Re:Not outsourcing - from a business point of view
on
Inside Wal-Mart IT
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The reason Walmart doesn't outsource is because they consider IT/IS to be a core competency
More likely they consider outsourcing an unacceptable risk because of the strategic nature of their data. Perhaps they hope that employees, even though not well paid, are more loyal.
Patent's from the 90s, eh. Looks like they won't be suing me for running UCSD's p-code interpreter on my Apple ][ way back when.
In addition, one of the features of UCSD Pascal was the INTERFACE section of UNITS. If you examine the first blocks of a p-code file, you find a self describing interface, which is what I understand is at the heart of COM, CORBA, etc.
O'Reilly publishes the programming books that don't suck
And who publishes programming magazines that don't suck? The only thing on the newstand that I look at today is Dr. Dobbs and I no longer buy it - it is largely irrelevant to what I do.
I find the professional journals largely unreadable today except for an occasional article in CACM with a practical basis. Sorry, the last time I went to a local ACM meeting, I concluded that ACM stood for "Academic Computer Masturbation".
As for DIY magazines, there once was a magazine called "Circuit Cellar" by the columnist from BYTE (back when *IT* didn't suck).
I saw the word COBOL and cringed and immediately thought of long hot days in the arid lab. Also, spending enormous amounts of time programming/debugging on what I thought was the worst language ever. Master file update...almost makes me cry what they put us through...
Modern COBOLs are a far cry from the original language. Some even have OO features. While the thought of using traditional COBOL file management makes me cringe too, nowadays you can use SQL or call out to an ODBC driver. Probably the best feature of the language is its data types. You are guaranteed to have (what appears to be) decimal arithmetic of specified precision. Good built in and external products are available for creating GUIs. While I would not consider it a general purpose programming language, in fact several COBOL compilers and associated tools are written in COBOL.
Similarly, modern Fortran (90 & 95) is a much more capable language then the 66 or 77 standard versions. I would prefer to use it rather than C or C++ in numeric computation.
I'm sure the author is trying to make the point "use the right tools for the job".
Actually, I think the regulations are a bit more industry specific. The company I work at is in the Financial Services area, and we are regulated by NASD and the SEC. I believe both have rules for various different forms of communication. 3 years for electronic communications. 7 years for paper xyz forms. 6 years for TPS reports. You get the picture.
I work in a branch of health care. We took over a small office about a year ago. I just got around to retiring outdated records. What I saw being saved shocked me, even more so since I had to remove all staples and shred it all. I've since made new policy.
We no longer keep duplicate records of phone messages. If it needs to be a part of the permanent record, it gets written in the chart.
Now Im not saying that there isnt a place for a 2 year degree that is focused on programming for corprate america. corprate america needs more programmers, especialy ones that have been custom made for the type of work that corps need, but to call them CS majors?
Perhaps they have CS degrees awarded because that is what corporate america requires in its job specifications? At least this acknowledges the reality that most IT jobs *don't* need a real Computer Scientist, let alone a EE. Most business programming is vocational, maintenance programming even more so.
Typing was required in my high school as a requirement for graduation. (The school board demanded it). It turns out to be the most important course (in terms of daily practical use) of any I took in high school. Even if you do not program in the business world you must type to be productive.
The busiest executives still type today when composing e-mail and creating documents.
On a good day I type about 120 WPM. Much faster of course for common phrases and command lines. The only problem I have is with some of the keys on the top row, as I spent a number of years typing on a bit-paired keyboard which isn't the same as a normal typewriter or modern PC keyboard.
How are you going to emulate a 5.25 inch drive to read old disks?
Write really good software! Even the Apple II Disk II drives, which depended heavily on the CPU have been emulated at the hardware level. Rather than reading sectors from a file, some image formats contain the stream of bytes read by the drive hardware. [Data encodings, bytes per sector and address and data marks were defined in *software* rather than by a disk controller chip. There were a large number of screwball formats, particularly in copy protected game software.]
This technology has implications for cancer research. If we can see how molecules can be moved by light, it will only be a matter of time before we see how it causes them to mutate and become cancerous.
And about 30 seconds more for some huckster in Florida to make fantastic claims for it!
I wasn't aware that water molecules could mutate and become cancerous, by the way. (Of course we know that Di-Hydrogen Mon-Oxide *is* dangerous.)
Does any one remember Ovshinsky? He made the cover of Life magazine back in the 60s with his "ovonic" micro fluid switches that were supposed to revolutionize everything. Of course that did not happen and now Energy Conversion Devices makes solar cells and batteries.
I'm frightened. The way things are regressing, we'll have an Orwellian world with a handful of companies controlling everything; simply because they've locked down everybody with their proprietary technologies.
And eventually the only place we will be able to buy ^H^H^H license anything from will be OCP.
RTFA - "No amount of extension cable will make a wired hands-free usable - the wire always conducts enough RFI to cause trouble, regardless of any filters that might be in place." Wires really transmit. I used some spare wire to wrap around my wireless to boast the signal.
How about terminating the the cable from the cell phone to the hearing aid DAI with an opto-isolator?
And this is at least the third time this has been promoted on/.
So? HLA is a good teaching tool. Randy is now a unversity professor.
Even if you don't use assembly, it does make you a better programmer. Learn assembly and pointers make sense. As a teaching tool, assembly has some advantages. You are programming an abstract machine at a simplified level. (If you read Knuth, you are programming a fictional abstract machine!) Some data structures and algorithms are easy to explain in assembly.
Plus, understanding assembly gives you a sanity check on C code. For example, look at the hoops some C programmers go through to get the double length result of a multiply or the quotient and remainder from a divide operation at the same time.
In particular, I remember a library routine that came with a well known MS-DOS C compiler by a very talented programmer. I could see that the source code was written in C and it was a convoluted mess. Worse it was wrong! About 20 lines of 8088 code would have been equivalent (or 4 lines of '386 code). The author was trying to do some low level bit whacking in C that should have been done in asm in the first place.
6. The most obvious and easiest to code algorithm is the slowest. (Bubble sort vs. Radix or quick-sort)
7. Mastery of the above is the difference between a $50k programmer and a $90K programmer.
Even better is to match the solution to the problem.
1. When I need to write a sorting routine in a programming language as part of an application, as opposed to writing a routine for a library call, I usually use a comb sort instead of a quick sort. Speeding up the sort by a factor of 2 is less important than having code I can understand or I can write at 3 AM and get right.
2. I frequently tabulate the number of people on a mailing list by zip code. After exporting the data as text, I run it through a simple AWK program:
{a[$0]++} END{for(i in a)print i,a[i]}
This is fast enough on a few thousand items even on an original PC-XT and I can write it in my sleep.
3. Shuffling a deck of cards is easy, even in BASIC:
10 RANDOMIZE TIMER 20 DIM C(52) 30 FOR I=1 TO 52 40 C(I)=I 50 NEXT I 60 FOR I=52 TO 1 STEP -1 70 SWAP C(I),C(INT(1+I*RND)) 80 NEXT I 90 FOR I=1 TO 52 100 PRINT C(I); 110 NEXT I
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The reason Walmart doesn't outsource is because they consider IT/IS to be a core competency
More likely they consider outsourcing an unacceptable risk because of the strategic nature of their data. Perhaps they hope that employees, even though not well paid, are more loyal.
Patent's from the 90s, eh. Looks like they won't be suing me for running UCSD's p-code interpreter on my Apple ][ way back when.
In addition, one of the features of UCSD Pascal was the INTERFACE section of UNITS. If you examine the first blocks of a p-code file, you find a self describing interface, which is what I understand is at the heart of COM, CORBA, etc.
O'Reilly publishes the programming books that don't suck
And who publishes programming magazines that don't suck? The only thing on the newstand that I look at today is Dr. Dobbs and I no longer buy it - it is largely irrelevant to what I do.
I find the professional journals largely unreadable today except for an occasional article in CACM with a practical basis. Sorry, the last time I went to a local ACM meeting, I concluded that ACM stood for "Academic Computer Masturbation".
As for DIY magazines, there once was a magazine called "Circuit Cellar" by the columnist from BYTE (back when *IT* didn't suck).
Thanks for the misleading headline. "Self-assembling 3D Nanostructures" is a far cry from a form of ultra-micro-lithography.
I saw the word COBOL and cringed and immediately thought of long hot days in the arid lab. Also, spending enormous amounts of time programming/debugging on what I thought was the worst language ever. Master file update...almost makes me cry what they put us through...
Modern COBOLs are a far cry from the original language. Some even have OO features. While the thought of using traditional COBOL file management makes me cringe too, nowadays you can use SQL or call out to an ODBC driver. Probably the best feature of the language is its data types. You are guaranteed to have (what appears to be) decimal arithmetic of specified precision. Good built in and external products are available for creating GUIs. While I would not consider it a general purpose programming language, in fact several COBOL compilers and associated tools are written in COBOL.
Similarly, modern Fortran (90 & 95) is a much more capable language then the 66 or 77 standard versions. I would prefer to use it rather than C or C++ in numeric computation.
I'm sure the author is trying to make the point "use the right tools for the job".
Actually, I think the regulations are a bit more industry specific. The company I work at is in the Financial Services area, and we are regulated by NASD and the SEC. I believe both have rules for various different forms of communication. 3 years for electronic communications. 7 years for paper xyz forms. 6 years for TPS reports. You get the picture.
I work in a branch of health care. We took over a small office about a year ago. I just got around to retiring outdated records. What I saw being saved shocked me, even more so since I had to remove all staples and shred it all. I've since made new policy.
We no longer keep duplicate records of phone messages. If it needs to be a part of the permanent record, it gets written in the chart.
Now Im not saying that there isnt a place for a 2 year degree that is focused on programming for corprate america. corprate america needs more programmers, especialy ones that have been custom made for the type of work that corps need, but to call them CS majors?
Perhaps they have CS degrees awarded because that is what corporate america requires in its job specifications? At least this acknowledges the reality that most IT jobs *don't* need a real Computer Scientist, let alone a EE. Most business programming is vocational, maintenance programming even more so.
The BBC has broken the strike over terms and conditions for the Daleks....
And in late breaking news, the CBC has decided to franchise Dr. Who from the BBC. Their first episode, "The Dalek Invasion of Detroit".
Watch Daleks swarm the Ambassador Bridge, zapping toll keepers on the way.
Watch Daleks ride the elevator to the top of the Ren Cen!
Watch Daleks runing amok through a vast urban wasteland.
(True to movie tradition it will actually be shot in Dallas.)
...when the BBC agreed not to put any stairs in the new episodes.
Your standard model slag pit comes without stairs, thank you.
Typing was required in my high school as a requirement for graduation. (The school board demanded it). It turns out to be the most important course (in terms of daily practical use) of any I took in high school. Even if you do not program in the business world you must type to be productive.
The busiest executives still type today when composing e-mail and creating documents.
On a good day I type about 120 WPM. Much faster of course for common phrases and command lines. The only problem I have is with some of the keys on the top row, as I spent a number of years typing on a bit-paired keyboard which isn't the same as a normal typewriter or modern PC keyboard.
And then booting said 11/05
Booting a PDP-10 was much more fun.
How are you going to emulate a 5.25 inch drive to read old disks?
Write really good software! Even the Apple II Disk II drives, which depended heavily on the CPU have been emulated at the hardware level. Rather than reading sectors from a file, some image formats contain the stream of bytes read by the drive hardware. [Data encodings, bytes per sector and address and data marks were defined in *software* rather than by a disk controller chip. There were a large number of screwball formats, particularly in copy protected game software.]
This technology has implications for cancer research. If we can see how molecules can be moved by light, it will only be a matter of time before we see how it causes them to mutate and become cancerous.
And about 30 seconds more for some huckster in Florida to make fantastic claims for it!
I wasn't aware that water molecules could mutate and become cancerous, by the way. (Of course we know that Di-Hydrogen Mon-Oxide *is* dangerous.)
Does any one remember Ovshinsky? He made the cover of Life magazine back in the 60s with his "ovonic" micro fluid switches that were supposed to revolutionize everything. Of course that did not happen and now Energy Conversion Devices makes solar cells and batteries.
aliens contacted in 2020, arrive in 2021, just in time to be sued by SCO.
I'm frightened. The way things are regressing, we'll have an Orwellian world with a handful of companies controlling everything; simply because they've locked down everybody with their proprietary technologies.
And eventually the only place we will be able to buy ^H^H^H license anything from will be OCP.
RTFA - "No amount of extension cable will make a wired hands-free usable - the wire always conducts enough RFI to cause trouble, regardless of any filters that might be in place." Wires really transmit. I used some spare wire to wrap around my wireless to boast the signal.
How about terminating the the cable from the cell phone to the hearing aid DAI with an opto-isolator?
The next step is to sue every McDonald's with an ATM machine.
Or every grocery store with a bank branch.
it just should be illegal to try to get money from someone under the pretense of deception.
and real decpetion is even worse!
rule #1: criminals lie
rule #2: see rule #1
And this is at least the third time this has been promoted on /.
So? HLA is a good teaching tool. Randy is now a unversity professor.
Even if you don't use assembly, it does make you a better programmer. Learn assembly and pointers make sense. As a teaching tool, assembly has some advantages. You are programming an abstract machine at a simplified level. (If you read Knuth, you are programming a fictional abstract machine!) Some data structures and algorithms are easy to explain in assembly.
Plus, understanding assembly gives you a sanity check on C code. For example, look at the hoops some C programmers go through to get the double length result of a multiply or the quotient and remainder from a divide operation at the same time.
In particular, I remember a library routine that came with a well known MS-DOS C compiler by a very talented programmer. I could see that the source code was written in C and it was a convoluted mess. Worse it was wrong! About 20 lines of 8088 code would have been equivalent (or 4 lines of '386 code). The author was trying to do some low level bit whacking in C that should have been done in asm in the first place.
The only way to truely secure your data is to hire a team of tibetan monks to each remember 1/5th of it. THen they can sing it back to you.
Until "The Master" attacks Logopolis.
Did anyone else feel like part of the article was more of a resume than an article about Microsoft?
Yes, I stopped reading when the author said
In time, my stock options allowed me to pursue a for-profit dot-com startup, as well as a series of socially responsible nonprofit ventures.
A liberal dot-bomber from the west coast. What a novelty.
[snip points 1-5]
6. The most obvious and easiest to code algorithm is the slowest. (Bubble sort vs. Radix or quick-sort)
7. Mastery of the above is the difference between a $50k programmer and a $90K programmer.
Even better is to match the solution to the problem.
1. When I need to write a sorting routine in a programming language as part of an application, as opposed to writing a routine for a library call, I usually use a comb sort instead of a quick sort. Speeding up the sort by a factor of 2 is less important than having code I can understand or I can write at 3 AM and get right.
2. I frequently tabulate the number of people on a mailing list by zip code. After exporting the data as text, I run it through a simple AWK program:
{a[$0]++}
END{for(i in a)print i,a[i]}
This is fast enough on a few thousand items even on an original PC-XT and I can write it in my sleep.
3. Shuffling a deck of cards is easy, even in BASIC:
10 RANDOMIZE TIMER
20 DIM C(52)
30 FOR I=1 TO 52
40 C(I)=I
50 NEXT I
60 FOR I=52 TO 1 STEP -1
70 SWAP C(I),C(INT(1+I*RND))
80 NEXT I
90 FOR I=1 TO 52
100 PRINT C(I);
110 NEXT I
Penn State is famous for its dairy plant on campus and its short course on making ice cream
m l
http://conferences.cas.psu.edu/IceCream/icsc.ht
which Ben & Jerry attended.
Two members of the bomb squad, like a modern day odd couple and their lovable sarcastic robot friend
How about the movie "Runaway" with Tom Sellick?
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/