The lesson they learned is that the users like to use buggy versions of their software?
Sure blame your users...
Maybe the lesson to learn is not release buggy software!
The other day, I was investigating some strange behavior in our production environment. I scanned through some piece of code written way back in 2001. After poking around for a couple hours, I find the offending code. The code was somewhat buggy and I found it right away, but fixing it proved to be challenging. After a hour or so, my frustrations got to me. It was so bad that I started to say "who wrote this crap?", only to realize that I wrote it 7 years ago. Alas, I had stumbled upon the oldest running code in my measly existence.
Ah, but MY point being that if MS offers companies advertising for less money, or offers web sites more money for carrying their ads- or some combination of the two, then Google has a problem.
Well, I suppose this is true, if you were strictly looking at Adsense. Undercutting is surely a valid business tactic in that context. But that eats into the profit, if there is any when the smoke clears. I personally do not see much return on investment for a Microsoft Yahoo!, and some people agree.
On top of that, Google will compete. So, they drop prices and give out more too. With even odds, Google will probably still win because they have better Internet products, IMO.
Microsoft is over their heads. They seem to be very desperate to me, because they are behaving like a spoiled child who wants to hog all of the toys, but does not have enough means to play with all of them. If I was their daddy, I would tell them to sit down, shut-up, and built me a god-damn operating system that does not require me to buy a whole new computer.
You can take you clue stick back, because you obviously did not understand by post. Let me send you a big "duh" right back at you. No one denies that ads are needed to generate revenue. Anyone who runs a website already knows this.
The point is that no one visits a site for the advertising. They visit a site for some sort value. Ads devalue a site. People hate them. No doubt in my mind that there are a necessary thing if your service is free. So, imagine if Google slacked off by not improving their search quality, for the sake of increasing the bottom line. They may be able to get away with it once, but after a while people will notice. The hypothetical buzz on the net about "how Google search sucks" will be circulating, and people will start looking for a better site. So, a dwindling number of eyeballs see the precious ads, profit drops, then you become... Yahoo. Ripe for acquisition.
Make customers happy, period. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft does this well.
Second, MS will then offer cut rate advertisement (or perhaps a new click model which is deeply discounted), which will force Google to react or lose market share.
Remember that Google is primarily a advertisement firm with some killer search technology, not a technology firm that also does ads- so to use a Ballmer quote from the past, to kill a company, you "cut out the air supply". Google's air is adverts.
Bzzz. Wrong. Flawed logic. Technology brings cool applications. Cool applications bring users. Users drive advertising. Not one person I know uses Google for their see their latest "cool ads", then realize that there is some silly search engine there. Google's "air" is search technology by it's own admission. It is the consumer base using a product or service, and through clever and non-interfering advertising gives profitability. Without customers using a product, click model nets zero revenue.
If Yahoo is integrated into Microsoft as tightly as I think it would be, then I agree with you that Yahoo is dead. MSN is already be a better portal than Yahoo anyway, IMO. I don't use either on a regular basis, so take that what it is worth. However, I think that Microsoft will have sunk 44 billion into something that gives them little competitive advantage. There no technology advantage, no advantage for consumers, and little net financial advantage even with a boost in advertising.
So? I think that is irrelevant, IMO. The employer said that he misrepresented the company in the blog. There is no direct evidence of that at all. So, how can his assert such a ridiculous claim? Because he is employed by a buyer of Microsoft products and someone is crying to the boss worried that Microsoft may retaliate? Oh, please. I am the customer and user of your products, they should bow down to us. Not the other way around.:-)
I have a hard time finding any references to this guy's employer anywhere in his blog. So, what asshat translated the mere existence of this blog into "representing the company"? With respect to his need to pay the bills and all, maybe he should have stood up for himself.
To me, the most critical thing in the software market right now is the lack of good Windows software. Without good software and an owner who can afford it, a 3GHZ computer is wasted. Can cheap, quality software be written for a user's market?
A few years ago, Jamie Cansdale, expecting test-driven development to expand, developed TestDriven.NET. Though the initial work took only a couple of months, the he has spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to TestDriven.NET. Now we have 2.5, 2.6, and 2.7. The value of the time invested well exceeds $4,000,000,000,000,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the millions of people who say they are using TestDriven.NET has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never liked.NET, and 2) The real value of Microsoft's crippled products is only $2.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists know, most of you know why Microsoft sucks. They know Microsoft must be paid for software, but hobbyist need something extensible. Who cares if the people who worked on the original products at Microsoft never think of it first?
Is this fair? One thing Microsoft does not allow people to do is make improvements on their own crippled software. Hobbyist don't make a lot of money extending software. There is no royalty paid to them for the documentation, the debugging and the overhead make coding fun. One thing Microsoft does is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford their crippled software? What software developer can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and not make it user extensible? The fact is, no one besides the hobbyists invested a lot of time in Microsoft software. We have written WinAPI, and are writing COM and.NET code, but there is very little incentive to continue to use your expensive software. Most directly, the thing you do is alienate users and developers.
What about the guys who like your software? Aren't they allowed making money, too? Yes, but most of those may lose out in the end. They are the ones who hate Microsoft products the most, because they really know how much it sucks.
I would appreciate replies from any one who wants to give up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me here at slashdot.org. Nothing would please me more than being able to allow Microsoft to die and deluge the market with better software.
Well, we all know that Google is feverishly working on their free broadband service. They don't have enough time to worry about on a measly 12GB database. They are too focus on getting installation instructions correct!
So, what you are saying is that your company DOES have data retention policies, but they are just relying on you for the definition and enforcement those technical details?
With Google having many, many terrabytes of data, do they even bother doing backups? Practically speaking, could clusters of redundant servers with large hard drives be a faster, better, more cost-effective solution in lieu of the clunky, time-consuming backup tapes in the long run? It just fascinates me that as the amount of total storage increases, backup tapes seems less and less as practical. What do you think?
Since this is the first time that I seen both services, I think the answer is no. From what I can tell, netvibes is more similar to Google personal pages than Yahoo Pipes.
I tried using Pipes tonight and I think that this may be the best thing Yahoo has really done in a long time. Forget the fact that they had down time because it was "whatever"-dotted. I kinda expected it. But when I got to see it and try it, I think it was the relatively simple and straight-forward to use.
It just makes me what to smack my grandma and say "why the f*ck did I not think of that?"
They care more about MSCE and CCNP certifications than they do a Bachelor's degree.
That's an understatement. Do you know why employers prefer MSXX certifications? The answer will come soon, but first, a story. I had my yearly review recently. This is my fifth year at this company. When I started at this company, I had no certifications (just a CS degree with years experience) and none is required. Each year, I get the usual jerking motion from my manager. "You did great, but you did too much of X and not enough Y". This year, we had an interesting conversation: Manager: "You should to get MSCE certified." Me: "Why?" Manager: "It's necessary path for your career." Me: "No, it isn't. What makes you think that?" Manager: "It makes your resume good. Plus, we'll pay for it." Me: "After five years at this company, you all of a sudden want me to get certified? That does not sound right. I built the good, quality software that makes this company money without those f***ing certifications." Manager: "Well, it going to placed as a goal for this year." (He shows me the paperwork.) Me: "It's not binding unless I sign it. From my point of view, there is no advantage for me to pursue a certification. It takes time that I really do not have." Manager: "You are right. There is no advantage for you." Me: "What? Why in the world do I need to do this then?" Manager: "Remember, Joe, who left recently?" (Joe's not his real name, duh). Me: "Sure." Manager: "He held the majority of the Microsoft ceritifcations." Me: "So?" Manager: "We get a significant discount from Microsoft if we have professionals with the certifications. We will lose about $200,000 in discounts if we do not ramp up more certified people." Me: "This is a load of bullsh*t. Why in the world would we put ourselves into this situation?" Manager: "Well, we are dependent on them."
I will stop here, because it goes off into a wild tangent. For years, it always baffled me why some companies would rather hire MSCE's rather than professionals with CS or even Software Engineering degrees. This conversation basically shed a lot of light. I would imagine that A+ certification has similar perks for a company. But, it really shows what companies really care about. They hope to hire under-qualified people to "engineer" their vision, requiring the use of software from vendors, whose ultimate goal is to lock you into their substandard products and offer perks to "certify" engineers for those products. A deadly cycle, indeed.
Someone pointed out to me that the FSF does mention something about patents on their campaigns page. My bad. However, it is focus toward a petition in the United Kingdom. I personally do not believe in petitioning myself, so I may have selectively ignored it. I believe more in lobbying because that's what the politicians really listen to.
The FSF is starting to lose focus of the real issue. Companies are creating and buying patents as a strategy against their competitors. It's not only Microsoft. IBM does it. HP does it. Novell does it. Whether you like it or not, they are all competitors of free software. They may publicly promote free and open source software, but that is really only one of their business strategies. They have one goal: make money. Whether SUSE (notice I did not say "Novell"), Red Hat, Mandriva, etc enter into non-aggression aggreements is really irrelevent. The Linux distributors, the so-called "defenders of free software" also have a common goal: make money. They are little different though. The distributors ones making concessions that balance the business aspects of software versus the ethics of software to achieve their primary goal: make money. So, when the FSF and the community bitch and moan about these agreements, the tend to jump on some sort of bandwagon that distracts them from their goals. FSF: fight the real issue. Fight all of the obvious patents. Fight to copyrighting / patenting of public API's. Keep fighting real, tangable, and provable violations of the GPL.
If the businesses that are promoting free and open source software are entering into non-aggression agreeements, so what? Nothing is preventing the FSF in entering agreements of their own. For example, maybe they can enter into agreements with distributors to help the FSF with lobbying funds to address the patent issue. I do not see many news stories on that, do I FSF? Look at your campaigns page. Nothing about patents there, either. Even the high priority projects show nothing about this issue. In this old eWeek article, Lawyers Weigh In on Linux Patent Threat, shows that the FSF has at least acknowledged the issue:
[regarding the use of patent litigation insurance]
Bradley M. Kuhn, executive director of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) added that the news "isn't a surprise."
"The U.S. Patent Office has been granting patents at an alarming rate. In fact, it's likely difficult today to write any software program--be it free software or proprietary--from scratch that does not exercise the teachings of some existing software patent in the U.S.A."
Moreover, the "FSF has long warned that software patents were very dangerous not only to free software, but to the software industry as a whole. We firmly believe that the world would be a much better place without software patents," Kuhn said.
If that is the case, then why isn't the actually fighting patents the top priority of the FSF? It is the biggest threat to use of free software, don't you think?
I have a big problem with WYSIWYG word processing: I spend more time "formatting" than "writing". Even with the shear amount of templates available, it still puts a severe lag in my productivity. LaTeX is nice and powerful, but at the same time, it is complex and generally overkill for what I need. So, I started on simply use HTML for my documents, but tagging sucks just as bad. I prefer to write just plain text files with minimal markup and limited formatting, so I can focus on what I am communicating. Well, wiki syntax is relatively simple. So, I decided to find some tools that allow me to do simplified wiki markup. I ended up finding Muse, an Emacs mode that allows the user to create wiki text and have them compile into various output formats (LaTeX, DocBook, HTML, PDF, etc). So now, I create documents and resumes in text, compile it into HTML, apply stylesheets and publish/print.
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a competitor of Expensify that built their system on the .NET platform. So there....
The lesson they learned is that the users like to use buggy versions of their software? Sure blame your users... Maybe the lesson to learn is not release buggy software!
The other day, I was investigating some strange behavior in our production environment. I scanned through some piece of code written way back in 2001. After poking around for a couple hours, I find the offending code. The code was somewhat buggy and I found it right away, but fixing it proved to be challenging. After a hour or so, my frustrations got to me. It was so bad that I started to say "who wrote this crap?", only to realize that I wrote it 7 years ago. Alas, I had stumbled upon the oldest running code in my measly existence.
On top of that, Google will compete. So, they drop prices and give out more too. With even odds, Google will probably still win because they have better Internet products, IMO.
Microsoft is over their heads. They seem to be very desperate to me, because they are behaving like a spoiled child who wants to hog all of the toys, but does not have enough means to play with all of them. If I was their daddy, I would tell them to sit down, shut-up, and built me a god-damn operating system that does not require me to buy a whole new computer.
You can take you clue stick back, because you obviously did not understand by post. Let me send you a big "duh" right back at you. No one denies that ads are needed to generate revenue. Anyone who runs a website already knows this.
The point is that no one visits a site for the advertising. They visit a site for some sort value. Ads devalue a site. People hate them. No doubt in my mind that there are a necessary thing if your service is free. So, imagine if Google slacked off by not improving their search quality, for the sake of increasing the bottom line. They may be able to get away with it once, but after a while people will notice. The hypothetical buzz on the net about "how Google search sucks" will be circulating, and people will start looking for a better site. So, a dwindling number of eyeballs see the precious ads, profit drops, then you become... Yahoo. Ripe for acquisition.
Make customers happy, period. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft does this well.
If Yahoo is integrated into Microsoft as tightly as I think it would be, then I agree with you that Yahoo is dead. MSN is already be a better portal than Yahoo anyway, IMO. I don't use either on a regular basis, so take that what it is worth. However, I think that Microsoft will have sunk 44 billion into something that gives them little competitive advantage. There no technology advantage, no advantage for consumers, and little net financial advantage even with a boost in advertising.
Hey, now that there is a potential boom in the space tourism industry, those scientists can flock to the private sector.
Way to go, NASA!
So? I think that is irrelevant, IMO. The employer said that he misrepresented the company in the blog. There is no direct evidence of that at all. So, how can his assert such a ridiculous claim? Because he is employed by a buyer of Microsoft products and someone is crying to the boss worried that Microsoft may retaliate? Oh, please. I am the customer and user of your products, they should bow down to us. Not the other way around. :-)
I have a hard time finding any references to this guy's employer anywhere in his blog. So, what asshat translated the mere existence of this blog into "representing the company"? With respect to his need to pay the bills and all, maybe he should have stood up for himself.
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
.NET, and 2) The real value of Microsoft's crippled products is only $2.
.NET code, but there is very little incentive to continue to use your expensive software. Most directly, the thing you do is alienate users and developers.
To me, the most critical thing in the software market right now is the lack of good Windows software. Without good software and an owner who can afford it, a 3GHZ computer is wasted. Can cheap, quality software be written for a user's market?
A few years ago, Jamie Cansdale, expecting test-driven development to expand, developed TestDriven.NET. Though the initial work took only a couple of months, the he has spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to TestDriven.NET. Now we have 2.5, 2.6, and 2.7. The value of the time invested well exceeds $4,000,000,000,000,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the millions of people who say they are using TestDriven.NET has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never liked
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists know, most of you know why Microsoft sucks. They know Microsoft must be paid for software, but hobbyist need something extensible. Who cares if the people who worked on the original products at Microsoft never think of it first?
Is this fair? One thing Microsoft does not allow people to do is make improvements on their own crippled software. Hobbyist don't make a lot of money extending software. There is no royalty paid to them for the documentation, the debugging and the overhead make coding fun. One thing Microsoft does is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford their crippled software? What software developer can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and not make it user extensible? The fact is, no one besides the hobbyists invested a lot of time in Microsoft software. We have written WinAPI, and are writing COM and
What about the guys who like your software? Aren't they allowed making money, too? Yes, but most of those may lose out in the end. They are the ones who hate Microsoft products the most, because they really know how much it sucks.
I would appreciate replies from any one who wants to give up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me here at slashdot.org. Nothing would please me more than being able to allow Microsoft to die and deluge the market with better software.
Credit cards in cleartext? Eh. Sounds like a bonehead mistake, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, where did you say you worked? Why? Oh, no reason. :-)
Well, we all know that Google is feverishly working on their free broadband service. They don't have enough time to worry about on a measly 12GB database. They are too focus on getting installation instructions correct!
So, what you are saying is that your company DOES have data retention policies, but they are just relying on you for the definition and enforcement those technical details?
With Google having many, many terrabytes of data, do they even bother doing backups? Practically speaking, could clusters of redundant servers with large hard drives be a faster, better, more cost-effective solution in lieu of the clunky, time-consuming backup tapes in the long run? It just fascinates me that as the amount of total storage increases, backup tapes seems less and less as practical. What do you think?
New Mexico has been itching to invite the Plutonians back to Roswell. They figure, "We need to drive up tourism in the state."
What the hell, Plutonians are not party-poopers like those damn Martians.
the Unix Wars all over again.
Look, guys. Interoperate, or die. Simple as that.
Since this is the first time that I seen both services, I think the answer is no. From what I can tell, netvibes is more similar to Google personal pages than Yahoo Pipes.
I tried using Pipes tonight and I think that this may be the best thing Yahoo has really done in a long time. Forget the fact that they had down time because it was "whatever"-dotted. I kinda expected it. But when I got to see it and try it, I think it was the relatively simple and straight-forward to use.
It just makes me what to smack my grandma and say "why the f*ck did I not think of that?"
They care more about MSCE and CCNP certifications than they do a Bachelor's degree.
That's an understatement. Do you know why employers prefer MSXX certifications? The answer will come soon, but first, a story. I had my yearly review recently. This is my fifth year at this company. When I started at this company, I had no certifications (just a CS degree with years experience) and none is required. Each year, I get the usual jerking motion from my manager. "You did great, but you did too much of X and not enough Y". This year, we had an interesting conversation:
Manager: "You should to get MSCE certified."
Me: "Why?"
Manager: "It's necessary path for your career."
Me: "No, it isn't. What makes you think that?"
Manager: "It makes your resume good. Plus, we'll pay for it."
Me: "After five years at this company, you all of a sudden want me to get certified? That does not sound right. I built the good, quality software that makes this company money without those f***ing certifications."
Manager: "Well, it going to placed as a goal for this year." (He shows me the paperwork.)
Me: "It's not binding unless I sign it. From my point of view, there is no advantage for me to pursue a certification. It takes time that I really do not have."
Manager: "You are right. There is no advantage for you."
Me: "What? Why in the world do I need to do this then?"
Manager: "Remember, Joe, who left recently?" (Joe's not his real name, duh).
Me: "Sure."
Manager: "He held the majority of the Microsoft ceritifcations."
Me: "So?"
Manager: "We get a significant discount from Microsoft if we have professionals with the certifications. We will lose about $200,000 in discounts if we do not ramp up more certified people."
Me: "This is a load of bullsh*t. Why in the world would we put ourselves into this situation?"
Manager: "Well, we are dependent on them."
I will stop here, because it goes off into a wild tangent. For years, it always baffled me why some companies would rather hire MSCE's rather than professionals with CS or even Software Engineering degrees. This conversation basically shed a lot of light. I would imagine that A+ certification has similar perks for a company. But, it really shows what companies really care about. They hope to hire under-qualified people to "engineer" their vision, requiring the use of software from vendors, whose ultimate goal is to lock you into their substandard products and offer perks to "certify" engineers for those products. A deadly cycle, indeed.
Someone pointed out to me that the FSF does mention something about patents on their campaigns page. My bad. However, it is focus toward a petition in the United Kingdom. I personally do not believe in petitioning myself, so I may have selectively ignored it. I believe more in lobbying because that's what the politicians really listen to.
If the businesses that are promoting free and open source software are entering into non-aggression agreeements, so what? Nothing is preventing the FSF in entering agreements of their own. For example, maybe they can enter into agreements with distributors to help the FSF with lobbying funds to address the patent issue. I do not see many news stories on that, do I FSF? Look at your campaigns page. Nothing about patents there, either. Even the high priority projects show nothing about this issue. In this old eWeek article, Lawyers Weigh In on Linux Patent Threat, shows that the FSF has at least acknowledged the issue:
If that is the case, then why isn't the actually fighting patents the top priority of the FSF? It is the biggest threat to use of free software, don't you think?
I have a big problem with WYSIWYG word processing: I spend more time "formatting" than "writing". Even with the shear amount of templates available, it still puts a severe lag in my productivity. LaTeX is nice and powerful, but at the same time, it is complex and generally overkill for what I need. So, I started on simply use HTML for my documents, but tagging sucks just as bad. I prefer to write just plain text files with minimal markup and limited formatting, so I can focus on what I am communicating. Well, wiki syntax is relatively simple. So, I decided to find some tools that allow me to do simplified wiki markup. I ended up finding Muse, an Emacs mode that allows the user to create wiki text and have them compile into various output formats (LaTeX, DocBook, HTML, PDF, etc). So now, I create documents and resumes in text, compile it into HTML, apply stylesheets and publish/print.
Googling them! No, really. It's the most novel concept in the world. You should try it some time.
Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix)
America Ferrera (Ugly Betty)
Jessica Alba (Dark Angel, Fantastic 4)
Carrie Fisher (Star Wars)
Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager)
I mean, come on C-Net, if you are gonna pick fillers, at least come close!
Smoke 'em if you got 'em.