... but in my experience, women tend to have a different approach to technology than guys. Guys (as a generalisation) love the technology itself. Because of that, beta is cool - getting to see the latest, greatest thing, pushing the technology to its limits. Girls (as a generalisation) tend to use technology for things they find useful. Technology is a means to and end, not an end in itself. So, girls want to have fun playing, not testing.
...CNN.com announces a new hosting deal with hotnakedteens.com to handle peak traffic periods.
A spokesman for CNN.com said "after talking to several vendors including Sun, IBM and Microsoft, hotnakedteens.com won the business by showing they routinely handle traffic 10 times the traffic we received around Sept 11."
The Ballmer visit has been planned for quite a few months, and coincides with an event in Asia. Whenever a senior exec like Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates travel, they always meet with a few top customers. It's just a convenient coincidence that one of their top customers happens to need some extra attention at the time Steve is here, so it all worked out nicely.
Scamming these scum is great fun, as Haxial so elegantly demonstrated. I've done it myself, but not with that much style!
But seriously, it's also a great weapon. If you start corresponding with every Nigerian scammer that comes into your mail box (I'm getting about 1 a fortnight, I'm sure others get more) it will waste lots of their time and reduce the damage they can do. You don't need to go to great trouble like Haxial has (although it's more fun if you do), just send them a few mails and tie them up. For us/.ers who are information-savvy, it's pretty easy to do.
I think it's funny the number of people who say "don't bother marketing, I choose what's best".
Maybe that's true for those posters, and maybe it's not. There is a belief amongst many of us that we are "immune" to marketing and use our superior intellects to make purchasing decisions. I used to think that way, till I studied marketing.
The thing is, I have worked in marketing departments at various times, including groups marketing to developers. You don't spend 6 and 7 digit marketing budgets without measuring the return on the marketing funds. And the marketing campaigns work - they wouldn't keep doing them if they didn't.
For example, I've seen one developer-focused campaign that saw users go from about 3000 to about 8000 in a few months, the only change was marketing, no product changes were made.
Maybe/. users are above it (or just in denial), but chances are marketing does work on you, it's just too subtle for you to realise.
Next time you are in the supermarket and you choose the toothpaste you have heard of instead of the cheaper brand you've never heard of, congratulations, you're a marketee!
I work for a large corporate, and a big part of my job is to manage software projects. We have no inhouse developers, all work is outsourced. My job is to select & manage outsourcers, I often use small companies (<10 people) as I find, if you pick the right ones, the rates aren't excessive, they are excellent software engineers, and you get more attention from them.
Here's the top hints that would make me hire you:
Price: don't be the cheapest. Price isn't my top priority. Just don't rip me off like some of the big consultancies.
People are busy. I am busy. My internal customers are busy. Do things that will save us time and we will like you.
Focus on business value. I'm not giving you money so you can write kewl code. I'm giving you money so that you can write something that will add value to my business. Don't ever forget that. The more value you add, the more valuable you become.
Give realistic budgets & estimates.
Deliver on time (see above).
Develop a good understanding of my internal systems. Like all large corporates, we have a large collection of sometimes confusing and often illogical internal sytems and tools. Achieve a good understanding of them, and you get a certain amount of "lock in" with me - I find it harder to replace you, as I need to brief a new consultancy on all those tools. See the point about being busy.
Is can we teach student proprietary languages/systems or not? If we throw out C#, we should also throw out Oracle, Java, Access, etc. So, we have students who don't know the tools most companies use. Tough call.
In an attempt to cash in on the popularity of cryonics amongst techies, CryoGen Inc. of San Fransisco are now offering a caffeinated blood-replacement coolant.
I do fear the slashdotting frankly:) I generate a fair bit of traffic (15Gb/month or so), and have troubles getting reasonably priced hosts who offer the features I want and don't mind the bandwidth. Basically, I don't want to piss off my hosting company - I really like my current host.
But, since this story is getting a bit old and this will probably be moderated below most peoples settings (please - no higher than 3!), it's http://www.groovygames.com/kitty/, based on the Japanese character Hello Kitty.
I'm facing a similar situation. I run a web site (been live since Feb 96) which has a bunch of games, primarily aimed at small kids. It's hugely popular (1000's of unique users/day), I pay for the hosting myself and I just keep it up to bring a little happiness into the world. I live in Australia.
Recently, I've been contacted by the FTC in the USA saying my site is not compliant with some new legislation called COPPA - the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act. I replied to them, pointing out that I was resident in Australia and this was reflected in the WHOIS record for my domain. I got a personal (ie. not form letter) response from one of their lawyers, basically saying they don't care where I live, and the legislation explicitly mentions non-resident sites (with some fairly vague caveats: http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.htm point 20).
They have since started sending me snail mail (based on my whois record) with friendly messages encouraging compliance, but making it very clear they are watching me.
While I applaud COPPA and support its principles, I do resent being legally threatened by another countries government.
At this point, I have chosen to remain non-compliant. I don't do anything explicitly "wrong" under the act, I don't sell kids email addresses (from an e-card page), etc. But I haven't complied to their privacy policy requirements. I want to see what they do and how far they take this. At the end of the day, compliance is a trivial task and if they get really nasty, I can become compliant in 30 minutes. But it's the principle - I'm Australian and I'm not interested in the laws of another country. I'm sure/.ers understand that (even if they don't agree with my actions).
Getting a touch off topic here...
This touches on one of my favourite gripes. This attitude ("greedy capitalists") is particularly rife in Australia. We have this strange paradox in our culture. On one hand, there is a strong sense of "the Aussie Battler", and a sense of rejoicing when the Battler does well. From the single mother days from bankruptcy winning the lottery to the unemployed guy who started a lawn mowing business, only to end up with 100 guys working for him. That's the Aussie battler, and the media loves them.
On the other hand, if you are a battler and then become too successful, the media will take you down as a "fat cat" who lives in a lovely house while his poor workers (AKA Aussie Battlers) struggle to pay their mortgage.
So, basically the rule in Australia is it's great to be heading for the top, but not great to be at the top. It's a national povery mentality that will stop us ever becoming an economic powerhouse.
You probably are very productive, but 99% of people aren't and still struggle with basic concepts and tools. They need someone to hold their hand. If people like you dominate the open source world then Microsoft will continue to be No.1.
Slashdot Mirror
... but in my experience, women tend to have a different approach to technology than guys.
Guys (as a generalisation) love the technology itself. Because of that, beta is cool - getting to see the latest, greatest thing, pushing the technology to its limits.
Girls (as a generalisation) tend to use technology for things they find useful. Technology is a means to and end, not an end in itself.
So, girls want to have fun playing, not testing.
A spokesman for CNN.com said "after talking to several vendors including Sun, IBM and Microsoft, hotnakedteens.com won the business by showing they routinely handle traffic 10 times the traffic we received around Sept 11."
More /. half truths...
The Ballmer visit has been planned for quite a few months, and coincides with an event in Asia. Whenever a senior exec like Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates travel, they always meet with a few top customers. It's just a convenient coincidence that one of their top customers happens to need some extra attention at the time Steve is here, so it all worked out nicely.
As opposed to their 4.7-GHz chip for low-end desktop PCs?
Scamming these scum is great fun, as Haxial so elegantly demonstrated. I've done it myself, but not with that much style!
/.ers who are information-savvy, it's pretty easy to do.
But seriously, it's also a great weapon. If you start corresponding with every Nigerian scammer that comes into your mail box (I'm getting about 1 a fortnight, I'm sure others get more) it will waste lots of their time and reduce the damage they can do. You don't need to go to great trouble like Haxial has (although it's more fun if you do), just send them a few mails and tie them up. For us
I guess they thought "Detroit Free Press" that meant it was free of anything to do with Detroit...
Fortune Magazine lists Microsoft as one of the best companies in the world to work for.
Isn't the idea of Apple having guidelines kinda ironic. Why don't they just throw out the whole guidelines manual and replace it with a single line.
THINK DIFFERENT
What we need now is a pop up offering to remove spam. Put them in the same room and duck - it might be like mixing matter and anti-matter.
I think it's funny the number of people who say "don't bother marketing, I choose what's best".
/. users are above it (or just in denial), but chances are marketing does work on you, it's just too subtle for you to realise.
Maybe that's true for those posters, and maybe it's not. There is a belief amongst many of us that we are "immune" to marketing and use our superior intellects to make purchasing decisions. I used to think that way, till I studied marketing.
The thing is, I have worked in marketing departments at various times, including groups marketing to developers. You don't spend 6 and 7 digit marketing budgets without measuring the return on the marketing funds. And the marketing campaigns work - they wouldn't keep doing them if they didn't.
For example, I've seen one developer-focused campaign that saw users go from about 3000 to about 8000 in a few months, the only change was marketing, no product changes were made.
Maybe
Next time you are in the supermarket and you choose the toothpaste you have heard of instead of the cheaper brand you've never heard of, congratulations, you're a marketee!
Here's the top hints that would make me hire you:
Is can we teach student proprietary languages/systems or not? If we throw out C#, we should also throw out Oracle, Java, Access, etc. So, we have students who don't know the tools most companies use. Tough call.
In an attempt to cash in on the popularity of cryonics amongst techies, CryoGen Inc. of San Fransisco are now offering a caffeinated blood-replacement coolant.
Some goes for the vast majority of commercial software.
I do fear the slashdotting frankly :) I generate a fair bit of traffic (15Gb/month or so), and have troubles getting reasonably priced hosts who offer the features I want and don't mind the bandwidth. Basically, I don't want to piss off my hosting company - I really like my current host.
But, since this story is getting a bit old and this will probably be moderated below most peoples settings (please - no higher than 3!), it's http://www.groovygames.com/kitty/, based on the Japanese character Hello Kitty.
I'm facing a similar situation. I run a web site (been live since Feb 96) which has a bunch of games, primarily aimed at small kids. It's hugely popular (1000's of unique users/day), I pay for the hosting myself and I just keep it up to bring a little happiness into the world. I live in Australia.
/.ers understand that (even if they don't agree with my actions).
Recently, I've been contacted by the FTC in the USA saying my site is not compliant with some new legislation called COPPA - the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act. I replied to them, pointing out that I was resident in Australia and this was reflected in the WHOIS record for my domain. I got a personal (ie. not form letter) response from one of their lawyers, basically saying they don't care where I live, and the legislation explicitly mentions non-resident sites (with some fairly vague caveats: http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.htm point 20).
They have since started sending me snail mail (based on my whois record) with friendly messages encouraging compliance, but making it very clear they are watching me.
While I applaud COPPA and support its principles, I do resent being legally threatened by another countries government.
At this point, I have chosen to remain non-compliant. I don't do anything explicitly "wrong" under the act, I don't sell kids email addresses (from an e-card page), etc. But I haven't complied to their privacy policy requirements. I want to see what they do and how far they take this. At the end of the day, compliance is a trivial task and if they get really nasty, I can become compliant in 30 minutes. But it's the principle - I'm Australian and I'm not interested in the laws of another country. I'm sure
I guess
man marketing
didn't return anything.
Funny, here's me thinking that being able to run on old hardware (something windows generally can't do) is a selling point of Linux.
Getting a touch off topic here... This touches on one of my favourite gripes. This attitude ("greedy capitalists") is particularly rife in Australia. We have this strange paradox in our culture. On one hand, there is a strong sense of "the Aussie Battler", and a sense of rejoicing when the Battler does well. From the single mother days from bankruptcy winning the lottery to the unemployed guy who started a lawn mowing business, only to end up with 100 guys working for him. That's the Aussie battler, and the media loves them. On the other hand, if you are a battler and then become too successful, the media will take you down as a "fat cat" who lives in a lovely house while his poor workers (AKA Aussie Battlers) struggle to pay their mortgage. So, basically the rule in Australia is it's great to be heading for the top, but not great to be at the top. It's a national povery mentality that will stop us ever becoming an economic powerhouse.
Great! Let's see your grandma using Vi.
You probably are very productive, but 99% of people aren't and still struggle with basic concepts and tools. They need someone to hold their hand. If people like you dominate the open source world then Microsoft will continue to be No.1.