Well of course I've tried that one. This is my 4th job in 3 years:)) And I was never, never jobless. Exploit the system; let not the system exploit you.
On a serious note, I'm only suggesting this for the overtime hours. When you're at work, work seriously, and get it done just right. If you're working 8/5, and the project is still a disaster, then ask yourself, Would actually working extra hours (instead of reading slashdot) have helped?
The system Hollerith put together used holes punched in designated locations on cardboard cards to represent the demographic characteristics of each person interviewed. Like Jacquard's and Babbage's cards, and the "player pianos" then in vogue, the holes in Hollerith's cards were meant to allow the passage of mechanical components. Hollerith used an electromechanical counter in which copper brushes closed certain electrical circuits if a hole was encountered, and did not close a circuit if a hole was not present.
An electrically activated mechanism increased the running count in each category by one unit every time the circuit for that category was closed. By adding sorting devices that distributed cards into various bins, according to the patterns of holes and the kind of tabulation desired, Hollerith not only created the ability to keep up with large amounts of data, but created the ability to ask new and more complicated questions about the data. The new system was in place in time for the 1890 census.
Hollerith obtained a patent on the system that he had invented just in time to save the nation from drowning in its own statistics. In 1882-83, he was an instructor in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, establishing the earliest link between that institution and the development of computer science and technology. In 1896, Hollerith set up the "Tabulating Machine Company" to manufacture both the cards and the card-reading machines. In 1900, Hollerith rented his equipment to the Census Bureau for the Twelfth Census.
Some years later, Hollerith's Tabulating Machine had become an institution known as "
International Business Machines," run by a fellow named Thomas Watson, Senior. But there were two World Wars ahead, and several more thinkers--the most extraordinary of them all--still to come before a manufacturer of tabulating machines and punch cards would have anything to do with true computers. The modern-day concerns of this company--selling machines to keep track of the information that goes along with doing business--would have to wait for some deadly serious business to be transacted.
Do the work, but piss and moan to you supervisor about it
Start doing the work while looking for a new job
Quit immidately
Pretend to work, while reading slashdot
Nothing beats the last option. You get to use the company resources to do what you like to, and even get a good name in the mgmt. for working hard on weekends:) Besides, if the project is a disaster, you'll be the last one to get fired.
The company will find out the hard way that working 12 hrs a day, 7 days a week writing code is a sure way to get poor quality code and make a project cost more and take longer than decent working hours.
That's not the way it works. The project could be just a prototype, or a poor version 1.0. Once the client/VC is convinced it can be done, the team goes back to coding 8/5 and produces a solid product. Well, that's the idea anyway.
BTW has anyone noticed this trend with MSFT? They produce a poor 1.0, and by 5.0 (a few rewrites later?) it's robust, feature-rich, and popular.
12 hrs/7 days in a thought-intensive job is fatiguing (I know, I've been there and done that). After about a 50 hour week, you start hitting diminishing returns. After about 60 hours, in my experience, you start getting negative returns (the project actually starts regressing) because more bugs than good code is put in.
As I said, sometimes the "first version is meant to be thrown away", so it doesn't matter how many bugs. The time-to-market is more important in introducing a product. Moreover, the team can take a 2-5 day break, and come back to code version 2.0 at 8/5 pace.
For projects, the more the no. of bugs, the better it is, because they can keep billing the client for the mythical man-hours put in for fixing them. Project-companies with hourly billing gain both ways (12/7 followed by bug-fixing cycles).
If a couple of you band together, and threaten to quit, and they need to get this done right away, they may simply not have time to hire new people. As a result, they may give in to your demands to be paid overtime.
And the couple is hard to make. I've been in this situation before (well, a few times), and found it impossible to convince my colleagues that we can stand up against the mgmt. Perhaps they were wisely thinking of the possibility of getting fired after the project is done. But how would that be different from any other day in this down economy? What's the guarantee that you won't get fired even after working 12/7?
BBC shows us that your competition is worse than you could ever imagine. Your next comercial code might be written in an Indain jail.
Where does the article mention that the prisoners are writing code in jail? Does it even say that they're learning how to code? No, they're getting computer education.
Secondly, the 3rd world country outsourcing is a passing fad, IMHO. Larger software houses won't do this because of unstable political, economic and educational conditions. It will cost (a lot?) more to debug code written with Hindi variables when the outsourcing company goes bust.
Which larger software houses are you talking about? Oracle?
And, no, Indian programmers don't write code with Hindi variables. I'm sick of this FUD against the Indian programmer. Plain Old FUD.
You have more faith in systems / sites than I do. How many of those websites with ids and passwords store the passwords in plain text? Do you trust all sites by putting in your master password?
Well, really there isn't one master password;) There's probably one for all my company internal accounts (yes, we have to create a number of acounts in my company for different kinds of tasks--each with a not-really-different username/password). There's another for all accounts created on the www. And so on.
It's like grouping together some accounts based on the level of trust and giving them the same password.
"The hackers who wrote the Incompatible Timesharing System decided that
file protection was usually used by a self-styled system manager to get
power over everyone else," Stallman would later explain. "They didn't
want anyone to be able to get power over them that way, so they didn't
implement that kind of a feature. The result was, that whenever
something in the system was broken, you could always fix
it."
Through such vigilance, hackers managed to keep the AI Lab's machines
security-free. Over at the nearby MIT Laboratory for Computer Sciences,
however, security-minded faculty members won the day. The LCS installed
its first password-based system in 1977. Once again, Stallman took it
upon himself to correct what he saw as ethical laxity. Gaining access to
the software code that controlled the password system, Stallman
implanted a software command that sent out a message to any LCS user who
attempted to choose a unique password. If a user entered "starfish," for
example, the message came back something like:
I see you chose the password "starfish." I suggest that you switch to
the password "carriage return." It's much easier to type, and also it
stands up to the principle that there should be no
passwords.
Users who did enter "carriage return"---that is, users who simply
pressed the Enter or Return button, entering a blank string instead of a
unique password--left their accounts accessible to the world at
large. As scary as that might have been for some users, it reinforced
the hacker notion that Institute computers, and even Institute computer
files, belonged to the public, not private individuals. Stallman,
speaking in an interview for the 1984 book Hackers, proudly noted
that one-fifth of the LCS staff accepted this argument and employed the
blank-string password.
Well it's ok to have the same password for everything. But if someone does genuinely need my password, I change it to something simple--like "rabbit", or "rollsroyce"--before giving it out.
With this:
I'm not giving out my current master password.
I'm not making it easier for the person to guess all my future passwords based on the pattern found in my present passwords. Most people (except for the real geeks, maybe) follow a pattern in their passwords. If you know the pattern, it makes the job easier.
So if the techie needs your password, change it to "abc123" and give him that. When he's done, change it back to the original.
Imagine how angry a Muslim would be at an article titled "Should
You Hire a Muslim?"--the author going by the assumption that all
Muslims are terrorists. If you're a Muslim living in the US
post 9/11, or if you have Muslim friends in a similar situation,
you'll understand what I mean.
Just as all Muslims are not terrorists (it's a real, real shame
we have to explain this to some over-patriotic jerk in the US),
all hackers are not social outlaws who break into systems to
steal private data or cripple the system. A good hacker is
capable of such stuff, and some hackers do, but the vast
majority don't!
Kevin Mitnick *might* be a hacker--I don't know, I don't care.
Even if he is a hacker, he's also a guy, white, American, etc.
and his name begins with 'K'. Is it fair to say that all white
American guys whose names begin with 'K' are criminals?
A hacker is only as likely to be a lawbreaker as, say, a
carpenter, doctor, sportsperson, soldier, musician, lawyer
(yes!) or even policeman.
The TECHNICAL THUG. Usually a systems programmer who has been forced
into system administration; writes scripts in a polyglot of the Bourne shell,
sed, C, awk, perl, and APL.
The ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST. Usually a retentive drone (or rarely, a
harridan ex-secretary) who has been forced into system administration.
The MANIAC. Usually an aging cracker who discovered that neither the
Mossad nor Cuba are willing to pay a living wage for computer
espionage. Fell into system administration; occasionally approaches
major competitors with indesp schemes.
The IDIOT. Usually a cretin, morpohodite, or old COBOL programmer
selected to be the system administrator by a committee of cretins,
morphodites, and old COBOL programmers.
Slashdot Mirror
For once I thought this was about Intellectual Property.
On a serious note, I'm only suggesting this for the overtime hours. When you're at work, work seriously, and get it done just right. If you're working 8/5, and the project is still a disaster, then ask yourself, Would actually working extra hours (instead of reading slashdot) have helped?
- Do the work like a good worker bee
- Do the work, but piss and moan to
/. about it
- Do the work, but piss and moan to you supervisor about it
- Start doing the work while looking for a new job
- Quit immidately
- Pretend to work, while reading slashdot
Nothing beats the last option. You get to use the company resources to do what you like to, and even get a good name in the mgmt. for working hard on weekendsBTW has anyone noticed this trend with MSFT? They produce a poor 1.0, and by 5.0 (a few rewrites later?) it's robust, feature-rich, and popular.
As I said, sometimes the "first version is meant to be thrown away", so it doesn't matter how many bugs. The time-to-market is more important in introducing a product. Moreover, the team can take a 2-5 day break, and come back to code version 2.0 at 8/5 pace.For projects, the more the no. of bugs, the better it is, because they can keep billing the client for the mythical man-hours put in for fixing them. Project-companies with hourly billing gain both ways (12/7 followed by bug-fixing cycles).
Excellent analysis by Andrei Herasimchuk
2003: Bill Gates buys Unix from SCO, sues every Linux co. on earth, buys the Internet from itself, and All Your Base Belong To Us.
Of course, brainfuck is the answer.
Just want to touch on two of your points. One, Vim does have autoword/autoline completetion. Second, Eclipse does have C/C++ development support.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Where does the article mention that the prisoners are writing code in jail? Does it even say that they're learning how to code? No, they're getting computer education.
Stop FUDing, guy.
Ahem... may I introduce Oracle Reports, the best enterprise reporting tool on the planet.
Which larger software houses are you talking about? Oracle?
And, no, Indian programmers don't write code with Hindi variables. I'm sick of this FUD against the Indian programmer. Plain Old FUD.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8734
Could this guy be linked to SCO in some way? Funded by Microsoft?
Al Qaeda.
Ok. Doesn't matter. Nevermind.
Aaaargghh! WHO IS making money... !!! You anal-expulsive assholes!
_I_ am making money off Linux, dumbo! Just sold 2 CDs last night ;-)
SCO is not the answer.
SCO is the queston.
No (or Linux) is the answer.
It's like grouping together some accounts based on the level of trust and giving them the same password.
BTW I quote this under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
With this:
- I'm not giving out my current master password.
- I'm not making it easier for the person to guess all my future passwords based on the pattern found in my present passwords. Most people (except for the real geeks, maybe) follow a pattern in their passwords. If you know the pattern, it makes the job easier.
So if the techie needs your password, change it to "abc123" and give him that. When he's done, change it back to the original.A quick search on google, for some background:
http://www.google.com/search?q=misuse+of+term+hac
Imagine how angry a Muslim would be at an article titled "Should You Hire a Muslim?"--the author going by the assumption that all Muslims are terrorists. If you're a Muslim living in the US post 9/11, or if you have Muslim friends in a similar situation, you'll understand what I mean.
Just as all Muslims are not terrorists (it's a real, real shame we have to explain this to some over-patriotic jerk in the US), all hackers are not social outlaws who break into systems to steal private data or cripple the system. A good hacker is capable of such stuff, and some hackers do, but the vast majority don't!
Kevin Mitnick *might* be a hacker--I don't know, I don't care. Even if he is a hacker, he's also a guy, white, American, etc. and his name begins with 'K'. Is it fair to say that all white American guys whose names begin with 'K' are criminals?
A hacker is only as likely to be a lawbreaker as, say, a carpenter, doctor, sportsperson, soldier, musician, lawyer (yes!) or even policeman.
I Accept
What do you call a sysad? Depends.
There are four major species of Unix sysad:
HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR:t ml
http://www.fsf.org/fun/jokes/know.your.sysadmin.h
What you say!!!
If it weren't for a Bad Printer, there would be no Free Software Movement!
Bad Printers are good for Freedom and Growth. Move 'zig' For great justice
Larry still has no need to lose any sleep over MySQL.