The main problem I see with unions is that while they theoretically exist for the benefit of all members, they tend to prop up the underachievers and demote the go-getters. In other words, they breed mediocrity.
Also, think of this: with an IT union, wages will most likely be capped for its members. Rather than the open market determining rates, it will be the union. I, personally, would much rather take my chances and go for the higher wage.
I once spent from 6:00AM Friday morning till 7PM Monday in my office. The office was tiny, bad light, etc... with a pungent view of an alley in Pioneer Square (Seattle). Around midnight each night I would set the alarm on my cellphone to go off at 3:00AM and try to sleep on the floor. I found that I didn't actually sleep that much, but did feel somewhat refreshed.
My wife, of course, did not understand... she became suspicious at about 9PM of the first day. She became even more suspicious when I told her she couldn't come to the office to visit. The end? I finally got home and showed her the end result of the marathon. Her response: "You spent 3 days working on that!???".
Sometimes it's very refreshing and eye-opening to be married to a non-techie.
MSSQL Server also really, really, really prefers to talk over the network. I have seen several large sites that had IIS and MSSQL Server on the same box and were slow as shit. However, moving MSSQL Server to its own box, with *nothing* else running, increased response time, etc... by an order of magnitude.
Come on! I didn't say vaporware... I said creating a demonstration that will not crash... and I also said that was acceptable only so long as the demonstrator followed through on their promises.
What I was speaking of was setting up presentations/demonstrations in such a way that they *cannot fail*, which, in my opinion is much different than fraudulent behavior. Realize that the majority of these demonstrations happen months before an actual product is *released*. There are bound to be problems with the product at that stage, but you must show the audience what the product *will* do. So long as the presenting company follows through with what they have shown in the presentation, I see no problem.
Now, misleading on financial matters is an entirely different story.
And if everyone in china is just gonna start entering pinyin to make characters you might as well pull a vietnam and just all out romanize your language...
I disagree. On my old Japanese Sony Vaio I have the entire Hiragana "alphabet". So, using a copy of Japanese Windows, I can "spell out" Kanji using Hiragana. To me, perfectly natural. I can get the Kanji for Daibutsu by typing the "da" "i" "bu" "tsu" keys on the keyboard. Simple.
As with most large presentations, MS presentations are almost always rigged. I spent a brief period at Microsoft Consulting Services and we created several "demos" that were rather elaborate in the way they made it *look* like something was really happening. However, you can't blame MS for that... any smart person would try to limit the unknown factors in a presentation to thousands of people. That's just smart business. A bit misleading, perhaps... but smart business.
It's not confusion so much as just how, um... unpleasant the code looks. Using code delimeters like <% is bad enough, but with Perl you end up with lots of $, %, etc... to *me* very, very unreadable code. So, to answer your question: I am not a Perl fan. At all. That being said, I prefer templating languages that allow for very clean separation of logic and HTML (as one example, look at Skunkweb, skunkweb.sourceforge.net)... then again, I am a Python bigot.
Just my opinion. Like I said in my original post, I think that the concepts behind Mason are very valid and well implemented, I just dislike the templating language.
I just don't understand how code like this (the first example in the Mason Developer Manual) is even remotely readable:
<%perl>
my $noun = 'World';
my @time = split/[\s:]/, localtime;
</%perl>
Hello <% $noun %>,
% if ( $time[3] < 12 ) {
good morning.
% } else {
good afternoon.
% }
I know that Mason has a lot of wonderful things under the hood (the component caching mechanism is pretty swell) but I would rather shoot myself in the head than manage a large website with hundreds of pages that all looked like the above.
Not necessarily. There are two ways that monetary reward could come from such a venture: 1) the programmer may be able to learn new tools and skills "on the job" while performing this charity work -- which may equate to more money in the programmer's professional life, or, 2) not all "charity" work is performed pro bono. The venture that I alluded to in my earlier post involves an initial pro bono component, but my firm will be able to reap the rewards of that pro bono work at a later date, while still empowering the community. It's a win-win.
There's nothing worse than sending in aid that makes the person wind up with this big shiny thing that they don't have the resources to maintain or expand on.
*EXACTLY*. Any venture that claims to be of benefit to the "needy" should make sure that it provides the tools and education to empower the community in which they are working; otherwise, you end up with a community that is now *more reliant* on outside sources to work with the technology/software/whatever that you have provided.
I would liken giving a Zambian village a network of PCs without training them how to use and maintain them to teaching schoolchilren how to read a book, but without teaching them anything about semantics, grammar, etc... in other words, worthless.
My firm is currently working with the economic development council of an impoverished county in the Pacific Northwest. While the technology in this county is not quite as outdated as that in, say, Gambia, it isn't *that* far behind.
We have found that the various city, county, and private organizations are willing to bend over backwards to work with us. Bear in mind, I am not talking about a purely altruistic venture on my own firm's part, but rather a joint venture between a private company and the community, with profits being used to further develop technology-specific public works in the region.
It depends on the contract. For example, I am looking at one in front of me right now that says, "All disputes regarding this contract are subject to arbitration of the AAA". I don't know if that holds up in court or not... fortunately have never had to test the theory.
Also check to see if there is an AAA (American Arbitrator Association) clause in the contract. If that is the case, then you *must* use AAA for any disputes.
Re:I've got a mouse that needs no hands!
on
Airborne Mouse
·
· Score: 1
I'll bet nothing turns on chicks like having a "reflective gizmo" hanging from your glasses... that must be the 00's equivelant of tape on the glasses. Plus, I am sure you don't look like a spazz rocking your head back and forth.;-)
On a business trip one time I found myself without access to any dialup other than AOL. I signed up for the free account and cancelled the next week when I returned home. The bills kept coming from AOL. Every month they would bill and every month I would call Amex and have the bill removed. I finally, god's honest truth, cancelled the Amex card just to make it go away.
Go to ebay and find an IBM Workpad z50. It's a CE machine, looks exactly like a baby thinkpad (8.1" screen, 2/3-size keyboard, 2 USB ports, builtin 33.6 modem, one PCMCIA and one CF slot, 16MB -- upgradeable to 48MB, decent sound and a screen that does 640x480). With a CompactFlash card you can install NetBSD on it. I have heard of various success installing Linux on it. In a crunch, I believe there is an emacs port to CE... I know that there is a vim port.
I don't think it really matters whether there is a C# ISO standard or not. People are either going to use it or they are not. Did corporations flock to using Java^H^H^H^HECMAScript) just because it became "standardized"?
I don't get this. Yeah, there were many ridiculous words banded about in business plans of recent years, but synergy is not one of them. Synergy is a word that makes sense. It might have been overused, but it makes sense.
I think your premise is wrong. Binding a bunch of firms together to help in the death process is ridiculous. Bringing a bunch of firms with synergistic and underutilized technology together and forming a new firm makes a lot of sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, think of this: with an IT union, wages will most likely be capped for its members. Rather than the open market determining rates, it will be the union. I, personally, would much rather take my chances and go for the higher wage.
I once spent from 6:00AM Friday morning till 7PM Monday in my office. The office was tiny, bad light, etc... with a pungent view of an alley in Pioneer Square (Seattle). Around midnight each night I would set the alarm on my cellphone to go off at 3:00AM and try to sleep on the floor. I found that I didn't actually sleep that much, but did feel somewhat refreshed.
My wife, of course, did not understand... she became suspicious at about 9PM of the first day. She became even more suspicious when I told her she couldn't come to the office to visit. The end? I finally got home and showed her the end result of the marathon. Her response: "You spent 3 days working on that!???".
Sometimes it's very refreshing and eye-opening to be married to a non-techie.
MSSQL Server also really, really, really prefers to talk over the network. I have seen several large sites that had IIS and MSSQL Server on the same box and were slow as shit. However, moving MSSQL Server to its own box, with *nothing* else running, increased response time, etc... by an order of magnitude.
not if you had one of these babies!
Come on! I didn't say vaporware... I said creating a demonstration that will not crash... and I also said that was acceptable only so long as the demonstrator followed through on their promises.
Now, misleading on financial matters is an entirely different story.
I disagree. On my old Japanese Sony Vaio I have the entire Hiragana "alphabet". So, using a copy of Japanese Windows, I can "spell out" Kanji using Hiragana. To me, perfectly natural. I can get the Kanji for Daibutsu by typing the "da" "i" "bu" "tsu" keys on the keyboard. Simple.
As with most large presentations, MS presentations are almost always rigged. I spent a brief period at Microsoft Consulting Services and we created several "demos" that were rather elaborate in the way they made it *look* like something was really happening. However, you can't blame MS for that... any smart person would try to limit the unknown factors in a presentation to thousands of people. That's just smart business. A bit misleading, perhaps... but smart business.
Just my opinion. Like I said in my original post, I think that the concepts behind Mason are very valid and well implemented, I just dislike the templating language.
I just don't understand how code like this (the first example in the Mason Developer Manual) is even remotely readable:
<%perl> /[\s:]/, localtime;
my $noun = 'World';
my @time = split
</%perl>
Hello <% $noun %>,
% if ( $time[3] < 12 ) {
good morning.
% } else {
good afternoon.
% }
I know that Mason has a lot of wonderful things under the hood (the component caching mechanism is pretty swell) but I would rather shoot myself in the head than manage a large website with hundreds of pages that all looked like the above.
Not necessarily. There are two ways that monetary reward could come from such a venture: 1) the programmer may be able to learn new tools and skills "on the job" while performing this charity work -- which may equate to more money in the programmer's professional life, or, 2) not all "charity" work is performed pro bono. The venture that I alluded to in my earlier post involves an initial pro bono component, but my firm will be able to reap the rewards of that pro bono work at a later date, while still empowering the community. It's a win-win.
*EXACTLY*. Any venture that claims to be of benefit to the "needy" should make sure that it provides the tools and education to empower the community in which they are working; otherwise, you end up with a community that is now *more reliant* on outside sources to work with the technology/software/whatever that you have provided.
I would liken giving a Zambian village a network of PCs without training them how to use and maintain them to teaching schoolchilren how to read a book, but without teaching them anything about semantics, grammar, etc... in other words, worthless.
We have found that the various city, county, and private organizations are willing to bend over backwards to work with us. Bear in mind, I am not talking about a purely altruistic venture on my own firm's part, but rather a joint venture between a private company and the community, with profits being used to further develop technology-specific public works in the region.
For. The. Love. Of. God. What in the hell is that old guy with the beanie doing?
It depends on the contract. For example, I am looking at one in front of me right now that says, "All disputes regarding this contract are subject to arbitration of the AAA". I don't know if that holds up in court or not... fortunately have never had to test the theory.
Also check to see if there is an AAA (American Arbitrator Association) clause in the contract. If that is the case, then you *must* use AAA for any disputes.
I'll bet nothing turns on chicks like having a "reflective gizmo" hanging from your glasses... that must be the 00's equivelant of tape on the glasses. Plus, I am sure you don't look like a spazz rocking your head back and forth. ;-)
On a business trip one time I found myself without access to any dialup other than AOL. I signed up for the free account and cancelled the next week when I returned home. The bills kept coming from AOL. Every month they would bill and every month I would call Amex and have the bill removed. I finally, god's honest truth, cancelled the Amex card just to make it go away.
Forgot to mention. IBM discontinued the Workpad z50 in 2000. However, mine has worked without a hitch since I bought it in 1999.
These are truly cool little machines.
The whole thing is moot.
Now that I hadn't thought of. I have investigated Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam as sources of programmers. To date the only promising one is Vietnam.
I wonder what sort of FBI file an American could rack up by setting up shop on North Korea...? ;-)
I think your premise is wrong. Binding a bunch of firms together to help in the death process is ridiculous. Bringing a bunch of firms with synergistic and underutilized technology together and forming a new firm makes a lot of sense.
This is exactly the problem that XNS was developed to solve.