I hadn't coded in years and never in the language he had to work with.
If as a software development manager you do not have the ability to do the work of those you directly manage, then you shouldn't be managing them. This inability is not tolerated in other engineering disciplines and it shouldn't be tolerated in software engineering either.
Note to trolls:
I only said "ability" and never directly or indirectly implied that you should be able to do the same job as capably as those you manage.
I said, "those you directly manage"; I don't expect the CEO to be able to engineer software, unless he has software developers reporting to him—then he better be able to code.
While many posters to this topic have correctly pointed out the various deciding factors one can use when deciding to learn a foreign language---do you plan to work solely in an English speaking country, do you plan to work in a non-English speaking country, etc.
One important factor I haven't seen any other posters mention is the cost of learning a foreign language at your university. It may be negligible depending on how your university prices credits, but if it's not, given the rising cost of university tuition and the availability of foreign language education in large cities and "college towns", you might consider concentrating on your field of study at university and saving money by learning a foreign language from an outside source.
With that said, and complete agreement with the idea that learning one or many foreign languages never hurts, as a foreign language speaker and a published researcher in the fields of genetics and computational biology, I have never used my foreign language abilities in research in anything but trivial situations. The vast majority of journals are published in English, the vast majority of meetings are conducted in English, the vast majority of scientists speak English as a de facto language, and a large number of science courses at foreign universities are now taught in English.
Re:MIght not be enforcable...
on
Google's Evil NDA
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This might actually be a move by some Google executives to "do no evil". Imagine: They are forced by investors to create an NDA, and a pretty strict one. They create an NDA so strict reasonable lawyers are pretty sure it won't be enforceable... But, assuming investors' lawyers reviewed the document and understood it, those lawyers might be expecting a more corporate friendly court. So, in a situation in which an NDA must be created, Google exeuctive tried their best to create an NDA they thought wouldn't stand up in court, hence attempting to "do no eveil".
Does the U.S. Copyright Office legally have the authority to designate a third-party in this way? It seems that if they can legally do this, then they could do it for a whole range of copyrighted material distributed in a variety of different ways? For example, what would stop them from designating a third-party for the collection of print copyright royalties?
Does anyone know, does turnitin have copyright releases for any of the published sources it compares against? It seems like turnitin's potential exposure as a result of litigation by students is nothing compared to their potential exposure as a result of litigation by publishers.
And I guess for busting the genuinely clever plagiarists who are buying papers all semester long that they know haven't been published elsewhere online.
I'm curious, given the degree of grade inflation currently practiced in US universities, Why is buying a paper for you class any worse than the four years the student is spending buying their diploma? At least these papers are reasonably priced?
Not that there should be any doubt, but we can all take a small (which may become large) step to let the MPAA know how we feel by sending an e-mail to the MPAA to report the their theft of intellectual property. The e-mail address is hotline@mpaa.org. You can also find the e-mail address on their fim theft page.
The contents of my e-mail are as follows:
To Whom It May Concern:
This e-mail is not to report the theft of a movie, but the theft of another type of intellectual property: software. The perpetrator is your organization, the MPAA.
By using the Forest Blog bloggin engine, either directly or as the results of the actions of another party, you have violated the linkware license to the Forest Blog blogging engine by removing all links back to the Forest Blog site, failing to credit the original author in any way.
Until such time as the MPAA can develop and implement a plan that demonstrates an understanding of the importance of intellectual property rights for all types of intellectual property, your efforts to guard against the theft of your intellectual property in light of your theft of intellectual property will be viewed as the farce it is.
I would like to be able to say that this type of action from a university surprises me, but, sadly, it does not.
Many of the other posts to this article have addressed issues of whether or whether not the letter the student received constitutes slander, the various aspects of university IT departments, or how the student should approach their universities' IT department.
I think what is at issue here is much larger than legal minutiae and university IT departments; I think it goes to the heart of one of the cornerstones (or what should be, but may no longer be, one of the cornerstones) of a university: the free and open communication of ideas.
One of the most important ideas a university can (should) encourage is the free communication of ideas. This should not only extend to tenured university faculty, but should be a principal the university encourages both its faculty and its students to practice. By declaring BitTorrent, a tool that can be used for the free communication of ideas illegal " '[u]ntil the courts decide that student P2P activity is permitted' " the university, through its IT department, is actively discouraging the free communication of ideas. And that is a very sad and troubling position for any university to take.
My download of the PDF has not finished yet--and has two more hours to go (Slashdoted?). I was wondering if the document is signed in any way? It seems given the nature of the document and the fact that it is being distributed by the NSA that it should be signed.
The DMCA may have a loophole that makes this legal
It's not a "loophole", it's an explicit exception.
European law has a similar provision.
It's there for good reason: To promote competition and not allow DRM to be used for vendor lock-in.
(Current attempts notwithstanding)
What the DMCA does is prohibit circumvention of copyright-protection devices (e.g. "cracking"), unless it's done for interoperability purposes.
If this is indeed the case, then how was PlayFair (Slashdot introduction) not doing anything other than allowing interoperability (Slashdot story on SourceForge.net pulling PlayFair after they received a DMCA complaint from Apple) with the music player I choose to use on Linux? Do music players on Linux not count, because Linux is not devloped by a for-profit entity? Does the DCMA specify or how are courts to determine when interoperability stops and copyright infringement begins?
I just wanted to follow up on what the parent post said.
Do you treat your doctor as less of a professional because he will charge you for everything? I bet not.
Being treated like a professional is a matter of respect, not how you choose to be compensated. If anything, I would say that by requiring you to pay to be avaliable when you should not be and then convincing you that it is what you should be doing is anything but treating you like a professional.
Now our new CIO has elected to stop that benefit using the argument that we should be dedicated staff who desire to be responsive and should do what it takes to make that happen.
I couldn't resist posting because, when I hear sh1t like this it really pisses me off.
Let's be realistic. Sure, a part of the benefit you derive from your job is probably doing that job well--and not being rewarded for doing it well. Why did I leave out not being rewarded for doing it well? Because that is really part of what I am guessing is the primary benefit you derive from you job--being rewarded for it (i.e., pay and other monetary benefits). The simple fact is you can not provide food, shelter, warmth or any other basic necessity for yourself or members of your family from the sense of a job well done.
First, if your CIO is really such a f_ckw1t that he thinks your sense of a job well done is compensation for your job taking over you personal life--at your expense--he should not be in an executive--much less any--management position.
Second, using your CIO's logic, as an executive of a company his sense of a job well done should be pleasing the CEO, maybe president, board of directors and, really, the shareholders (assuming it is not a private company). Therefore, perhaps he would like to make himself available at all times--at his own expense--so he can field questions from irate stockholders every time the stock ticks down. I bet not.
Finally, I wish you all the luck in your life and career and no additional stress, but I find it really unfortunate that companies who employ d1psh1ts like your CIO don't fire them quicker or fail faster. In my opinion that is really the beauty of the dotcom fallout: a lot of companies managed by complete idiots failed as fast as possible.
Also, if you decide to leave, would you re-post telling all of us the name of your company? That way, if we wish, we can express our displeasure by never buying another single thing from them ever again.
Even given the incredible storage capacity of devices such as iPods, I would be willing to bet that more valuable information is stolen from compaines as a result of their lack of attention to or inability to address their network security problems.
The case of AOL aside, I think most companies have more to fear from non-employees than employees. Additionally, and equally dangerous, I suspect most companies are not aware of information thefts from outside sources, and when they are, are not as willing to report it.
As the parent post said, life sciences. I work for a large government life sciences research institue, and about half of our total computer base is Macs. There are a lot of labs that use older G4s as if they were servers, and will probably upgrade to X servers over time. Given the general level of ease of use and "reliablity" of our Microsoft equipment--which mirrors my experience pertty much everywhere I have ever worked--these labs would never accept a Microsoft solution.
I think the RIAA has provided a great example of how to settle a lawsuit. If I'm ever sued by the RIAA, I will offer to settle with them for a cash equivalent in my fecal matter, valued at $15.99 per ounce.
Seriously, this is what I would really like to see--very much like the nutrition labels you see on food.
Of course you would want to do this in such a way that companies would not complain that they were being forced to give away valuable competitive information, but I think there should be ways to avoid that.
For example, you could have information on the development process used (ISO9000 [1], etc.), the testing methods used, and the ratio of development to testing time. Additionally, and I think most valuable, the number of bugs/vulnerabilities of previous versions of the product--defined by the amount of code taking from previous product(s). Otherwise, Microsoft would just declare every product a new product for which this information is not available.
[1] Not that I have ever seen ISO9000 correlate with any increase in software quality in any of the numerous companies I have seen it used in.
I ask this as a legitimate question, hoping someone will respond.
I would have guessed--I don't know why--that a sans serif font would be easier on the eyes. Not that either of these two things are logical explanations: the only font I have seen developed for people with dyslexia, Read Regular was sans serif; and most of the people I have worked with whom have poor eyesight prefer a sans serif font.
Is a serif font really easier on the eyes and why?
At what point should we all write to the SEC and request an investigation? Maybe Darl and Martha can share a cell. (Yes, for the purposes of humor I am assuming Martha is guilty; I have no questions about Darl.)
I don't know how accurate the information is, but I just heard that most people who have been sued by the RIAA have settled for an average of US$3,000.
I understand why this people might settle under the duress of being sued by the RIAA, but I don't understand why they don't all get together, form a class, and file a class action suit against the RIAA. In all honesty, I'm not sure exactly what they would sue the RIAA for.
One suggestion: harassment.
Another suggestion: if the RIAA represents the recording labels, and you believe CDs are so ridiculously expensive that some form of price fixing or other anti-trust violation must be taking place -- which I do -- then that might be a possibility. Perhaps for legal reasons you could not sue the RIAA for this, but if you had to sue the individual record labels, a successful class action suit should have a major impact on the RIAA too, as it's money comes from the record labels. I would think this would be especially true if the the amount of the class action suit were consistent with the ridiculous damages the RIAA and record labels are claiming.
Slashdot Mirror
I hadn't coded in years and never in the language he had to work with.
If as a software development manager you do not have the ability to do the work of those you directly manage, then you shouldn't be managing them. This inability is not tolerated in other engineering disciplines and it shouldn't be tolerated in software engineering either.
Note to trolls:
While many posters to this topic have correctly pointed out the various deciding factors one can use when deciding to learn a foreign language---do you plan to work solely in an English speaking country, do you plan to work in a non-English speaking country, etc.
One important factor I haven't seen any other posters mention is the cost of learning a foreign language at your university. It may be negligible depending on how your university prices credits, but if it's not, given the rising cost of university tuition and the availability of foreign language education in large cities and "college towns", you might consider concentrating on your field of study at university and saving money by learning a foreign language from an outside source.
With that said, and complete agreement with the idea that learning one or many foreign languages never hurts, as a foreign language speaker and a published researcher in the fields of genetics and computational biology, I have never used my foreign language abilities in research in anything but trivial situations. The vast majority of journals are published in English, the vast majority of meetings are conducted in English, the vast majority of scientists speak English as a de facto language, and a large number of science courses at foreign universities are now taught in English.
This might actually be a move by some Google executives to "do no evil". Imagine: They are forced by investors to create an NDA, and a pretty strict one. They create an NDA so strict reasonable lawyers are pretty sure it won't be enforceable... But, assuming investors' lawyers reviewed the document and understood it, those lawyers might be expecting a more corporate friendly court. So, in a situation in which an NDA must be created, Google exeuctive tried their best to create an NDA they thought wouldn't stand up in court, hence attempting to "do no eveil".
Does the U.S. Copyright Office legally have the authority to designate a third-party in this way? It seems that if they can legally do this, then they could do it for a whole range of copyrighted material distributed in a variety of different ways? For example, what would stop them from designating a third-party for the collection of print copyright royalties?
Does anyone know, does turnitin have copyright releases for any of the published sources it compares against? It seems like turnitin's potential exposure as a result of litigation by students is nothing compared to their potential exposure as a result of litigation by publishers.
I'm curious, given the degree of grade inflation currently practiced in US universities, Why is buying a paper for you class any worse than the four years the student is spending buying their diploma? At least these papers are reasonably priced?
Many of the other posts to this article have addressed issues of whether or whether not the letter the student received constitutes slander, the various aspects of university IT departments, or how the student should approach their universities' IT department.
I think what is at issue here is much larger than legal minutiae and university IT departments; I think it goes to the heart of one of the cornerstones (or what should be, but may no longer be, one of the cornerstones) of a university: the free and open communication of ideas.
One of the most important ideas a university can (should) encourage is the free communication of ideas. This should not only extend to tenured university faculty, but should be a principal the university encourages both its faculty and its students to practice. By declaring BitTorrent, a tool that can be used for the free communication of ideas illegal " '[u]ntil the courts decide that student P2P activity is permitted' " the university, through its IT department, is actively discouraging the free communication of ideas. And that is a very sad and troubling position for any university to take.
My download of the PDF has not finished yet--and has two more hours to go (Slashdoted?). I was wondering if the document is signed in any way? It seems given the nature of the document and the fact that it is being distributed by the NSA that it should be signed.
If this is indeed the case, then how was PlayFair (Slashdot introduction) not doing anything other than allowing interoperability (Slashdot story on SourceForge.net pulling PlayFair after they received a DMCA complaint from Apple) with the music player I choose to use on Linux? Do music players on Linux not count, because Linux is not devloped by a for-profit entity? Does the DCMA specify or how are courts to determine when interoperability stops and copyright infringement begins?
Do you treat your doctor as less of a professional because he will charge you for everything? I bet not.
Being treated like a professional is a matter of respect, not how you choose to be compensated. If anything, I would say that by requiring you to pay to be avaliable when you should not be and then convincing you that it is what you should be doing is anything but treating you like a professional.
Let's be realistic. Sure, a part of the benefit you derive from your job is probably doing that job well--and not being rewarded for doing it well. Why did I leave out not being rewarded for doing it well? Because that is really part of what I am guessing is the primary benefit you derive from you job--being rewarded for it (i.e., pay and other monetary benefits). The simple fact is you can not provide food, shelter, warmth or any other basic necessity for yourself or members of your family from the sense of a job well done.
First, if your CIO is really such a f_ckw1t that he thinks your sense of a job well done is compensation for your job taking over you personal life--at your expense--he should not be in an executive--much less any--management position.
Second, using your CIO's logic, as an executive of a company his sense of a job well done should be pleasing the CEO, maybe president, board of directors and, really, the shareholders (assuming it is not a private company). Therefore, perhaps he would like to make himself available at all times--at his own expense--so he can field questions from irate stockholders every time the stock ticks down. I bet not.
Finally, I wish you all the luck in your life and career and no additional stress, but I find it really unfortunate that companies who employ d1psh1ts like your CIO don't fire them quicker or fail faster. In my opinion that is really the beauty of the dotcom fallout: a lot of companies managed by complete idiots failed as fast as possible.
Also, if you decide to leave, would you re-post telling all of us the name of your company? That way, if we wish, we can express our displeasure by never buying another single thing from them ever again.
The case of AOL aside, I think most companies have more to fear from non-employees than employees. Additionally, and equally dangerous, I suspect most companies are not aware of information thefts from outside sources, and when they are, are not as willing to report it.
As the parent post said, life sciences. I work for a large government life sciences research institue, and about half of our total computer base is Macs. There are a lot of labs that use older G4s as if they were servers, and will probably upgrade to X servers over time. Given the general level of ease of use and "reliablity" of our Microsoft equipment--which mirrors my experience pertty much everywhere I have ever worked--these labs would never accept a Microsoft solution.
I think the RIAA has provided a great example of how to settle a lawsuit. If I'm ever sued by the RIAA, I will offer to settle with them for a cash equivalent in my fecal matter, valued at $15.99 per ounce.
I wonder how long it will be until some bloodthirsty dictator considers a worm running on an enemy military computer an act of war?
I can't believe no one has come up with this idea. You know, like the carBQ (cook a meal on your engine while you commute home).
Of course you would want to do this in such a way that companies would not complain that they were being forced to give away valuable competitive information, but I think there should be ways to avoid that.
For example, you could have information on the development process used (ISO9000 [1], etc.), the testing methods used, and the ratio of development to testing time. Additionally, and I think most valuable, the number of bugs/vulnerabilities of previous versions of the product--defined by the amount of code taking from previous product(s). Otherwise, Microsoft would just declare every product a new product for which this information is not available.
[1] Not that I have ever seen ISO9000 correlate with any increase in software quality in any of the numerous companies I have seen it used in.
I guess we know where the lawyers for the RIAA, MPAA, etc. will be looking for business next.
I would have guessed--I don't know why--that a sans serif font would be easier on the eyes. Not that either of these two things are logical explanations: the only font I have seen developed for people with dyslexia, Read Regular was sans serif; and most of the people I have worked with whom have poor eyesight prefer a sans serif font.
Is a serif font really easier on the eyes and why?
At what point should we all write to the SEC and request an investigation? Maybe Darl and Martha can share a cell. (Yes, for the purposes of humor I am assuming Martha is guilty; I have no questions about Darl.)
I understand why this people might settle under the duress of being sued by the RIAA, but I don't understand why they don't all get together, form a class, and file a class action suit against the RIAA. In all honesty, I'm not sure exactly what they would sue the RIAA for.
One suggestion: harassment.
Another suggestion: if the RIAA represents the recording labels, and you believe CDs are so ridiculously expensive that some form of price fixing or other anti-trust violation must be taking place -- which I do -- then that might be a possibility. Perhaps for legal reasons you could not sue the RIAA for this, but if you had to sue the individual record labels, a successful class action suit should have a major impact on the RIAA too, as it's money comes from the record labels. I would think this would be especially true if the the amount of the class action suit were consistent with the ridiculous damages the RIAA and record labels are claiming.
Any thoughts?
Then I wish IBM would stop running those ads that state, IBM recommends Windows XP for business (paraphrasing).
I have to say (Well, okay, I don't have to, but I will.), I am a little surprised Microsoft beat out SCO.