Sure, I'd be in if it's workable. I pledged to one fund for the 12-year-old-kid case, but that case got dismissed, so it wasn't used. I'd still like to stick a finger in the eye of the **AA in whatever way I can for their calculated subversion of the copyright laws.
First, my comment was tongue-in-cheek, as noted by the emoticon. However, there is a lot of truth behind it. Microsoft learned the error of its ways after being brought up on charges - they quickly became major political contributors, and the penalties for their crimes went away.
I completely agree that people in power should be held accountable, but that is not happening. Martha Stewart went to jail for a stupid lie that might have netted her $50,000 while Carly Fiorina got a $12 million severance package for gaming the system and nearly killing a company. Which one hurt shareholders the most, and what do the two cases tell those people with influence?
He's more likely to die of a heart attack if he doesn't throw chairs around and keeps it bottled up instead. Personally, I'd like to know the brand of wax that he uses on his head - my car could use some of that.
What are you doing hanging out in the archives? It's dank and moldy, and you're going to catch a cold.
Again, why should it?
It's because of the reason. What is the justification for some recently hired CEO to get rid of good, productive people who made the company a success when the reason is for his/her personal profit? Do companies exist for the good of the CEO in your brave, new world?
Thanks to bad laws passed in the name of reform, US executives tend to get a lot of "compensation" in the form of stock options. This leads executives to make business decisions based solely on what will make short-term stock price swings (that move their options above water). Carly Fiorina is a typical example. As an untalented late-comer to HP, she decided to outsource many jobs even though the company was profitable and healthy. While this got some good reviews in the financial press and a short-term stock price increase, it eventually devastated the company, and she walked away with millions after ruining the lives of thousands of productive workers, and probably the company as well (time will tell).
If the Chinese engineer can get the job done for less, why should he not be allowed to? Both guys are just trying to make a living.
Why should someone who worked for years making a company into a success suddenly be kicked out because some MBA thinks all engineers are interchangeable widgets? They aren't. Does the new replacement engineer come with an injection that gives him/her the experience and institutional knowledge of the original? Should a company fire an older, experienced Chinese engineer to hire a cheaper, newly-minted American engineer? Obviously not, as long as the current engineer is productive.
Is the Chinese one a less-worthy human being to you than the American engineer?
There's a saying that there is no such thing as a stupid question, but I think you proved the saying wrong. It has nothing to do with an individual's "worth" as a human being; it's about an employee's inherent right to be treated as a human being, a professional, and a valuable resource instead of as a disposable widget at management's greed-driven whim.
Apparently the complaint was common, because Warrior Within introduced a free-form combat system with dozens of attack combinations: wielding two weapons, stealing enemy weapons, throwing those weapons, grabbing your enemies and then throwing them or breaking their necks or cutting them apart or decapitating them. I replayed Warrior Within several times just for the sheer joy of the combat system.
Maybe it was great for gamer gods, but it doesn't seem to work so well for people who have only an hour or so a day to play. Complicated button-mashing memory doesn't last long. As for throwing your weapons, that was great. Hit the wrong button, and you can lose a powerful weapon - they don't hit the wall and fall or stick where you can retrieve them, they're just gone.
I have to agree with that even though it will offend all the PoP fans. The reviews of PoP-SoT were great, so I bought it, and it was really beautiful. After playing for a while, it was jump, miss, rewind, jump, miss, rewind, jump, miss, run out of sand, die, restart, rinse, repeat, rinse repeat, finish level. About two-thirds of the way through, I realized I was just plain bored and quit.
When PoP-WW came out, the reviews were great and claimed they had fixed all the previous problems, so I bought it. The first couple of levels were interesting, then after a while, it was the previous PoP all over again only worse. Now I was just backtracking all over the place and every other level was a time-trial against an unbeatable foe.
There was one room where you needed to make a series of swinging jumps to wall standards. From hours of play, I knew the last one was too far away to make, but there didn't seem any other way to go, so I tried it. On the final jump, you can see the Prince start to drop well short of the standard, and then something moves him horizontally until he completes the jump. I lost interest in that one half-way through, and I won't be buying the latest one no matter how many princes they put in it.
Hell, if you got started so long ago that you're 60+ and programming now, then you started off with punchcards and manual switches.
What would your point be, since 2GLs and 3GLs are far easier and require less understanding of computing than machine language and manual switches?
That's a hell of a big change, a lot more than simple syntax and such. I mean, if you started with C (1972), then you're still in good shape with Perl (1987) and Python (1991). But if you started with Fortran (1957), Cobol (1959), and Lisp (1959), you're stuck with some seriously dead-end knowledge
If you think that, you don't understand programming at all - or were you trying for a funny mod?
Not that there aren't jobs around for those specialities, but what was hip in 1960 is fossilized today. You could be using Fortran 95, or Scheme, I suppose, but what would be the point?
Take your Ritalin and sit down. Just because someone knows Fortran or C doesn't mean they don't also know Java and C++. You're like the class clown demonstrating his knowledge of two languanges while everyone else knows four.
This interests me as I'm going to turn 40 next February. Is there some kind of energy barrier that strips away programming skills at 40?
I'll hold up my hand and testify that it doesn't work that way. I learned a lot of programming languages before 40 and more after 40. Just like accounting, the skill doesn't change. The real barrier is the hiring pattern of US companies - if you lose a software position after 40, you may be finished because HR will find something in your resume to indicate your age, and they have unofficial guidance to avoid you. (Got that during an outplacement session where one person was from HR and got laid off at the same time as a bunch of IT workers - is that stupid or what?) After 40, the only way in is "networking", which means getting someone in the company to recommend you, which sometimes brings the recommending party a bonus if you get hired. Once you get an interview, the competition isn't usually very tough. Experience counts, once you can get past the clueless weasels in HR who are looking for 20+ years in Java experience. I have to admit I'm pleased to hear that more HR functions are being outsourced overseas; it serves them right.
Traitor. I wouldn't become a sysadmin under any circumstance - unless the position were offered - then I could finally get root and screw up other users' stuff.:)
The real problem with old programmers that I've seen is that they figure they're owed a huge salary even though their skills haven't kept up with modern needs.
The problem I've seen with new programmers is that they don't even have the basics in hand. Even after taking the 101 classes, they still don't uderstand the importance of getting the requirements first. They're always jumping into coding something and bolting it to the floor instead of understanding the problem, the business rules, and the customer's needs first. This leads to lots of rework and dings against the IT department. Yeah, this ain't sexy or fun, but it is what a software engineer does. I don't think you have any idea what "modern needs" are, since they are no different from needs 20 years ago. IT is simply a service that helps a business to achieve it's goal, hopefully in the most efficient manner possible.
It't not like time in is a valid reason to expect a high wage - experience counts, but productivity counts a hell of a lot more.
LOC != productivity. If you haven't learned that lesson yet, you still need to snatch the pebble of understanding from that old, overpaid, feeble, guy's hand.
same situation, produced in the united states just like the high tech components.
Apparently you are too young to remember when the textile, garment, and steel industries were exported. They were soon followed by the electronic manufacturing and machined goods industries among others.
but in America they have less power, so private-equity groups can often turn around mismanaged companies. This simply tends to suggest that obvious and significant mismanagement, of any kind, would soon be vetoed by the market.
I think I see what you're saying, but that would only be true with small-cap companies. There are few groups that would try to buy mismanaged companies like Disney or HP with (shrinking) equity in the billions of dollars (and huge liabilities). And that is where employment and employees are affected the most by bad management.
An excellent point, which is why the vast majority of weapons systems used by the US are built in the US with US components. The COTS gear is another matter.
Um, that may be true for high-tech components, and I don't really believe it, but what about the necessary low-tech components of warfare like uniforms (textiles/garments) or steel which the government has gleefully given away to foreign producers? I suppose we could ask the WTO to make sure suppliers live up to contracts while engaged in a war and wait for a resolution.
In today's news, the WTO has suspended the war between China and the US because a shipment of military uniforms was not received on schedule. The US ambassador claims the delay is an obvious Chinese military tactic to denude and demoralize its opponents while the spokesman for the PROC claims that US naval blockades have prevented the delivery of tighty-whities to the US on schedule. Stay tuned for coverage of the looming jock strap shortage - is the US doing all it can to protect the family jewels, and how did we get in this situation?
It certainly would not surprise me to find out that windows has hooks for espionage by the NSA and whatnot.
If we are trusting Windows to do espionage, we are truly doomed. [Your uranium enrichment monitoring program is no longer responding. Do you wish to send a message to Microsoft?]
If I was the chinese I would not trust any item not made under my control.
Absolutely. And the reciprocal is also true. Any software product produced in a foreign country and used in the U.S. should be highly suspect. Are you listening, Cisco and DHS/CERT?
Thanks for the anecdotal data. I think that supports my contention that "reinvent" is really just a euphemism for the less digestable "get a new profession".
So why is it that so few members of the board of directors of most major companies are shareholders in that company? Why is it that Disney's board pretty much ignored the uproar from shareholders during the uprising in 2004? Eisner's salary certainly didn't take any hit, nor was he removed from his CEO position. Why is it that Enron's board ignored the interests of shareholders and freely walked away from their mess?
CEOs need incentives to do their jobs well. If they don't have them, they will make the least-risky (and so the least-rewarding) decisions in order to keep their jobs as long as possible.
So you're saying that CEOs are less responsible and less honest than the rest of us who agree to do a job to the best of our abilities for the salary that we agree to? That is so sad that anyone could believe that that is a reasonable position for any executive officer of any company. Also, that least-risky decision you allude to is most likely the best decision for the long-term health of the company. And that is what this is about: the health of the company, not the risky decision and short-term financial health of the CEO.
The board of directors is elected by the shareholders.
Generally, the board of directors is approved by the shareholders. A rubber stamp. Big difference. The only way to make the board of directors answerable is to sue, and they are mostly protected under the articles of incorporation. You'd have to have a really good case for failure to perform fiduciary duty to get one convicted of anything or personally liable for anything. If you're saying that a director could lose that position and be replaced by a clone, big deal. Two fewer meetings per year for a CEO making millions - that's more of a reward than a penalty.
If capitalists are greedy, they will find and exploit all such opportunities, thus turning the tide of outsourcing and bringing executive salaries down to earth.
Who said capitalists are greedy? Our current crop of CEOs are greedy. The tide of outsourcing is already turning because the profits claimed by proponents are often not there. Many CEOs jumped on the bandwagon and hurt their companies; that's just poor, and really overpriced, bad management. Despite the fiascos, executive compensation is still rising.
Perhaps capitalists are not motivated by greed and frequently forego potential profits; or, more likely, perhaps they think that outsourcing and expensive executives are not so bad after all.
That would be a generous way of looking at it. I'm a bit more cynical. When you have a controlling class that dictates the rules instead of true capitalism, it doesn't have much to do with capitalists or their views. Obviously, overpriced executives are a drain on any company and anathema to any real capitalist.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, I'd be in if it's workable. I pledged to one fund for the 12-year-old-kid case, but that case got dismissed, so it wasn't used. I'd still like to stick a finger in the eye of the **AA in whatever way I can for their calculated subversion of the copyright laws.
First, my comment was tongue-in-cheek, as noted by the emoticon. However, there is a lot of truth behind it. Microsoft learned the error of its ways after being brought up on charges - they quickly became major political contributors, and the penalties for their crimes went away.
I completely agree that people in power should be held accountable, but that is not happening. Martha Stewart went to jail for a stupid lie that might have netted her $50,000 while Carly Fiorina got a $12 million severance package for gaming the system and nearly killing a company. Which one hurt shareholders the most, and what do the two cases tell those people with influence?
If you couldn't get the relevancy, then you have limited scope, but hey, happy holidays anyway. :)
You mean there's a difference between business interests and government interests? When did this happen and why didn't I get the memo?
You didn't notice when Martha Stewart was convicted of not making enough political contributions? It was in all the newspapers. :)
He's more likely to die of a heart attack if he doesn't throw chairs around and keeps it bottled up instead. Personally, I'd like to know the brand of wax that he uses on his head - my car could use some of that.
Perhaps I'm the only one who appreciated Laura's flip side as well as her front side. :)
Have you noticed how this story is barely mentioned anywhere other than geek news site who hate Microsoft?
I saw the story first on CNN. As usual, Slashdot was a little slow on the uptake. Oh, sorry - I didn't mean to step on your rant.
What are you doing hanging out in the archives? It's dank and moldy, and you're going to catch a cold.
Again, why should it?
It's because of the reason. What is the justification for some recently hired CEO to get rid of good, productive people who made the company a success when the reason is for his/her personal profit? Do companies exist for the good of the CEO in your brave, new world?
Thanks to bad laws passed in the name of reform, US executives tend to get a lot of "compensation" in the form of stock options. This leads executives to make business decisions based solely on what will make short-term stock price swings (that move their options above water). Carly Fiorina is a typical example. As an untalented late-comer to HP, she decided to outsource many jobs even though the company was profitable and healthy. While this got some good reviews in the financial press and a short-term stock price increase, it eventually devastated the company, and she walked away with millions after ruining the lives of thousands of productive workers, and probably the company as well (time will tell).
If the Chinese engineer can get the job done for less, why should he not be allowed to? Both guys are just trying to make a living.
Why should someone who worked for years making a company into a success suddenly be kicked out because some MBA thinks all engineers are interchangeable widgets? They aren't. Does the new replacement engineer come with an injection that gives him/her the experience and institutional knowledge of the original? Should a company fire an older, experienced Chinese engineer to hire a cheaper, newly-minted American engineer? Obviously not, as long as the current engineer is productive.
Is the Chinese one a less-worthy human being to you than the American engineer?
There's a saying that there is no such thing as a stupid question, but I think you proved the saying wrong. It has nothing to do with an individual's "worth" as a human being; it's about an employee's inherent right to be treated as a human being, a professional, and a valuable resource instead of as a disposable widget at management's greed-driven whim.
The reason Tomb Raider was to be appreciated is because it put grabbing ledges into such great perspective (followed by a handstand, of course). :)
Apparently the complaint was common, because Warrior Within introduced a free-form combat system with dozens of attack combinations: wielding two weapons, stealing enemy weapons, throwing those weapons, grabbing your enemies and then throwing them or breaking their necks or cutting them apart or decapitating them. I replayed Warrior Within several times just for the sheer joy of the combat system.
Maybe it was great for gamer gods, but it doesn't seem to work so well for people who have only an hour or so a day to play. Complicated button-mashing memory doesn't last long. As for throwing your weapons, that was great. Hit the wrong button, and you can lose a powerful weapon - they don't hit the wall and fall or stick where you can retrieve them, they're just gone.
I have to agree with that even though it will offend all the PoP fans. The reviews of PoP-SoT were great, so I bought it, and it was really beautiful. After playing for a while, it was jump, miss, rewind, jump, miss, rewind, jump, miss, run out of sand, die, restart, rinse, repeat, rinse repeat, finish level. About two-thirds of the way through, I realized I was just plain bored and quit.
When PoP-WW came out, the reviews were great and claimed they had fixed all the previous problems, so I bought it. The first couple of levels were interesting, then after a while, it was the previous PoP all over again only worse. Now I was just backtracking all over the place and every other level was a time-trial against an unbeatable foe.
There was one room where you needed to make a series of swinging jumps to wall standards. From hours of play, I knew the last one was too far away to make, but there didn't seem any other way to go, so I tried it. On the final jump, you can see the Prince start to drop well short of the standard, and then something moves him horizontally until he completes the jump. I lost interest in that one half-way through, and I won't be buying the latest one no matter how many princes they put in it.
Odd, considering that our sun is white.
It is a G2V, or yellow dwarf.
Hell, if you got started so long ago that you're 60+ and programming now, then you started off with punchcards and manual switches.
What would your point be, since 2GLs and 3GLs are far easier and require less understanding of computing than machine language and manual switches?
That's a hell of a big change, a lot more than simple syntax and such. I mean, if you started with C (1972), then you're still in good shape with Perl (1987) and Python (1991). But if you started with Fortran (1957), Cobol (1959), and Lisp (1959), you're stuck with some seriously dead-end knowledge
If you think that, you don't understand programming at all - or were you trying for a funny mod?
Not that there aren't jobs around for those specialities, but what was hip in 1960 is fossilized today. You could be using Fortran 95, or Scheme, I suppose, but what would be the point?
Take your Ritalin and sit down. Just because someone knows Fortran or C doesn't mean they don't also know Java and C++. You're like the class clown demonstrating his knowledge of two languanges while everyone else knows four.
This interests me as I'm going to turn 40 next February. Is there some kind of energy barrier that strips away programming skills at 40?
I'll hold up my hand and testify that it doesn't work that way. I learned a lot of programming languages before 40 and more after 40. Just like accounting, the skill doesn't change. The real barrier is the hiring pattern of US companies - if you lose a software position after 40, you may be finished because HR will find something in your resume to indicate your age, and they have unofficial guidance to avoid you. (Got that during an outplacement session where one person was from HR and got laid off at the same time as a bunch of IT workers - is that stupid or what?) After 40, the only way in is "networking", which means getting someone in the company to recommend you, which sometimes brings the recommending party a bonus if you get hired. Once you get an interview, the competition isn't usually very tough. Experience counts, once you can get past the clueless weasels in HR who are looking for 20+ years in Java experience. I have to admit I'm pleased to hear that more HR functions are being outsourced overseas; it serves them right.
Many 40+ programmers become sysadmins.
Traitor. I wouldn't become a sysadmin under any circumstance - unless the position were offered - then I could finally get root and screw up other users' stuff. :)
The real problem with old programmers that I've seen is that they figure they're owed a huge salary even though their skills haven't kept up with modern needs.
The problem I've seen with new programmers is that they don't even have the basics in hand. Even after taking the 101 classes, they still don't uderstand the importance of getting the requirements first. They're always jumping into coding something and bolting it to the floor instead of understanding the problem, the business rules, and the customer's needs first. This leads to lots of rework and dings against the IT department. Yeah, this ain't sexy or fun, but it is what a software engineer does. I don't think you have any idea what "modern needs" are, since they are no different from needs 20 years ago. IT is simply a service that helps a business to achieve it's goal, hopefully in the most efficient manner possible.
It't not like time in is a valid reason to expect a high wage - experience counts, but productivity counts a hell of a lot more.
LOC != productivity. If you haven't learned that lesson yet, you still need to snatch the pebble of understanding from that old, overpaid, feeble, guy's hand.
same situation, produced in the united states just like the high tech components.
Apparently you are too young to remember when the textile, garment, and steel industries were exported. They were soon followed by the electronic manufacturing and machined goods industries among others.
but in America they have less power, so private-equity groups can often turn around mismanaged companies. This simply tends to suggest that obvious and significant mismanagement, of any kind, would soon be vetoed by the market.
I think I see what you're saying, but that would only be true with small-cap companies. There are few groups that would try to buy mismanaged companies like Disney or HP with (shrinking) equity in the billions of dollars (and huge liabilities). And that is where employment and employees are affected the most by bad management.
An excellent point, which is why the vast majority of weapons systems used by the US are built in the US with US components. The COTS gear is another matter.
Um, that may be true for high-tech components, and I don't really believe it, but what about the necessary low-tech components of warfare like uniforms (textiles/garments) or steel which the government has gleefully given away to foreign producers? I suppose we could ask the WTO to make sure suppliers live up to contracts while engaged in a war and wait for a resolution.
In today's news, the WTO has suspended the war between China and the US because a shipment of military uniforms was not received on schedule. The US ambassador claims the delay is an obvious Chinese military tactic to denude and demoralize its opponents while the spokesman for the PROC claims that US naval blockades have prevented the delivery of tighty-whities to the US on schedule. Stay tuned for coverage of the looming jock strap shortage - is the US doing all it can to protect the family jewels, and how did we get in this situation?
It certainly would not surprise me to find out that windows has hooks for espionage by the NSA and whatnot.
If we are trusting Windows to do espionage, we are truly doomed. [Your uranium enrichment monitoring program is no longer responding. Do you wish to send a message to Microsoft?]
If I was the chinese I would not trust any item not made under my control.
Absolutely. And the reciprocal is also true. Any software product produced in a foreign country and used in the U.S. should be highly suspect. Are you listening, Cisco and DHS/CERT?
Thanks for the anecdotal data. I think that supports my contention that "reinvent" is really just a euphemism for the less digestable "get a new profession".
I'll correct you:
I'm all ears.
CEO answers to Shareholders by way of Board.
So why is it that so few members of the board of directors of most major companies are shareholders in that company? Why is it that Disney's board pretty much ignored the uproar from shareholders during the uprising in 2004? Eisner's salary certainly didn't take any hit, nor was he removed from his CEO position. Why is it that Enron's board ignored the interests of shareholders and freely walked away from their mess?
CEOs need incentives to do their jobs well. If they don't have them, they will make the least-risky (and so the least-rewarding) decisions in order to keep their jobs as long as possible.
So you're saying that CEOs are less responsible and less honest than the rest of us who agree to do a job to the best of our abilities for the salary that we agree to? That is so sad that anyone could believe that that is a reasonable position for any executive officer of any company. Also, that least-risky decision you allude to is most likely the best decision for the long-term health of the company. And that is what this is about: the health of the company, not the risky decision and short-term financial health of the CEO.
The board of directors is elected by the shareholders.
Generally, the board of directors is approved by the shareholders. A rubber stamp. Big difference. The only way to make the board of directors answerable is to sue, and they are mostly protected under the articles of incorporation. You'd have to have a really good case for failure to perform fiduciary duty to get one convicted of anything or personally liable for anything. If you're saying that a director could lose that position and be replaced by a clone, big deal. Two fewer meetings per year for a CEO making millions - that's more of a reward than a penalty.
If capitalists are greedy, they will find and exploit all such opportunities, thus turning the tide of outsourcing and bringing executive salaries down to earth.
Who said capitalists are greedy? Our current crop of CEOs are greedy. The tide of outsourcing is already turning because the profits claimed by proponents are often not there. Many CEOs jumped on the bandwagon and hurt their companies; that's just poor, and really overpriced, bad management. Despite the fiascos, executive compensation is still rising.
Perhaps capitalists are not motivated by greed and frequently forego potential profits; or, more likely, perhaps they think that outsourcing and expensive executives are not so bad after all.
That would be a generous way of looking at it. I'm a bit more cynical. When you have a controlling class that dictates the rules instead of true capitalism, it doesn't have much to do with capitalists or their views. Obviously, overpriced executives are a drain on any company and anathema to any real capitalist.
If all you want is to do your engineering job, then you deserve what you get.
If only that were true, so many American engineers would be satisfied - if they got what they deserved.