Maybe the barbed leaves are just a way to attract female trees for breeding and thus to have a natural selection to improve the breed. And the silly scientists of course couldn't even come up with that one. I say that they should have considered creationism more seriously. And saying a meaningless prayer or two before eating the food you worked for also wouldn't hurt. Heretics!
A friend of mine hosts web sites and get revenue from adds. What he noticed is that worse articles result in higher levels of add clicking. Presumably if people are bored by a site they either close it or click on an (add) link, possibly to just get away from it. The human brain is an enigma.
Anyway, Bing could be so much worse than Google that visitors are more likely to move along. Also of interest is whether these user come back and/or if they move back to Google after a while.
Having said all that I must remark that I have never even tried Bing and that I'm not planning on doing so in the foreseeable future. I don't care much for the MS bunch and that from the two I'm more likely to sort of trust Google -for the time being.
It's not about hatred but more about apprehension. Most times MS woos and lulls the world into thinking they're not so bad after all, it's ugly head rears up one way or another.
In related news it is alleged that Nissan will do a pokemon rice job on the Z370. It will however be $100 cheaper.
WTF! Are xformers so geeky that they a Chevy deserves an article on/.? Sure, car crisis and shit. But hey!
When the original series was aired I used to take the piss at xformers --con and -tron and all with an all American deep voice. Cars transforming into robots, both goodies and baddies.
How lame can you get? What's the next level of unlikeliness? Oh shithe that 'll be Tolkien of which hoards of devotees are on/. I see and smell my karma burning....
Father I need to confess. Contrary to popular belief the significant parts of my life fit in a couple of 16 GB SDHC cards. A bit of video on one and all photos on the other. That's it.
I take the complete works of Edsger Dijkstra need even less storage. If I would be so privileged to be one 10th as meaningful as he was to society -which I'm not- then 32 GB is still over-dimensioned.
It's the age guys. All of a sudden one starts to be realistic.
Back on topic. Fact is these gadgets will become dirt cheap and then I'll buy of course.
Remember DHCP? MS came with that as an extension of bootp and with an RFC too. Surely a fortunate bug somewhere -that never was fixed- causing WfW not to comply, resulting in MS DHCP servers.
Remember NetBIOS over TCP? Where a clear algorithm was defined to map NetBIOS names to DNS. Not too unfortunately, in WfW the algorithm wasn't implemented causing incompatibilities between OS/2 and WfW, and making a transition from NetBIOS over NetBEUI a bigger pain than it should have been.
There must be more recent examples which I don't know about.
MS never gives a little without getting a lot. Stay clear of the b'stards.
I worked for Philips back in the 90ies where I was a developer in the first car navigation systems. Had a good time there and I like the technology behind navigation systems. Route planning, position determination (GSP, dead reckoning, compass), database, on-line updates, voice alerts, GUI, etc...
However, I take pride in NOT using car navigation. I study maps to get where I want and then I leave these maps home. I see situations where I'm lost as oportunities to get to know the surroundings better.
A couple of weeks ago I planned a trip of 2400 km (1500 miles.) Needles to say the trip did not go as planned. West from Paris there was a huge traffic jam towards the coast. So I stopped at a service station, tried to reroute but failed.
Then from Calais to my destination in Dartford near London everything went fine and I found my destination instantly.
On my way back I wanted to avoid Paris and decided to drive through Belgium, a route I did consider only as an unlikely alternative. Sure enough, east from Brussels, I too the wrong way. Instead of driving toward Luxembourg, I was driving towards LiÃge. I deduced this from the position of the sun. At a service station, using a crappy map I found on the shelves, I rerouted. The road I took was incredibly beautiful and well worth the extra time.
After Luxembourg everything went fine through France and Germany and I home only a few hours later than expected.
My brother in law -very intelligent man, PhD, literate, etc...- on the other hand, has no sense of direction at all. It seems there's no therapy or cure for that. He would always use a navigation system, probably even to move within the city he lived in for 50 years.
My brains won't degrade by the presence of navigation systems and neither would my brother in law's.
Well, if this does work, it looks like the waste processing plants will get a complete overhaul.
You mean with lame phone pranks, one really stupid bimbo, the prank guy being a good-for-nothing idiot and dirt cheap sentiments? But, regardless of that you like the craftsmanship and keep consuming?
The "easy" part of the military is that tasks are well defined. Mostly you do what you're told -wel, apart from obvious stuff like the camelbacks you told us- and people expect orders to be clear. If you don't follow orders then consequences are mostly clearly defined.
Also, screwing up in the army means you will get killed. The room for morons to maneuver is small and coming up through ranks is accepted. Fair enough.
The hard part in civil organizations is that people are not always motivated or clearly instructed for that matter. There's a hell of a lot of gray area that will be used politically. Simply being liked by coworkers is not enough. You'll always have to go through a management layer that's scared shitless by anyone slightly more savvy.
I dare to question whether in the military a leap to officer is well received at 39. Officers/managers should establish themselves at a much younger age.
The essence is that you should know yourself before taking an irreversible step. Laving technology is such a step after about two years.
BTW, although I sound critical, I accept and respect my management. When managers and workers groove, the hard bits seem easy and the impossible suddenly becomes possible. Hail to both good managers and good workers.
Now at 44 I'm leaving behind a big budget team in a big enterprise to become an IT Director in a small but growing company.
I'm happy to hearing this worked out for you. You clearly have more for you going than "just" the technical part.
I myself am not in the same position. I excel in technical stuff but I'm lousy at selling my ideas and keeping up with people that are not passionate at whatever it is they do. I know my short comings and deal with them.
What I see around me is that excellent technical staff is sometimes strong armed into management, typically by promotion to team leader of their former team. Reasons may vary from trying to justify a higher salary to trying to "get rid of the savvy bastard." Suddenly the team they used to excel in, lost (the) one worker, all gets harder to manage and no new resources are allowed. The new team manager inevitably turns back to coding and the loosing struggle starts.
The alternatives to management as a career opportunity are consultancy or architecture. Both interesting and maybe a bit more natural to the technical person.
To someone who is always learning, dispensability is something to pursue!
Sure. I'd even say that dispensability is part of sane development (What if someone suddenly passes away?) However, dispensability is often mistaken for horribly simple systems that require loads of manual interaction and are prone to fail in critical times. Or, the manager's definition.
I was once in a position where UNIX developers couldn't be arsed to spend 2 hours learning make(1). Or to learn POD to easily generate man-pages. Or to document Java classes well and use Javadoc. Guess what happened when I left out of my own choice with a completely documented system that complied to all internal architectural requirements? I was blamed for the incompetence of the people staying behind. There wasn't a single buddy manager of my former manager that simply noted that all was done under his supervision and that eventually he was responsible and that he should improve. I perfectly understand this way of behaving but I could never lower myself to this level.
When you're junior you are taught to setup an organization as a constantly self improving system and you tend to buy it. When you get senior you realize it's mostly about buddies hugging each other. I exercise the privilege NOT to play a game I will loose. I am content in selling my skills for good money.
Apart from "what makes you tick" there's the expectations side.
Not to put you down but realistically I'd say that at 39 you'll most likely wind up being a dispensable middle manager. As technical savvy person you most likely will be a pain in the arse for your peers and one management level higher. Either you're the talent that took the wrong road 20 years ago and will become CTO/CEO (not very likely, you're reading/.), or you will not fit in and burn out (most likely), or you're so completely bland that you are appreciated for not interfering (not likely,/.)
Face it, 39 is late for starting anything new. Would you accept a middle manager which at 39 decides that being a middleware expert "really is his calling", as your peer?
Even though most of us here think we would be better managers than the idiots that are currently managing us, we most likely won't. However basic and primordial we think management skills are, these remain skills which you have to acquire.
If management is really what you want and you want to avoid the trap of "caring too much about the details of the product", you might consider moving to another field altogether. Think how easy it would be to push, say, fashion designers around. ("I can't sell this a s beige, Serge, call it Sahara Yellow.)
FYI: At 45 I'm an absolute techy. Only now I start to really sense the way certain managers want my services and will stick knives in my back as soon as these are obtained. These are "management basics" and I'd be the laughing stock if I were to swap places.
When I look at the exterior and interior of the Veyron, a lack of expertise and craftsmanship is not what comes to mind.
The point was that at some the Bugatti name was traded when the expertise and craftsmanship weren't long gone. Sure enough expertise and craftsmanship were brought in but missing that heritage reduced Bugatti to merely a brand. I don't think Ettore Bugatti would have wanted it that way. I do think he would have been impressed by the Veyron though.
The Bugatti EB110 is horrible"? To give you an idea of just how "horrible" it was, the greatest driver ever (statistically) - Michael Schumacher - bought one himself, and drove it often. Plus, it was the progenitor of the Veyron's quad-turbo meme. And you were doing quite well, up to there;-)
Yeah, Schumi bought one so it's likely to be a proper racer. No argument there.
But look at a picture of the EB110 and almost any other model Bugatti built before that. Suddenly whatever beauty you see in the EB110's fades.
A bit like the Gumpert Apollo. Hell of a car but too ugly to be driven at night, in the desert, when a lethal virus decimated the world population and you're blind as well.
Nowadays Bugatti is owned by Volkswagen and the Veyron is it's "gimmick" (for the car illiterate, this is an understatement) to show the world how bloody good they are. The "Volk" (people) part of VW is prohibitive in marketing luxury cars. The Phaeton for example just doesn't get the attention it deserves in the limousine segment.
IMHO the pedigree isn't there anymore. Bugatti was very successful in the old days but ever since Ettore Bugatti passed away in 1947 the company just didn't have a sense of direction. In 1987 the name Bugatti -and not the expertise and craftsmanship- was bought by an entrepreneur which produced the horrible Bugatti EB110. Now VW produces the Veyron and it's currently the technically most sophisticated car around but the blood line is definitively cut.
Here's where I've got to disagree with you, since there are quite a lot of fat women who have really ugly (and probably stinky) butts.
The indoctrination machine proclaiming that sufferer of anorexia are sexy and desirable works miracles. IMHO dimension is not a pejorative factor of the women's behind. Shape of the derriere, the transition to and coherence with other body parts can make my charisma grow like a mountain flower in spring.
Free yourself from the tyranny of the motion picture industry! The truth induced on you by them simply isn't. Appreciate the female behind by considering all shapes and forms. And contemplate many, many shapes before judging. <INSERT GOSPEL QUOTE HERE>
There is no honor in accepting gifts to study women's derriere. A cavalier does this pro deo and pro patria. Indeed I do so vigorously and relentlessly.
I am among a very secret an tightly knit circle of experts. Currently 3 x 10^9 members pertain to this club. We recognize each other by a prurient grin on our faces.
If anything, differences in skin, religion and culture intensify our bond as we admire in reverend awe every single instance. (However, when our duties are accomplished we might take up where we left and proceed with cracking each other's sculls.)
Now I shall drink tea whilst adopting the erected wee finger position.
Buddy, you're already modded down but I'm replying anyway.
What I depict is a situation that occurs in most workplaces in the EU/USA. Indian companies are flew in because investors and management think that's cheaper. But the match between a "tech process and methodology" oriented culture -like mentioned in article and like Indian companies tend to be- and businesses that are clueless about quality -that's more than 90% of all businesses-, is not made in heaven.
So, projects are bound to fail. And horribly so.
What I'm stating is that quality and methodology are academic concepts that hardly ever are implemented well or sustainably for that matter. I know, I have seen many of these come loudly and go silently like a thief in the night.
Now think about the misery this attitude of both "our" and "your" management this causes. "Our" misery is relative as we "only" have to clean up after disaster.
"You" guys are less well off. Two miles from where I live is a whole quarter owned by TCS. The Indians living there are exploited. Their payroll in India continues and their salary is doubled. Not bad you'd say, except that it is bad.
The guys I worked with miss their family -it's not that they can spend a weekend going to and from India- and a large part of their salary is spent on keeping in touch. For the rest they live very sober lives and cannot afford the life style a minimum wages worker here would. For a month's work, 5 days -and I'm very generous here- are spent on them. What happens with the rest of the revenue? What do you think?
And then eventually when they get back they have to serve at least a year in India before they can start their own business, doing the same but for a multiple amount of money.
Back to coding. You'd say that India would be contributing 2/3 of all the open source code compared to EU/USA. After all, there are 1G Indians and roughly.G EU/USA people. You'd say and you'd be wrong.
Don't forget that the open source code you're reviewing/rewriting is written in sheds, in the evening. As a fully employed person you are bound to find you can do better. But of course you contribute back to society.
To be PC: Mostly I have very good personal contact with Indians. Cultured, well spoken, interested, witty. Although there is the occasional bastard. Just like in any culture.
"master the 'boring' details of tech process and methodology"
Ha!
I myself have worked for large outfits and many in my family work for large outfits. My experience and that of my loved ones is that working with Indian companies is a guarantee for disaster. Recently my sister witnessed a $50 million project being trashed. The problem is that Indian IT companies usually limit themselves to implementing exactly what you specify. Or, if you ask for an analysis, they let a bloated system emerge. Unless you work for a CMMI level 4 company this attitude is next to useless.
People that master "tech process and methodology" wind up being slaves to "quality". Quality as in "meticulously following the procedures." As more than 90% of businesses don't really have quality in place -or at best, have some quality shroud- this means that de facto they are slaves to the next management level. Very convenient once you are the manager.
The problem is that higher management and share holders don't understand that this is common practice. They only see that Indians cost 10 times less than European/US people. If you need 20 times more people to do the work, cost double. The bureaucracy of 20 times more people cripples your organization.
Man, I've seen a team of 10-15 people writing 'make' files for package generation. And particularly crappy 'make' files at that. Had to wait hours to have them running a 'make pkg' command and returning me the generated package. For Christ's sake! This is something you think about and implement on a rainy afternoon and which takes 1 minute to run each time afterwards.
Don't want to bitch or moan. But isn't that just stealing energy from cars?
There's no such thing as free energy. It probably will cost cars extra to drive over the plates. That is, the 30 kWh come from fossil fuel. Way to go!
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe the barbed leaves are just a way to attract female trees for breeding and thus to have a natural selection to improve the breed. And the silly scientists of course couldn't even come up with that one. I say that they should have considered creationism more seriously. And saying a meaningless prayer or two before eating the food you worked for also wouldn't hurt. Heretics!
A friend of mine hosts web sites and get revenue from adds. What he noticed is that worse articles result in higher levels of add clicking. Presumably if people are bored by a site they either close it or click on an (add) link, possibly to just get away from it. The human brain is an enigma.
Anyway, Bing could be so much worse than Google that visitors are more likely to move along. Also of interest is whether these user come back and/or if they move back to Google after a while.
Having said all that I must remark that I have never even tried Bing and that I'm not planning on doing so in the foreseeable future. I don't care much for the MS bunch and that from the two I'm more likely to sort of trust Google -for the time being.
l33t. That is, it seems to be the rookie's favorite. Probably they feel it does favors to their coolness. Yeah, sure.
It's not about hatred but more about apprehension. Most times MS woos and lulls the world into thinking they're not so bad after all, it's ugly head rears up one way or another.
In related news it is alleged that Nissan will do a pokemon rice job on the Z370. It will however be $100 cheaper.
/.? Sure, car crisis and shit. But hey!
/. I see and smell my karma burning....
WTF! Are xformers so geeky that they a Chevy deserves an article on
When the original series was aired I used to take the piss at xformers --con and -tron and all with an all American deep voice. Cars transforming into robots, both goodies and baddies.
How lame can you get? What's the next level of unlikeliness? Oh shithe that 'll be Tolkien of which hoards of devotees are on
Father I need to confess. Contrary to popular belief the significant parts of my life fit in a couple of 16 GB SDHC cards. A bit of video on one and all photos on the other. That's it.
I take the complete works of Edsger Dijkstra need even less storage. If I would be so privileged to be one 10th as meaningful as he was to society -which I'm not- then 32 GB is still over-dimensioned.
It's the age guys. All of a sudden one starts to be realistic.
Back on topic. Fact is these gadgets will become dirt cheap and then I'll buy of course.
Remember DHCP? MS came with that as an extension of bootp and with an RFC too. Surely a fortunate bug somewhere -that never was fixed- causing WfW not to comply, resulting in MS DHCP servers.
Remember NetBIOS over TCP? Where a clear algorithm was defined to map NetBIOS names to DNS. Not too unfortunately, in WfW the algorithm wasn't implemented causing incompatibilities between OS/2 and WfW, and making a transition from NetBIOS over NetBEUI a bigger pain than it should have been.
There must be more recent examples which I don't know about.
MS never gives a little without getting a lot. Stay clear of the b'stards.
By applying for a patent the referred technology surely has been proven to work. That is, he successfully implemented prototypes.
Or maybe not and he's trying to stifle people that really want to make a difference and to make money from litigation. What else?
The lack of evidence -who deploys huge scale experiments without the world taking note- supports my theory -which a five year old could come up with.
I worked for Philips back in the 90ies where I was a developer in the first car navigation systems. Had a good time there and I like the technology behind navigation systems. Route planning, position determination (GSP, dead reckoning, compass), database, on-line updates, voice alerts, GUI, etc...
However, I take pride in NOT using car navigation. I study maps to get where I want and then I leave these maps home. I see situations where I'm lost as oportunities to get to know the surroundings better.
A couple of weeks ago I planned a trip of 2400 km (1500 miles.) Needles to say the trip did not go as planned. West from Paris there was a huge traffic jam towards the coast. So I stopped at a service station, tried to reroute but failed.
Then from Calais to my destination in Dartford near London everything went fine and I found my destination instantly.
On my way back I wanted to avoid Paris and decided to drive through Belgium, a route I did consider only as an unlikely alternative. Sure enough, east from Brussels, I too the wrong way. Instead of driving toward Luxembourg, I was driving towards LiÃge. I deduced this from the position of the sun. At a service station, using a crappy map I found on the shelves, I rerouted. The road I took was incredibly beautiful and well worth the extra time.
After Luxembourg everything went fine through France and Germany and I home only a few hours later than expected.
My brother in law -very intelligent man, PhD, literate, etc...- on the other hand, has no sense of direction at all. It seems there's no therapy or cure for that. He would always use a navigation system, probably even to move within the city he lived in for 50 years.
My brains won't degrade by the presence of navigation systems and neither would my brother in law's.
Well, if this does work, it looks like the waste processing plants will get a complete overhaul.
You mean with lame phone pranks, one really stupid bimbo, the prank guy being a good-for-nothing idiot and dirt cheap sentiments? But, regardless of that you like the craftsmanship and keep consuming?
We as a species are doomed.
The "easy" part of the military is that tasks are well defined. Mostly you do what you're told -wel, apart from obvious stuff like the camelbacks you told us- and people expect orders to be clear. If you don't follow orders then consequences are mostly clearly defined.
Also, screwing up in the army means you will get killed. The room for morons to maneuver is small and coming up through ranks is accepted. Fair enough.
The hard part in civil organizations is that people are not always motivated or clearly instructed for that matter. There's a hell of a lot of gray area that will be used politically. Simply being liked by coworkers is not enough. You'll always have to go through a management layer that's scared shitless by anyone slightly more savvy.
I dare to question whether in the military a leap to officer is well received at 39. Officers/managers should establish themselves at a much younger age.
The essence is that you should know yourself before taking an irreversible step. Laving technology is such a step after about two years.
BTW, although I sound critical, I accept and respect my management. When managers and workers groove, the hard bits seem easy and the impossible suddenly becomes possible. Hail to both good managers and good workers.
Now at 44 I'm leaving behind a big budget team in a big enterprise to become an IT Director in a small but growing company.
I'm happy to hearing this worked out for you. You clearly have more for you going than "just" the technical part.
I myself am not in the same position. I excel in technical stuff but I'm lousy at selling my ideas and keeping up with people that are not passionate at whatever it is they do. I know my short comings and deal with them.
What I see around me is that excellent technical staff is sometimes strong armed into management, typically by promotion to team leader of their former team. Reasons may vary from trying to justify a higher salary to trying to "get rid of the savvy bastard." Suddenly the team they used to excel in, lost (the) one worker, all gets harder to manage and no new resources are allowed. The new team manager inevitably turns back to coding and the loosing struggle starts.
The alternatives to management as a career opportunity are consultancy or architecture. Both interesting and maybe a bit more natural to the technical person.
To someone who is always learning, dispensability is something to pursue!
Sure. I'd even say that dispensability is part of sane development (What if someone suddenly passes away?) However, dispensability is often mistaken for horribly simple systems that require loads of manual interaction and are prone to fail in critical times. Or, the manager's definition.
I was once in a position where UNIX developers couldn't be arsed to spend 2 hours learning make(1). Or to learn POD to easily generate man-pages. Or to document Java classes well and use Javadoc. Guess what happened when I left out of my own choice with a completely documented system that complied to all internal architectural requirements? I was blamed for the incompetence of the people staying behind. There wasn't a single buddy manager of my former manager that simply noted that all was done under his supervision and that eventually he was responsible and that he should improve. I perfectly understand this way of behaving but I could never lower myself to this level.
When you're junior you are taught to setup an organization as a constantly self improving system and you tend to buy it. When you get senior you realize it's mostly about buddies hugging each other. I exercise the privilege NOT to play a game I will loose. I am content in selling my skills for good money.
Apart from "what makes you tick" there's the expectations side.
/.), or you will not fit in and burn out (most likely), or you're so completely bland that you are appreciated for not interfering (not likely, /.)
Not to put you down but realistically I'd say that at 39 you'll most likely wind up being a dispensable middle manager. As technical savvy person you most likely will be a pain in the arse for your peers and one management level higher. Either you're the talent that took the wrong road 20 years ago and will become CTO/CEO (not very likely, you're reading
Face it, 39 is late for starting anything new. Would you accept a middle manager which at 39 decides that being a middleware expert "really is his calling", as your peer?
Even though most of us here think we would be better managers than the idiots that are currently managing us, we most likely won't. However basic and primordial we think management skills are, these remain skills which you have to acquire.
If management is really what you want and you want to avoid the trap of "caring too much about the details of the product", you might consider moving to another field altogether. Think how easy it would be to push, say, fashion designers around. ("I can't sell this a s beige, Serge, call it Sahara Yellow.)
FYI: At 45 I'm an absolute techy. Only now I start to really sense the way certain managers want my services and will stick knives in my back as soon as these are obtained. These are "management basics" and I'd be the laughing stock if I were to swap places.
When I look at the exterior and interior of the Veyron, a lack of expertise and craftsmanship is not what comes to mind.
The point was that at some the Bugatti name was traded when the expertise and craftsmanship weren't long gone. Sure enough expertise and craftsmanship were brought in but missing that heritage reduced Bugatti to merely a brand. I don't think Ettore Bugatti would have wanted it that way. I do think he would have been impressed by the Veyron though.
Not to mention VW owns Lamboghini and Porsche. There's your "lower end" market covered there.
Porsche not (yet) and Lambo through Audi. Wouldn't we all want to humbly eat these scraps?
The Bugatti EB110 is horrible"? To give you an idea of just how "horrible" it was, the greatest driver ever (statistically) - Michael Schumacher - bought one himself, and drove it often. Plus, it was the progenitor of the Veyron's quad-turbo meme. And you were doing quite well, up to there ;-)
Yeah, Schumi bought one so it's likely to be a proper racer. No argument there.
But look at a picture of the EB110 and almost any other model Bugatti built before that. Suddenly whatever beauty you see in the EB110's fades.
A bit like the Gumpert Apollo. Hell of a car but too ugly to be driven at night, in the desert, when a lethal virus decimated the world population and you're blind as well.
brand nobody had heard of
Are you kidding? Bugatti has been around forever.
Nowadays Bugatti is owned by Volkswagen and the Veyron is it's "gimmick" (for the car illiterate, this is an understatement) to show the world how bloody good they are. The "Volk" (people) part of VW is prohibitive in marketing luxury cars. The Phaeton for example just doesn't get the attention it deserves in the limousine segment.
IMHO the pedigree isn't there anymore. Bugatti was very successful in the old days but ever since Ettore Bugatti passed away in 1947 the company just didn't have a sense of direction. In 1987 the name Bugatti -and not the expertise and craftsmanship- was bought by an entrepreneur which produced the horrible Bugatti EB110. Now VW produces the Veyron and it's currently the technically most sophisticated car around but the blood line is definitively cut.
As Bill Bailey said, we're human slaves in an Insect Nation (AHAAAAAHAAAAAAA!)
admire in reverend awe every single instance.
Here's where I've got to disagree with you, since there are quite a lot of fat women who have really ugly (and probably stinky) butts.
The indoctrination machine proclaiming that sufferer of anorexia are sexy and desirable works miracles. IMHO dimension is not a pejorative factor of the women's behind. Shape of the derriere, the transition to and coherence with other body parts can make my charisma grow like a mountain flower in spring.
Free yourself from the tyranny of the motion picture industry! The truth induced on you by them simply isn't. Appreciate the female behind by considering all shapes and forms. And contemplate many, many shapes before judging. <INSERT GOSPEL QUOTE HERE>
There is no honor in accepting gifts to study women's derriere. A cavalier does this pro deo and pro patria. Indeed I do so vigorously and relentlessly.
I am among a very secret an tightly knit circle of experts. Currently 3 x 10^9 members pertain to this club. We recognize each other by a prurient grin on our faces.
If anything, differences in skin, religion and culture intensify our bond as we admire in reverend awe every single instance. (However, when our duties are accomplished we might take up where we left and proceed with cracking each other's sculls.)
Now I shall drink tea whilst adopting the erected wee finger position.
To women's backsides we all cheer hooray!
Devious bastards!
Buddy, you're already modded down but I'm replying anyway.
.G EU/USA people. You'd say and you'd be wrong.
What I depict is a situation that occurs in most workplaces in the EU/USA. Indian companies are flew in because investors and management think that's cheaper. But the match between a "tech process and methodology" oriented culture -like mentioned in article and like Indian companies tend to be- and businesses that are clueless about quality -that's more than 90% of all businesses-, is not made in heaven.
So, projects are bound to fail. And horribly so.
What I'm stating is that quality and methodology are academic concepts that hardly ever are implemented well or sustainably for that matter. I know, I have seen many of these come loudly and go silently like a thief in the night.
Now think about the misery this attitude of both "our" and "your" management this causes. "Our" misery is relative as we "only" have to clean up after disaster.
"You" guys are less well off. Two miles from where I live is a whole quarter owned by TCS. The Indians living there are exploited. Their payroll in India continues and their salary is doubled. Not bad you'd say, except that it is bad.
The guys I worked with miss their family -it's not that they can spend a weekend going to and from India- and a large part of their salary is spent on keeping in touch. For the rest they live very sober lives and cannot afford the life style a minimum wages worker here would. For a month's work, 5 days -and I'm very generous here- are spent on them. What happens with the rest of the revenue? What do you think?
And then eventually when they get back they have to serve at least a year in India before they can start their own business, doing the same but for a multiple amount of money.
Back to coding. You'd say that India would be contributing 2/3 of all the open source code compared to EU/USA. After all, there are 1G Indians and roughly
Don't forget that the open source code you're reviewing/rewriting is written in sheds, in the evening. As a fully employed person you are bound to find you can do better. But of course you contribute back to society.
To be PC: Mostly I have very good personal contact with Indians. Cultured, well spoken, interested, witty. Although there is the occasional bastard. Just like in any culture.
"master the 'boring' details of tech process and methodology"
Ha!
I myself have worked for large outfits and many in my family work for large outfits. My experience and that of my loved ones is that working with Indian companies is a guarantee for disaster. Recently my sister witnessed a $50 million project being trashed. The problem is that Indian IT companies usually limit themselves to implementing exactly what you specify. Or, if you ask for an analysis, they let a bloated system emerge. Unless you work for a CMMI level 4 company this attitude is next to useless.
People that master "tech process and methodology" wind up being slaves to "quality". Quality as in "meticulously following the procedures." As more than 90% of businesses don't really have quality in place -or at best, have some quality shroud- this means that de facto they are slaves to the next management level. Very convenient once you are the manager.
The problem is that higher management and share holders don't understand that this is common practice. They only see that Indians cost 10 times less than European/US people. If you need 20 times more people to do the work, cost double. The bureaucracy of 20 times more people cripples your organization.
Man, I've seen a team of 10-15 people writing 'make' files for package generation. And particularly crappy 'make' files at that. Had to wait hours to have them running a 'make pkg' command and returning me the generated package. For Christ's sake! This is something you think about and implement on a rainy afternoon and which takes 1 minute to run each time afterwards.
Don't want to bitch or moan. But isn't that just stealing energy from cars?
There's no such thing as free energy. It probably will cost cars extra to drive over the plates. That is, the 30 kWh come from fossil fuel. Way to go!
The moral is: "DO NOT POST YOUR PERSONAL LIFE ON THE INTERNET!"
Really, besides your loved ones, nobody gives a fsck about your personal life unless they can make a bob or two out of it.
Also, be unmistakeably clear to provide licensing conditions to your content.
Last, don't whine if you're an idiot. Then again, you're probably still in the long lasting denial phase anyway.