Lets face it, Microsoft and Apple have roughly the same business model: Wait for a small company to invent something and prove out the market then buy/clone/copy/steal the invention.
Ipod was done by Archos first, does anyone recall the Stacker idea MS lifted in the DOS days? I am too lazy to come up with more examples... but its the way things work.
I really thought Lucas Arts made the vanguard games, the Monkey Islands, the Day of the Tentacles, the Grim Fandangos. Grim Fandango is basically playable art.
Some informal studies have shown that software engineering is about 20% clerical (typing, etc) and about 80% intellectual. This suggests that the limit of computer automation of software engineering is about 20% until computers are able to think. Our jobs are quite safe at present.
Agreed - my first reaction to this is WTF?! It's a shame that we live in such a paranoid society where everybody thinks their neighbor is "out to get them" and that somehow that justifies an escalating spiral of "revenge" tactics. Life is too f'king short..you all should learn to relax more.
I have seen this with some friends family members. One has a grandmother who is in her 80s, who is constantly concerned that the neighbors are spying on her, "screwing her" in a variety of ways, etc etc. I can think of *NOTHING* that her 20 - 40 year old neighbors could care less about then what an 80 year old woman does, or even to take the time out of their lives to screw with her.
In reality, she seems to suffer from HPD, which is in the family of illnesses more commonly called a "borderline personalities" This is someone who is not outright dysfunctional, but nevertheless has some serious issues. The fact that the submitters neighbor feels he needs to do this (assuming people really aren't screwing with him), probably indicates some issue:)
It depends on how seriously you take XP. At its core, XP is mostly good advice, and you'd be surprised how many companies need their relatively simple advice. However, there are a lot of small minds who make it into a religion in place of thinking for themselves.
I went to an interview a few months ago and the place told me, "We tried XP but we like scrumm better because XP's cycle times are too short." A statement I found incredible because they clearly had missed the entire point of a methodology in the first place.
The problem isn't the "War on Terror". Terrorists are real. The problem is the people willing to give up their rights because of it, and the people willing to take advantadge of it to create their facist states, or the theocracies or whatever they plan on doing.
Just wait till your sis makes it big... There's this uncomfortable area where you're making a fairly decent ammount of money but don't really have the resources to cheat the tax system. I have just barely inched into the 6 figure territory, and I'm really not any better off for it. The government takes the better portion of what I make.
I am leaning towards #2, but I think I remember reading that peach / apriocot pits can be used to make air filters for gas masks. I *believe* that the government collected them during WWI or WWII as part of the war effort. Perhaps some war buff could confirm my recollection or tell me im an idiot?:)
No matter what peaches are used for, restrictions on them is rediculous.
Here in California there are severe restrictions on purchasing psuephedrine (sp?) (sudafed) because its a precursor to meth I think? My county used to be the meth capital of the country (I'm not sure if it is anymroe), but at one time we were making 80% of the countries meth. Here you have to *SIGN A REGISTRY* if you buy *any ammount*. Consequence: I just don't buy it anymore. Also I think you have to be over 21 to buy spray paint, the idea is to cut down on grafiti... The law has had no effect on grafitti, but has stoped lots of kids from painting their bikes. The idea that gang members *OR* drug dealers will be deteured by these restrictions is laughable.
Lastly, my uncle bought (IIRC) a water desalinator for his boat and recieved a visit from the FBI asking about it. So yea, they're watching.
Thats a *VERY* good point. However, it this particular case, the upper management completely undermines the middle management with unrealstic projects, deadlines, budgets and staffing levels. Nothing gets done. And they blame the manager. Everyone sees this, and nobody will ACCEPT any middle management positions. Far more so when they offfer *NO* pay increase whatsoever, yet you'll soon be the scape goat for their problems.
Eh, my company routinely offers people "Management" positions with no pay increase whatsoever. In one case it actually offered someone a substantial *DECREASE* in pay to take a management position.
Thats the first thing I thought of when I read this.
Exactly. And its also how students graduate writing all their programs as one function. Ive seen perfectly "correct" programs that were 3000 lines of if statements, that could have been accomplished with 200 lines of code.
At my place of business, we just hired a junior engineer (over my sternious objections) who just graudated from college and asks questions like "How can I compare variables?"... I have to think that automated grading is part of the problem that creates people like that:)
So if layoffs end up scaring off all the great employees, how should a company get rid of its worst employees? I only ask this as idle speculation.
Its pretty easy actually. The place I work offered retention bonuses during a difficult period. Basically contracts which offered a bonus if the employee stayed after a certain date. The problem was the bonuses simply highlighted the incomopetence of our management. They were only offered to "key people" which created a division between those who got them and those who didn't. But far worse then that -- people who were seriously critical to the company were *NOT* offered bonuses, and a lot of deadwood was! So in this case -- trying to retain the employees was far worse than doing nothing at all.
As far as deadwood it comes back to good management. *VERY* few companies have good management. If you have a good manager he should be able to identiy who in his group is performing and who isn't. However, more frequently management is concerned with politics, with race, , and with protecting their turf. For Instance, our test engineering group is run by a vietnamese guy, and he only hires vietnamese people, and has even *FIRED* people who aren't vietnamese for expressly that reason. He hired a vietnamese programmer who is a *COMPLETE* idiot -- the guy has to ask us questions about how to do things like comparing variables! My point is, as long as there are concerns other than the best interests of the company -- you cant hope to eliminate the idiots.
Yes, I've been through this as well. The company makes people nervous, and all of your *TOP* talent leaves because they're top talent, they can get a job anywhere. You loose signifigant domain knowledge with those people. Then the middle teir starts leaving under the stress of having to do *ALL* the work (remember: the bottom does very little work). Eventually you are left with a few middle teir people, and everyone who never should have worked for you in the first place.
I find layoffs to be a logical fallicy. Unless you are reducing your product lines, or support, or sustaining engineering... Then you're either saying "We are overstaffed and therefore fuckups" or you're saying, "We plan to abuse our current employees into doing more work." Either way, a sign taht the end is coming.
Maybe its just being in my late 20's and still having vivid memories of being in High School... But my High School was basically a prison. It was draconian, it was fascism, and it "sucked bigtime."
Giving a responsible well meaning institution parental rights would not be a bad thing. But most high schools are prisons, at BEST they are babysitting services.
IMHO our entire educational system needs radical overhaul, but to do that we need a SOCIETAL overhaul because the majority of americans do not value education. The prison wardens who work at schols now? They're fighting fires, they're trying to hold the line. They're in distress.
Their *ATTITUDE* is a serious problem. They're "training customers" and claiming that DVRs are about time shifting and not commercial avoidance.
This my friend, is the first hacking cough of the death of this industry, and just like the RIAA whose being replaced by CDBABY, they're willing to do *ANYTHING* to make it last a few more years.
Thank you. As a Software Architect, I'd like to say you are 100% dead on. I can spot a deathmarch project from the next county, and they *ALL* begin with phrases like "The market window for this product is..." or "We have to complete this by XXX or we all die" or my favorite, "My research shows every month we don't have capability X we loose Y dollars."
The appropriate response to any of these is "You should have proposed this project X months ago (where X is a conservative estimate."
Smaller = Faster. You can do one of two things to make a HD faster, spin the platters faster, or increase density so more data is passing under the heads.
Re:Don't forget LucasArts
on
Five That Fell
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· Score: 1
I was going to make the same suggestion. I don't think even today companies are capable of making adventure games as polished as LucasFilms games were 15 years ago...
Now all they do is make star wars games... they should change their name to the "star wars company"... I think "LucasArts" is a bit overreaching for what they're doing.
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The subtext of the saying is -- Sometimes the low tech solution is better.
Ipod was done by Archos first, does anyone recall the Stacker idea MS lifted in the DOS days? I am too lazy to come up with more examples ... but its the way things work.
Sadly, lucas has given that up.
Some informal studies have shown that software engineering is about 20% clerical (typing, etc) and about 80% intellectual. This suggests that the limit of computer automation of software engineering is about 20% until computers are able to think. Our jobs are quite safe at present.
I have seen this with some friends family members. One has a grandmother who is in her 80s, who is constantly concerned that the neighbors are spying on her, "screwing her" in a variety of ways, etc etc. I can think of *NOTHING* that her 20 - 40 year old neighbors could care less about then what an 80 year old woman does, or even to take the time out of their lives to screw with her.
In reality, she seems to suffer from HPD, which is in the family of illnesses more commonly called a "borderline personalities" This is someone who is not outright dysfunctional, but nevertheless has some serious issues. The fact that the submitters neighbor feels he needs to do this (assuming people really aren't screwing with him), probably indicates some issue :)
I went to an interview a few months ago and the place told me, "We tried XP but we like scrumm better because XP's cycle times are too short." A statement I found incredible because they clearly had missed the entire point of a methodology in the first place.
The problem isn't the "War on Terror". Terrorists are real. The problem is the people willing to give up their rights because of it, and the people willing to take advantadge of it to create their facist states, or the theocracies or whatever they plan on doing.
Just wait till your sis makes it big... There's this uncomfortable area where you're making a fairly decent ammount of money but don't really have the resources to cheat the tax system. I have just barely inched into the 6 figure territory, and I'm really not any better off for it. The government takes the better portion of what I make.
No matter what peaches are used for, restrictions on them is rediculous.
Here in California there are severe restrictions on purchasing psuephedrine (sp?) (sudafed) because its a precursor to meth I think? My county used to be the meth capital of the country (I'm not sure if it is anymroe), but at one time we were making 80% of the countries meth. Here you have to *SIGN A REGISTRY* if you buy *any ammount*. Consequence: I just don't buy it anymore. Also I think you have to be over 21 to buy spray paint, the idea is to cut down on grafiti ... The law has had no effect on grafitti, but has stoped lots of kids from painting their bikes. The idea that gang members *OR* drug dealers will be deteured by these restrictions is laughable.
Lastly, my uncle bought (IIRC) a water desalinator for his boat and recieved a visit from the FBI asking about it. So yea, they're watching.
I said none of the google *APPS*. Submitting to a webpage isn't an app.
Google local, maps, etc, all display a message that the try 650 is not supported. Try to be less insulting the next time you say something dumb.
Can anyone tell me why *NONE* of the google apps work with the Palm Treo?
Thats a *VERY* good point. However, it this particular case, the upper management completely undermines the middle management with unrealstic projects, deadlines, budgets and staffing levels. Nothing gets done. And they blame the manager. Everyone sees this, and nobody will ACCEPT any middle management positions. Far more so when they offfer *NO* pay increase whatsoever, yet you'll soon be the scape goat for their problems.
Thats the first thing I thought of when I read this.
At my place of business, we just hired a junior engineer (over my sternious objections) who just graudated from college and asks questions like "How can I compare variables?" ... I have to think that automated grading is part of the problem that creates people like that :)
How about doing your job instead? Automated turn in is fine, automated grading is bullshit and a perversion of academic principles.
Their software is already overpriced. I need to buy a copy of XP Pro and VS 2005 Pro...
A fully legit boxed copy of XP Pro is $279!!
A fully legit copy of VS2005 Pro is $720! ($488 for upgrade edition)
Consequence? I'm sticking with win2000 and vs2005 standard.
I find it amusing that Apple charges $110 for a superior OS, and their dev software is *FREE*.
Its pretty easy actually. The place I work offered retention bonuses during a difficult period. Basically contracts which offered a bonus if the employee stayed after a certain date. The problem was the bonuses simply highlighted the incomopetence of our management. They were only offered to "key people" which created a division between those who got them and those who didn't. But far worse then that -- people who were seriously critical to the company were *NOT* offered bonuses, and a lot of deadwood was! So in this case -- trying to retain the employees was far worse than doing nothing at all.
As far as deadwood it comes back to good management. *VERY* few companies have good management. If you have a good manager he should be able to identiy who in his group is performing and who isn't. However, more frequently management is concerned with politics, with race, , and with protecting their turf. For Instance, our test engineering group is run by a vietnamese guy, and he only hires vietnamese people, and has even *FIRED* people who aren't vietnamese for expressly that reason. He hired a vietnamese programmer who is a *COMPLETE* idiot -- the guy has to ask us questions about how to do things like comparing variables! My point is, as long as there are concerns other than the best interests of the company -- you cant hope to eliminate the idiots.
I find layoffs to be a logical fallicy. Unless you are reducing your product lines, or support, or sustaining engineering ... Then you're either saying "We are overstaffed and therefore fuckups" or you're saying, "We plan to abuse our current employees into doing more work." Either way, a sign taht the end is coming.
Giving a responsible well meaning institution parental rights would not be a bad thing. But most high schools are prisons, at BEST they are babysitting services.
IMHO our entire educational system needs radical overhaul, but to do that we need a SOCIETAL overhaul because the majority of americans do not value education. The prison wardens who work at schols now? They're fighting fires, they're trying to hold the line. They're in distress.
That is *extremely* true.
This my friend, is the first hacking cough of the death of this industry, and just like the RIAA whose being replaced by CDBABY, they're willing to do *ANYTHING* to make it last a few more years.
The appropriate response to any of these is "You should have proposed this project X months ago (where X is a conservative estimate."
Smaller = Faster. You can do one of two things to make a HD faster, spin the platters faster, or increase density so more data is passing under the heads.
Now all they do is make star wars games ... they should change their name to the "star wars company" ... I think "LucasArts" is a bit overreaching for what they're doing.