IE6 may be 10 years old but even today many software depends on it. In my company the QA tool is HP Quality Centre, a very expensive tool at that. It is a ActiveX control that only runs on IE 6 and IE 7 (that is if it doesn't crash every few hours). Several hundred man hours has been spent since many years to create requirements and test cases and it is not easy to replace it just for this reason alone. So IE 6 stays.
Not only in house software but vendor softwares as well. We have a huge investment in HP Quality Centre, a test management software. The UI is ActiveX but works in IE 7 though. But only the devs have installed IE7 as we have local admin access, everyone else is IE6. And this will possibly stay for ever.
In Australia a very common way to buy property is at an auction. Since you don't know how much the house will end up at auction and you have to pay a 10% deposit on the spot after winning to seal the deal, cheques are pretty much the only option. We are talking substantial money here, like 10% of $522,000 = $52.2K. You write a cheque and since you know it takes 3 working days to cash the cheque, go back home and transfer money parked in a high interest saving account to the checking account.
I have a sony vaio laptop (pcg-FX770K) bought about 5 years back. Now I want to make it a Linux system. I have tried every distro from SUSE 10, Fedora C5, Ubuntu 5.05, Damn Small Linux,Vector Linux, knoppix live cd, you name it. In all cases install just hangs. None of them goes past the install step and there is no indication why it hangs. Windows install in it without problem. As much as I like Linux this is a big problem for me. So he is right that it is difficult to install linux into a vaio laptop.
I was an IT worker in India. I am Indian.
Indian IT companies recrit all sorts of engineer i.e civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical etc apart from comp sci. Since most engineering students have atleast a common denominator of traits like analysis, rigourous coursework, maths etc. the IT companies know that they can train them in sofwtware with relative ease. Of course the CS grads get the more better technlogy to start with (says database. java etc) while the non - CS ones may have more maintenance, mainframe, testing kind of job to begin with.
Most IT companies take grads and subject them to 1-3 months intensive introductory software training courses just like a mini college course. Check for example the
infosys global education centre
Also large Indian companies are in turn opening offices in China , Hungary etc to outsource the outsourcing.
I have worked in Wipro earlier , and while I wouldn't call it a sweatshop , it isn't the best place to work either (even in India). The biggest problem there I felt was incompetent project management and their recruitment policy. Once a picker of top Indian students only they shifted to take all and sundry from little known colleges as s/w engineers and not training them properly. The result is coders who has a very narrow vision and limited knowledge.
I am sure there are exceptions but thats what I felt.
This is quite true.
I am an Indian and I have 1 more comment.
All Indian electronics/CS engineers study mostly english books and many of them by well known foreign authors. Previously they were all printed in US and there were photo copying shops that would make hundreds of photocopy of the original books. This is because the books were too dammed
expensive.
But with the advent of IT most books started getting printed in India for the local market. The result - more people buys books.
e.g The "camel" is about 10$ in India compared to 35$ in US.
I think this strategy should be bought forward in s/w. Not many in India will buy a photoshop for 600$ but make it 50$ and see...
Yesterday I purchased the starwars trlogy VHS casette boxed set , here in Australia.
Today when I played episode IV there was a message on the screen that the "Tape is protected by home entertainment approved copy protection" whatever that means.
Now how can you copy protect a analog medium like VHS tape. Also I dont know if it is legal under Aussie laws which are a bit crazy at times:)
Does anyone know how the copy protection is implemented ?
There are some software which is not directly visible to the common joe , like the one inside your cellphone or your car etc. I work for such s/w and have seen complete redesign and rewrite of code and even participated in such activities.
I have seen how 5-7 years old code which are well written but still has to be rewritten because the work its supposed to do has changed. eg. a oracle db driver based on 1990 version while the product uses oracle 8i. Of course that driver couldnt unleash the features that 8i provides.
Many times I have seen that hacking has gone extreme making the code unmaintenable specially when the original coders are no longer anymore.
Also in these softwares efficiency is paramount , bloat is not.
The companies I worked in are hugely succesfull in their respective domains and have they shut down complete working product line only to begin a new one.
If only your life or some vital infrastructure depended on M$ s/w , they wouldnt have dared to write crap.
ps: After almost 2 years of reading slashdot this
is my first post.
Slashdot Mirror
In Australia the govt. was thinking of introducing it but has backed off. So do not think it can never happen in law. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/nicola-roxon-to-spare-the-right-to-offend-in-discrimination-u-turn/story-fn59niix-1226565490811
Careful on what you wish.Virgin Blue airlines in Australia suffered a 2 day blackout costing $20 million due to a single solid state drive failure. They have since gone back to normal drive. Read it at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/still-no-clue-to-virgin-blues-20m-question/story-e6frgakx-1225937335722
IE6 may be 10 years old but even today many software depends on it. In my company the QA tool is HP Quality Centre, a very expensive tool at that. It is a ActiveX control that only runs on IE 6 and IE 7 (that is if it doesn't crash every few hours). Several hundred man hours has been spent since many years to create requirements and test cases and it is not easy to replace it just for this reason alone. So IE 6 stays.
Not only in house software but vendor softwares as well. We have a huge investment in HP Quality Centre, a test management software. The UI is ActiveX but works in IE 7 though. But only the devs have installed IE7 as we have local admin access, everyone else is IE6. And this will possibly stay for ever.
In Australia a very common way to buy property is at an auction. Since you don't know how much the house will end up at auction and you have to pay a 10% deposit on the spot after winning to seal the deal, cheques are pretty much the only option. We are talking substantial money here, like 10% of $522,000 = $52.2K. You write a cheque and since you know it takes 3 working days to cash the cheque, go back home and transfer money parked in a high interest saving account to the checking account.
I have a sony vaio laptop (pcg-FX770K) bought about 5 years back. Now I want to make it a Linux system. I have tried every distro from SUSE 10, Fedora C5, Ubuntu 5.05, Damn Small Linux,Vector Linux, knoppix live cd, you name it. In all cases install just hangs. None of them goes past the install step and there is no indication why it hangs. Windows install in it without problem. As much as I like Linux this is a big problem for me. So he is right that it is difficult to install linux into a vaio laptop.
I was an IT worker in India. I am Indian. Indian IT companies recrit all sorts of engineer i.e civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical etc apart from comp sci. Since most engineering students have atleast a common denominator of traits like analysis, rigourous coursework, maths etc. the IT companies know that they can train them in sofwtware with relative ease. Of course the CS grads get the more better technlogy to start with (says database. java etc) while the non - CS ones may have more maintenance, mainframe, testing kind of job to begin with. Most IT companies take grads and subject them to 1-3 months intensive introductory software training courses just like a mini college course. Check for example the infosys global education centre Also large Indian companies are in turn opening offices in China , Hungary etc to outsource the outsourcing.
In my part of India we have a more appropiate one -
Sive says to needle, "you got a hole in your ass".
I have worked in Wipro earlier , and while I wouldn't call it a sweatshop , it isn't the best place to work either (even in India). The biggest problem there I felt was incompetent project management and their recruitment policy. Once a picker of top Indian students only they shifted to take all and sundry from little known colleges as s/w engineers and not training them properly. The result is coders who has a very narrow vision and limited knowledge.
I am sure there are exceptions but thats what I felt.
This is quite true.
...
I am an Indian and I have 1 more comment.
All Indian electronics/CS engineers study mostly english books and many of them by well known foreign authors. Previously they were all printed in US and there were photo copying shops that would make hundreds of photocopy of the original books. This is because the books were too dammed
expensive.
But with the advent of IT most books started getting printed in India for the local market. The result - more people buys books.
e.g The "camel" is about 10$ in India compared to 35$ in US.
I think this strategy should be bought forward in s/w. Not many in India will buy a photoshop for 600$ but make it 50$ and see
Yesterday I purchased the starwars trlogy VHS casette boxed set , here in Australia. Today when I played episode IV there was a message on the screen that the "Tape is protected by home entertainment approved copy protection" whatever that means. Now how can you copy protect a analog medium like VHS tape. Also I dont know if it is legal under Aussie laws which are a bit crazy at times :)
Does anyone know how the copy protection is implemented ?
There are some software which is not directly visible to the common joe , like the one inside your cellphone or your car etc. I work for such s/w and have seen complete redesign and rewrite of code and even participated in such activities.
I have seen how 5-7 years old code which are well written but still has to be rewritten because the work its supposed to do has changed. eg. a oracle db driver based on 1990 version while the product uses oracle 8i. Of course that driver couldnt unleash the features that 8i provides.
Many times I have seen that hacking has gone extreme making the code unmaintenable specially when the original coders are no longer anymore.
Also in these softwares efficiency is paramount , bloat is not.
The companies I worked in are hugely succesfull in their respective domains and have they shut down complete working product line only to begin a new one.
If only your life or some vital infrastructure depended on M$ s/w , they wouldnt have dared to write crap.
ps: After almost 2 years of reading slashdot this
is my first post.