Dr. Robert M. Sauer of the Department of Economics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and president of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies
Why is the media always taken in with the idea of the "all-purpose expert"? This guy has a PhD in economics, not software design or management. There is nothing to suggest he knows what he's talking about when it comes to software.... we interrupt this broadcast... to get a comment on the NASA programme from Dr. Hibbert of the Chicago Institute of Modern Art...
I don't doubt that competent sysadmins exist, and if your sysadmins are competent enough, that's great. I'd like to make software at your company.
Here in Europe, demand for developers is really at an all time low. Here's a quick graph to demonstrate that the market is very depressed for all IT skills.
I fear your example is not the norm though. I know the senior sysadmin for a large internationally known sports venue who insists that open source is insecure. He's a great friend but I'm glad I don't have to work with him.
But development isn't the job of a sysadmin, sysadmins only think it's aprt of their job. Surely a good sysadmin should be practically invisible to their users.
Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Everyone knows who the sysadmin is.
Developers haven't been hired in developed countries for at least two years now. If they are hired, they have to have track records and references from previous companies. The variety existed for a while, but many of those hired as developers in 1999/2000 are now out of work. Many sysadmins unfortunately kept their jobs.
DB admins have reputations to keep, but as you've demonstrated by muddling your job role with a developer's, the sysadmin's role is nebulous.
Here's a quick test to try out on your systems administrator. Choose a tecchie topic like how a SAN works. ask them to explain it in terms a non-technical person can understand.
If they can't explain it in really simple terms, it's because they don't really know how it works themselves. Prepare to be dissappointed.
Remember, there are still a lot of sysadmins around who were employed at the height of the tech boom when all they needed was an interest in computers and penchant for manga to get hired.
iMode came out and basically lied about being the first
No, they didn't lie, they actually covered up the fact that it had an always-on connection to the Internet, because people in Japan were kind of scared of the Internet then.
JPhone certainly didn't have email and Internet then either as NTT Docomo was the first to request W3C's comments on CHTML which became the standard subset to display content for the phones. JPhone was too busy concentrating on increasing the pixel-depth of their colour displays back then to think about network functionality.
It's a while since I've been there. Why does everyone hate JPhone now?
If you go to the raves I used to go to, they're all in 3rd floor basements. And I never even tried to use a phone down there. Hehe.
Docomo, like Sony is one of those companies you want to hate but end up rather liking. Sony, you hate for the AIBO hacking controversy, saves itself with the Linux kit for PS2.
Docomo is a money-grabbing, high priced qu(e)asi-governmental monopoly. But it knows that by adapting Linux to run on a phone, it wins tecchie friends.
The first imode phone came out in February 1999. I bought one (the black f501i) in March 1999 when I arrived in Japan. I wanted a phone I could send email from because I didn't have a PC. That phone was nice and was way ahead of it's time (even in Japan)
Docomo's Linux offering will also be good, as it has tecchie know-how. Oh, and NTT Docomo has one of the highest market capitalisations on the planet.
and only capitalism details that IP and copyright are capital goods. Sure, they might make some concessions to attract investment but ultimately if it suits China they'll tear up any agreement to recognise Western-derived copyright. This is how it's always been.
Piracy effectively becomes "exercise of the People's right to pool and share resources".
For about 1.7 seconds, I thought the headline said... oh, nevermind.
Your forgetting a key reason for XML
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Effective XML
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· Score: 1
For performance, EDI is definately better
Well, hang on. There's the cost factor. When you take into account Value Added Network (VAN), storage and interconnection fees, plus the usual per-kilocharacter fees, XML suddenly performs much better - the bandwidth to send it is greater but if you have an FTP server then it's not even your bandwidth at issue. The cost per invoice/order is MUCH less even when development fees are taken into account and therefore performance is higher.
EDI is a pain in the ass to debug too. Missing tags or misplaced required fields - oh joy. Start counting those plusses +++000+75000+?:+++ already.
management consultants. Ever thought what management consultants do? I used to be one. They get paid good money to dress unpopular decisions up as the results of their 'independent studies'. What do they actually know about management? I graduated in history and started with a consultancy 2 years after graduating. There is never an industry as nepotistic and bent as management consultancy - that's how I got the job (through a friend).
My advice? Ask the oldest guy (or the person who's been there the longest) in your company what they did last time the same thing happened. They usually know, but you might not know that.
I reckon other distributions would choose the same path if they had the option of pursuing a profitable model.
Remember, even RMS' first OSS foray was to make money (with a mail order business after he lost his job, as I remember reading).
What Redhat could be mindful of is whether they will lose a chunk of bedroom-based user/testers with funky hardware - didn't young Torvalds point out recently that desktop users are the new focus?
"IT Auditors"? Really? Pay them $50,000 and they'll say whatever you want them to say. And that's before they actually do anything. I have a friend from my university days working there. She studied Art History, and that's the extent of her technical expertise. But she's very nice to look at. Which sums up the company.
Integrity? It's a management err... "consultancy"! What did you expect?
I can count the number of Japanese people I know who enjoy the occassional reefer on the fingers of one foot.
Some Japanese like the music, the clothes, the attitude but they don't do the blunts.
A few years ago in a place in northern Tokyo (Omiya), a Japanese friend left a bag of white powder - it was actually flour (don't ask) - in a karaoke place with his rucksack by mistake. We paid a left and found 20 riot police waiting for us outside. 4 hours later and a chat with the head honcho and we all had a (rather nervous) joke and went home. Every year there's a westerner visiting from getting stopped and thrown in jail in Japan. The juryless legal system is a weak defence in most cases. Anxious not to be perceived as unjust, the Japanese legal system looks hard at these "drug mule" defence but it rarely washes with the Japanese police.
It doesn't surprise me that the Japanese developed such a device, although I'm a little surprised they bothered, as drugs is not a *pressing* problem in Japan right now.
In fact, the War on Drugs is no longer the demonized "war" anymore. The War on Terrorism is it's replacement.
Re:this is fantastic - no GPL from VS.NET ?!
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C# 2.0 Spec Released
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· Score: 1
Question - does VS really forbid GPL releases?
Isn't that practically impossible to prove? (Take out the VS.NET comments in the program and deny all knowledge... ?)
I'm lost as to how/why a dev environment can dictate the resulting release license.
The core of the problem with Linux is it's PR. There's this gulf of understanding between us tecchies and the people who make "really important" decisions.
The number of times our company (large retail group) has tripped up because of decisions based on convincing salespeople rather than technical merit make for shameful reading.
This document has a stamp of officialdom though. Better still, a government stamp! Written by bureaucrats for bureaucrats! Yippee!
There will be a copy on my Director's desk Monday. Whether I can get him to read it is another matter. But that's a different battle. I imagine there's a few UK government bureaucrats swotting up using this document too. I'm amazed and rather humbled that it's written in English as well!
At the end of the day ...
on
Software Exorcism
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· Score: 3, Insightful
they pretend to pay us so we pretend to work. In the UK, developers salaries are cheaper than some hourly rates offered in India with outsouring companies... but moving along... it comes down to the fact that good programmers are rarely good at getting on with people.
If you can do your technical stuff well and be a nice person (even better a popular preson), a company will value you and you can rise above office political bullshit.
The books author sounds embittered by the fact that joining the software industry at the height of the tech boom didn't make them as rich as (Kill) Bill. Get over it and get along with people.
(... hey I never do anyway!) can I guess that Bruce says something like:
"Technological solutions don't work for human problems. 9/11, Bush, P2P vs. RIAA are human problems. Cryptography can't help you here either, so look elsewhere. "
Many retailers are already complaining that they were unable to order sufficient quantities to supply them if the bug takes more than a few days to fix."
I'll be complaining too when is wasn't fixed tomorrow too. *Hiccup!*
Slashdot Mirror
Dr. Robert M. Sauer of the Department of Economics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and president of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies
... we interrupt this broadcast ... to get a comment on the NASA programme from Dr. Hibbert of the Chicago Institute of Modern Art ...
Why is the media always taken in with the idea of the "all-purpose expert"? This guy has a PhD in economics, not software design or management. There is nothing to suggest he knows what he's talking about when it comes to software.
People like you are absolutely the reason the BOFH stereotype exists. I'm really reeally glad I don't have to work with you.
I don't doubt that competent sysadmins exist, and if your sysadmins are competent enough, that's great. I'd like to make software at your company.
Here in Europe, demand for developers is really at an all time low. Here's a quick graph to demonstrate that the market is very depressed for all IT skills.
I fear your example is not the norm though. I know the senior sysadmin for a large internationally known sports venue who insists that open source is insecure. He's a great friend but I'm glad I don't have to work with him.
But development isn't the job of a sysadmin, sysadmins only think it's aprt of their job. Surely a good sysadmin should be practically invisible to their users.
Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Everyone knows who the sysadmin is.
Developers haven't been hired in developed countries for at least two years now. If they are hired, they have to have track records and references from previous companies. The variety existed for a while, but many of those hired as developers in 1999/2000 are now out of work. Many sysadmins unfortunately kept their jobs.
DB admins have reputations to keep, but as you've demonstrated by muddling your job role with a developer's, the sysadmin's role is nebulous.
Here's a quick test to try out on your systems administrator. Choose a tecchie topic like how a SAN works. ask them to explain it in terms a non-technical person can understand.
If they can't explain it in really simple terms, it's because they don't really know how it works themselves. Prepare to be dissappointed.
Remember, there are still a lot of sysadmins around who were employed at the height of the tech boom when all they needed was an interest in computers and penchant for manga to get hired.
iMode came out and basically lied about being the first
No, they didn't lie, they actually covered up the fact that it had an always-on connection to the Internet, because people in Japan were kind of scared of the Internet then.
JPhone certainly didn't have email and Internet then either as NTT Docomo was the first to request W3C's comments on CHTML which became the standard subset to display content for the phones. JPhone was too busy concentrating on increasing the pixel-depth of their colour displays back then to think about network functionality.
It's a while since I've been there. Why does everyone hate JPhone now?
If you go to the raves I used to go to, they're all in 3rd floor basements. And I never even tried to use a phone down there. Hehe.
to get a Docomo imode phone.
Docomo, like Sony is one of those companies you want to hate but end up rather liking. Sony, you hate for the AIBO hacking controversy, saves itself with the Linux kit for PS2.
Docomo is a money-grabbing, high priced qu(e)asi-governmental monopoly. But it knows that by adapting Linux to run on a phone, it wins tecchie friends.
The first imode phone came out in February 1999. I bought one (the black f501i) in March 1999 when I arrived in Japan. I wanted a phone I could send email from because I didn't have a PC. That phone was nice and was way ahead of it's time (even in Japan)
Docomo's Linux offering will also be good, as it has tecchie know-how. Oh, and NTT Docomo has one of the highest market capitalisations on the planet.
Where are the founders of the broadband revolution?
Working in bars, claiming benefits etc. etc.
and only capitalism details that IP and copyright are capital goods. Sure, they might make some concessions to attract investment but ultimately if it suits China they'll tear up any agreement to recognise Western-derived copyright. This is how it's always been.
Piracy effectively becomes "exercise of the People's right to pool and share resources".
For about 1.7 seconds, I thought the headline said ... oh, nevermind.
For performance, EDI is definately better
Well, hang on. There's the cost factor. When you take into account Value Added Network (VAN), storage and interconnection fees, plus the usual per-kilocharacter fees, XML suddenly performs much better - the bandwidth to send it is greater but if you have an FTP server then it's not even your bandwidth at issue. The cost per invoice/order is MUCH less even when development fees are taken into account and therefore performance is higher.
EDI is a pain in the ass to debug too. Missing tags or misplaced required fields - oh joy. Start counting those plusses +++000+75000+?:+++ already.
management consultants. Ever thought what management consultants do? I used to be one. They get paid good money to dress unpopular decisions up as the results of their 'independent studies'. What do they actually know about management? I graduated in history and started with a consultancy 2 years after graduating. There is never an industry as nepotistic and bent as management consultancy - that's how I got the job (through a friend).
My advice? Ask the oldest guy (or the person who's been there the longest) in your company what they did last time the same thing happened. They usually know, but you might not know that.
It exposes companies to blackmail? I wonder what they're finding? The corporate ethics grey area steps in to cloud the issue ...
I reckon other distributions would choose the same path if they had the option of pursuing a profitable model.
Remember, even RMS' first OSS foray was to make money (with a mail order business after he lost his job, as I remember reading).
What Redhat could be mindful of is whether they will lose a chunk of bedroom-based user/testers with funky hardware - didn't young Torvalds point out recently that desktop users are the new focus?
are Cap Gemini Ernst and Young.
... "consultancy"! What did you expect?
"IT Auditors"? Really? Pay them $50,000 and they'll say whatever you want them to say. And that's before they actually do anything. I have a friend from my university days working there. She studied Art History, and that's the extent of her technical expertise. But she's very nice to look at. Which sums up the company.
Integrity? It's a management err
I can count the number of Japanese people I know who enjoy the occassional reefer on the fingers of one foot.
Some Japanese like the music, the clothes, the attitude but they don't do the blunts.
A few years ago in a place in northern Tokyo (Omiya), a Japanese friend left a bag of white powder - it was actually flour (don't ask) - in a karaoke place with his rucksack by mistake. We paid a left and found 20 riot police waiting for us outside. 4 hours later and a chat with the head honcho and we all had a (rather nervous) joke and went home. Every year there's a westerner visiting from getting stopped and thrown in jail in Japan. The juryless legal system is a weak defence in most cases. Anxious not to be perceived as unjust, the Japanese legal system looks hard at these "drug mule" defence but it rarely washes with the Japanese police.
It doesn't surprise me that the Japanese developed such a device, although I'm a little surprised they bothered, as drugs is not a *pressing* problem in Japan right now.
In fact, the War on Drugs is no longer the demonized "war" anymore. The War on Terrorism is it's replacement.
Question - does VS really forbid GPL releases?
... ?)
Isn't that practically impossible to prove? (Take out the VS.NET comments in the program and deny all knowledge
I'm lost as to how/why a dev environment can dictate the resulting release license.
The core of the problem with Linux is it's PR. There's this gulf of understanding between us tecchies and the people who make "really important" decisions.
The number of times our company (large retail group) has tripped up because of decisions based on convincing salespeople rather than technical merit make for shameful reading.
This document has a stamp of officialdom though. Better still, a government stamp! Written by bureaucrats for bureaucrats! Yippee!
There will be a copy on my Director's desk Monday. Whether I can get him to read it is another matter. But that's a different battle. I imagine there's a few UK government bureaucrats swotting up using this document too. I'm amazed and rather humbled that it's written in English as well!
they pretend to pay us so we pretend to work. In the UK, developers salaries are cheaper than some hourly rates offered in India with outsouring companies ... but moving along ... it comes down to the fact that good programmers are rarely good at getting on with people.
If you can do your technical stuff well and be a nice person (even better a popular preson), a company will value you and you can rise above office political bullshit.
The books author sounds embittered by the fact that joining the software industry at the height of the tech boom didn't make them as rich as (Kill) Bill. Get over it and get along with people.
1. It's iTRON not eTRON. Read the Japanese version (and if you're really familiar with iTRON, I'm sure you'll be able to)
./ these days?
2. iTRON is not free or open source. It's derivative JSP/TOPPERS Kernel is.
Dear oh dear. Is it really this easy to get mod points on
The TOPPERS/JSP kernel (in Japanese) is open source and is an implementation of the iTRON kernel. But iTRON will not be free or open source.
( ... hey I never do anyway!) can I guess that Bruce says something like:
"Technological solutions don't work for human problems. 9/11, Bush, P2P vs. RIAA are human problems. Cryptography can't help you here either, so look elsewhere. "
Just a hunch.
Many retailers are already complaining that they were unable to order sufficient quantities to supply them if the bug takes more than a few days to fix."
I'll be complaining too when is wasn't fixed tomorrow too. *Hiccup!*
a shuttle (possibly Atlantis) could fly again next fall.
"Fall" is a comment on the reliability of the shuttle program, or the US for Autumn?
1. Home made mortar as seen on Slashdot
2. A bowling ball
3. A [insert chosen religion] fanatic
4. A crowded shopping mall
Some days, I like the idea of living in the USA, toher days, I just don't.