When developers ask for a new monitor or dual monitors, let them have 'em but mandate that the monitors be in a vertical orientation as opposed to the typical horizontal orientation. That way, they'll have to use the monitors for efficient viewing of code rather than watching movies all day long.
Well, look here. There's a lot of personal preference involved in efficient text handling, and arbitrarily forcing programmers to work in landscape or portrait just so they don't watch movies is ridiculous. Matter of fact, if you have coders doing that on the job, either give them the requisite attitude adjustment, or just fire their happy little asses and hire some responsible citizens. Maybe in their next position they'll be a little more focused.
Furthermore, I don't know about you but the apps I develop are generally not used with the monitor in a vertical configuration (matter of fact, given the nature of the software I work on that would be completely inappropriate) so it would nullify the advantages of a dual-monitor setup if I were forced to use them the way you describe.
Continuing this theme, you can't just say, "programmers work better with monitors oriented THIS way." Sure, if you're hacking assembler code a vertical setup might (might!) be better for you because the lines tend to be relatively short, unless you're like me and like lots of comments. If you're coding in.Net or Java, you're probably happier with a horizontal layout given how wordy those languages are (.Net in particular, Christ on a crutch and I thought Cobol was verbose.) I've also found that when I'm editing source code, it's often nice to have the IDE running vertical, with the other, horizontal monitor for both my debug output and the application display itself.
So, I'd say this: give your developers the tools, training and any good advice they need, and then let each of them figure out what works best. Otherwise you're just another overbearing manager more interested in exerting his authority, rather than running an efficient, productive development team. Beware of arbitrary constraints... they're rarely helpful and usually counterproductive, because of considerable variation between individuals. We're not all alike, and we're not all maximally productive in the same identical environment.
It's such a simple idea that I'm surprised that more businesses and coders haven't caught on to it.
Good security is through computational complexity.
Which is one form of obscurity.
Sophist. You're just obscuring the point.
Computational complexity does so even if the methodology or algorithm itself is well-known, there being no presumption of ignorance on the part of the attacker. Security through obscurity depends entirely on the attacker being unaware of how a security system works, and being presumed unable to ever figure it out.
That rarely works well in practice, if you're attempting to obscure something that someone else wants badly enough. On the other hand, if the unauthorized unobscuring of your data can be accomplished only with a century or more of supercomputer time... you're pretty safe, even if the attacker knows exactly how you protected your data.
Then and there, he pledged to adopt the management approach of always beng more expert than the people you are managing, even if it means working 16/7 for years on end.
That's one way. The other way is to make sure that you hire good people who can be trusted to make good judgments... and then trust them.
Recently my boss reviewed my schematic and asked me to replace 1% resistors with 2 or 5% "because they are cheaper". Yes true, but I spend most of the day doing that, so he spent about $650 on the task, thereby spending MORE not less.
Which [potentially] shows why he's a boss - and you aren't. That $650 (overpaid in salary to you) is a one time cost - but it can also represent considerably savings, in setup time if 2 or 5% resistors are the standard wherever you circuits are manufactured, in total cost (of hardware) across a large production run (even more so if your design contains many resistors), etc... etc...
Any engineer worth a damn knows enough accounting to be able to figure this stuff out.
I think you missed the point. The guy was saying that he's well aware of the cost savings of using cheaper resistors, but that he'd already done the analysis. The boss overrode him using financial criteria alone, rather than what a good engineer does, which is try to find a balance between cost and functionality (or reliability, or performance, or accuracy, or whatever your project's target criteria.) Chances are, that design will go into production and not meet spec, which means the expense of a redesign and lost manufacturing time. I see that happen all the time.
One reason corporations don't like part-time is that as long as you are full-time, you actually tend to work way past 40 hours a week. You do whatever it takes to get the job done, under impossible deadlines.
Quite the opposite in many cases. Companies like part-timers because they can be worked right up to 39.999 hours per week, thereby allowing the company to avoid paying any bennies (talk about violating the spirit of the law.) Oh, need more hours? Just hire some more part timers. A lot of big companies that laid off huge swaths of their workforce found out that the work still needed to be done... so they hired back the exact same people for a fraction of the cost. Bit hard on the workers, of course, who suddenly found themselves umemployed and then re-hired, but for less pay and no health insurance or retirement benefits. This kind of treatment of your employees makes perfect sense: that is, if you're a bean-counting android CEO (or a human sociopath in the same position.)
that they stopped filing lawsuits "months ago" and haven't filed their mass lawsuits since early Fall, and that the last suit they filed was in August....I did a little investigating and found out that they've been filing tons of lawsuits right through last week.
I'll give you ten cents if you can tell me what companies the RIAA represents.
Why is that a troll? The majority of people I know seem to think that it's the RIAA doing all of this on their own. They're just paid to do a job, after all. We should be looking past the public face of the music industry, and start paying attention to the corporations who are truly responsible.
This is an example of the ineffectiveness of "Hanlon's Razor" (Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity), but I think my more cynical "mcgrew's razor" applies here: Never attribute to stupidity or incompetence that which can be adequately explained by greedy self interest.
In other words, they're bloodsucking leeches that need to be salted and pulled off the soft underbelly of modern civilization.
I think the general rule for the "come to X country and learn its language" is for people intending to live there, not vacation there.
True enough, but even so... it's getting to the point where you'll be able to adequately communicate just about anywhere in the world if you know English and Spanish.
Yes indeed, I hear Spanish is a big hit over in Russia now.
Your arrogance disgusts me. It's always English, English, English!
Boy, did the GP hit a nerve with you. Frankly, I didn't find anything particular arrogant about his post (actually it was rather logical) but you're coming off as distinctly trollish.
Historically, every time a nation has become a dominant economic power, its particular native tongue has been studied and learned by people of other nations that wish to do business with the big boy. That's what happened here: America was the dominant economic, technological and scientific power for a long, long time and a lot of people around the world found it beneficial to learn English. Their choice, not our arrogance, and they in turn received considerable benefits for their efforts. That will probably continue, in spite of China's rising star, because I understand that they have more of their citizens learning English than the entire population of the United States.
The only thing I can take away from your post is that you don't like Americans.
Artists may be in the music business, but the RIAA is in the CD business.
The RIAA has no business: they're just lawyers. However, the studios themselves have never been in the music business either... they're in the shiny-plastic-disc business. An ideal world (for them) would be one in which we buy empty plastic discs without them having to spend a penny on "artists" or "music".
An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."
Did the spokesman make this statement in front of a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner?
No, actually, it was a huge "Mission: Impossible" banner, and Jim Phelps was not available for comment.
I would suggest that ISPs think long and hard about whether they want to become liable for contributory copyright infringement for all their traffic just so they spend resources to help the RIAA. That doesn't exactly sound like a great deal.
The reality is, it can't be done reliably. If at all... the ISPs are on the losing end of the technological stick and they know that. The RIAA is just trying to make people afraid of a new boogeyman now.
I'm sure that the people making the decisions at the highest levels of these corporations are never in direct contact with the unwashed masses, who would be the ones spitting on them.
That is correct. I pointed that out as well as a reason even social censure doesn't have the power it once did. Of course, that isn't even universally true. I once bumped into my Congressman at the grocery store (he was doing a decent enough job at the time, so I didn't spit on him:-)
I'm impressed that your Congressman actually frequents a grocery store. I remember a news clip of George Bush, Sr. taking a tour of a grocery store, and waving something at the laser scanner. He smiled, looked at the camera, and said something like, "It's amazing the things they have these days." Apparently he hadn't done his own shopping for some time.
Heh... The biggest question I would have is that how are they going to get legit PI licenses to investigate all of that; they can't have this plan without breaking the law in the same manner they've been doing with the lawsuits themselves. And with this plan, now they're involving the ISPs with those civil liabilities. Nice...
If I were an ISP, I'd tell them to go stuff themselves unless they had proof obtained in a manner that a court of law would consider legit.
From a technological perspective, this could get interesting. Now, is the RIAA attempting to force/cajole/convince ISPs to simply block ALL peer-to-peer applications? That won't wash: too many big vendors (Valve's Steam Content Distribution System, World of Warcraft, etc.) use swarming technology to distribute legitimate software. Every operating system (Linux, Solaris, you-name-it) vendor uses Torrents for distribution (indeed, grabbing Linux distros quickly was Bram Cohen's original inspiration for developing Bit Torrent.) It's no longer possible for media companies to reasonably claim that there are no valid uses for P2P and swarming technologies. That cat is out of the bag, just as it was for the VCR.
Furthermore, there are millions of customers (with more coming online every day) who justify their expensive broadband connections because of various P2P apps. They're not going to be happy if their fast 10 mbit/sec connection suddenly isn't useful for anything but email and Web browsing. In spite of what the RIAA/MPAA will tell you, there are other content creators out there. These are outfits that use and work with these technologies rather than try to fight them. Those guys won't take kindly to being arbitrarily blocked.
Assuming the legalities work out, how much are the ISPs willing to invest in this? If a P2P product is encrypting its transmissions, what are they going to do? Deep-packet inspection only goes so far... trying to decrypt a 128-bit AES encoded data stream on-the-fly is, well, just not going to work.
Consequently, I'm not really sure what the ISPs can do to selectively (and that's the key word here, folks) prevent transmission of copyrighted materials. I mean, sure, an ISP can look at the pattern of connections from a given machine and determine fairly easily if a P2P program is in use. However, it's not going to be hard for the developers behind the likes of Vuze (Azureus), Phex, and other P2P products to hide what is actually being transmitted from any kind of automated analysis (most support encryption already.)
This is a losing game. Throwing in the towel now will save them a lot of time, money and lost customers.
As with the VCR piracy that was said to destroy the entire movie industry decades ago it was the very same deal. People who saw their outdated business in peril convinced officials (that don't use the technology and don't how about it's workings and benefits) to outlaw those who tried to improve how things are done, so they can make more money of prolonging the process of adaption.
Cleanse, purge, repeat.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed with the MPAA in the Sony vs. Universal.
Nevertheless, it's a damn good thing that Jack Valenti is dead. That bastard did a lot of damage to the legal system along the way. Now if a few other similarly-placed individuals would just conveniently self-terminate, we'd all be a lot better off.
There's evil loose in the world, and you need look no further than your local video store to find it. Bloodsuckers.
Because the ISP's know damn well what will happen when people find out who they are.
Someone needs to dig this up fast and post it far and wide.
When these ISP's are raped by class action lawsuits and face customers bailing in droves, you will see a different tune.
Excellent point, plasmacutter. If one has a choice of ISP's, as most people do nowadays, why choose one that's in bed with the RIAA?
True... my concern is that this kind of intrusive network monitoring and blocking methodology may become industry standard practice. You can bet your boots that all the major ISPs have been watching what Comcast has been doing with Sandvine. If Comcast manages to get away with subverting the network from the user's perspective to such a degree, then the rest will fall in line under the mantra of "network management to ensure a quality experience for all of our customers" and there won't be anywhere else to go. Keep in mind that this is a good thing from the ISPs perspective as well: if they're allowed to cut off or threaten customers that allegedly transfer copyright materials, they'll be in a much better position to block competing network services (such as VoIP.)
Slashdot Mirror
I mostly agree but I think Algorithms has a place in there too. Data Structures would help as well
Niklaus Wirth ... is that you?
When developers ask for a new monitor or dual monitors, let them have 'em but mandate that the monitors be in a vertical orientation as opposed to the typical horizontal orientation. That way, they'll have to use the monitors for efficient viewing of code rather than watching movies all day long.
Well, look here. There's a lot of personal preference involved in efficient text handling, and arbitrarily forcing programmers to work in landscape or portrait just so they don't watch movies is ridiculous. Matter of fact, if you have coders doing that on the job, either give them the requisite attitude adjustment, or just fire their happy little asses and hire some responsible citizens. Maybe in their next position they'll be a little more focused.
.Net or Java, you're probably happier with a horizontal layout given how wordy those languages are (.Net in particular, Christ on a crutch and I thought Cobol was verbose.) I've also found that when I'm editing source code, it's often nice to have the IDE running vertical, with the other, horizontal monitor for both my debug output and the application display itself.
... they're rarely helpful and usually counterproductive, because of considerable variation between individuals. We're not all alike, and we're not all maximally productive in the same identical environment.
Furthermore, I don't know about you but the apps I develop are generally not used with the monitor in a vertical configuration (matter of fact, given the nature of the software I work on that would be completely inappropriate) so it would nullify the advantages of a dual-monitor setup if I were forced to use them the way you describe.
Continuing this theme, you can't just say, "programmers work better with monitors oriented THIS way." Sure, if you're hacking assembler code a vertical setup might (might!) be better for you because the lines tend to be relatively short, unless you're like me and like lots of comments. If you're coding in
So, I'd say this: give your developers the tools, training and any good advice they need, and then let each of them figure out what works best. Otherwise you're just another overbearing manager more interested in exerting his authority, rather than running an efficient, productive development team. Beware of arbitrary constraints
It's such a simple idea that I'm surprised that more businesses and coders haven't caught on to it.
Well, now you know.
Maybe she gets a raise?
She'll get a raise and/or a promotion because she covered somebody else's ass. That's how it works in government these days.
Good security is through computational complexity.
Which is one form of obscurity.
Sophist. You're just obscuring the point.
... you're pretty safe, even if the attacker knows exactly how you protected your data.
Computational complexity does so even if the methodology or algorithm itself is well-known, there being no presumption of ignorance on the part of the attacker. Security through obscurity depends entirely on the attacker being unaware of how a security system works, and being presumed unable to ever figure it out.
That rarely works well in practice, if you're attempting to obscure something that someone else wants badly enough. On the other hand, if the unauthorized unobscuring of your data can be accomplished only with a century or more of supercomputer time
Should that circuit judge be able to keep their job?
After all, he's blatantly participating in a cover-up of illegal activities in the Arkansas state government.
You know, I would be up in arms about all this but then again, you know ... Arkansas.
(I use the term "Big 4" advisedly, because they're getting smaller every day).
I'm sure that disturbs them greatly. I also note that there were some thousands of blacksmiths who once felt the same way.
Then and there, he pledged to adopt the management approach of always beng more expert than the people you are managing, even if it means working 16/7 for years on end.
That's one way. The other way is to make sure that you hire good people who can be trusted to make good judgments ... and then trust them.
I remember being subject to a class called Data Structures & Algorithms ...
Yes, I believe Nicholas Wirth taught that one. Supposedly when you've added the Data Structures to the Algorithms, you get Programs or something.
Which [potentially] shows why he's a boss - and you aren't. That $650 (overpaid in salary to you) is a one time cost - but it can also represent considerably savings, in setup time if 2 or 5% resistors are the standard wherever you circuits are manufactured, in total cost (of hardware) across a large production run (even more so if your design contains many resistors), etc... etc... Any engineer worth a damn knows enough accounting to be able to figure this stuff out.
I think you missed the point. The guy was saying that he's well aware of the cost savings of using cheaper resistors, but that he'd already done the analysis. The boss overrode him using financial criteria alone, rather than what a good engineer does, which is try to find a balance between cost and functionality (or reliability, or performance, or accuracy, or whatever your project's target criteria.) Chances are, that design will go into production and not meet spec, which means the expense of a redesign and lost manufacturing time. I see that happen all the time.
One reason corporations don't like part-time is that as long as you are full-time, you actually tend to work way past 40 hours a week. You do whatever it takes to get the job done, under impossible deadlines.
Quite the opposite in many cases. Companies like part-timers because they can be worked right up to 39.999 hours per week, thereby allowing the company to avoid paying any bennies (talk about violating the spirit of the law.) Oh, need more hours? Just hire some more part timers. A lot of big companies that laid off huge swaths of their workforce found out that the work still needed to be done ... so they hired back the exact same people for a fraction of the cost. Bit hard on the workers, of course, who suddenly found themselves umemployed and then re-hired, but for less pay and no health insurance or retirement benefits. This kind of treatment of your employees makes perfect sense: that is, if you're a bean-counting android CEO (or a human sociopath in the same position.)
that they stopped filing lawsuits "months ago" and haven't filed their mass lawsuits since early Fall, and that the last suit they filed was in August....I did a little investigating and found out that they've been filing tons of lawsuits right through last week.
So, they're lying. Again.
I'll give you ten cents if you can tell me what companies the RIAA represents.
Why is that a troll? The majority of people I know seem to think that it's the RIAA doing all of this on their own. They're just paid to do a job, after all. We should be looking past the public face of the music industry, and start paying attention to the corporations who are truly responsible.
Yeah, because all the ISPs have been real cooperative with the RIAA in the past ... (hint: No.)
Hint: Yes. They have ... in particular AT&T and Comcast have released confidential customer data at the drop of a hat.
This is an example of the ineffectiveness of "Hanlon's Razor" (Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity), but I think my more cynical "mcgrew's razor" applies here: Never attribute to stupidity or incompetence that which can be adequately explained by greedy self interest.
In other words, they're bloodsucking leeches that need to be salted and pulled off the soft underbelly of modern civilization.
Either they're stupid or they think we are.
Does it really have to be one or the other?
No, it doesn't. And they aren't exactly stupid ... but they are dishonest.
This is the great US of A!
We are only concerned with short-term profits.
NOW GET BACK TO WORK OR I'LL HAVE YOU FLOGGED!
-- Your Boss
p.s. $50 will be taken form your paycheck to pay for your visit to this site.
Actually, that's not true. The major studios aren't U.S. corporations.
I think the general rule for the "come to X country and learn its language" is for people intending to live there, not vacation there.
True enough, but even so... it's getting to the point where you'll be able to adequately communicate just about anywhere in the world if you know English and Spanish.
Yes indeed, I hear Spanish is a big hit over in Russia now.
Your arrogance disgusts me. It's always English, English, English!
Boy, did the GP hit a nerve with you. Frankly, I didn't find anything particular arrogant about his post (actually it was rather logical) but you're coming off as distinctly trollish.
Historically, every time a nation has become a dominant economic power, its particular native tongue has been studied and learned by people of other nations that wish to do business with the big boy. That's what happened here: America was the dominant economic, technological and scientific power for a long, long time and a lot of people around the world found it beneficial to learn English. Their choice, not our arrogance, and they in turn received considerable benefits for their efforts. That will probably continue, in spite of China's rising star, because I understand that they have more of their citizens learning English than the entire population of the United States.
The only thing I can take away from your post is that you don't like Americans.
I can live with that.
Artists may be in the music business, but the RIAA is in the CD business.
The RIAA has no business: they're just lawyers. However, the studios themselves have never been in the music business either ... they're in the shiny-plastic-disc business. An ideal world (for them) would be one in which we buy empty plastic discs without them having to spend a penny on "artists" or "music".
Did the spokesman make this statement in front of a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner?
No, actually, it was a huge "Mission: Impossible" banner, and Jim Phelps was not available for comment.
I would suggest that ISPs think long and hard about whether they want to become liable for contributory copyright infringement for all their traffic just so they spend resources to help the RIAA. That doesn't exactly sound like a great deal.
The reality is, it can't be done reliably. If at all ... the ISPs are on the losing end of the technological stick and they know that. The RIAA is just trying to make people afraid of a new boogeyman now.
I'm sure that the people making the decisions at the highest levels of these corporations are never in direct contact with the unwashed masses, who would be the ones spitting on them.
That is correct. I pointed that out as well as a reason even social censure doesn't have the power it once did. Of course, that isn't even universally true. I once bumped into my Congressman at the grocery store (he was doing a decent enough job at the time, so I didn't spit on him :-)
I'm impressed that your Congressman actually frequents a grocery store. I remember a news clip of George Bush, Sr. taking a tour of a grocery store, and waving something at the laser scanner. He smiled, looked at the camera, and said something like, "It's amazing the things they have these days." Apparently he hadn't done his own shopping for some time.
Heh... The biggest question I would have is that how are they going to get legit PI licenses to investigate all of that; they can't have this plan without breaking the law in the same manner they've been doing with the lawsuits themselves. And with this plan, now they're involving the ISPs with those civil liabilities. Nice...
If I were an ISP, I'd tell them to go stuff themselves unless they had proof obtained in a manner that a court of law would consider legit.
From a technological perspective, this could get interesting. Now, is the RIAA attempting to force/cajole/convince ISPs to simply block ALL peer-to-peer applications? That won't wash: too many big vendors (Valve's Steam Content Distribution System, World of Warcraft, etc.) use swarming technology to distribute legitimate software. Every operating system (Linux, Solaris, you-name-it) vendor uses Torrents for distribution (indeed, grabbing Linux distros quickly was Bram Cohen's original inspiration for developing Bit Torrent.) It's no longer possible for media companies to reasonably claim that there are no valid uses for P2P and swarming technologies. That cat is out of the bag, just as it was for the VCR.
... trying to decrypt a 128-bit AES encoded data stream on-the-fly is, well, just not going to work.
Furthermore, there are millions of customers (with more coming online every day) who justify their expensive broadband connections because of various P2P apps. They're not going to be happy if their fast 10 mbit/sec connection suddenly isn't useful for anything but email and Web browsing. In spite of what the RIAA/MPAA will tell you, there are other content creators out there. These are outfits that use and work with these technologies rather than try to fight them. Those guys won't take kindly to being arbitrarily blocked.
Assuming the legalities work out, how much are the ISPs willing to invest in this? If a P2P product is encrypting its transmissions, what are they going to do? Deep-packet inspection only goes so far
Consequently, I'm not really sure what the ISPs can do to selectively (and that's the key word here, folks) prevent transmission of copyrighted materials. I mean, sure, an ISP can look at the pattern of connections from a given machine and determine fairly easily if a P2P program is in use. However, it's not going to be hard for the developers behind the likes of Vuze (Azureus), Phex, and other P2P products to hide what is actually being transmitted from any kind of automated analysis (most support encryption already.)
This is a losing game. Throwing in the towel now will save them a lot of time, money and lost customers.
As with the VCR piracy that was said to destroy the entire movie industry decades ago it was the very same deal. People who saw their outdated business in peril convinced officials (that don't use the technology and don't how about it's workings and benefits) to outlaw those who tried to improve how things are done, so they can make more money of prolonging the process of adaption. Cleanse, purge, repeat.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed with the MPAA in the Sony vs. Universal.
Nevertheless, it's a damn good thing that Jack Valenti is dead. That bastard did a lot of damage to the legal system along the way. Now if a few other similarly-placed individuals would just conveniently self-terminate, we'd all be a lot better off.
There's evil loose in the world, and you need look no further than your local video store to find it. Bloodsuckers.
Because the ISP's know damn well what will happen when people find out who they are. Someone needs to dig this up fast and post it far and wide. When these ISP's are raped by class action lawsuits and face customers bailing in droves, you will see a different tune.
Excellent point, plasmacutter. If one has a choice of ISP's, as most people do nowadays, why choose one that's in bed with the RIAA?
True ... my concern is that this kind of intrusive network monitoring and blocking methodology may become industry standard practice. You can bet your boots that all the major ISPs have been watching what Comcast has been doing with Sandvine. If Comcast manages to get away with subverting the network from the user's perspective to such a degree, then the rest will fall in line under the mantra of "network management to ensure a quality experience for all of our customers" and there won't be anywhere else to go. Keep in mind that this is a good thing from the ISPs perspective as well: if they're allowed to cut off or threaten customers that allegedly transfer copyright materials, they'll be in a much better position to block competing network services (such as VoIP.)