Good protocol can secure bad encryption more easily than good encryption can help bad protocol.
The Sana Security diagrams show us just how bad the windows internal protocols really are. There is no securing this system with Digital Rights management or any other encryption scheme. Any security method placed on top of a such bad messaging protocols will fail miserably because even if the encryption or other security suite is perfect... windows isn't. And the system will be compromised by drilling down through windows... not through the security system.
What good is a bullet-proof pad lock if you put the combination on a yellow sticky note next to the lock itself?
Sure, they report on the LED cartoon characters the bomb squad blew up... but they didn't say squat about the five "Bud-Light" signs that same bomb squad blew up earlier the same day!
I can't tell you what to do. I can only give you advice. My advice may be bad advice. I don't know your business. That said here's a few points
Tech isn't important. For virtually all companies technology is not all that important. Conducting business is. If tech helps make business cheaper or faster... great. If it gets in the way then it is a money sucking annoyance at best. As a grade "A" technologist you focus on first getting your tech out of the way, then on getting tech to help make business cheaper, faster, easier to conduct.
Your job is to get your boss promoted. You are employed to make your boss look good. If your boss is an idiot that you simply can't make look good no matter how hard you try... get another job. Your boss' job is to get his boss promoted and so on up the chain until you hit share-holders who are in it for the money.
If you out shine your boss you will get fired. Don't. You can shine, just make sure you redirect the glory to the boss power structure. This kind of brown-nosing will get noticed. Sucking glory into yourself will cause conflict.
If your boss is an idiot convince him that your great ideas are his. Sometimes you do this by chatting up one of your ideas and saying what a smart person your boss is for having thought of it. If you do this be prepared to be the scape-goat if your great plan fails. Remember what your job is and do it. Your job is to get your boss promoted. He will sacrifice you to get this goal accomplished.
IT is a cost sink. It completes no sales, makes no revenue, and never turns a profit. To ensure the survival of department make certain to collect very negative metrics showing huge expendatures and then show how great you are doing at cutting these costs. You must how victory even when you are being utterly defeated.
Never strike a man lest you mean to kill him. Unless you really belive you can get your boss fired so fast it will make his head spin don't stop doing your job. People are smart and can see through the double talk. Or they can't and you need to keep them in the dark until you can strike the killing blow.
Know your boss. Do not assume loyalty in a person who has never demonstrated it. Do not assume sentimentality. Do not assume. Know what motivates your boss' bosses. It's probably not what motivates you.
Technology is about equal parts of science, math, and politics. You can't pull off tech leadership without mastering all three.
My company is currently implementing these great ideas that my boss thought of. It is such a pleasure to be working with a genius of his caliber. I would never have considered these ideas without his guidance and insight. I am so glad to be learning these things from him. I'm so glad he thought of this... even if he can't remember when or how he did.
No matter how hard you market pancakes they still make lousy shingles.
Butts hit the seats for good movies. Make a good movie first, then make with the hype. Hire better writers and pay them better. Write movies so damn good actors will do them for scale just to say they were part of history.
you've always been able to say whatever you wanted to as long as you were willing and able to pay the price. Challenge the King? Die. Challenge the Empire? Die. This time all they want is cold hard cash. I'd say the price of speech has gotten cheaper.
Okay, okay, so SQL practically reads like english... that's all great... however, there's this whole thing called "The Five Normal Forms" that many people who dive into SQL never learn. I find that many people who jump in and learn Perl, PHP, and some SQL can create these fabulous messes of a system. That's usually when I get hired to clean the mess up when the company realizes it can't double its growth again until somebody fixes their "database" that some scripters piled up with a muck rake.
Do yourself a favor. Don't just be another script kiddie with a muck rake. Really learn the technologies you're working with well. Get a depth of knowledge. Learn not just how to do a thing learn why you do it. Don't just think of how to solve a problem... think of how best to solve a problem. If you aren't experienced enough to know a few different techniques, that's okay, just think about alternate ways you could do the same thing. As you build this catalog of alternate techniques you could begin to see when one way would have saved work and another made more work than necessary.
A good theoretical underpinning will serve you well. It will give you the right "why" questions to ask but it won't give you the answers. If you can't get a college degree right now or are too busy for one then try and think ahead about the life of your project. Think about how it will evolve and grow. Think about what you'll need to know when you hit those road blocks. The key is thinking ahead and reflection on what you've done. Think how you could make it better.
Whatever you do in the long run don't short change yourself! Get your magical piece of paper that says you have a four year college degree. It really is the most valuable investment you'll ever make. Unless your current project has a name like Microsoft or Linux you'll eventually want that degree.
Figure out what you want to do, what you can realistically do, and what you can get paid to do. Start pulling apart what the needs are, why they are what they are, and how they will evolve. Then you begin to apply yourself to these domains. If that's too hard start scanning the tech sites and figure out where the most jobs are and buy a "teach yourself in X days" book and go to it cowboy. Once you wrangle that job start in on what the company you work for really needs, why they need it, what they can pay for, and how their needs will evolve then get to work inventing the future.
That's what the difference between a job in IT is and what a career in IT is. A job in IT is just setting up a spam filter... a career is making the spam filter better... or inventing a new spam filter. The difference between a job in IT and a career in IT is the difference between dealing with the future and inventing it.
The first unit of information technology is the pen and paper. The computer implements the ideas of the programmer about how the user thinks. The computer represents the elements of the problem in an easily manipulated way.
After 25 years we can say these things about interacting well with a computer. Programs manipulate data. Data represents information. Information and data have no meaning even though rules can manipulate data in seemingly meaningful ways. Users define meaning nothing else does that.
Users should understand the basic ideas behind data format and program navigation. They should know that format A is nearly universal or how to ask a program what it can read. They should be able to wrap their minds around the concept that transforming data from format A to format B alters only the model with which it is stored. Then they should know that different programs know how to use different models.
In my dream future an introduction course might start like this:
There are three components to a well built program: The view, the model, and the controller. The model represents the data we are interested in logically, the view shows it to us graphically or in an otherwise comprehensible form... it allows us to communicate with a controller which follows rules established to manipulate the model in a way that is consistent with our understanding of the problem we are trying to solve or the parameters of the task we are attempting to accomplish.
Maybe in a hundred years we'll get all this down to a concise understandable form. By then we'll break this down as well as we do books.
When my son learned "how to read" at school I learned that now-a-days we teach kids books have basic components, a spine, a cover, liner pages, a publish block, an ISBN number, a Title, a sub title, a set of contents, and pages. All this even though I had taught him to read at the age of four. I used the method described in "To kill a Mocking Bird" and to my surprize it worked. Apparently, however, this didn't mean he was literate.
So then kids: This is a browser, it has a back button and a forward button this moves us through history. It has a URL bar that tells us what its looking at right now. The big box in the center is the content. There are many kinds of browsers each works a little differently but nearly all of them have these same elements. Now let's cover the word processor and the spreadsheet...
This is the same problem we faced with the switch from dial-up to broad-band. The cry back then was that the phone system wasn't set up for constant data communication. The phone system design was built around sporadic 3 minute phone calls... not four hour download sessions! Yikes! The internet will destroy the telephone's infrastructure!
I call bull I say that what will happen is that as the internet begins to "beef up" and stream more data that we will either find ways to make bigger data "pipes" or we will find new ways to distribute data as in Peer to Peer.
Imagine, internet companies getting upset because people use the internet. Sheesh.
even if you don't feel like you need it, go ahead and get your degree. It will pay off in the long run. Find a way to do it, go to night school, live off of your wife's salary, borrow, take part time contracts, go to overload classes. Get your degree.
The harder, more difficult, more math intensive your degree the better. The sooner you can get it, the better.
So, perhaps coffee is useful for persuasion. The connection between persuasion and "yes-men", though, is spurrious at best. Essentially, TFA is saying that caffeine helps people listen to -- and makes them slightly more open-minded towards -- arguments.
I just finished a cup of coffee and I have to say that after hearing your argument out it seems pursuasive. I'm definately in a better mood any way. I'm inclined to agree with you.
Point your MythTV at Spike network and tell it to record anything with "Star Trek" in the title. You'll fill up a 750GB drive in a few days if you're MythTV is set to high quality recording.
You know, I absolutely loved Edmonton and I wouldn't have the slightest problem with the twenty below zero winters as I'm originally from Alaska. But that would be my problem. I'm 'merican would someone in Edmonton hire someone from 'merica?
Not looking for work right now, had to move to Europe for my last job tho' so if the labor market gets tight I'm willing to ship over seas... the problem is connecting with sponsors who would be willing to get you the work permits. So when are we going to get the universal working permit? When will citizenship not matter anymore? I may be willing to go anywhere they need my skills but not everywhere that they need my skills is willing to take me.
I have a BSCS and part of a Masters in CS as well. I was going to go for a doctorate in CS but I got bit by the dot-com bug. My current boss told me that I was the first BSCS that he ever hired that was capable of producing software. He preferred to hire BSEE and the like as software people because they brought engineering rigor to programming.
Personally, I think that since he is an EE himself that he prefers folks with an EE background because he relates to them better.
A BSCS from a school with an ACM or otherwise certified/endorsed curriculum is very hard to get for many people. The math is simply too hard. The theory too abstract. That, in my opinion, is a good thing. I like that because it means very few people have a BSCS.
What I don't like is the common theme I hear that BSCS is worthless, doesn't prepare the degree holder to create software, or is otherwise not the best degree for someone who wants to make software. Excuse me?
I have worked at huge companies with thousands of software engineers, I've worked in tiny shops with five software engineers, I've worked as a "developer" and a "programmer" and I have never had a boss with a BSCS. I've had bosses with mail order degrees in MIS, degrees in English, degrees in EE, and one with a doctorate in Linguistics. None have a BSCS or equivalent. Why is that?
If we want IT to be a "lifetime" career field then we need to fix the problem that produces career IT people that are not schooled in IT. If you can see a clear path from schooling to career, to a stable future then people will follow it. If people see a field with no clear path to success they will shun it.
Is the shortage of IT leadership because this is the first generation of people who could make a life long career in IT? I don't think so. I think that was the 80s. So what gives?
I think the dot-com boom hurt IT badly and we're just seeing it now. There is no logical connection between choices made by people who joined the dot-com boom with BSCS or without and those who are still working in the field today. It makes no sense.
I did an interview recently for a new software engineer position they've added to my department. I asked an interviewer what degree he had. When he answered BSCS (he was a newly minted grad) I asked if he had taken "Data Structures" when he answered "No." I knew something was up. I can't prove it but after more questions about basic programming I determined that either his school was terrible or I had caught him in a lie. I would prefer to think he it was a lie that he had a BSCS and that no school would graduate a student with BSCS without a "Data Structures" class under their belt. "Formal Linguistics" is important... but not a clincher... "Data Structures" is deadly important.
Only half my staff has a technology related degree. Oddly, I'm the only one who thinks that hiring people with technology degrees is important. I even have a coworker with a doctorate in computer science and has taught as a professor (not my boss btw) that doesn't think IT degrees are important.
If this is the pervasive attitude amongst American IT workers then it will be a miracle if IT stays in the US. I guarantee our competition thinks education is important. So am I alone towing this line that the BSCS or a Software Engineering degree should produce a higher caliber Software Engineer than someone with a High School diploma or a degree in Electrical Engineering?
"If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. There's no such thing as the next big thing," he added.
A more insightful thing to say would be, "If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. Real innovation isn't just about the next big thing." As far as innovation being harder now, yes... that's right.
Innovation is harder now because of terrible Intellectual Property law. Innovation was always hard from a technical stand point. The concepts we take for granted now, grand earth shattering paradigm shifts such as the concept of "zero" or the very idea of a variable, were always very difficult to create. Modern paradigm shifting innovations such as the light bulb and the assembly line were also very hard to come up with.
On the upshot, he's implemented programs to actually listen to his employees. He may have said there is no "next big thing" but I think he's hit upon "the next big thing" and that is: Actually listening to your own people. He's actually using the internet for what it was meant for instead of just selling widgets! Communication! Wow, the first and last big thing.
After being equally disappointed by both the mainstream parties then finally realizing that there is no such thing as a viable third party in the US I have become a "Political Agnostic" which means that I believe:
If there is such a good thing as a "good politician" they are so far removed from me as to make no practical difference.
I can't speak to Outsourcing in general but I recently posted this in my journal it seems especially apropos in the light of Outsourcing and Offshoring software. I think it cuts both ways and really you should look for talent no matter where you are looking for people:
Unfortunately, with code, it takes the test of time and change to tell if a programmer is a truly talented one or just capable of writing volumes of drek that holds together. The audience that can read code is small and those qualified to judge its quality is even smaller. Just like the population of people qualified to judge Samoan poetry. Yet that's just what you've hired someone to do as a business person who employs programmers... you've hired someone to do a thing which you have no knowledge of how to judge whether they've done a good job or not. Hence the fear of software development and the desire to create a generic "seal of quality" such as certification. So when you hire fifty people at half the price of the five you had before and they produce reams of Samoan poetry you can't read but it seems to look about the same... you might feel you got a good deal. Unfortunately for everyone the quality of their prose has nothing to do with the size of the pay check. But, both prose and paychecks affect the bottom line.
Slashdot Mirror
Good protocol can secure bad encryption more easily than good encryption can help bad protocol.
The Sana Security diagrams show us just how bad the windows internal protocols really are. There is no securing this system with Digital Rights management or any other encryption scheme. Any security method placed on top of a such bad messaging protocols will fail miserably because even if the encryption or other security suite is perfect... windows isn't. And the system will be compromised by drilling down through windows... not through the security system.
What good is a bullet-proof pad lock if you put the combination on a yellow sticky note next to the lock itself?
Sure, they report on the LED cartoon characters the bomb squad blew up... but they didn't say squat about the five "Bud-Light" signs that same bomb squad blew up earlier the same day!
Oh, and Blood Bowl uses some custom dice, but they're just D6s with pictures instead of numbers.
I guess if your probability can't be represented in base six... no dice!
That's the big idea floating around at my shop.
- Tech isn't important. For virtually all companies technology is not all that important. Conducting business is. If tech helps make business cheaper or faster... great. If it gets in the way then it is a money sucking annoyance at best. As a grade "A" technologist you focus on first getting your tech out of the way, then on getting tech to help make business cheaper, faster, easier to conduct.
- Your job is to get your boss promoted. You are employed to make your boss look good. If your boss is an idiot that you simply can't make look good no matter how hard you try... get another job. Your boss' job is to get his boss promoted and so on up the chain until you hit share-holders who are in it for the money.
- If you out shine your boss you will get fired. Don't. You can shine, just make sure you redirect the glory to the boss power structure. This kind of brown-nosing will get noticed. Sucking glory into yourself will cause conflict.
- If your boss is an idiot convince him that your great ideas are his. Sometimes you do this by chatting up one of your ideas and saying what a smart person your boss is for having thought of it. If you do this be prepared to be the scape-goat if your great plan fails. Remember what your job is and do it. Your job is to get your boss promoted. He will sacrifice you to get this goal accomplished.
- IT is a cost sink. It completes no sales, makes no revenue, and never turns a profit. To ensure the survival of department make certain to collect very negative metrics showing huge expendatures and then show how great you are doing at cutting these costs. You must how victory even when you are being utterly defeated.
- Never strike a man lest you mean to kill him. Unless you really belive you can get your boss fired so fast it will make his head spin don't stop doing your job. People are smart and can see through the double talk. Or they can't and you need to keep them in the dark until you can strike the killing blow.
- Know your boss. Do not assume loyalty in a person who has never demonstrated it. Do not assume sentimentality. Do not assume. Know what motivates your boss' bosses. It's probably not what motivates you.
- Technology is about equal parts of science, math, and politics. You can't pull off tech leadership without mastering all three.
My company is currently implementing these great ideas that my boss thought of. It is such a pleasure to be working with a genius of his caliber. I would never have considered these ideas without his guidance and insight. I am so glad to be learning these things from him. I'm so glad he thought of this... even if he can't remember when or how he did.Everytime someone asks you for a pirated version of Microsoft Office give them Open Office instead. And tell them about how great Firefox is.
Microsoft will start giving them away... bundled with a new computer.
No matter how hard you market pancakes they still make lousy shingles.
Butts hit the seats for good movies. Make a good movie first, then make with the hype. Hire better writers and pay them better. Write movies so damn good actors will do them for scale just to say they were part of history.
otherwise hollywood would be spamming sites like digg or slashdot to promote their movies
they do this already... you just don't know it. It's called synthetic viral marketing.
Everybody else is simply shut out.
Uh, yeah. Pretty much the whole justice-for-all thing is propaganda.
you've always been able to say whatever you wanted to as long as you were willing and able to pay the price. Challenge the King? Die. Challenge the Empire? Die. This time all they want is cold hard cash. I'd say the price of speech has gotten cheaper.
Okay, okay, so SQL practically reads like english... that's all great... however, there's this whole thing called "The Five Normal Forms" that many people who dive into SQL never learn. I find that many people who jump in and learn Perl, PHP, and some SQL can create these fabulous messes of a system. That's usually when I get hired to clean the mess up when the company realizes it can't double its growth again until somebody fixes their "database" that some scripters piled up with a muck rake.
Do yourself a favor. Don't just be another script kiddie with a muck rake. Really learn the technologies you're working with well. Get a depth of knowledge. Learn not just how to do a thing learn why you do it. Don't just think of how to solve a problem... think of how best to solve a problem. If you aren't experienced enough to know a few different techniques, that's okay, just think about alternate ways you could do the same thing. As you build this catalog of alternate techniques you could begin to see when one way would have saved work and another made more work than necessary.
A good theoretical underpinning will serve you well. It will give you the right "why" questions to ask but it won't give you the answers. If you can't get a college degree right now or are too busy for one then try and think ahead about the life of your project. Think about how it will evolve and grow. Think about what you'll need to know when you hit those road blocks. The key is thinking ahead and reflection on what you've done. Think how you could make it better.
Whatever you do in the long run don't short change yourself! Get your magical piece of paper that says you have a four year college degree. It really is the most valuable investment you'll ever make. Unless your current project has a name like Microsoft or Linux you'll eventually want that degree.
Figure out what you want to do, what you can realistically do, and what you can get paid to do. Start pulling apart what the needs are, why they are what they are, and how they will evolve. Then you begin to apply yourself to these domains. If that's too hard start scanning the tech sites and figure out where the most jobs are and buy a "teach yourself in X days" book and go to it cowboy. Once you wrangle that job start in on what the company you work for really needs, why they need it, what they can pay for, and how their needs will evolve then get to work inventing the future.
That's what the difference between a job in IT is and what a career in IT is. A job in IT is just setting up a spam filter... a career is making the spam filter better... or inventing a new spam filter. The difference between a job in IT and a career in IT is the difference between dealing with the future and inventing it.
The first unit of information technology is the pen and paper. The computer implements the ideas of the programmer about how the user thinks. The computer represents the elements of the problem in an easily manipulated way.
After 25 years we can say these things about interacting well with a computer. Programs manipulate data. Data represents information. Information and data have no meaning even though rules can manipulate data in seemingly meaningful ways. Users define meaning nothing else does that.
Users should understand the basic ideas behind data format and program navigation. They should know that format A is nearly universal or how to ask a program what it can read. They should be able to wrap their minds around the concept that transforming data from format A to format B alters only the model with which it is stored. Then they should know that different programs know how to use different models.
In my dream future an introduction course might start like this: There are three components to a well built program: The view, the model, and the controller. The model represents the data we are interested in logically, the view shows it to us graphically or in an otherwise comprehensible form... it allows us to communicate with a controller which follows rules established to manipulate the model in a way that is consistent with our understanding of the problem we are trying to solve or the parameters of the task we are attempting to accomplish.
Maybe in a hundred years we'll get all this down to a concise understandable form. By then we'll break this down as well as we do books.
When my son learned "how to read" at school I learned that now-a-days we teach kids books have basic components, a spine, a cover, liner pages, a publish block, an ISBN number, a Title, a sub title, a set of contents, and pages. All this even though I had taught him to read at the age of four. I used the method described in "To kill a Mocking Bird" and to my surprize it worked. Apparently, however, this didn't mean he was literate.
So then kids: This is a browser, it has a back button and a forward button this moves us through history. It has a URL bar that tells us what its looking at right now. The big box in the center is the content. There are many kinds of browsers each works a little differently but nearly all of them have these same elements. Now let's cover the word processor and the spreadsheet...
Bull!
This is the same problem we faced with the switch from dial-up to broad-band. The cry back then was that the phone system wasn't set up for constant data communication. The phone system design was built around sporadic 3 minute phone calls... not four hour download sessions! Yikes! The internet will destroy the telephone's infrastructure!
I call bull I say that what will happen is that as the internet begins to "beef up" and stream more data that we will either find ways to make bigger data "pipes" or we will find new ways to distribute data as in Peer to Peer.
Imagine, internet companies getting upset because people use the internet. Sheesh.
even if you don't feel like you need it, go ahead and get your degree. It will pay off in the long run. Find a way to do it, go to night school, live off of your wife's salary, borrow, take part time contracts, go to overload classes. Get your degree.
The harder, more difficult, more math intensive your degree the better. The sooner you can get it, the better.
TEN HOUR DAY?? is that what passes for exhausting to the new crowd of code monkeys?
I know what you mean. I put in a 10 hour day when I'm on vacation. Geesh. Slackers.
So, perhaps coffee is useful for persuasion. The connection between persuasion and "yes-men", though, is spurrious at best. Essentially, TFA is saying that caffeine helps people listen to -- and makes them slightly more open-minded towards -- arguments.
I just finished a cup of coffee and I have to say that after hearing your argument out it seems pursuasive. I'm definately in a better mood any way. I'm inclined to agree with you.
If programming is something you love to do, then do it. If it's just something you want to do because you've heard it'll earn you "big bucks", don't.
I'd have to say that's good advice for Doctoring, Lawyering, or Programming.
Point your MythTV at Spike network and tell it to record anything with "Star Trek" in the title. You'll fill up a 750GB drive in a few days if you're MythTV is set to high quality recording.
OpenDocument Alliance is not the OASIS Technical Committee.
In that case I'll ignore them.
You know, I absolutely loved Edmonton and I wouldn't have the slightest problem with the twenty below zero winters as I'm originally from Alaska. But that would be my problem. I'm 'merican would someone in Edmonton hire someone from 'merica?
Not looking for work right now, had to move to Europe for my last job tho' so if the labor market gets tight I'm willing to ship over seas... the problem is connecting with sponsors who would be willing to get you the work permits. So when are we going to get the universal working permit? When will citizenship not matter anymore? I may be willing to go anywhere they need my skills but not everywhere that they need my skills is willing to take me.
I have a BSCS and part of a Masters in CS as well. I was going to go for a doctorate in CS but I got bit by the dot-com bug. My current boss told me that I was the first BSCS that he ever hired that was capable of producing software. He preferred to hire BSEE and the like as software people because they brought engineering rigor to programming.
Personally, I think that since he is an EE himself that he prefers folks with an EE background because he relates to them better.
A BSCS from a school with an ACM or otherwise certified/endorsed curriculum is very hard to get for many people. The math is simply too hard. The theory too abstract. That, in my opinion, is a good thing. I like that because it means very few people have a BSCS.
What I don't like is the common theme I hear that BSCS is worthless, doesn't prepare the degree holder to create software, or is otherwise not the best degree for someone who wants to make software. Excuse me?
I have worked at huge companies with thousands of software engineers, I've worked in tiny shops with five software engineers, I've worked as a "developer" and a "programmer" and I have never had a boss with a BSCS. I've had bosses with mail order degrees in MIS, degrees in English, degrees in EE, and one with a doctorate in Linguistics. None have a BSCS or equivalent. Why is that?
If we want IT to be a "lifetime" career field then we need to fix the problem that produces career IT people that are not schooled in IT. If you can see a clear path from schooling to career, to a stable future then people will follow it. If people see a field with no clear path to success they will shun it.
Is the shortage of IT leadership because this is the first generation of people who could make a life long career in IT? I don't think so. I think that was the 80s. So what gives?
I think the dot-com boom hurt IT badly and we're just seeing it now. There is no logical connection between choices made by people who joined the dot-com boom with BSCS or without and those who are still working in the field today. It makes no sense.
I did an interview recently for a new software engineer position they've added to my department. I asked an interviewer what degree he had. When he answered BSCS (he was a newly minted grad) I asked if he had taken "Data Structures" when he answered "No." I knew something was up. I can't prove it but after more questions about basic programming I determined that either his school was terrible or I had caught him in a lie. I would prefer to think he it was a lie that he had a BSCS and that no school would graduate a student with BSCS without a "Data Structures" class under their belt. "Formal Linguistics" is important... but not a clincher... "Data Structures" is deadly important.
Only half my staff has a technology related degree. Oddly, I'm the only one who thinks that hiring people with technology degrees is important. I even have a coworker with a doctorate in computer science and has taught as a professor (not my boss btw) that doesn't think IT degrees are important.
If this is the pervasive attitude amongst American IT workers then it will be a miracle if IT stays in the US. I guarantee our competition thinks education is important. So am I alone towing this line that the BSCS or a Software Engineering degree should produce a higher caliber Software Engineer than someone with a High School diploma or a degree in Electrical Engineering?
now is the time to sell.
"If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. There's no such thing as the next big thing," he added.
A more insightful thing to say would be, "If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. Real innovation isn't just about the next big thing." As far as innovation being harder now, yes... that's right.
Innovation is harder now because of terrible Intellectual Property law. Innovation was always hard from a technical stand point. The concepts we take for granted now, grand earth shattering paradigm shifts such as the concept of "zero" or the very idea of a variable, were always very difficult to create. Modern paradigm shifting innovations such as the light bulb and the assembly line were also very hard to come up with.
On the upshot, he's implemented programs to actually listen to his employees. He may have said there is no "next big thing" but I think he's hit upon "the next big thing" and that is: Actually listening to your own people. He's actually using the internet for what it was meant for instead of just selling widgets! Communication! Wow, the first and last big thing.
After being equally disappointed by both the mainstream parties then finally realizing that there is no such thing as a viable third party in the US I have become a "Political Agnostic" which means that I believe:
If there is such a good thing as a "good politician" they are so far removed from me as to make no practical difference.
I can't speak to Outsourcing in general but I recently posted this in my journal it seems especially apropos in the light of Outsourcing and Offshoring software. I think it cuts both ways and really you should look for talent no matter where you are looking for people:
Unfortunately, with code, it takes the test of time and change to tell if a programmer is a truly talented one or just capable of writing volumes of drek that holds together. The audience that can read code is small and those qualified to judge its quality is even smaller. Just like the population of people qualified to judge Samoan poetry. Yet that's just what you've hired someone to do as a business person who employs programmers... you've hired someone to do a thing which you have no knowledge of how to judge whether they've done a good job or not. Hence the fear of software development and the desire to create a generic "seal of quality" such as certification. So when you hire fifty people at half the price of the five you had before and they produce reams of Samoan poetry you can't read but it seems to look about the same... you might feel you got a good deal. Unfortunately for everyone the quality of their prose has nothing to do with the size of the pay check. But, both prose and paychecks affect the bottom line.