experance) and I've seen a number of gifted code slingers wash out because they lack people, organizatinal and/or business skills. All else beign equal, I tend to hire a physics, engineering math grad over a CS grad for software tasks because they tend have broader experance and more rounded educations.
If you want to be a professional you have to pay your dues and get an education, gain experance (technical, prefessional and life) and then act with a greater level of responsability than just a certified *tool*
-s
The real problem for Shareware is that is can not reach the IS department where the real money is located. IS departments are very carefull to Not violate any EULAs so they WILL pay for Shareware if it is the best solution for them. You need to look at it from your customer's perspective (I know this is a radical idea, but the software industry does have customers)
Shareware authors need to have published policies for corporate sales including extended trials periods (3 to 12 months) after it has been qualified on an IS worker's sandbox. The author must also be prepared to give generous discounts for volume, accept PO and to not get paid for 90 to 120 days on the PO. And yes you have to generate a bill to these companies. In short, if you want to be in the Shareware business you need to be In Business and Act like a Business. If you act like some jerkwater hillbilly don't expect to get any business sales.
If you don't follow your customers needs, including helping them pay for it in ways they are used to you are not going to sell any software.
-s
The Wasington B & O tax is simple tax on gross sales (Like a sales tax only taken away from the sellers gross, not added directly to the buyers cost). B & O taxes were created, in part, to handle the case of wholesale as Washington sales taxes apply only at retail.
Seattle is simply saying that software is just the same as insurance claims processing, car repaire or airplane building. The tax laws also handle the case of making a part in one location, say Seatle, and shipping it to another location, say LA, where it gets included in a second product even if it is all don einside the same corporation. It's no different here. Tax laws handle internal transfers just fine.
As far a an income tax. Washington has among the most regresive taxes in the country and they are geting worse. We have a half-wit tax crusader who keeps cutting progressive taxes (progressive is a term of art that means the rich pay proportionally more) and then businesses bot to the legislature screaming that we need to fix our infrastructure so they are forced to raise regressive (regressive==the poor pay more) taxes such as sales taxes and gambling. And the voters are in no mood to use their brains.
We need better, broader education in this county, but that is off topic.
Rotterdam was flattened. And the Germans said thay'd flatten the other large city in the NL, Amsterdam if the Dutch didn't surender ASAP. In fact, if you walk around Rotterdam you may find less left standing than in Hiroshima. Halland standing up the the 3rd Reich makes about as much sense as Japan did standing up to atom bomb.
This was a simple case of surender and live to fight another day or die. Occupation was hell for the Dutch, but at least there are still Dutch.
Try reading some history, even the "Classic Comics Edition," for twit-wit's sake.
-s
We have companies leaving Seattle because the town is wallling down around it it's ears. The roads are a mess. Boeing just moved it's HQ to Chi-town to avoid the trafic. And we all can see the rest of their assembly work following soon. If a city does not keep it's infrastructure up companies can not prosper, or even function. Seattle is sinking for lack of funds.
If a software company has many Seattle employees yet it sell nothing from it's Seattle location then it pays no Sales or B & O taxes (the taxin the article) and Washington has no income tax so why should this software company get a free ride while everyone else has to pick up the cost of roads, fire protection, etc???
Grow-up and stop free loading. We all have a responsability to where we live.
Also, Seattle != Redmond as they are different cities.
Before WW2 Several US bus lines used large (apx 2m diameter) flywheels. The cool thing about these for transport is that you can use regenerative breaking to recover energery that would otherwise be lost to heat in breaking. For buses you can "trickle chanrge" them all night long. Also with a bus you can afford the overhead (mass and cost) of shielding. As long as you orient the axis vertically you have no problem with the gyro effect. In a true emergency you can also shut these flywheels down quicker than you might think using magnetic breaking (of course you're going to burnout your coils so it's a one time option) The flywheel buses worked especially well in Hilly Seattle. Of course Detroit bought up most of the metro lines and shut them down before 1950 but that's another issue.
Let's get real. The real problem here is that the record/movie companies are releasing their products in a format that is realily computer readable. Why did they do that? Because it was the fastest and cheapest way to build a critical mass. It's only now that there is that critical mass that they are crying foul. If these media companies are truely serious about preventing piracy they would stop publishing their products a a public format. They need to create a new form of player htat they feel is secure. Wrap patents and trade secrets around it and sell this new player to the public. They just need to stop selling CDs and DVDs. Come on Hollywood, if you are truely worried about poeple ripping off your DVDs, STOP selling DVDs, doh. Just don't put your garbage in my hardware. I don't want to watch your slop and I don't want to pay for your hardware in my general purpose computer using industry standsrd drives. If you don't kile my sand box, just take our toys and build your own sand box.
If you are making a site of any real importance do not use server side crap. Keep it simple HTML so that every one can use it AND it can be archived. If it is important enough to do right it is important enough to archive and made "real"
Add sensors via a standard I/O on your PDAs. Get the kids using the tech to understand the broader worls. Perhaps a global air & water quality effort?
Mose drive mfgs will cast a clear cover that they will use for NON-WORKING sales demo units.
The real test of a PDA is can you accomplish primary tasks whle commuting in heavy traffic. Yes, I know doing so is likely to kill people, but the real success of the PalmOS is that you just might be able to check an appointment in heavy traffic without killing yourself. Try that with a laptop or PPC.
Well written PalmOS apps are usefull while standing. Ever try to look-up a phone number in your laptop while standing at a pay phone at the airport? It's not a plesant sight.
The PalmOS os for people on the go. If all you do is drive a desk don't bother with any PDA.
-s
Two things effect die size.
1) "Active Area" is where the Transisters and routs go
2) Bonding Pads. Any chip has to have pads as connection points. As bus widths go up so do the number of I/O pads. Even with inovative connection methods I/O takes up alot of real estate. The good news is that the features of I/O are large so they seldom are the cause of a bad chip so they are less often the reason of a chip process falure. One thing to keep in mind is that Pads must be of a minimum size and must be on teh outsde edge of the chip so that in a wide, but simple chip you can end up with "circled wagons" with a lot of empty space inside.
-s
My nephew was tagged, he is 8 months old. Perhaps it is because he never had a ticket before.
BTW: A link in the article to "an explanation of the government's new "computer-assisted profiling system" has been removed???
Get yourself a big mean dog and don't feed it too much.
Woz must using his Apple ][ as a server ;^0
As far as I'm concerned Woz is a real hero of high tech. He did some truly revolutionary tech that worked at a human scale, found a partner who had what was required to get it to the masses, kept his sence of houmor and then took his winnings to become a volunteer teaching. This is a true winner.
Thanks Woz from a slightly jaded 40 year old engineer
In a moment of weakness I did the switch this week end on our WQorst dial-up. What a disaster. We only use the account a few hours a week to check email. My girl friend choose qwest as part of a package ($13.95/month). I spent the whole weekend trying to get email working. Finally I figured out that they had not activated the email account and I could not get that concept through to the MSN SOB support monkey and asked to speak to his supervisor. No joy, you can not speak to a supervisor and they will not give you a last name or other unique ID.
I called QWorst and frankly they had a friendly support folks who seemed to know what they were doing, she answered the phone with her employee ID. When I explained how unhappy I was with the switch she suggested that I should speak to her supervisor and tell him. BTW, the supervisoe explained that ALL of my personal data from QWorst was shared with MSN. For as unhappy as I am with QWorsts business practices I have to say that I always enjoyed good tech support.
That said, I'm dumping MSN and moving to eskimo.com, a local provider that has been around for 20 years. Yes Virginia, there was a thing called BBSs, Fido and other coolness, but I digress....
-s
Strong crypto is a cheep and easy way to provide reasonable security. Their are other way that are even more secure.
One Time Pad. One time pads are about as secure as you can get if they are properly used. Anybody should be able to impliment one after a two week course of BASIC programming.
And don't forget the world war (rev 2.0) Code Talkers. They used a jargon version of their a Native American language that was unbroken by the Japanese. Languages used by small isolated populations make a great code system because their grammer and syntax tend to drift to a very complex state.
Combine a small tribal language with a One Time Pad and you have an rock-solid system that can be done by hand!
-s
Yep, that's what we need. Goverment price supports to make sure those speculators who squatted on some half-wit name are able to get their condos in Maui. The system has worked well for farmers.
:^)
And don't forget real estate speculators who buy up some postage stamp of land next to a school and sue when they are stopped from putting in a toxic dump next to a school.
It must be the government's falt these yahoos
are not rich. It's time for us, er.. I mean the government to pay-up.
Save the DotCom millionares NOW!! Give until it hurts.
;^)
Let's be real. If you look in the guts of a cell phone today you will see more MIPS in that phone than a PDA (PocketPCs incuded) As a person who lives with his Visor always at arms reach, a cost-effective and well designed PDA phone is a solid chioce for me. They also need to have versions with stanards besides GSM.
If I have to make a chioce of PDA or phone I take PDA every time!
Georga Tech's Honor Code for CS1321 - Introduction to Computing
This will be a major pain in the ass when Sony and Nintendo go to design their next gen consoles. The current and previous generations of consoles are built around SGI's project reality. It could, in an odd way, force the console makers to be truely inovative.