This only shows that money *can* be made by doing good things, that are beneficial to society and your customers, and not just by treating them like the enemy, into whose eyes you must shove your content forcefully, out of whose wallets you must take as much money as possible, and whose freedom (to choose or otherwise) you must limit.
I wish more huge corporations would see the market this way. Sure, Google isn't perfect, but initiatives like these sure make me believe they have positive intentions, all in all. I'm not saying we should blindly trust them, but they deserve some credit.
There's no shame in raking in wads of cash. The shame is in doing it in dirty ways (Like MS's monopoly, the RIAA's lawsuits and illegal conduct, etc. etc.)
In most areas of life, the better you know something, the better you get at doing it, the more you like it. Like learning to drive a car: When you start, it's hard to notice everything on the road, but as you get better, driving usually becomes fun.
I've observed that Microsoft products usually go the other way around: "Common" users like Windows and Office, more or less. Most of them are scared of anything that works differently. However, as you progress in your level of usage (Get to know the internals of the system, tweak settings, etc.), and use more advanced MS products (Like Windows Server, Exchange, MOM, etc.), and hate Microsoft more, because you notice all the crazy stuff their products do, and the insane complexities and inconsistencies that are hidden in corners of the code, the UI, the data generated, and so on.
That may be why there is no "cult like following" - The users who would be enthusiastic enough to have that attitude, just hate the MS products (that they may be experts on) too much.
I, myself, am an MCP and a Windows network admin, and so are many of my friends, and I noticed that phenomenon in most of them, as well as in many teachers (MCTs!) in courses I've taken, consultants, etc.
Since most left handed people are more adept at using their right hand than righties are adept with their left hand, a left handed person can switch to mousing with their right hand (relatively) easily. Personally, when I had a tech support job, I quickly learned to mouse with my right hand just as easily as I do with my left hand, because I had to work on many people's computers, who were, of coure, mostly right handed.
To this day (about 4 years after I stopped doing this regularly) I can operate a mouse just as easily with both my hands. Typing is still a drag, though (I type with one hand, in a weird [yet fast] way).
When I had tendonitis due to bad mousing, I just used my right hand, and it rocked.
First of all, you really should consider the project's needs and your customer's needs. For example, I'm developping and supporting some small point-of-sale application for over a year now, and I chose to write it in VB6. The project called for something that would be ready in about 3 days, and work on old machines, so neither C++ nor.NET were a possibility.
For small (Or even medium) apps that are not speed-critical, and just handle files, user input, and database data, VB6 is great. There's also a huge supportive community around it, that adores Copy & Paste, and I say that as a good thing - When you see a code snippet on some site, chances are you can use it without modifications. It will be "packaged" as an independent function or module. And people do great (and crazy) things with VB6 - You can find almost anything on the web..
The major problem with VB6 is that Microsoft killed it off, and left people like me without a replacement (Support a.NET app on Win98SE? Yeah right). However, there are a few companies I heard of that offer VB6 language clones that are supposed to be good, and even better than VB6. Google...
All in all, I'll continue using VB6, unless I stumble upon a really big disadvantage.
This may not exactly be the case with websites, but with software, the answer is (For me) "it depends". For example, I've written a program that's used on accounting and point-of-sale computers, many of which still use Win98SE, so I have to support it, work around its quirks and bugs, whatever. You can't tell a client he has to upgrade, he'll just go to your competition.
I am, however, quite stern about system updates. As far as I'm concerned, unless there's some expecially delicate update (Like XPSP2, or the few buggy MS fixes in the past), there's no excuse not to update for 99% of computers. If it works for you, great, but if you call me for support - I better not find out you had VB6 runtimes from the stonage, no VBScript, or whatever. Especially when I specify my program's dependencies (With links to the files on MS's website!).
As for websites - I try to make things simple and server-sided as possible anyway. I test on IE6 and latest Ff.
Actually, in one of my pre-recruitment interviews I told the interviewer that I read Slashdot and he was enthusiastic because he did too.:) That was an interview by technical people for a technical job, though, not the generic screening interviews that all Israeli teenagers do. (Recruitment is mandatory in Israel)
However, it should be noted that this was news to me, as I know quite a few people who played or still play D&D and other RPGs (I did, too) and served in highly classified jobs (Like myself).
Also, a prominent Israeli portal posted this caricature about the issue.
The guy on the dragon is saying (Very loosely translated) "I won't go anywhere but Golani", which is an elite unit.
And for the Slashdot crowd, the artist (Miki Mottes) was once the Sysop of a major Israeli BBS.
Sorry to tell you, but after having a mini-flashlight (LED-based) on my keychain for the past few months, I can tell you that a flashlight is much more useful than you think..
I think the name "Systems Administrator", though not completely descriptive, caught on very nicely and is pretty close to what all the people described above do.. You administer the system, the infrastructure upon which people work, that gives them the services they need to work.
And I'll add something a senior manager told a friend of mine once: When there's nothing wrong with the systems, network, etc., everyone asks: "What do we need the operators and admins for??", and on the other hand, when there's a malfunction and everyone's staring at the screen and can't work until it's fixed, everyone asks: "What do we need the operators and admins for??"
And I think there's no tech support/admin guy here that won't nod his head reading this... To either direction.:)
BBSes were brought to Israel in the late '80s, and now it's pretty safe to say that the BBS scene is almost completely dead.
I'm a sysop since 1995, and when I opened my BBS, which was running 10PM to 7AM each night on my 386dx with a 2400 modem, I'd get a few calls each night, not counting those bothering my family during daytime.:-)
Nowadays, what's left of my BBSes and most of the others is mail. We have Fidonet technology based mail nets in Israel called C_Net and UltiNet (The latter has a homepage and online mail reading, http://www.mikud.org - Requires Hebrew on your browser [Because it's in Hebrew, duh..]), which are relatively active and have about 50-70 writers together. In the "good old days", we had over a hundred writers, and hundreds of readers...
As for the BBSes themselves, most BBSes that aren't mailer-only (Like mine is) run RemoteAccess or PCBoard, and get about 5 users a day, at best.
As for BBSes worldwide, off the top of my head, I can think of http://www.pcmicro.com and http://www.juge.com where you will probably find links to other BBSes too.
Slashdot Mirror
This only shows that money *can* be made by doing good things, that are beneficial to society and your customers, and not just by treating them like the enemy, into whose eyes you must shove your content forcefully, out of whose wallets you must take as much money as possible, and whose freedom (to choose or otherwise) you must limit.
I wish more huge corporations would see the market this way. Sure, Google isn't perfect, but initiatives like these sure make me believe they have positive intentions, all in all. I'm not saying we should blindly trust them, but they deserve some credit.
There's no shame in raking in wads of cash. The shame is in doing it in dirty ways (Like MS's monopoly, the RIAA's lawsuits and illegal conduct, etc. etc.)
"Double whammy", of course, being a professional immunological term.
In most areas of life, the better you know something, the better you get at doing it, the more you like it. Like learning to drive a car: When you start, it's hard to notice everything on the road, but as you get better, driving usually becomes fun.
I've observed that Microsoft products usually go the other way around: "Common" users like Windows and Office, more or less. Most of them are scared of anything that works differently. However, as you progress in your level of usage (Get to know the internals of the system, tweak settings, etc.), and use more advanced MS products (Like Windows Server, Exchange, MOM, etc.), and hate Microsoft more, because you notice all the crazy stuff their products do, and the insane complexities and inconsistencies that are hidden in corners of the code, the UI, the data generated, and so on.
That may be why there is no "cult like following" - The users who would be enthusiastic enough to have that attitude, just hate the MS products (that they may be experts on) too much.
I, myself, am an MCP and a Windows network admin, and so are many of my friends, and I noticed that phenomenon in most of them, as well as in many teachers (MCTs!) in courses I've taken, consultants, etc.
Since most left handed people are more adept at using their right hand than righties are adept with their left hand, a left handed person can switch to mousing with their right hand (relatively) easily. Personally, when I had a tech support job, I quickly learned to mouse with my right hand just as easily as I do with my left hand, because I had to work on many people's computers, who were, of coure, mostly right handed.
To this day (about 4 years after I stopped doing this regularly) I can operate a mouse just as easily with both my hands. Typing is still a drag, though (I type with one hand, in a weird [yet fast] way).
When I had tendonitis due to bad mousing, I just used my right hand, and it rocked.
First of all, you really should consider the project's needs and your customer's needs. For example, I'm developping and supporting some small point-of-sale application for over a year now, and I chose to write it in VB6. The project called for something that would be ready in about 3 days, and work on old machines, so neither C++ nor .NET were a possibility.
.NET app on Win98SE? Yeah right). However, there are a few companies I heard of that offer VB6 language clones that are supposed to be good, and even better than VB6. Google...
For small (Or even medium) apps that are not speed-critical, and just handle files, user input, and database data, VB6 is great. There's also a huge supportive community around it, that adores Copy & Paste, and I say that as a good thing - When you see a code snippet on some site, chances are you can use it without modifications. It will be "packaged" as an independent function or module. And people do great (and crazy) things with VB6 - You can find almost anything on the web..
The major problem with VB6 is that Microsoft killed it off, and left people like me without a replacement (Support a
All in all, I'll continue using VB6, unless I stumble upon a really big disadvantage.
This may not exactly be the case with websites, but with software, the answer is (For me) "it depends". For example, I've written a program that's used on accounting and point-of-sale computers, many of which still use Win98SE, so I have to support it, work around its quirks and bugs, whatever. You can't tell a client he has to upgrade, he'll just go to your competition.
I am, however, quite stern about system updates. As far as I'm concerned, unless there's some expecially delicate update (Like XPSP2, or the few buggy MS fixes in the past), there's no excuse not to update for 99% of computers. If it works for you, great, but if you call me for support - I better not find out you had VB6 runtimes from the stonage, no VBScript, or whatever. Especially when I specify my program's dependencies (With links to the files on MS's website!).
As for websites - I try to make things simple and server-sided as possible anyway. I test on IE6 and latest Ff.
They stripped all instances of Miranda's copyright. That's still not acceptable under the GPL.
Actually, in one of my pre-recruitment interviews I told the interviewer that I read Slashdot and he was enthusiastic because he did too. :) That was an interview by technical people for a technical job, though, not the generic screening interviews that all Israeli teenagers do. (Recruitment is mandatory in Israel)
However, it should be noted that this was news to me, as I know quite a few people who played or still play D&D and other RPGs (I did, too) and served in highly classified jobs (Like myself).
Also, a prominent Israeli portal posted this caricature about the issue.
The guy on the dragon is saying (Very loosely translated) "I won't go anywhere but Golani", which is an elite unit.
And for the Slashdot crowd, the artist (Miki Mottes) was once the Sysop of a major Israeli BBS.
Sorry to tell you, but after having a mini-flashlight (LED-based) on my keychain for the past few months, I can tell you that a flashlight is much more useful than you think..
I think the name "Systems Administrator", though not completely descriptive, caught on very nicely and is pretty close to what all the people described above do.. You administer the system, the infrastructure upon which people work, that gives them the services they need to work.
:)
And I'll add something a senior manager told a friend of mine once: When there's nothing wrong with the systems, network, etc., everyone asks: "What do we need the operators and admins for??", and on the other hand, when there's a malfunction and everyone's staring at the screen and can't work until it's fixed, everyone asks: "What do we need the operators and admins for??"
And I think there's no tech support/admin guy here that won't nod his head reading this... To either direction.
BBSes were brought to Israel in the late '80s, and now it's pretty safe to say that the BBS scene is almost completely dead.
:-)
I'm a sysop since 1995, and when I opened my BBS, which was running 10PM to 7AM each night on my 386dx with a 2400 modem, I'd get a few calls each night, not counting those bothering my family during daytime.
Nowadays, what's left of my BBSes and most of the others is mail. We have Fidonet technology based mail nets in Israel called C_Net and UltiNet (The latter has a homepage and online mail reading, http://www.mikud.org - Requires Hebrew on your browser [Because it's in Hebrew, duh..]), which are relatively active and have about 50-70 writers together. In the "good old days", we had over a hundred writers, and hundreds of readers...
As for the BBSes themselves, most BBSes that aren't mailer-only (Like mine is) run RemoteAccess or PCBoard, and get about 5 users a day, at best.
As for BBSes worldwide, off the top of my head, I can think of http://www.pcmicro.com and http://www.juge.com where you will probably find links to other BBSes too.
Liron.