Yes it's a big city, but does it have the demographic of people that would shop at a business like that? I mean, if a business can survive in Victoria (greater area of 300K people), then it has to be demographics and marketing.
So that justifies high prices? I'd expect the elasticity of demand on a product like Windows would mean more purchases in the consumer world if the price was lower (i.e. less pirating).
The flip side is corporate customers are much less elastic. They must buy Windows licenses, so they do, regardless of price. There is also the OEM market, which does get lower pricing, but that's not exposed to the customers and is huge business for MS. Upgrades to software may have been common in the 90s (3.11 -> 95 -> 98 -> XP), but now people often upgrade their hardware and get the latest MS OS that way (thanks to hardware being so disposable these days). Can't really blame people as you can buy a decent laptop for the price of my first CD burner.
Could MS charge a bigger price difference on home vs pro? Sure. Would it make them much more profit? I'd assume no, as they have some pretty smart people working there. Either the market isn't big enough to make a big difference or it would cause issues with their corporate or OEM (e.g. OEM expect X% off retail licenses.. retail go down, they expect their license cost to go down).
If you check the subject of the parent (which your post is still using) they were referring to Ubuntu. Implying people will jump through hoops to get a free version of Windows when you can get a free as in beer (no hacks, no license required) OS, even on a disc mailed to you.
Yes it's not true that Windows is being given away with no hack or license.. that's not what the parent posted.
The ONLY video store I know that is still successful specializes in difficult to find material. The kicker is all their staff are avid film and movie fans and can recommend films you haven't seen, "Oh you like that director? Have you seen his little known release X? What about this director from a decade prior that was his main influence?"
Personally I think it would be cool if rental places could do a beer growler style service. You bring a flash drive in, they drop a 1080P film on it of your choice. I like my movies in HD, but I'm no fan of BR. Of course DRM and the MPAA stands between that ever realistically happening. Why would I want such a service rather than online or a kiosk? Aside from online DL speed being slow on low compression HD videos (especially less popular ones), the same reason the as above. So I can have a human help me select something. That's where the value is added.
So because a wikipedia article doesn't cover it, it must not be true?
Here's US v. Nicholas in which (under oath) he admits to drug use. So there's part of it verified. Find the divorce case which was they fought to keep sealed (but the L.A. times fought for) and I'm sure you'll find information about his infidelity with prostitutes. With some quick googling I was only able to find his attempts to keep it sealed.
Did Vanity Fair possibly exaggerate or sensationalize? Sure, but nothing in there is all that unbelievable. I've seen rich people with a lot less money (only 400-500K/year) do things along those lines. If they had that money it would be the same story. Only thing is they aren't in the tech business.. they are in an inherently shadier business..
Forget McAfee. I want a movie about Henry Nicholas of Broadcom. Henry was living large: drugs, prostitutes, secret sex lair being built under his house while his family lived in it.. It's as though he was living his life just to make a crazy movie about it.
McAfee? I don't want to watch a movie about some some guy that is obsessed with taking drugs rectally.
Maybe they are literally sitting on the money for a short while then giving it to start-ups. What to start a new tech business? Sure, but your money is going to smell like a rich guy's ass.
Some people aren't down with that.. hence acceptance of VC being down.
Quite true. I know a few people who use "medical" marijuana for pain relief (medical simply meaning they procure it through legal means, not that it is produced or controlled by a lab). It has kept them off opiates (in one case gotten him off opiates). They are very specific about what works for their pain yet allows them to live productive lives.
Speaking of opiates: I am very against the use of opiates for pain control. Use in anesthesia makes sense, but as a long term pain control solution they just don't make any sense to me. They are extremely addictive and they become ineffective quite quickly. I have an uncle taking a dose large enough to kill an average person. At this point he's mainly managing his addiction, not his pain. Yes, marijuana can be habit forming, but have you seen opiate withdrawal or the side effects of heavy opiate use? I have no idea about long term usage of marijuana (not many studies covering that), but comparing people I know on optiates vs marijuana I don't see why marijuana isn't more consistently used as a first line defense in pain management with opiates being a last resort. I'm sure the tin foil hat wearers would claim it's the fault of the pharmaceutical industry, I suspect it's just the controversy around pot due to the "war on drugs". I'm sure pharmaceutical companies can find a way to make money off of cannabinoid based products.
Majority of coding work is not creative. Take an interactive form with 20 fields in WPF, for example - with data binding, with triggers, with validators.
I assume you aren't a recreational pot smoker. Different people, different strains, different results.. but in my anecdotal experience pot can be useful in routine tasks. For some it lets them focus (like Ritalin or adderall). I've tried coding drunk.. results were horrid. Weed? I can focus for longer periods of time, but also find it increases creativity. For some people it ruins concenrtation. We did an informal experiment with a dance game (similar to DDR). Played it sober, same level multiple times and kept score. Then "got high" and played the same level. Some people did better, some did horribly worse. It seemed to go one way or another (though the sample size was pretty small).
My point is the effects of pot aren't consistent, so we can't make broad statements about its effects. Maybe with the change in laws we'll see more research into the effects.
The book mentioned in the summary, "What the doremouse said", is worth a read. It shows the real beginnings of modern personal computers (which was SRI not Xerox Parc.. Parc got their researches from SRI after the gov't funding dried up). Those researchers experimented with plenty of drugs and came up with some really cool things.
Of course, in a perfect world, we'd all be running BeOS:-)
You mean if Apple had bought BeOS instead of NeXT? I've always wondered what would have happened (alternate future style) if they had gone through with that purchase. They didn't like they price (of BeOS), but somehow Steve talked them into paying more for NeXT.
Once it's working, Linux is alright. Getting it there sucks...
I can agree with this. I had a rock solid linux setup (well a few, but most recent was ubuntu 6.something). It took a while to get there (wireless, video, keyboard function keys.. don't remember if I ever got hibernation going right, but I don't remember it being an issue), but once I worked out the kinks.. rock solid. I even converted my wife to it once she borked an XP install and she liked it.. until she needed a flash update that didn't exist (to stream her horrid reality tv shows).
The biggest issue was upgrading. I'd often have to rework problems I thought I had already solved. We both ended up moving to OS X and that's where we stuck for personal stuff. I use Win7 for most work stuff and it's fine. Nothing to rave about, but I now couldn't imagine ever having to use XP again. Linux is now relegated to the raspPi. All my web hosting is linux.. but that's shared hosting so that's what you get. Some BSD variant would be just as good.
I university I was very pro linux anti-MS, ran openBSD for my firewall/router, loved using the Solaris servers at school since noone else was on them etc. Now I just use the tool that gives me the least grief for the job at hand. I have no love for any OS. They all cause some amount of grief, more so if they are the wrong tool for the job.
..though I'll be honest--I type faster on Apple's laptop keyboards...
Really? I have both a mech keyboard (same keyswitches as Das) and a macbook and I'm much faster on the mech keyboard. Travel length isn't that much if you are just hitting the keys until they register (i.e. click) rather than bottoming them out (which is kind of the point of a mechanical).
Yep. MX Black switches all the way and plenty of different manufacturers making keyboards with them. I went with a gaming company one as it was cheaper than my friend's Das. The biggest benefit to me is less fatigue. I don't have to bottom the keys out for them to register. Of course I find I'm also a bit faster on a mech.
Only downside is my office is beside the bedroom. I have to keep a dome keyboard on hand in case the wife is trying to sleep.
Cool. I'll check out goodReader. The Toshiba Thrive I have has a removable battery. They stopped making them (we bought up a bunch from whatever suppliers we could find). I don't think there was a cell version anyhow. Toshiba went on to make thinner tablets (ones without fullsize hdmi, usb, SD etc). It's funny, many different companies contacted Toshiba in regards to getting an OEM version of it since it's a good inexpensive device to use as a control, or POS device or what have you. They had no interest in supporting that. We offered to buy 500 retail version models and they wouldn't budge on price either (places like Newegg and tigerdirect were better prices in quantity).
I'm still waiting on a rep from Askey about their 12" Android tablets they were supposedly launching end of the summer, then Sept, then October. I can't even get my hands on a dev unit (regardless of price) as they keep changing the specs and release date. Oh well.
Personally I prefer iOS to Android for the stuff I end up doing on it. Keyboard is better (of course you can get better ones for android than the stock software keyboard). I am stuck on Honeycomb on my current tablet so take that into consideration (I have some limited experience with ICS) regarding the stock keyboard. I think the aspect ratio of the iPad is way better for documents and viewing in general. All the business related apps I use are on iOS. I love my android phone, but the Android tablet ends up just being a development device (I work on a product that's currently deployed to android tablets.. though it looks like they may drop those and use all-in-one computers..).
You didn't ask, but here it is anyhow.. I use office^2 (office squared) HD for reading and editing documents on flights, toggl for tracking time, Evernote (for notes), an RDP/vnc client (forget which), LogMeIn and that's about it for productivity. Otherwise I use it for media consumption (movies, news, books, magazines). Works great. If I need something more serious I'll pull out my laptop, but I can generally do without.
Check the specs in the google play store. Nexus 10 is wifi only on both models (at least on the Canadian site) but the Nexus 7 is available with cell connectivity (HSPA+ for data). I don't see why you had a hard time finding that out. It's right there on the official site "wifi only" right under the price.
Why do you even need cellular connectivity on your tablet? I have an original ipad (wifi version) and a toshiba thrive I use when travelling. If free wifi isn't available I just create a hotspot with my samsung smartphone.
Shoot.. I wrote a nice reply.. but forgot to hit submit after preview.
IANAL.. took a little law in school (mainly contract) but I honestly don't know shit. I ask for my lawyer's advice on all things legal regardless of how good a grasp I think I have on them (and then most often find out how little I know).
How would it help? Well you'd have your day in court (as you can sue, whereas the Crown must prosecute criminal cases) and some kind of remedy would be applied by the judge. It may be a trivial amount of damages (i.e. money) depending on the culprit's income, but they would apply something. The culprit would not end up with any criminal history due to the case, nor can the judge sentence jail time or similar.
Based on what you've said you should be able to get him on battery (for touching you) and trespass (trespass of chattels in particular). It should be noted the torte known as assault does not involve touching but simply putting you in a position where you fear imminent harm. It may apply as well. To start your case you'd need to make a statement of claim to be served to the defendant. It would be advisable to look up similar cases online to see what was applied so you can request a similar amount. If the defendant doesn't settle our of court and you have to go to trial you can apply for filing fees (it cost something like $400 in filing fees to take a case through to court.. luckily that's recoverable). If it goes to court and the judge thinks the actions of the defendant were egregious.. then he/she can apply punitive damages in addition to the damages you requested. The judge also can apply other remedies such as an injunction. In BC they have tried to streamline the civil suit process for cases under $25K: small claims bc.
As an aside.. had they followed through with criminal charges you could have still filled civil charges as well. It actually makes the process easier as you can just refer to the criminal case (which has a higher burden of proof). There was an instance of a vandal being charge twice (teen tagger) in Victoria. I laughed when his mom was complaining to the paper that he shouldn't get charged twice for something he was already punished for. One applied criminal charges (and possibly related fines) and the other sought the financial damages he caused. Being charged criminally doesn't get you off a civil case, it makes it easier to pursue. Also each property owner who had their property damaged by his graffiti could sue him. At the same rate, losing a criminal case doesn't mean a civil won't succeed (OJ being a famous example).
They probably didn't think they had enough of a case (for criminal trespass) or that the person wasn't worth charging (no history etc). That doesn't mean you can't push civil charges yourself. The police report alone would probably be enough for civil charges to stick (just need to prove it's more likely than not he trespassed). However the result would be some trivial amount of damages to deter the culprit from doing it again.
I've read conflicting reports on MS releasing a server OS for ARM. No short term plans for it (as of a year ago) to other claims it is inevitable/upcoming. AMD is going to be creating 64bit ARM chips (32bit vs 64bit was supposedly an issue with offering windows server for ARM.. though I'm not sure I buy that).
For most server stuff Linux is great (or BSD), but I have one application (as in purpose/use) where little ARM based servers running a windows OS would be perfect. Affordable, power efficient, small, but with enough processing power to do the task at hand. We're finally seeing some micro/pico itx arm boards, but the prices suck for performance and they don't have enough sata ports and no PCI slots etc. At this point I think I'm still better off with a little atom based board for most server duties.
I completely agree. There is a lot of opportunity in fixing code. I did get to work on some modules, but nothing like what was needed. I also got to work with some co-ops (uni students) I was in charge of adding testing support (good, but not valuable enough to management to put a full time employee on it) and to work on a replacement for one of the modules (which has yet to be integrated, a year later, even though it bests the original implementation by a long shot). Ultimately we learned a lot from each other and had some fun.
Lot's of great engineers in that company still, plenty of opportunity to fix things (I still wake up with solutions to various issues in that system), but it all boils down to management. Basically any code can be fixed. Stuff that's usable/stable can be DLLized (decoupled some how with a proper API) and the horrid stuff gets rewritten. I have yet to work on something that's a complete throw away. The issue is you need the support of management in order to have the resources required to do the work (unless you want to spend long unpaid nights working on code for the good of what is ultimately someone else's company).
I ended up leaving mainly out of frustration (that and a good opportunity). I started my own company and hired one of the students I had worked with previously. I couldn't be happier.
Of course the company that treats its software products is still profitable, so there's no motivation or reason to change anything. Add a few features quick and "cheap" which sells a few more units and continues cruising on.
Very few companies are concerned with software maintainability. Yes, it saves money long run, but the types of people that tend to end up running companies that make software are short sited business types that are concerned about turning as big a profit as they can the next quart to year (exec bonuses are at stake!). In reality doing things "right" will mean less cost the entire life of the product. Yes, initial profits will be delayed, but over the life profits will be higher due to lower maintenance costs (and maintenance is the majority of a software's life cycle).
Your example is a little different as it sounds as though it was on the right track initially, but someone up top push some quick new features. Which works for the first while, but then coupling starts making any additions down the road hell. Of course they pay the price to do those additions (poorly) because rework costs even more than a feature that takes 50-100% longer than it should to implement. And it gets worse and worse, and eventually the product is dropped because it costs too much to do anything to or you've burned too much customer good will with your buggy POS. But hey, it was a good run and they made profit and got bonuses and have this shiny new product to drive into the ground.
Heck, just ask to look at the codebase. It's not like you'll be able to pick up any trade secrets in 30 minutes. Better yet have someone that currently works there go through some of the general ideas and show you the problem areas. A good employer should be willing to do this.
Another option is to talk to existing employees. At my previous place of employment we'd have a Q&A with at least a few devs that work on the project the prospective candidate will be working on. They know how good or bad the software is. What about bug/defect tracking? How far buried are they in bugs, or are they actually adding useful new features rather than treading water in a sea of shit code?
I've done the treading water in someone else's codebase. It's no fun. In that instance it was fixable but management wasn't willing to put sufficient resources (people/time) into solving the issues. At the same time management was frustrated that "soo much time is spent on maintenance". Well yeah, it's shit broken code with no unit tests written, no test harness of any sort, object oriented code written by two engineers that had never written anything object oriented, were new to the language it was coded in and had never worked on a software project of its magnitude. Oh, and the one remaining employee that wrote the original code is not willing to fix anything himself or even discuss the issues (he's CTO, so he's above that). A company's key product that generates the majority of their $10mil revenue, but they are only willing to put a couple devs on it (while the CEO puts as much staff as he can into his revenue sucking pet project). That kind of stuff is good to know going into a project.
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Yes it's a big city, but does it have the demographic of people that would shop at a business like that? I mean, if a business can survive in Victoria (greater area of 300K people), then it has to be demographics and marketing.
So that justifies high prices? I'd expect the elasticity of demand on a product like Windows would mean more purchases in the consumer world if the price was lower (i.e. less pirating).
The flip side is corporate customers are much less elastic. They must buy Windows licenses, so they do, regardless of price. There is also the OEM market, which does get lower pricing, but that's not exposed to the customers and is huge business for MS. Upgrades to software may have been common in the 90s (3.11 -> 95 -> 98 -> XP), but now people often upgrade their hardware and get the latest MS OS that way (thanks to hardware being so disposable these days). Can't really blame people as you can buy a decent laptop for the price of my first CD burner.
Could MS charge a bigger price difference on home vs pro? Sure. Would it make them much more profit? I'd assume no, as they have some pretty smart people working there. Either the market isn't big enough to make a big difference or it would cause issues with their corporate or OEM (e.g. OEM expect X% off retail licenses.. retail go down, they expect their license cost to go down).
If you check the subject of the parent (which your post is still using) they were referring to Ubuntu. Implying people will jump through hoops to get a free version of Windows when you can get a free as in beer (no hacks, no license required) OS, even on a disc mailed to you.
Yes it's not true that Windows is being given away with no hack or license.. that's not what the parent posted.
Ding ding ding ding ding. We have a winner.
Seriously.
The ONLY video store I know that is still successful specializes in difficult to find material. The kicker is all their staff are avid film and movie fans and can recommend films you haven't seen, "Oh you like that director? Have you seen his little known release X? What about this director from a decade prior that was his main influence?"
Personally I think it would be cool if rental places could do a beer growler style service. You bring a flash drive in, they drop a 1080P film on it of your choice. I like my movies in HD, but I'm no fan of BR. Of course DRM and the MPAA stands between that ever realistically happening. Why would I want such a service rather than online or a kiosk? Aside from online DL speed being slow on low compression HD videos (especially less popular ones), the same reason the as above. So I can have a human help me select something. That's where the value is added.
So because a wikipedia article doesn't cover it, it must not be true?
Here's US v. Nicholas in which (under oath) he admits to drug use. So there's part of it verified. Find the divorce case which was they fought to keep sealed (but the L.A. times fought for) and I'm sure you'll find information about his infidelity with prostitutes. With some quick googling I was only able to find his attempts to keep it sealed.
Did Vanity Fair possibly exaggerate or sensationalize? Sure, but nothing in there is all that unbelievable. I've seen rich people with a lot less money (only 400-500K/year) do things along those lines. If they had that money it would be the same story. Only thing is they aren't in the tech business.. they are in an inherently shadier business..
Forget McAfee. I want a movie about Henry Nicholas of Broadcom. Henry was living large: drugs, prostitutes, secret sex lair being built under his house while his family lived in it.. It's as though he was living his life just to make a crazy movie about it.
McAfee? I don't want to watch a movie about some some guy that is obsessed with taking drugs rectally.
Maybe they are literally sitting on the money for a short while then giving it to start-ups. What to start a new tech business? Sure, but your money is going to smell like a rich guy's ass.
Some people aren't down with that.. hence acceptance of VC being down.
Quite true. I know a few people who use "medical" marijuana for pain relief (medical simply meaning they procure it through legal means, not that it is produced or controlled by a lab). It has kept them off opiates (in one case gotten him off opiates). They are very specific about what works for their pain yet allows them to live productive lives.
Speaking of opiates: I am very against the use of opiates for pain control. Use in anesthesia makes sense, but as a long term pain control solution they just don't make any sense to me. They are extremely addictive and they become ineffective quite quickly. I have an uncle taking a dose large enough to kill an average person. At this point he's mainly managing his addiction, not his pain. Yes, marijuana can be habit forming, but have you seen opiate withdrawal or the side effects of heavy opiate use? I have no idea about long term usage of marijuana (not many studies covering that), but comparing people I know on optiates vs marijuana I don't see why marijuana isn't more consistently used as a first line defense in pain management with opiates being a last resort. I'm sure the tin foil hat wearers would claim it's the fault of the pharmaceutical industry, I suspect it's just the controversy around pot due to the "war on drugs". I'm sure pharmaceutical companies can find a way to make money off of cannabinoid based products.
Majority of coding work is not creative. Take an interactive form with 20 fields in WPF, for example - with data binding, with triggers, with validators.
I assume you aren't a recreational pot smoker. Different people, different strains, different results.. but in my anecdotal experience pot can be useful in routine tasks. For some it lets them focus (like Ritalin or adderall). I've tried coding drunk.. results were horrid. Weed? I can focus for longer periods of time, but also find it increases creativity. For some people it ruins concenrtation. We did an informal experiment with a dance game (similar to DDR). Played it sober, same level multiple times and kept score. Then "got high" and played the same level. Some people did better, some did horribly worse. It seemed to go one way or another (though the sample size was pretty small).
My point is the effects of pot aren't consistent, so we can't make broad statements about its effects. Maybe with the change in laws we'll see more research into the effects.
The book mentioned in the summary, "What the doremouse said", is worth a read. It shows the real beginnings of modern personal computers (which was SRI not Xerox Parc.. Parc got their researches from SRI after the gov't funding dried up). Those researchers experimented with plenty of drugs and came up with some really cool things.
Of course, in a perfect world, we'd all be running BeOS :-)
You mean if Apple had bought BeOS instead of NeXT? I've always wondered what would have happened (alternate future style) if they had gone through with that purchase. They didn't like they price (of BeOS), but somehow Steve talked them into paying more for NeXT.
Once it's working, Linux is alright. Getting it there sucks...
I can agree with this. I had a rock solid linux setup (well a few, but most recent was ubuntu 6.something). It took a while to get there (wireless, video, keyboard function keys.. don't remember if I ever got hibernation going right, but I don't remember it being an issue), but once I worked out the kinks.. rock solid. I even converted my wife to it once she borked an XP install and she liked it.. until she needed a flash update that didn't exist (to stream her horrid reality tv shows).
The biggest issue was upgrading. I'd often have to rework problems I thought I had already solved. We both ended up moving to OS X and that's where we stuck for personal stuff. I use Win7 for most work stuff and it's fine. Nothing to rave about, but I now couldn't imagine ever having to use XP again. Linux is now relegated to the raspPi. All my web hosting is linux.. but that's shared hosting so that's what you get. Some BSD variant would be just as good.
I university I was very pro linux anti-MS, ran openBSD for my firewall/router, loved using the Solaris servers at school since noone else was on them etc. Now I just use the tool that gives me the least grief for the job at hand. I have no love for any OS. They all cause some amount of grief, more so if they are the wrong tool for the job.
Oops, meant blue not black.
..though I'll be honest--I type faster on Apple's laptop keyboards...
Really? I have both a mech keyboard (same keyswitches as Das) and a macbook and I'm much faster on the mech keyboard. Travel length isn't that much if you are just hitting the keys until they register (i.e. click) rather than bottoming them out (which is kind of the point of a mechanical).
Yep. MX Black switches all the way and plenty of different manufacturers making keyboards with them. I went with a gaming company one as it was cheaper than my friend's Das. The biggest benefit to me is less fatigue. I don't have to bottom the keys out for them to register. Of course I find I'm also a bit faster on a mech.
Only downside is my office is beside the bedroom. I have to keep a dome keyboard on hand in case the wife is trying to sleep.
Cool. I'll check out goodReader. The Toshiba Thrive I have has a removable battery. They stopped making them (we bought up a bunch from whatever suppliers we could find). I don't think there was a cell version anyhow. Toshiba went on to make thinner tablets (ones without fullsize hdmi, usb, SD etc). It's funny, many different companies contacted Toshiba in regards to getting an OEM version of it since it's a good inexpensive device to use as a control, or POS device or what have you. They had no interest in supporting that. We offered to buy 500 retail version models and they wouldn't budge on price either (places like Newegg and tigerdirect were better prices in quantity).
I'm still waiting on a rep from Askey about their 12" Android tablets they were supposedly launching end of the summer, then Sept, then October. I can't even get my hands on a dev unit (regardless of price) as they keep changing the specs and release date. Oh well.
Personally I prefer iOS to Android for the stuff I end up doing on it. Keyboard is better (of course you can get better ones for android than the stock software keyboard). I am stuck on Honeycomb on my current tablet so take that into consideration (I have some limited experience with ICS) regarding the stock keyboard. I think the aspect ratio of the iPad is way better for documents and viewing in general. All the business related apps I use are on iOS. I love my android phone, but the Android tablet ends up just being a development device (I work on a product that's currently deployed to android tablets.. though it looks like they may drop those and use all-in-one computers..).
You didn't ask, but here it is anyhow.. I use office^2 (office squared) HD for reading and editing documents on flights, toggl for tracking time, Evernote (for notes), an RDP/vnc client (forget which), LogMeIn and that's about it for productivity. Otherwise I use it for media consumption (movies, news, books, magazines). Works great. If I need something more serious I'll pull out my laptop, but I can generally do without.
Check the specs in the google play store. Nexus 10 is wifi only on both models (at least on the Canadian site) but the Nexus 7 is available with cell connectivity (HSPA+ for data). I don't see why you had a hard time finding that out. It's right there on the official site "wifi only" right under the price.
Why do you even need cellular connectivity on your tablet? I have an original ipad (wifi version) and a toshiba thrive I use when travelling. If free wifi isn't available I just create a hotspot with my samsung smartphone.
Shoot.. I wrote a nice reply.. but forgot to hit submit after preview.
IANAL.. took a little law in school (mainly contract) but I honestly don't know shit. I ask for my lawyer's advice on all things legal regardless of how good a grasp I think I have on them (and then most often find out how little I know).
How would it help? Well you'd have your day in court (as you can sue, whereas the Crown must prosecute criminal cases) and some kind of remedy would be applied by the judge. It may be a trivial amount of damages (i.e. money) depending on the culprit's income, but they would apply something. The culprit would not end up with any criminal history due to the case, nor can the judge sentence jail time or similar.
Based on what you've said you should be able to get him on battery (for touching you) and trespass (trespass of chattels in particular). It should be noted the torte known as assault does not involve touching but simply putting you in a position where you fear imminent harm. It may apply as well. To start your case you'd need to make a statement of claim to be served to the defendant. It would be advisable to look up similar cases online to see what was applied so you can request a similar amount. If the defendant doesn't settle our of court and you have to go to trial you can apply for filing fees (it cost something like $400 in filing fees to take a case through to court.. luckily that's recoverable). If it goes to court and the judge thinks the actions of the defendant were egregious.. then he/she can apply punitive damages in addition to the damages you requested. The judge also can apply other remedies such as an injunction. In BC they have tried to streamline the civil suit process for cases under $25K: small claims bc.
As an aside.. had they followed through with criminal charges you could have still filled civil charges as well. It actually makes the process easier as you can just refer to the criminal case (which has a higher burden of proof). There was an instance of a vandal being charge twice (teen tagger) in Victoria. I laughed when his mom was complaining to the paper that he shouldn't get charged twice for something he was already punished for. One applied criminal charges (and possibly related fines) and the other sought the financial damages he caused. Being charged criminally doesn't get you off a civil case, it makes it easier to pursue. Also each property owner who had their property damaged by his graffiti could sue him. At the same rate, losing a criminal case doesn't mean a civil won't succeed (OJ being a famous example).
They probably didn't think they had enough of a case (for criminal trespass) or that the person wasn't worth charging (no history etc). That doesn't mean you can't push civil charges yourself. The police report alone would probably be enough for civil charges to stick (just need to prove it's more likely than not he trespassed). However the result would be some trivial amount of damages to deter the culprit from doing it again.
I've read conflicting reports on MS releasing a server OS for ARM. No short term plans for it (as of a year ago) to other claims it is inevitable/upcoming. AMD is going to be creating 64bit ARM chips (32bit vs 64bit was supposedly an issue with offering windows server for ARM.. though I'm not sure I buy that).
For most server stuff Linux is great (or BSD), but I have one application (as in purpose/use) where little ARM based servers running a windows OS would be perfect. Affordable, power efficient, small, but with enough processing power to do the task at hand. We're finally seeing some micro/pico itx arm boards, but the prices suck for performance and they don't have enough sata ports and no PCI slots etc. At this point I think I'm still better off with a little atom based board for most server duties.
Nothing is stopping you from using WiX, WiX Edit or another tool (outside of VS express) for making an installer (proper MSI file).
I can't live with the limitations of VS Express, but creating installers plays no part in that.
I completely agree. There is a lot of opportunity in fixing code. I did get to work on some modules, but nothing like what was needed. I also got to work with some co-ops (uni students) I was in charge of adding testing support (good, but not valuable enough to management to put a full time employee on it) and to work on a replacement for one of the modules (which has yet to be integrated, a year later, even though it bests the original implementation by a long shot). Ultimately we learned a lot from each other and had some fun.
Lot's of great engineers in that company still, plenty of opportunity to fix things (I still wake up with solutions to various issues in that system), but it all boils down to management. Basically any code can be fixed. Stuff that's usable/stable can be DLLized (decoupled some how with a proper API) and the horrid stuff gets rewritten. I have yet to work on something that's a complete throw away. The issue is you need the support of management in order to have the resources required to do the work (unless you want to spend long unpaid nights working on code for the good of what is ultimately someone else's company).
I ended up leaving mainly out of frustration (that and a good opportunity). I started my own company and hired one of the students I had worked with previously. I couldn't be happier.
Of course the company that treats its software products is still profitable, so there's no motivation or reason to change anything. Add a few features quick and "cheap" which sells a few more units and continues cruising on.
Very few companies are concerned with software maintainability. Yes, it saves money long run, but the types of people that tend to end up running companies that make software are short sited business types that are concerned about turning as big a profit as they can the next quart to year (exec bonuses are at stake!). In reality doing things "right" will mean less cost the entire life of the product. Yes, initial profits will be delayed, but over the life profits will be higher due to lower maintenance costs (and maintenance is the majority of a software's life cycle).
Your example is a little different as it sounds as though it was on the right track initially, but someone up top push some quick new features. Which works for the first while, but then coupling starts making any additions down the road hell. Of course they pay the price to do those additions (poorly) because rework costs even more than a feature that takes 50-100% longer than it should to implement. And it gets worse and worse, and eventually the product is dropped because it costs too much to do anything to or you've burned too much customer good will with your buggy POS. But hey, it was a good run and they made profit and got bonuses and have this shiny new product to drive into the ground.
And if it doesn't work, it should have already been replaced.
Yep. Should have. Wasn't though. You know, budgets and such.
This.
Heck, just ask to look at the codebase. It's not like you'll be able to pick up any trade secrets in 30 minutes. Better yet have someone that currently works there go through some of the general ideas and show you the problem areas. A good employer should be willing to do this.
Another option is to talk to existing employees. At my previous place of employment we'd have a Q&A with at least a few devs that work on the project the prospective candidate will be working on. They know how good or bad the software is. What about bug/defect tracking? How far buried are they in bugs, or are they actually adding useful new features rather than treading water in a sea of shit code?
I've done the treading water in someone else's codebase. It's no fun. In that instance it was fixable but management wasn't willing to put sufficient resources (people/time) into solving the issues. At the same time management was frustrated that "soo much time is spent on maintenance". Well yeah, it's shit broken code with no unit tests written, no test harness of any sort, object oriented code written by two engineers that had never written anything object oriented, were new to the language it was coded in and had never worked on a software project of its magnitude. Oh, and the one remaining employee that wrote the original code is not willing to fix anything himself or even discuss the issues (he's CTO, so he's above that). A company's key product that generates the majority of their $10mil revenue, but they are only willing to put a couple devs on it (while the CEO puts as much staff as he can into his revenue sucking pet project). That kind of stuff is good to know going into a project.