I had the same reaction to this thread when I read it. I started coding in VBA when it first shipped (Was that Office95? it was similar to ExcelBasic which I also worked with). Nothing unusual there.
My other thought, though, was I can't think of a single user in the department I write code for that would either use or need VBA. It's the product itself that works. Nothing buggy in the application that I can think of. Plus, we're all on the entire suite including Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, FrontPage (YUCK), Photo Editor, Access, Project, and Visio. I'm all for OSS, or something cheaper than Office, but none of them competes with Office on each of those platforms. And users don't want several different options. Plus, I'm sure our standard desktop team would rather support one suite of software than several suites.
Why would the US develop jamming technology for it? We've done enough to piss off the rest of the world, and somehow still have a few friends. We'd lose GB, Spain, and Germany on that one.
a) the country you currently reside in and b) whether you think your country would work with the United States in a joint space mission and c) (optional) if possible, state your country's current economic spending on space missions.
the United States
No, I don't think the US will work with the US.. seems each department here is out to get the other
True that. I commented in another thread (about IT managers salaries going up while programmers are taking pay cuts) that one thing the economy bust seems to have done is weeded out the folks in programming positions that shouldn't be in them. At least for the most part. Have you seen the same thing happen?
That's interesting. Every Wal-Mart store has an nt server and a unix server in the back. The unix server handles all of the POS transactions. The nt server is there for communication... that's about it. They decided it was cheaper to manage communications on NT.... I've never done any analysis, but I suppose as penny pinching as they are, they looked into it pretty deeply.
The bottom line is most of the reasons for either error are bad programmers. A bad programmer can make any OS unstable or insecure. The developers I worked with that handled bank transactions were top notch.
That's not to say every developer was top notch though... we had one I can remember that decided typing variables in VB was too time consuming, and refused to do it.
A lot of truth to that... but that's generally because of a bad software developer.
As a long time Windows developer, I would have to say that, for a great many painfully obvious reasons, Linux would be a better choice for this. It's cheaper, more reliable in that a developer can see the source code, and see what it's trying to accomplish, has nice GUI's, and many development platforms to choose from.
Even though the article says they would run on a stipped down version of Windows, Linux takes up a much smaller footprint and runs faster, so older/cheaper hardware could be used without any concern.
With large banks trying to cut costs/increase earnings (anyone tried to cash a payroll check at a large bank recently? "that'll cost you $5, sir") I find it hard to believe that they would choose the more expensive OS to run their software.
That's sort of like Wal-Mart's home office policy on dealing with vendors. "If you want the world's largest retailer to carry your product, thereyby exposing it to millions of customers, you'll sell it to us for a price we decide." That usually equates to fractions of a penny in profit, and for vendors who sell multiple products, sometimes a loss on a few. The only two companies who don't have to deal with that are Sony and Nintendo, for obvious reasons. I witnessed this first hand, as I used to code for wally world, and was required to attent two Saturday sales meetings a month, where managers would brag about those tactics, all in the name of keeping a 27% profit margin.
Yeah, but that site is a salary calculator. It doesn't measure personal wealth, just income. So there are a few people who earn less than $0 on their jobs.
And yes, I saw the disclaimer at the bottom of the page. I guess I'm just not as funny as I think I am after all:)
Ah, but here, the CEO earns in the $200k range.. in salary. Then there's an incentive bonus, which all employees participate in. In salary grades 1-89, there's a max of 8% (almost never realized, unless you're an attorney). In grades 90-99 (99=CEO) there's a minimum of 8%. No max.
Then, there's an executive bonus, which only applies to grades 90-99. No restrictions... actually no rules. Just a dartboard I guess.
This company is not unique in that structure. I coded for a major bank a few years back, and the plan was similar.
I agree. I have a buddy with a Compaq T-1000 (laptop/huge pda with a transmeta in it) that he paid $1700 for. Fairly useless for the price, just as these seem to be. The noticeable advantage is the loss of a docking station and second monitor.. is that really necessary?
Do you, then, not think it would be fair when, as you have to lay off people from you company, you would AT LEAST keep your compensation level, rather than increase it by 7 digit numbers?
This is an extreme example, but it does remind me of what disghusted me most about Enron. The top brass was obviously greedy, and even more obviously oblivious to the lives they were destroying at the same time. People with families, homes, etc... were looking at losing them because Fastow (et all) wanted to be rich. That just disghusts me.
While there is some merit to your comment, I have to reply.
I hardly think that my 60 hour a week, solve all of the world (or at least this company) problems through code job, which earns less than a marketing manager (who's daily routing is read some of the reports that are provided by developers and pat his team on the back), is overpaid. And it was the same way in the 90's.
The boom in the tech industry in the 90's did create too many jobs for an understaffed industry. What happened then was not only higher salaries, but a lot of incompetent people in those positions.
Those of us that are left (and some competent folks who lost their jobs anyway) are burdened with two realities. Too few jobs, so supply and demand dictates we get paid less, and a sour taste in many hiring managers' collective mouths that many IT people really can't do what they say they can do... which also dictates lower salaries.
Strange. If you enter a zero (unemployed) you still are not the poorest person in the world. Does that mean there are people who pay to show up at work?
I happen to write HR code now, so am privy to the salaries and other compensation of all employees at my company. I've seen a few things happen recently, as our profit margin is in the red...
Layoffs everywhere in the company
Mandatory pay cuts for employees in the middle ranges of salary
Cuts in incentive bonuses, or complete elimination
An increase in salary and bonuses to the top 10% of salary grades here
Yeah, those guys really earned their wealth, and certainly not at the expense of their employees...
I'd be willing to bet, though, that the slow decline in IT salaries (developers in particular, where I have experience) won't be affected at all by this news.
I saw that in another post earlier, and it gave me the chills. I don't know what Italy's justice system is like, so I can't really comment on their penalty. But here in the US, "hackers" get stiffer penalties than first time rapists. Which is a more heinous crime? I would hope that if such laws were enacted here, that assigning jail time wouldn't go along with it. A spammer sitting next to a murderer? Come on.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry... every time I see Anandtech I can't help but think of Initech, the company in Office Space.
I had the same reaction to this thread when I read it. I started coding in VBA when it first shipped (Was that Office95? it was similar to ExcelBasic which I also worked with). Nothing unusual there.
My other thought, though, was I can't think of a single user in the department I write code for that would either use or need VBA. It's the product itself that works. Nothing buggy in the application that I can think of. Plus, we're all on the entire suite including Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, FrontPage (YUCK), Photo Editor, Access, Project, and Visio. I'm all for OSS, or something cheaper than Office, but none of them competes with Office on each of those platforms. And users don't want several different options. Plus, I'm sure our standard desktop team would rather support one suite of software than several suites.
I like that.. CSS. Can I use that without getting dragged into court?
Oh yeah, that's right. I wish I could say I've slept since then... instead I'll say I've written code since then. And I'm low on caffeine.
Why would the US develop jamming technology for it? We've done enough to piss off the rest of the world, and somehow still have a few friends. We'd lose GB, Spain, and Germany on that one.
How is this an arms race started by the Europeans? Didn't the US have GPS up first?
;)
Becuase it's not a race if only one person is in it
True that. I commented in another thread (about IT managers salaries going up while programmers are taking pay cuts) that one thing the economy bust seems to have done is weeded out the folks in programming positions that shouldn't be in them. At least for the most part. Have you seen the same thing happen?
That's interesting. Every Wal-Mart store has an nt server and a unix server in the back. The unix server handles all of the POS transactions. The nt server is there for communication... that's about it. They decided it was cheaper to manage communications on NT.... I've never done any analysis, but I suppose as penny pinching as they are, they looked into it pretty deeply.
Now that's +1 insightful.
At BSOD the system is dead too.
The bottom line is most of the reasons for either error are bad programmers. A bad programmer can make any OS unstable or insecure. The developers I worked with that handled bank transactions were top notch.
That's not to say every developer was top notch though... we had one I can remember that decided typing variables in VB was too time consuming, and refused to do it.
A lot of truth to that... but that's generally because of a bad software developer.
As a long time Windows developer, I would have to say that, for a great many painfully obvious reasons, Linux would be a better choice for this. It's cheaper, more reliable in that a developer can see the source code, and see what it's trying to accomplish, has nice GUI's, and many development platforms to choose from.
Even though the article says they would run on a stipped down version of Windows, Linux takes up a much smaller footprint and runs faster, so older/cheaper hardware could be used without any concern.
With large banks trying to cut costs/increase earnings (anyone tried to cash a payroll check at a large bank recently? "that'll cost you $5, sir") I find it hard to believe that they would choose the more expensive OS to run their software.
Um.... a good number of ATM's issued by a large bank I used to code for run NT 4.0. This isn't late breaking news.
That's sort of like Wal-Mart's home office policy on dealing with vendors. "If you want the world's largest retailer to carry your product, thereyby exposing it to millions of customers, you'll sell it to us for a price we decide." That usually equates to fractions of a penny in profit, and for vendors who sell multiple products, sometimes a loss on a few. The only two companies who don't have to deal with that are Sony and Nintendo, for obvious reasons. I witnessed this first hand, as I used to code for wally world, and was required to attent two Saturday sales meetings a month, where managers would brag about those tactics, all in the name of keeping a 27% profit margin.
Pretty nasty huh?
Yeah, but that site is a salary calculator. It doesn't measure personal wealth, just income. So there are a few people who earn less than $0 on their jobs.
:)
And yes, I saw the disclaimer at the bottom of the page. I guess I'm just not as funny as I think I am after all
Ah, but here, the CEO earns in the $200k range.. in salary. Then there's an incentive bonus, which all employees participate in. In salary grades 1-89, there's a max of 8% (almost never realized, unless you're an attorney). In grades 90-99 (99=CEO) there's a minimum of 8%. No max.
Then, there's an executive bonus, which only applies to grades 90-99. No restrictions... actually no rules. Just a dartboard I guess.
This company is not unique in that structure. I coded for a major bank a few years back, and the plan was similar.
I agree. I have a buddy with a Compaq T-1000 (laptop/huge pda with a transmeta in it) that he paid $1700 for. Fairly useless for the price, just as these seem to be. The noticeable advantage is the loss of a docking station and second monitor.. is that really necessary?
Do you, then, not think it would be fair when, as you have to lay off people from you company, you would AT LEAST keep your compensation level, rather than increase it by 7 digit numbers?
This is an extreme example, but it does remind me of what disghusted me most about Enron. The top brass was obviously greedy, and even more obviously oblivious to the lives they were destroying at the same time. People with families, homes, etc... were looking at losing them because Fastow (et all) wanted to be rich. That just disghusts me.
While there is some merit to your comment, I have to reply.
I hardly think that my 60 hour a week, solve all of the world (or at least this company) problems through code job, which earns less than a marketing manager (who's daily routing is read some of the reports that are provided by developers and pat his team on the back), is overpaid. And it was the same way in the 90's.
The boom in the tech industry in the 90's did create too many jobs for an understaffed industry. What happened then was not only higher salaries, but a lot of incompetent people in those positions.
Those of us that are left (and some competent folks who lost their jobs anyway) are burdened with two realities. Too few jobs, so supply and demand dictates we get paid less, and a sour taste in many hiring managers' collective mouths that many IT people really can't do what they say they can do... which also dictates lower salaries.
Ha! I wonder what the multiplier is for that. I'd like to know when I can start collecting "free money" from the government ;)
Someone please mod the parent up!
Strange. If you enter a zero (unemployed) you still are not the poorest person in the world. Does that mean there are people who pay to show up at work?
You're so right.
I happen to write HR code now, so am privy to the salaries and other compensation of all employees at my company. I've seen a few things happen recently, as our profit margin is in the red...
Layoffs everywhere in the company
Mandatory pay cuts for employees in the middle ranges of salary
Cuts in incentive bonuses, or complete elimination
An increase in salary and bonuses to the top 10% of salary grades here
Yeah, those guys really earned their wealth, and certainly not at the expense of their employees...
I hate it when I forget to use my tags.
I'd be willing to bet, though, that the slow decline in IT salaries (developers in particular, where I have experience) won't be affected at all by this news.
I saw that in another post earlier, and it gave me the chills. I don't know what Italy's justice system is like, so I can't really comment on their penalty. But here in the US, "hackers" get stiffer penalties than first time rapists. Which is a more heinous crime? I would hope that if such laws were enacted here, that assigning jail time wouldn't go along with it. A spammer sitting next to a murderer? Come on.