I worked for a company, that had it's own class B. Or/16 for those who prefer CIDR.
It had never been routed across the public net. I'd be prepared to bet there's a lot of companies that decided they 'were a major entity' and grabbed a big chunk of address space, back in the day when the IPv4 address space was 'more than anyone would ever need'.
I'd be prepared to bet there were a huge amount of 'entities' in the same situation. I mean, there's only a relatively small list that acutally need many at all, most can get by with a couple for DNS servers, a couple for mailservers, a couple for web servers and maybe a few for other 'key' internet thingummies. But 254 is way more than _most_ companies actually need.
The exception being the BBC, but even they have already paid for their content before broadcast.
Most broadcasters don't get a profit off the service they provide, they do so indirectly via selling advertising time, and compare this to the number of people who would 'receive' them.
People are finally starting to realise that 'Word Document' format isn't nearly as universal a format as they first thought, due to closed standards, where PDF, XML, HTML are all document formats that _are_.
Depends on the exact wording of the clause, but sometime 'no compete' is intended to stop you e.g. working on Rolls Royce jet engines, then moving to General Electric and doing the same thing. E.g. They hire 'your trade secrets'.
However I'd consider it entirely reasonable to move from developing websites for one customer, to developing websites for another - it's not like you're using the 'professional knowledge' acquired at one, to work for another.
But as is correctly pointed out, contract amendments are entirely fine to place before your boss/HR. I did this with 'software development' - I work in systems admin, I asked my boss about whether I'd be ok to release utilities I developed whilst I was there, and he was fine with it. (The 'IPR' restriction in that case would have been very pertinent if I'd been working on software development, but he was quite positive and helpful about the fact that releaseing stuff I'd hacked together onto the web wasn't a big deal)
Ugh yes, I've seen some frankly utterly barmy feature requests, that got 'pushed through' because the salesdrone in question had already sold that feature to a customer.
My experience of sales is limited, I admit - I've been to two places, one which had a sales culture based on bare faced lying, and bullying.
The other, where, to be fair, they were selling a pretty good product, but it cost >10x as much as an alternative which worked as well, for 95% of applications. (It had some high end bells and whistles. IF you had to have them, then it was worth it, but the majority, really didn't.)
I've walked into interviews, knowing I could do the job, and knowing I could do it well. And gave 'em an assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. I got the job in question. However with a product, you're not talking about a singular entity. Oracle can always cut more CDs and licenses.
I did a bit of investigation into a 'Technical pre-sales role'.
My conclusion was that Sales can be fun, but... well a salesman is fundamentally different in outlook to a techy - you're probably used to being well aware of what's wrong with a product, workarounds, hacks, and things that just plain suck
As sales, you _need_ to be focussing on what's great, why it's fantastic, and why this is exactly the thing they need in their business, beyond anything else.
My problem was/is that that's a bit too much like lying. You're telling your customer that yours is absolutely the best for them, and unless you're in a small subset of occurances, this is not the case.
Often, if it's obviously a 'bad idea' you won't get the sale, however you need to be deciding whether you can keep a straight face when you wholeheartedly recommend the product that gives you commission, over the one over there, that you use at home because it is actually better.
Some can, some can't.
Just remember, sales is far nearer to prostitution than to engineering. As a techy, you're looking for the best and most cost effective solution to their problem, out of a portfolio of options. As a salesperson you're aiming to look good, seduce your customers, and screw them for money.
Sadly though a pacifist outlook requires the rest of the world agree with you. Otherwise it just goes a bit wrong when some 'nutter with a gun' decides that actually, he's _not_ a pacifist, and would like to be in charge, thank you.
If violence isn't solving your problems, clearly you're not using enough of it
On a slightly more serious note, violence _does_ solve problems. It doesn't actually advance 'civilisation' but there's a very definite cultural and evolutionary imperative which basically means your ability to get thuggy on the other guy, is directly related to your long term survival.
All that's changed now, is our 'style' of violence. Terrorism for example, is clearly much more effective than military action at achieving your aims. The former only requires a few people prepared to die for their cause, of which there seems to be no great shortage, and a decent contract with your local fertilizer supplier. The latter requires thousands of troops, on long term duty in places like Iraq, which is very expensive. Both financially, but also on the 'human cost'.
Warfare is not the place to try and assert morality. Being more 'honourable' in your fighting, means you lose to people who are prepared to throw babies at you with grenades wired to their backs.
For MMOs I can understand a subscription model. I pay for website hosting on a monthly basis, so I don't see a real issue with paying for 'EVE Online hosting'. Either would be meaningless without the 'online' part of the service.
However I also object to paying just to be able to use games online. I mean, the 'service' of finding matches with another player, and have your local bandwidth/computer systems take up the load, I consider a mandatory part of a game with 'online content' and one that should be bundled in the initial purchase price.
If I'm paying £40 for a game, I expect it to be either mostly standalone, at which point the online service is a minor thing, and therefore should be a small fraction of that cost, and built in, or the online part to be the major component, and therefore also included in the initial cost, since it's otherwise 'not fit for purpose'.
I'll make an exception for MMOs, as they literally don't work offline, however I still consider it unreasonable to charge for both content _and_ time spent playing. Free game + sub seems reasonable. Expensive game + no sub also seems reasonable. The exact model I'd say depends a lot on the replayability of the game in question.
Requirements and specifications have been a challenge to developers (software and system alike) since the first '1' met the first '0'.
First off, is the question of who needs to produce the spec. The answer, sadly, is 'you' - if you're developing it, you need to produce a 'final spec' within the context of what you're able to produce.
However that's not the whole story by any means. You're also correct in saying you can't really make decisions on what stuff should do, and how and why. That's the really hard part. It requires a collective effort, between you and your users.
Unfortunately most of your users are also going to be wanting things that 'just work' so you'll possibly need to arrange with various managers that you _need_ your time, and theirs to get an accurate specification and requirements together.
Now, most will co-operate. You'll be able to talk to your users, and get them to take you through the aforementioned word document with sticky lables, and ask exactly what they mean.
Remember - your users don't understand 'technospeak'. Even simple stuff like what kind of button - they may not appreciate the difference between a radio button, and a drop down list.
Unfortunately, if you take away what they said they wanted, and do it, you'll be wrong. Which is why you need to draw up a 'spec document'. It's dull and long winded I'm afraid, but not nearly so bad as having to write and rewrite the thing you're working on, because the communications between you and your users isn't as effective as it could be.
Ask them to explain it. If there's something that exists already, arrange to watch them doing it, or better yet, use it yourself for a day or two. Draw up your document with what you 'think' they mean, in as clear a manner as possible. And then ask them to look at it, and feed back on correctness or amendments.
You can't do a spec without their input, but at the end of the day it's you that needs to do the spec - this is both because most end users are not IT savvy enough to put together something that you can use to code from, and because that way you have some control over nearly impossible features you sometimes get asked for.
Oh, and get manager 'buy in' on you doing these things. If you need to speak to the users for a long time to get it right, don't just assume they'll be able to put whatever their 'real' job is on hold whilst they do. At best, that annoys them, at worst you'll get told they 'don't have time' and you'll be stuck at a dead end.
Re:then the FHS is mistaken.
on
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And who is the authority on this? You? Please forgive me if I believe FHS over you....
--
Patenting software is like patenting 1+1=2.... silly.
I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to remove your signature for patent infringment.
Re:Disingenious backronym
on
Define - /etc?
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· Score: 1
However messing with sendmail.cf in either fashion is only marginally more preferable to poking your eyes out with a Sun power key.
I don't know about you, but when looking for a new job, negotiations should really be starting at a point where you're have no compunctions about accepting. Drop down a 30% raise to do something similar, and I'm confident that I'd say 'yes'.
Less of a raise doesn't mean a 'no' but it decreases the odds, along with a load of other factors like prospects, travel times, and that kind of thing.
The key point there being 'could'. It's not so much a hold up, as the depressing task of maintaining interoperability, when the alternative is to maintain the status quo, or just bodge on a few revisions or something.
I'd agree. I have Windows on my PC at home, because my favourite game of the day is pretty much certain to be 'fully compatible' with Windows.
Whilst a _few_ make it onto Linux, it's a minority, and generally it's a lot flakier.
Which is kind of a chicken and egg scenario - No game developer in their right mind does 'Linux Only', and only a few do 'Linux as well', simply because of relative market sizes.
Slashdot Mirror
It had never been routed across the public net. I'd be prepared to bet there's a lot of companies that decided they 'were a major entity' and grabbed a big chunk of address space, back in the day when the IPv4 address space was 'more than anyone would ever need'.
I'd be prepared to bet there were a huge amount of 'entities' in the same situation. I mean, there's only a relatively small list that acutally need many at all, most can get by with a couple for DNS servers, a couple for mailservers, a couple for web servers and maybe a few for other 'key' internet thingummies. But 254 is way more than _most_ companies actually need.
The exception being the BBC, but even they have already paid for their content before broadcast.
Most broadcasters don't get a profit off the service they provide, they do so indirectly via selling advertising time, and compare this to the number of people who would 'receive' them.
However I'd consider it entirely reasonable to move from developing websites for one customer, to developing websites for another - it's not like you're using the 'professional knowledge' acquired at one, to work for another.
But as is correctly pointed out, contract amendments are entirely fine to place before your boss/HR. I did this with 'software development' - I work in systems admin, I asked my boss about whether I'd be ok to release utilities I developed whilst I was there, and he was fine with it. (The 'IPR' restriction in that case would have been very pertinent if I'd been working on software development, but he was quite positive and helpful about the fact that releaseing stuff I'd hacked together onto the web wasn't a big deal)
Ugh yes, I've seen some frankly utterly barmy feature requests, that got 'pushed through' because the salesdrone in question had already sold that feature to a customer.
The other, where, to be fair, they were selling a pretty good product, but it cost >10x as much as an alternative which worked as well, for 95% of applications. (It had some high end bells and whistles. IF you had to have them, then it was worth it, but the majority, really didn't.)
I've walked into interviews, knowing I could do the job, and knowing I could do it well. And gave 'em an assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. I got the job in question. However with a product, you're not talking about a singular entity. Oracle can always cut more CDs and licenses.
My conclusion was that Sales can be fun, but ... well a salesman is fundamentally different in outlook to a techy - you're probably used to being well aware of what's wrong with a product, workarounds, hacks, and things that just plain suck
As sales, you _need_ to be focussing on what's great, why it's fantastic, and why this is exactly the thing they need in their business, beyond anything else.
My problem was/is that that's a bit too much like lying. You're telling your customer that yours is absolutely the best for them, and unless you're in a small subset of occurances, this is not the case.
Often, if it's obviously a 'bad idea' you won't get the sale, however you need to be deciding whether you can keep a straight face when you wholeheartedly recommend the product that gives you commission, over the one over there, that you use at home because it is actually better.
Some can, some can't.
Just remember, sales is far nearer to prostitution than to engineering. As a techy, you're looking for the best and most cost effective solution to their problem, out of a portfolio of options. As a salesperson you're aiming to look good, seduce your customers, and screw them for money.
Sadly though a pacifist outlook requires the rest of the world agree with you. Otherwise it just goes a bit wrong when some 'nutter with a gun' decides that actually, he's _not_ a pacifist, and would like to be in charge, thank you.
On a slightly more serious note, violence _does_ solve problems. It doesn't actually advance 'civilisation' but there's a very definite cultural and evolutionary imperative which basically means your ability to get thuggy on the other guy, is directly related to your long term survival.
All that's changed now, is our 'style' of violence. Terrorism for example, is clearly much more effective than military action at achieving your aims. The former only requires a few people prepared to die for their cause, of which there seems to be no great shortage, and a decent contract with your local fertilizer supplier. The latter requires thousands of troops, on long term duty in places like Iraq, which is very expensive. Both financially, but also on the 'human cost'.
Warfare is not the place to try and assert morality. Being more 'honourable' in your fighting, means you lose to people who are prepared to throw babies at you with grenades wired to their backs.
It was 5 years before I last switched jobs. But that's ok, my pants still stand up on their own.
Latency may leave something to be desired though :)
Doesn't matter, the Force overrides provenance.
"This is not the genocide you were looking for."
Depends who was wearing it last.
However I also object to paying just to be able to use games online. I mean, the 'service' of finding matches with another player, and have your local bandwidth/computer systems take up the load, I consider a mandatory part of a game with 'online content' and one that should be bundled in the initial purchase price.
If I'm paying £40 for a game, I expect it to be either mostly standalone, at which point the online service is a minor thing, and therefore should be a small fraction of that cost, and built in, or the online part to be the major component, and therefore also included in the initial cost, since it's otherwise 'not fit for purpose'.
I'll make an exception for MMOs, as they literally don't work offline, however I still consider it unreasonable to charge for both content _and_ time spent playing. Free game + sub seems reasonable. Expensive game + no sub also seems reasonable. The exact model I'd say depends a lot on the replayability of the game in question.
First off, is the question of who needs to produce the spec. The answer, sadly, is 'you' - if you're developing it, you need to produce a 'final spec' within the context of what you're able to produce.
However that's not the whole story by any means. You're also correct in saying you can't really make decisions on what stuff should do, and how and why. That's the really hard part. It requires a collective effort, between you and your users.
Unfortunately most of your users are also going to be wanting things that 'just work' so you'll possibly need to arrange with various managers that you _need_ your time, and theirs to get an accurate specification and requirements together.
Now, most will co-operate. You'll be able to talk to your users, and get them to take you through the aforementioned word document with sticky lables, and ask exactly what they mean.
Remember - your users don't understand 'technospeak'. Even simple stuff like what kind of button - they may not appreciate the difference between a radio button, and a drop down list.
Unfortunately, if you take away what they said they wanted, and do it, you'll be wrong. Which is why you need to draw up a 'spec document'. It's dull and long winded I'm afraid, but not nearly so bad as having to write and rewrite the thing you're working on, because the communications between you and your users isn't as effective as it could be.
Ask them to explain it. If there's something that exists already, arrange to watch them doing it, or better yet, use it yourself for a day or two. Draw up your document with what you 'think' they mean, in as clear a manner as possible. And then ask them to look at it, and feed back on correctness or amendments.
You can't do a spec without their input, but at the end of the day it's you that needs to do the spec - this is both because most end users are not IT savvy enough to put together something that you can use to code from, and because that way you have some control over nearly impossible features you sometimes get asked for.
Oh, and get manager 'buy in' on you doing these things. If you need to speak to the users for a long time to get it right, don't just assume they'll be able to put whatever their 'real' job is on hold whilst they do. At best, that annoys them, at worst you'll get told they 'don't have time' and you'll be stuck at a dead end.
However messing with sendmail.cf in either fashion is only marginally more preferable to poking your eyes out with a Sun power key.
Less of a raise doesn't mean a 'no' but it decreases the odds, along with a load of other factors like prospects, travel times, and that kind of thing.
If you don't ask, you don't get :)
Total War (Rome, Medieval, Medieval 2)
EVE Online
World of Warcraft (not to my taste, but some like it
Oblivion
That's just off the top of my head mind, it's entirely possible they did make it to console.
The choice of idiom was intentional. I still remember when 'no one ever got fired for buying IBM' :)
The key point there being 'could'. It's not so much a hold up, as the depressing task of maintaining interoperability, when the alternative is to maintain the status quo, or just bodge on a few revisions or something.
Whilst a _few_ make it onto Linux, it's a minority, and generally it's a lot flakier.
Which is kind of a chicken and egg scenario - No game developer in their right mind does 'Linux Only', and only a few do 'Linux as well', simply because of relative market sizes.