My wife was a big time role-player back when she was in school. Not only did she play D&D, but also the Star Trek and Star Wars role playing systems (talk about geeky!). However, she was the lone female in her group, so it was definitely a "guy thing".
The interesting thing to me is that, even though she was a RPG "geek", she is really not a tech "geek". Normally, the stereotype is that they two go hand-in-hand, but it really doesn't seem to be the case with her. She is more of a humanities/soft sciences person.
I asked her about this, and she explained that she played D&D et. al. for the social interactions and for the storytelling/creative aspects, which seems to fit her general humanities disposition.
That, of course, got me thinking as to why a large number of tech geeks DO play RPG's. Based upon the stereotype, it would seem as if the social and storytelling aspects of RPG's wouldn't be as appealing to them as it would be to, say, somebody interesting in creative writing or drama.
Perhaps the tech geek stereotype is just that - a stereotype? Perhaps tech geeks enjoy RPG's because of their creative nature? Who knows!
For the record, I am a certified (certifiable?) tech geek who dabbled in RPG's but never really got into them.
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Nevertheless, I would appreciate it if next time you at least come up with an original thought.
If you don't know what I am talking about, see the following post...
No offense jbrandon, but if you check the timestamps you will see that my post preceded TheJesusCandle's post. Actually, I am a little distrubed that somebody would cut and paste my words and claim them as their own. Thank you for pointing that out to me.
Here in the US, the sixth and final match was televised on the cable channel ESPN 2. I was channel surfing and I happened to stumble across it. To my surprise, it was actually quite interesting to watch on TV.
I am not a big chess freak, so I would have guessed that watching chess would be a lot like watching paint dry. However, it was made interesting by the "play-by-play" analysts who were chess masters themselves. They did a good job of explaining the moves, and also the psychology and strategy of chess at the grand master level. It really gave me a lot of insight into what goes on at when chess is played at such a high level.
After the match ended in a draw, they interviewed Kasparov. It was interesting to get his reaction to the match. Basically, his goal for the game was to "not lose", which is why he offered a draw from a very strong position. He didn't want to take a chance of making a blunder like he did in the third game of the match.
It seemed like the key advantage that the computer has in this situation is the fact that it doesn't have an ego to deal with. After losing to Deep Blue in 1997, it seemed like Kasparov was very afraid of losing to another computer in such a high-profile match. That definitely affect the way he approached the game.
The computer, on the other hand, is just calculating moves, so psychology doesn't factor into how it plays. To me, this seems like the biggest advantage that a computer has over a human player.
Also, he seemed to have more respect for this computer program than he did for Deep Blue. Apparently, he had a lot of problems with Deep Blue and how the 1997 match was handled. It could be sour grapes, of course, so I took his comments with a grain of salt.
I don't agree that consulting is obviously a better route. Last year I was in a situation where I was looking for a new job, so I was actually considering the question of consulting vs. full-time. What you are saying about consulting being more lucrative doesn't seem to be true in my case. Unless you have skills in a particularly obscure tech, the hourly rates nowadays seem to be pretty paltry. If you factor in things like benefits and self-employment taxes, things look much worse for consulting.
As far as your argument that consultants have more mobility and won't get bored with the same old job, I totally disagree. One big downside of being a consultant is that you have to sign a contract which binds you to the job for a length of time. That was a BIG reason why I didn't take a particular consulting job. As I mentioned above, the hourly rate was okay but not spectacular, so I really wanted the flexibility to grab a better opportunity if and when things started to pick up. When you work as a salaried employee, you usually aren't working under a contract. So if you start to get bored for whatever reason, you can leave whenever you want (although 2 weeks notice is usually customary).
I know you can probably negotiate an "escape clause" in your contract, but I'm sure the company will want something in return for agreeing to it.
From what I can tell, working full time gives you just as much money and benefits but without the contracts!
In general I thought that the author's heart was in the right place, but I thought that the text needs work in some areas - especially if this article is supposed to be read by novice programmers.
For instance, the section on Source Control boils down to "Source Control is good. I use it all the time". Why not describe what Source Control is, give arguments as to why it is useful, and give some tips on how to use it to its fullest potential.
There are other sections that need similar fleshing out, beyond just the mere mention.
Also, I would play with the ordering of things. It doesn't quite seem right to dive right into a detailed discussion of debugging at the beginning. I think it would be better to take on some of the more general issues first in order to ease into the technical stuff. Alternatively, you may want to split the article into two. One which discusses the "soft" issues, like working with teams, etc, and another which discusses the more meaty subjects like logging and code comments.
You know, I really hate all this "holier than thou" stuff that you and a lot of other people are spewing with regards to SUV. All of us buy all sorts of sh*t that they don't need to survive. We all have our TV's, VCR's, DVD's, computers, and other electricity guzzling gadgets that we probably could do without; however, I don't see anyone on here suggesting that computers are evil.
Unless you are willing to give up all of your luxury items and live off the fat of the land, then you are a hypocrite to call someone to task for their luxury items.
Personally, I think all of this anti-SUV garbage is good old class envy, pure and simple. People see a lot of rich folks driving expensive vehicles and they are jealous of all the money that the rich folks have that they don't have. I can hear it now, "Why should they able to afford that vehicle when I have to bum rides. It's not fair. If I can't have one of those babies, then nobody should have them!"
Even if SUV's were the safest, most fuel efficient vehicles on the road, people would still cry foul, because they perceive it as a status symbol of the rich.
Take a look at those hippie VW peace vans for instance. You never heard anyone complaining about those, and yet aren't they just as bad as SUV if not worse. Those 60's relics probably got terrible gas mileage, I doubt they would meet any sort of emission standards (did they even have catylitic converters back then?), there's no way a car could see around those bad boys, and if you got rear ended by one of those vans in your little Ford Pinto, you wouldn't be walking away from that accident. Nevertheless, because the VW van is perceived as the vehicle of the peace loving hippy, it was (and is) never criticized to the extent that the SUV is.
The only reason SUV's are bashed is because they are perceived by the have-nots as a status symbol of the haves. Who said that Marxism is dead!!!
I wouldn't mind anyone's Slashdot Trolling if they were just making a fashion statement, but it degrades my quality of life. I have to breathe in more fumes every day (from the coal-powered generators that provide the electricity, the diesel-fume-belching 18 wheelers that haul the computers from the factory to your homes, the mercury and lead infested runoff from the landfills where dead computers go to rot, etc, etc) just because some Anonymous Coward needs a "first post" to feel attractive....
If you use yours for work, excuse me. But if it's just because you have no life, don't complain for being pathetic. It just makes you a little more so....
I can't believe people still believe that there is some sort of "law" that says that Internet purchases are free of sales tax.
Sales tax is still collected by web sites for purchases shipped to places where they have a physical business location. For instance, if you live in Washington State or North Dakota, your purchases on Amazon subject to sales tax. This is true for every other website that has physical offices in states which levy a sales tax.
Technically, if your state has a sales tax, you are obligated to pay the sales tax on all purchases regardless of where they originate. If you purchase something from a retailer that has a business presence in your state, they remit the tax for you. If the seller doesn't have a business presence in your state, then YOU are obligated to send it in yourself. Of course, 99.9% of people don't do this; technically we all are in violation of the law.
The reason for this is that states have no juridiction to compel out-of-state retailers to collect the tax for them. That doesn't mean that the tax doesn't have to be paid - just that they can't make the company their "tax collector".
In my home state, there is actually a form that comes with your state tax booklet that you are supposed to fill you to pay sale tax on out-of-state purchases. Also, if you purchase a car out-of-state and try to register it in my state, you need to provide proof that you paid the appropriate sale tax, otherwise they won't let you register your vehicle (they do give you a credit based upon the sales tax paid to another state, so you don't end up paying sales tax twice).
Personally, I don't see any problem with the current system. As things are, Internet sales are treated like any other catalog and mail-order sales: if the business is in your state, they collect the tax, and if not, you have to pay it yourself (wink, wink)...
Actually, most companies that I've worked for have something called "personal days" which are like sick days, except you can use them for things other than sickness... like taking care of sick pets, for instance....
> Accounting and HR are bad examples, because those jobs appeal to a > completely different personality type than programming. Mixing a > marketing job with programming might work out better,
I agree with most of what you are saying, but actually I think you are a little off here. I would argue that accounting and programming appeal to similar personality types (detail oriented, logical, likes to work with numbers), while marketing and programming would appear to different personality types (marketing = people person, emotional rather than logical).
You need to provide more details as to what exactly you are doing.
It's sort of like asking a building contractor, "I want to build a house. You know, a house. With walls, and ceilings, and windows, and don't forget some doors too while you are at it." The specification is so vague that nobody in their right mind will be able to give you an estimate based on that information.
Here is a method that I've seen used for estimating the length of a software project. As you can see, it'll require some amount of work.
1. Come up with a DETAILED design of the project. You won't know how long the project will take if you don't know what the project is. When you say "build a front end", that could mean anything from a single screen with a few buttons and text boxes, to hundreds of screens with graphs and report generators, and all the other bells and whistles.
2. Subdivide the project into a series of smaller tasks. Try and make each task as small as possible. Small uniform tasks are much easier to estimate that a large nebulous one. Don't forget to include non-programming tasks, like testing, integration, documentation writing, status reports, etc, etc.
3. For each task, try and assign a time value to them. If the task is small enough, you should be able to come up with a reasonable value based upon your judgment. If you are having trouble estimating a task, you may need to subdivide the task again into even small pieces.
4. Determine if any of the tasks can be done in parallel. If there are no dependencies between the tasks, then two people can work on them at once.
5. Assign developers to each of the tasks. Allow them to exam the estimates for their assigned tasks, and listen to their feedback! Obviously, if your project has a lot of tasks that can be done in parallel, then having more developers will make the project move faster.
6. Sum up the total time of the subtasks, taking into account tasks that will be worked on in parallel by different developers. This will give you a rough estimate of the completion date. Of course, since this is an estimate, it is likely that it will take longer (or shorter if you are lucky). If that is unsatisfactory to the "powers that be", you will need to cut features or add more developers (but only add developers if things can be done in parallel).
7. As the project moves along and tasks are completed, see if the time it takes for each task matches up with the estimate. If you see that tasks are taking 50% longer than estimated, you should go back to your original task estimates, increase them by 50%, and recalculate a new estimated completion date. Doing this early in the project will prevent the "powers that be" from being surprised when your project isn't shipping by the "ship date".
8. If new features are added at the last minute (which they always are), you will need to add more tasks, and more time estimates to your project. Keep in mind that changes may require revisiting previously completed tasks.
In summary, know what you are going to do, make a first order estimate based upon the tasks, and as the project moves forward, recalibrate you estimate based upon actual data.
Since this is for an MBA project, I'm sure you will be allowed some leeway as long as the method you've used appears reasonable to the professor.
Re:Have a fall-back job in case CS doesn't work ou
on
When Tech Schools Go Bad?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Hey buddy. I feel your pain. I REALLY do! However, let me provide a little bit of perspective for you. I graduated college way back in 1993. If you don't remember 1993 very well, that was the year we were coming out of the Bush Senior recession of the early nineties. The situation wasn't that much different then than it is now.
Like you, I was graduating with a tech degree which I thought would be my ticket to riches and glory. Unfortunately, not a lot of companies were hiring entry level people, and the ones that were offered salaries that were in the $20K-$30K range. Hardly what you'd call a booming job market.
Here's the thing though. I love CS and I love technology. Even though I had a fallback (I took a couple of the actuarial certification exams in college), I knew that I would enjoy working in the software field more than any other (legal) occupation. I kept pounding the pavement and through a combination of hard work and luck, I was able to land a job doing software development for $30K. Sure it sounds low by dot-com standards, but the dot-com salaries are the exception, not the rule.
Fast forward to the late when everybody and their mother was looking for software developers.... I was in a great position to take advantage of the boom. I had several years experience, a proven track record, and a passion for what I was doing.
In summary, all I can say is this: if the reason you went into CS was to get a six-figure salary as a "web developer" without any effort, then you shouldn't have majored in CS in the first place. If you do enjoy CS, then do some work and look for a job, take that "low" $30K job like the rest of us had to, and when the next boom hits (and there WILL be another boom), you'll be sitting pretty.
So I guess in MrFredBoggs world, all synonyms would be outlawed. After all, why do we need the word "famished". We have a word for "hungry" - it's spelled "H-U-N-G-R-Y". What is wrong with it?
If you take the time to read the article, you will see that most of it deals with the fact that the explosion of patent craziness is killing basic research in the U.S.
I am surprised that the submitter didn't even mention that in the submission.
To me, that is more interesting topic for discussion than lame predictions for 2003...
Where do people come up with this misinformation!!
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics web site (www.bls.gov):
"Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work."
Please mod this down. If you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website (http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_faq.htm), you will see that their definition of unemployed is:
"Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work."
It says nothing about currently collecting unemployment benefits, or the like.
I don't know wher you get your driving times from but it is about FOUR hours from Albany to the Canada border (straight shot up the Northway), so there is no way anybody living in Canada is going to work in Albany.
Also, Albany is at least 3 hours NORTH or NYC (not 1 hour west as you suggest). Anybody who wants to live near NYC can find a place a lot closer than Albany. Just to give you some idea, Albany is about the same distance from NYC as Baltimore, MD (give or take 30 miles or so), it's a non-trivial distance.
Maybe I can shed some light on this subject. I worked in the actuarial department of a major life insurer, so I have some expertise in this subject.
First of all, you don't have to be an employer to get group insurance rates. All that you have to have is a group of people who are organized for some purpose OTHER THAN purchasing insurance. Most commonly, this is a group of people who work for a particular employer. However, there are other groups that offer group insurance (trade associations, unions, chambers of commerce).
The reason for the organization requirement is because of ADVERSE SELECTION. Adverse selection is where a person purchases insurance because he or she knows that it will be needed in the near future (bad health, pending surgery, etc). Insurance companies hate this because if too many people do this, they will go out of business and nobody will get insurance. This is why companies give you medical exams, don't cover pre-existing conditions, etc when buying an individual insurance policy.
The advantage of group insurance is that because entry into the group is limited to certain people, it is less likely that adverse selection will occur. Because people become members of the group for a reason not having anything to do with buying insurance, you probably won't get people joining just to get the health benefits. Usually you don't have to submit to a health exam to get group insurance. Also, pre-existing conditions are usually covered (with possible a short waiting period). If eBay opened the group membership to everyone, then membership would likely get flooded with sick people looking for the insurance benefits. This would drive up the costs of offering the insurance, and the insurer would probably cancel the policy (or increase the premium rates to much higher levels).
There are other things that insurers do to protect themselves from adverse selection. Group policies often have minimum enrollment requirements. The plan sponsor has to guarantee that a certain percentage of members gets the policy. This is to prevent the case where only the "sick" people in the group sign up. They want to make sure that the people who sign up are a good representative sample of the group. They also have enrollment periods where members can only sign up for the policy during a particular time period. Again, this prevents people from signing up just as they are entering the operating room. Finally, insurers adjust the group premiums from year to year, based upon the claim amount incurred by the group. This allows them to modify the premium if the group turns out to be less healthy than they originally thought.
One of the arguments in favor of nationalized health care is that everybody would be part of one big "group", so there will be maximum risk sharing. Thus, costs would be divided up evenly, as you say. Of course, given the business and political climate in the U.S., it isn't likely to happen any time soon!
I hope somebody mods this up, because this is SO true! Lack of knowledge as a manager isn't so bad as long as you are able to admit your limitations and surround yourself with trusted people who DO have the knowledge that you are missing.
Whenever I do a tech interview with somebody, I always make sure to ask something that the person probably won't know. I want to see if they just admit that they don't know, or if they try to come up with a BS answer. I'd rather have somebody who admits that they don't know something, rather than somebody who tries to fake it.
IANAL, so I can't comment on the legality of archive.com. However, based upon my own sense of "fair play", I think that if you put information on a public web server and allow people free access to it (as opposed to making people pay to view), you can hardly cry flow when somebody actually makes use of the information. If you didn't want the information to be distributed across the Internet, then why did you post it on there in the first place?
I could see you having a beef if somebody took what you put on your web page, copied it, and claimed it as their own work. That is wrong. However, archive.com doesn't claim to have authored the pages. Visitors know up front that it is an _archive_.
I don't know what it is like in the UK, but in the US it is customary to give two weeks notice before leaving your job. Most employers understand that "turnover" is a fact of life. It may come as a shock to your ego, but no single employee is indispensible. People come and go, and yet corporations survive.
I learned this lesson through experience. After college, I started worked for a large insurance company. After working there for 4+ years, my girlfriend (now wife) was taking a job in another city and I wanted to move with her. I agonized over what I was going to tell my employer. I felt guilty that I was bailing out on them after they had given me four years of gainful employment and experience. I honestly felt like I was doing something unethical by leaving them like that.
When I went into my manager's office to give him my letter of resignation, I was literally shaking. I thought that I would get escorted out of the building in shame. Much to my delight, my manager shook my hand and wished me the best of luck in my new city. He totally understood that people come and go, and although my leaving would be missed, they would make due.
Later I came to the realization that I was silly to feel guilty about leaving. Even though they had given me 4+ years of paychecks and experience, I had given them 4+ years of good work. Looking at things that way, it was a perfectly fair economic transaction. Once one party no longer gains from the transaction, he or she is perfect justified in terminating the relationship. There is nothing ethically wrong with that at all. You have no moral obligation to work for them longer than you desire, just like they have no obligation to keep you employed more than they desire.
As a practical issue, future companies are going to be wary of the fact that you only stayed with your job for 15 months and then left for an extended vacation. Usually employers will ask why you left your last job and what you did with your time between jobs. You may have some explaining to do.
Of course, you have alternatives to quitting after 15 months. You didn't say how long you are travelling for, but you can always use vacation time or take an unpaid leave of absense. If you prove yourself to be a valuable employee, you may be able to work something out.
I disagree with you that out of date docs are better than none. If something in your documentation is wrong, it is WORSE than having no docs because you'll wrongly take the doc at face value rather than scrutinizing the code to figure it out.
I've been bit before by this problem and it is definitely a pain!
Slashdot Mirror
My wife was a big time role-player back when she was in school. Not only did she play D&D, but also the Star Trek and Star Wars role playing systems (talk about geeky!). However, she was the lone female in her group, so it was definitely a "guy thing".
The interesting thing to me is that, even though she was a RPG "geek", she is really not a tech "geek". Normally, the stereotype is that they two go hand-in-hand, but it really doesn't seem to be the case with her. She is more of a humanities/soft sciences person.
I asked her about this, and she explained that she played D&D et. al. for the social interactions and for the storytelling/creative aspects, which seems to fit her general humanities disposition.
That, of course, got me thinking as to why a large number of tech geeks DO play RPG's. Based upon the stereotype, it would seem as if the social and storytelling aspects of RPG's wouldn't be as appealing to them as it would be to, say, somebody interesting in creative writing or drama.
Perhaps the tech geek stereotype is just that - a stereotype? Perhaps tech geeks enjoy RPG's because of their creative nature? Who knows!
For the record, I am a certified (certifiable?) tech geek who dabbled in RPG's but never really got into them.
... buzzword
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Nevertheless, I would appreciate it if next time you at least come up with an original thought.
5 96 61
If you don't know what I am talking about, see the following post...
http://slashdot.org/comments.plsid=53202&cid=52
Who knew that Jesus was such a Karma whore....
No offense jbrandon, but if you check the timestamps you will see that my post preceded TheJesusCandle's post. Actually, I am a little distrubed that somebody would cut and paste my words and claim them as their own. Thank you for pointing that out to me.
Here in the US, the sixth and final match was televised on the cable channel ESPN 2. I was channel surfing and I happened to stumble across it. To my surprise, it was actually quite interesting to watch on TV.
I am not a big chess freak, so I would have guessed that watching chess would be a lot like watching paint dry. However, it was made interesting by the "play-by-play" analysts who were chess masters themselves. They did a good job of explaining the moves, and also the psychology and strategy of chess at the grand master level. It really gave me a lot of insight into what goes on at when chess is played at such a high level.
After the match ended in a draw, they interviewed Kasparov. It was interesting to get his reaction to the match. Basically, his goal for the game was to "not lose", which is why he offered a draw from a very strong position. He didn't want to take a chance of making a blunder like he did in the third game of the match.
It seemed like the key advantage that the computer has in this situation is the fact that it doesn't have an ego to deal with. After losing to Deep Blue in 1997, it seemed like Kasparov was very afraid of losing to another computer in such a high-profile match. That definitely affect the way he approached the game.
The computer, on the other hand, is just calculating moves, so psychology doesn't factor into how it plays. To me, this seems like the biggest advantage that a computer has over a human player.
Also, he seemed to have more respect for this computer program than he did for Deep Blue. Apparently, he had a lot of problems with Deep Blue and how the 1997 match was handled. It could be sour grapes, of course, so I took his comments with a grain of salt.
I don't agree that consulting is obviously a better route. Last year I was in a situation where I was looking for a new job, so I was actually considering the question of consulting vs. full-time. What you are saying about consulting being more lucrative doesn't seem to be true in my case. Unless you have skills in a particularly obscure tech, the hourly rates nowadays seem to be pretty paltry. If you factor in things like benefits and self-employment taxes, things look much worse for consulting.
As far as your argument that consultants have more mobility and won't get bored with the same old job, I totally disagree. One big downside of being a consultant is that you have to sign a contract which binds you to the job for a length of time. That was a BIG reason why I didn't take a particular consulting job. As I mentioned above, the hourly rate was okay but not spectacular, so I really wanted the flexibility to grab a better opportunity if and when things started to pick up. When you work as a salaried employee, you usually aren't working under a contract. So if you start to get bored for whatever reason, you can leave whenever you want (although 2 weeks notice is usually customary).
I know you can probably negotiate an "escape clause" in your contract, but I'm sure the company will want something in return for agreeing to it.
From what I can tell, working full time gives you just as much money and benefits but without the contracts!
In general I thought that the author's heart was in the right place, but I thought that the text needs work in some areas - especially if this article is supposed to be read by novice programmers.
For instance, the section on Source Control boils down to "Source Control is good. I use it all the time". Why not describe what Source Control is, give arguments as to why it is useful, and give some tips on how to use it to its fullest potential.
There are other sections that need similar fleshing out, beyond just the mere mention.
Also, I would play with the ordering of things. It doesn't quite seem right to dive right into a detailed discussion of debugging at the beginning. I think it would be better to take on some of the more general issues first in order to ease into the technical stuff. Alternatively, you may want to split the article into two. One which discusses the "soft" issues, like working with teams, etc, and another which discusses the more meaty subjects like logging and code comments.
Anyway, best of luck to you in your endeavors.
You know, I really hate all this "holier than thou" stuff that you and a lot of other people are spewing with regards to SUV. All of us buy all sorts of sh*t that they don't need to survive. We all have our TV's, VCR's, DVD's, computers, and other electricity guzzling gadgets that we probably could do without; however, I don't see anyone on here suggesting that computers are evil.
Unless you are willing to give up all of your luxury items and live off the fat of the land, then you are a hypocrite to call someone to task for their luxury items.
Personally, I think all of this anti-SUV garbage is good old class envy, pure and simple. People see a lot of rich folks driving expensive vehicles and they are jealous of all the money that the rich folks have that they don't have. I can hear it now, "Why should they able to afford that vehicle when I have to bum rides. It's not fair. If I can't have one of those babies, then nobody should have them!"
Even if SUV's were the safest, most fuel efficient vehicles on the road, people would still cry foul, because they perceive it as a status symbol of the rich.
Take a look at those hippie VW peace vans for instance. You never heard anyone complaining about those, and yet aren't they just as bad as SUV if not worse. Those 60's relics probably got terrible gas mileage, I doubt they would meet any sort of emission standards (did they even have catylitic converters back then?), there's no way a car could see around those bad boys, and if you got rear ended by one of those vans in your little Ford Pinto, you wouldn't be walking away from that accident. Nevertheless, because the VW van is perceived as the vehicle of the peace loving hippy, it was (and is) never criticized to the extent that the SUV is.
The only reason SUV's are bashed is because they are perceived by the have-nots as a status symbol of the haves. Who said that Marxism is dead!!!
I wouldn't mind anyone's Slashdot Trolling if they were just making a fashion statement, but it degrades my quality of life. I have to breathe in more fumes every day (from the coal-powered generators that provide the electricity, the diesel-fume-belching 18 wheelers that haul the computers from the factory to your homes, the mercury and lead infested runoff from the landfills where dead computers go to rot, etc, etc) just because some Anonymous Coward needs a "first post" to feel attractive....
If you use yours for work, excuse me. But if it's just because you have no life, don't complain for being pathetic. It just makes you a little more so....
I can't believe people still believe that there is some sort of "law" that says that Internet purchases are free of sales tax.
Sales tax is still collected by web sites for purchases shipped to places where they have a physical business location. For instance, if you live in Washington State or North Dakota, your purchases on Amazon subject to sales tax. This is true for every other website that has physical offices in states which levy a sales tax.
Technically, if your state has a sales tax, you are obligated to pay the sales tax on all purchases regardless of where they originate. If you purchase something from a retailer that has a business presence in your state, they remit the tax for you. If the seller doesn't have a business presence in your state, then YOU are obligated to send it in yourself. Of course, 99.9% of people don't do this; technically we all are in violation of the law.
The reason for this is that states have no juridiction to compel out-of-state retailers to collect the tax for them. That doesn't mean that the tax doesn't have to be paid - just that they can't make the company their "tax collector".
In my home state, there is actually a form that comes with your state tax booklet that you are supposed to fill you to pay sale tax on out-of-state purchases. Also, if you purchase a car out-of-state and try to register it in my state, you need to provide proof that you paid the appropriate sale tax, otherwise they won't let you register your vehicle (they do give you a credit based upon the sales tax paid to another state, so you don't end up paying sales tax twice).
Personally, I don't see any problem with the current system. As things are, Internet sales are treated like any other catalog and mail-order sales: if the business is in your state, they collect the tax, and if not, you have to pay it yourself (wink, wink)...
Actually, most companies that I've worked for have something called "personal days" which are like sick days, except you can use them for things other than sickness... like taking care of sick pets, for instance....
> Accounting and HR are bad examples, because those jobs appeal to a
> completely different personality type than programming. Mixing a
> marketing job with programming might work out better,
I agree with most of what you are saying, but actually I think you are a little off here. I would argue that accounting and programming appeal to similar personality types (detail oriented, logical, likes to work with numbers), while marketing and programming would appear to different personality types (marketing = people person, emotional rather than logical).
You need to provide more details as to what exactly you are doing.
It's sort of like asking a building contractor, "I want to build a house. You know, a house. With walls, and ceilings, and windows, and don't forget some doors too while you are at it." The specification is so vague that nobody in their right mind will be able to give you an estimate based on that information.
Here is a method that I've seen used for estimating the length of a software project. As you can see, it'll require some amount of work.
1. Come up with a DETAILED design of the project. You won't know how long the project will take if you don't know what the project is. When you say "build a front end", that could mean anything from a single screen with a few buttons and text boxes, to hundreds of screens with graphs and report generators, and all the other bells and whistles.
2. Subdivide the project into a series of smaller tasks. Try and make each task as small as possible. Small uniform tasks are much easier to estimate that a large nebulous one. Don't forget to include non-programming tasks, like testing, integration, documentation writing, status reports, etc, etc.
3. For each task, try and assign a time value to them. If the task is small enough, you should be able to come up with a reasonable value based upon your judgment. If you are having trouble estimating a task, you may need to subdivide the task again into even small pieces.
4. Determine if any of the tasks can be done in parallel. If there are no dependencies between the tasks, then two people can work on them at once.
5. Assign developers to each of the tasks. Allow them to exam the estimates for their assigned tasks, and listen to their feedback! Obviously, if your project has a lot of tasks that can be done in parallel, then having more developers will make the project move faster.
6. Sum up the total time of the subtasks, taking into account tasks that will be worked on in parallel by different developers. This will give you a rough estimate of the completion date. Of course, since this is an estimate, it is likely that it will take longer (or shorter if you are lucky). If that is unsatisfactory to the "powers that be", you will need to cut features or add more developers (but only add developers if things can be done in parallel).
7. As the project moves along and tasks are completed, see if the time it takes for each task matches up with the estimate. If you see that tasks are taking 50% longer than estimated, you should go back to your original task estimates, increase them by 50%, and recalculate a new estimated completion date. Doing this early in the project will prevent the "powers that be" from being surprised when your project isn't shipping by the "ship date".
8. If new features are added at the last minute (which they always are), you will need to add more tasks, and more time estimates to your project. Keep in mind that changes may require revisiting previously completed tasks.
In summary, know what you are going to do, make a first order estimate based upon the tasks, and as the project moves forward, recalibrate you estimate based upon actual data.
Since this is for an MBA project, I'm sure you will be allowed some leeway as long as the method you've used appears reasonable to the professor.
Hey buddy. I feel your pain. I REALLY do! However, let me provide a little bit of perspective for you. I graduated college way back in 1993. If you don't remember 1993 very well, that was the year we were coming out of the Bush Senior recession of the early nineties. The situation wasn't that much different then than it is now.
Like you, I was graduating with a tech degree which I thought would be my ticket to riches and glory. Unfortunately, not a lot of companies were hiring entry level people, and the ones that were offered salaries that were in the $20K-$30K range. Hardly what you'd call a booming job market.
Here's the thing though. I love CS and I love technology. Even though I had a fallback (I took a couple of the actuarial certification exams in college), I knew that I would enjoy working in the software field more than any other (legal) occupation. I kept pounding the pavement and through a combination of hard work and luck, I was able to land a job doing software development for $30K. Sure it sounds low by dot-com standards, but the dot-com salaries are the exception, not the rule.
Fast forward to the late when everybody and their mother was looking for software developers.... I was in a great position to take advantage of the boom. I had several years experience, a proven track record, and a passion for what I was doing.
In summary, all I can say is this: if the reason you went into CS was to get a six-figure salary as a "web developer" without any effort, then you shouldn't have majored in CS in the first place. If you do enjoy CS, then do some work and look for a job, take that "low" $30K job like the rest of us had to, and when the next boom hits (and there WILL be another boom), you'll be sitting pretty.
That sad part is that when I was reading it, I was checking them off... "yep, did that", "yep, done that"
BTW, I grew up in NJ, if you couldn't tell...
So I guess in MrFredBoggs world, all synonyms would be outlawed. After all, why do we need the word "famished". We have a word for "hungry" - it's spelled "H-U-N-G-R-Y". What is wrong with it?
If you take the time to read the article, you will see that most of it deals with the fact that the explosion of patent craziness is killing basic research in the U.S.
I am surprised that the submitter didn't even mention that in the submission.
To me, that is more interesting topic for discussion than lame predictions for 2003...
Where do people come up with this misinformation!!
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics web site (www.bls.gov):
"Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work."
Please mod this down. If you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website (http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_faq.htm), you will see that their definition of unemployed is:
"Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work."
It says nothing about currently collecting unemployment benefits, or the like.
I don't know wher you get your driving times from but it is about FOUR hours from Albany to the Canada border (straight shot up the Northway), so there is no way anybody living in Canada is going to work in Albany.
Also, Albany is at least 3 hours NORTH or NYC (not 1 hour west as you suggest). Anybody who wants to live near NYC can find a place a lot closer than Albany. Just to give you some idea, Albany is about the same distance from NYC as Baltimore, MD (give or take 30 miles or so), it's a non-trivial distance.
Maybe I can shed some light on this subject. I worked in the actuarial department of a major life insurer, so I have some expertise in this subject.
First of all, you don't have to be an employer to get group insurance rates. All that you have to have is a group of people who are organized for some purpose OTHER THAN purchasing insurance. Most commonly, this is a group of people who work for a particular employer. However, there are other groups that offer group insurance (trade associations, unions, chambers of commerce).
The reason for the organization requirement is because of ADVERSE SELECTION. Adverse selection is where a person purchases insurance because he or she knows that it will be needed in the near future (bad health, pending surgery, etc). Insurance companies hate this because if too many people do this, they will go out of business and nobody will get insurance. This is why companies give you medical exams, don't cover pre-existing conditions, etc when buying an individual insurance policy.
The advantage of group insurance is that because entry into the group is limited to certain people, it is less likely that adverse selection will occur. Because people become members of the group for a reason not having anything to do with buying insurance, you probably won't get people joining just to get the health benefits. Usually you don't have to submit to a health exam to get group insurance. Also, pre-existing conditions are usually covered (with possible a short waiting period). If eBay opened the group membership to everyone, then membership would likely get flooded with sick people looking for the insurance benefits. This would drive up the costs of offering the insurance, and the insurer would probably cancel the policy (or increase the premium rates to much higher levels).
There are other things that insurers do to protect themselves from adverse selection. Group policies often have minimum enrollment requirements. The plan sponsor has to guarantee that a certain percentage of members gets the policy. This is to prevent the case where only the "sick" people in the group sign up. They want to make sure that the people who sign up are a good representative sample of the group. They also have enrollment periods where members can only sign up for the policy during a particular time period. Again, this prevents people from signing up just as they are entering the operating room. Finally, insurers adjust the group premiums from year to year, based upon the claim amount incurred by the group. This allows them to modify the premium if the group turns out to be less healthy than they originally thought.
One of the arguments in favor of nationalized health care is that everybody would be part of one big "group", so there will be maximum risk sharing. Thus, costs would be divided up evenly, as you say. Of course, given the business and political climate in the U.S., it isn't likely to happen any time soon!
I hope somebody mods this up, because this is SO true! Lack of knowledge as a manager isn't so bad as long as you are able to admit your limitations and surround yourself with trusted people who DO have the knowledge that you are missing.
Whenever I do a tech interview with somebody, I always make sure to ask something that the person probably won't know. I want to see if they just admit that they don't know, or if they try to come up with a BS answer. I'd rather have somebody who admits that they don't know something, rather than somebody who tries to fake it.
IANAL, so I can't comment on the legality of archive.com. However, based upon my own sense of "fair play", I think that if you put information on a public web server and allow people free access to it (as opposed to making people pay to view), you can hardly cry flow when somebody actually makes use of the information. If you didn't want the information to be distributed across the Internet, then why did you post it on there in the first place?
I could see you having a beef if somebody took what you put on your web page, copied it, and claimed it as their own work. That is wrong. However, archive.com doesn't claim to have authored the pages. Visitors know up front that it is an _archive_.
I don't know what it is like in the UK, but in the US it is customary to give two weeks notice before leaving your job. Most employers understand that "turnover" is a fact of life. It may come as a shock to your ego, but no single employee is indispensible. People come and go, and yet corporations survive.
I learned this lesson through experience. After college, I started worked for a large insurance company. After working there for 4+ years, my girlfriend (now wife) was taking a job in another city and I wanted to move with her. I agonized over what I was going to tell my employer. I felt guilty that I was bailing out on them after they had given me four years of gainful employment and experience. I honestly felt like I was doing something unethical by leaving them like that.
When I went into my manager's office to give him my letter of resignation, I was literally shaking. I thought that I would get escorted out of the building in shame. Much to my delight, my manager shook my hand and wished me the best of luck in my new city. He totally understood that people come and go, and although my leaving would be missed, they would make due.
Later I came to the realization that I was silly to feel guilty about leaving. Even though they had given me 4+ years of paychecks and experience, I had given them 4+ years of good work. Looking at things that way, it was a perfectly fair economic transaction. Once one party no longer gains from the transaction, he or she is perfect justified in terminating the relationship. There is nothing ethically wrong with that at all. You have no moral obligation to work for them longer than you desire, just like they have no obligation to keep you employed more than they desire.
As a practical issue, future companies are going to be wary of the fact that you only stayed with your job for 15 months and then left for an extended vacation. Usually employers will ask why you left your last job and what you did with your time between jobs. You may have some explaining to do.
Of course, you have alternatives to quitting after 15 months. You didn't say how long you are travelling for, but you can always use vacation time or take an unpaid leave of absense. If you prove yourself to be a valuable employee, you may be able to work something out.
I've been bit before by this problem and it is definitely a pain!