Hey, why don't you shut up and go find some chairs or something?
No matter how much your great role model chants "developers," we know he can't fucking wait to offshore all those development jobs to India.
You should be modded redundant because this is now the third time in this discussion I've had to tear down this ideological pop-economic BULLSHIT.
Wow. You know, I wish I could just say the same to someone like yourself who appears (perhaps you only appear but don't actually) to hold a view that the world is coming to an end. THAT view is irrational. You don't see the Chinese or the Indians sitting around wringing their hands over these issues...But Westerners have wasted a lot of time and energy doing just that.
The market doesn't govern the physical universe. At all. The amounts of material and energy present on Earth are in no way related to the laws of supply and demand. The universe is indifferent to your over-applied, unfalsifiable theories. Applying your (almost certainly feeble) understanding of economics implies the universe responds like a rational actor, an idiotic notion that underpins most religion and superstition.
You are correct, sir, when you say that the market doesn't govern the physical universe. The markets do, however, affect human behavior and psychology. Which, if you treat a market as a tool, is it's purpose -- it highlights when a given resource is short and manages demand for it. (Not the supply of it.) That's not suggesting that the universe is a rational actor. It's suggesting that institutions that manage billions of dollars (or pounds or yuan) behave, over time, in a rational manner.
Sometimes 'cheaper alternatives' just don't exist. This is why your precious markets have never got to grips with spaceflight. The markets reaction has always been "Wait till it is cheaper" on the assumption that all technology gets cheaper - ignoring the fact that there is a physical constraint on what you must do to get into orbit. The required delta-V isn't going to change just because it would be financially efficient for it to do so.
Actually, we're waiting for a return on any such investment (in space travel) to be viable. If, for example, (let's indulge in a fantasy for the sake of the conversation) it was discovered that there was a large enough supply of gold on the moon and all you had to do was scoop it up, there would be a concerted effort (at current gold prices) to get up there and scrape it off. Again, the market is a means or tool, if you prefer, to force irrational actors (humans) to behave in a rational matter (through the enforcement and broadcast of scarcity).
At the moment, it's just now become viable (i.e. there are people who can afford it) to have space tourism. Two things have happened to make that possible -- the cost of a space flight has, in fact, dropped from 1970 levels and the number of people who want to pay that and can afford to pay it has increased.
And before you say "stupid markets!" consider that the other alternative that has been widely employed was war with a lot of killing and enslavement. Personally, I prefer the exchange of currency to bullets (or ICBMs). Your position on that appears to be unclear, however...
If you are a true economist, then fuck off and play with your stock markets and leave actual science to actual scientists.
Wow. Again, I marvel at your intellectual prowess. "Silly troll, forums are for adults!"
You appear to be blind. The little icon at the top of the page here indicates that this is "Your Rights Online" story and you have wandered into the political discussion section of Slashdot.
(Whoa, looks like the PRC boys haven't figured this one out, but I imagine that they will be fixing that shortly, which means you won't have to be troubled by these stories, anymore.)
The reason we discuss this so much here is that the censoring techniques used in China are an interesting case study of what we, in the Western Democracies need to prevent from being deployed here. (Listen, what you guys do there, in your own country, is very little of my business -- unless you want to change it, and then I might care -- and what we do here is very little of your business. So, this isn't a judgement or a nationalistic thing. We just have different civil traditions. That are incompatible.)
The reason you see so many of these is because is really is interesting to see what lengths governments will go to to control the free exchange of information. We don't have it to that extent here. It's exotic for us (like a lot of other aspects of Chinese society and culture, but that is a different conversation -- one that Ms. Hu would definately not allow).
Anyway, I hope that answered your question.
By the way, since you are there, do you imagine that those censors get to have a lookie lookie (and maybe a copy copy) before they blocky blocky?
The problem is to be made into a mode of pure watching, a state of the same. In fact, if the environment is technologically-driven, so you crumple up the URL from the last tab you were already expecting.
I believe I speak for a large % of/. when I say:
What the hell did you just say?
This guy is pretty slick. It's called a Markov Chain, the specific application in this case is a Word Based Dissociated Press Props to you Mark, it's a slick little beastie. Add this intellegence to a bot and you've got a real spam machine there.
On the other hand, it could just be my ex-boss posting....
The reason why MS lobbies for an increase of H1B? Because they have thousands of open positions. Microsoft has never had a layoff of technical personel. It's not that Bill doesn't care about tech talent. It's that he and the rest of Microsoft demand that the talent be the very best, or they won't hire them. They won't outsource to cheap labor. Two, or even ten cheap programmers will never create what one really good programmer can, and they know that.
Uh, no. You are incorrect, sir. I can only infer from your comment above that you are not in the applications development industry (or have extremely limited experience with it...Perhaps you are a "Gates fanboy").
You, and Mr. Gates (if this is what he professes to believe), are also mistaken that a rising number of students in these programs will correlate to a rising amount of top-notch talent. There's no correlative or causative relationship there, as the last tech boom (in the late nineties) proved. (How many of those graduates were considered "top-notch"?) There is a finite number of people who will be interested in this sort of work and an even smaller number of those who will be "good" and an even smaller number who will be "great". Those people know who they are and will frequently self-select into the field. Even fewer of those will be willing to work in the high pressure, "always on," "Ballermized" culture of Microsoft. (Think of the famous Windows 1.0 sales pitch or the "I love this company" speech or the "Developers" chant. As you watch the segements, ask yourself, "Would I want to work for this man?"). More likely, they will go work for Google.
Basically, you either have the "skillz" or you don't. No amount of training will take you to that level if you don't have the ability to intuitively grasp the underpinnings of the field. You could still be a programmer, but it would be unlikely that Microsoft would consider you to be a "good enough" programmer.
While this may do some good, really (in terms of inspiring people who might not have had a clue what they would want to do for a living) it strikes me as a strategic play to keep the cost of good developers low and to placate those who are politically opposed to raising the quota for H1-B visas in the US.
Of course, all of this is irrelevant, as the undergraduates (as another poster already mentioned) are smarter than they look and have finally figured out that law and finance are the two industries in this country in which demand will never decrease. And it is, definately, the smart play.
Son, if you can't test your own code and you now admit that you felt like you had to pad your estimates, that's why you got canned. Management *hates* padding (unless they do it). And it sounds like the manager you reported to was smart enough to sniff it out. (Or you weren't smart enough to hide it.)
Such blanket padding is usually taken as a lack of confidence (could be subliminal on your part) in the padder's ability. As a technical team lead, I would lose patience with someone using "testing" as an excuse to explain why something couldn't be done on time. (For what it's worth, my approach would not be to fire that person, it would be to attempt to educate them out of that lack of confidence...Most people in the industry don't see the value in that.) And yeah, that means weekends and late nights. It sucks to be on the bottom, but initially, that's what people have to do.
And just so you know, most organizations can't afford to have a seperate testing department. EDS does (did?) it that way, but smaller organizations expect you to do your own testing.
I stand by my assertion that on at least 95% of occasions, if someone won't show me the code, it's because they are hiding something they don't want me to see.
And I'm sure that Google would just turn over the code in their toolbar and for their search engines and appliances if you just asked them?
If you do manage to get it from them, I would like to see it, because I could learn a lot from it!
They are a business, like any other. I suppose they try to do good, but the fact that they have to try tells us something right there, doesn't it?
Marx therefore concluded that as this form of capitalism collapsed under its own weight, that it would be replaced by a system where the workers ran and owned the means of production. In general, this has not happened.
What do you call a 401(k) retirement plan largely invested in stocks and bonds?
Or a mutual fund largely held by unionised workers?
If anything, this is what Marx meant about workers owning the means (the capital) of production.
Funny how he turned out to be right in ways people never considered. Ask any owner of a large (like multi-billion dollar) privately held company about employee owned retirement plans (or companies) and you will usually get a response similar to one that you would have gotten in the late 19th century. (Which would be shock and horror, largely.)
There have been basically two prongs of the arguments in favor of the Universal Grammar debate. The first is that the task of learning an infinite grammar from a finite subset of sentences (and then only from positive evidence) appears to be too difficult to accomplish solely through statistical means. The second is an effort to show that language learning is biologically- rather than experience-based. This is the effort to show that there is a critical period in language development, which would suggest that there is a strong biological (i.e., genetic) component to langauge learning.
Chomsky's work was important because it re-oriented the way we look at language acquistion (much like Freud changed the way we look at pyschology). It doesn't mean that his model is accurate.
The fact that cognitive and sociolinguistic strategies work well to teach and learn languages post age 12 (which, if I remember correctly, is considered the "cut-off" for first language acquistion) is proof that Chomsky's theories of language acquistion are flawed. The implication here is that once the biology (in the brain) is there, congitive skills and the ability to analyze (and sensitivity to) cultural and pragmatic ques become more important than biology. Chomsky, if I remember my reading right, would contend that a non-native speaker of a language would never learn to speak "accent free" in a language he or she were attempting to acquire. This is false, as there have been many cases (not just with native English speakers going to, say, Russian, but also with Russian speakers to German -- Putin is a famous example -- or Chinese speakers to English) in which adult speakers of one language have acquired a second language without accent (or with an "appropriate" "place-able" accent -- German exchange students to the US appear to be examples of this, as every one I have ever met sounded like he or she came from Nebraska).
Chomsky's contribution was real -- in terms of provoking us to look at language in a different way -- and for that he should go down in history...But his model is, in fact, flawed.
Not that you Apple fanboys would be sensitive to / defensive about that or anything? Your reaction tells me more about you and Apple products than it does about the book.
Perhaps, on some level, you guys really do believe that you are getting raped on price and value...but are really emotional and wealthy and can't resist when someone puts a shiny box in front of you?
Though I do admire Jobs' ability to sell slow-ass shit and convince people that an OS that's 30 years old is "modern."
Oh, and by the way, I don't bitch about Linux -- the open source people aren't trying to sell me anything but their time (and that has value). Linux may be based on technology that's 30 years old, but at least I'm not paying a premium for it.
The boys from M$ are all business and they try (and Windows is *still* too expensive) so I'll take a hit in quality for a moderate price...
Uh, Physics...Let's see, nuclear weapons development, energy (nuclear reactors), ballistic missle defense, the list goes on. Math, a better targeting analysis algorithim... Comp Sci, ballistic missle defense, anti-tank weapons/air-to-air missle guidance systems (tell the missles when and where "to get kenitic")
So, not only were/are you poor, you aren't very creative, either. Weapons development and research people get paid very well...Sometimes by both sides.
Actually, that would be taking a cue from Palm -- who published their SDK and quite a few development tools and helped out on an open source implementation of a gcc tool chain.
When there are no other parties responsible for development, maybe that's cool.
But I doubt that you all are just going to start hacking on that Tomahawk's navigation system and not bother to tell anyone what you did...
Well, I suppose that if it's not documented, they won't know that you were the one responsible for having it boomerang back and sink the ship that launched it. Way to cover your ass.
I'll grant you -- having been there myself -- the best rarely f--k up, but when they do, the results are usually devastating (and career limiting). Of course, if no one knows it was you -- because you didn't document (or communicate) it, you could blame on the poor shumck who did do what he was supposed to, eh?
And you're right. The communication was always the hardest part, even with a bunch of elite, top-notch programmers. Getting people to slow down, think about what they were doing and then document it -- all while thinking, what happens ten years from now when we have to redesign this b--tch? -- was always the hardest part.
It can even be executed in a hurry, with enough experience... Or even after the fact, after the dust has settled... As long as it will stand a peer review -- from someone who might have to support it -- it works.
Of course, if someone is working with idiots, they have my sympathy, but we found that the swift termination of a couple of the slowest ones really did a lot to help the other learn.
Asshole. I don't swear by an iPod -- 300 dollars for a f--king USB harddrive is a little steep for me.
Like you can run to Apple and change the UI after the product is produced.
If you must know, it was privately held and typically, my team had the fastest turn around in the department -- so that if you wanted a change, we had probably outrun your fat ass before you asked for it. That's why you don't want people changing the specs on you -- it slows the team down. Wait for the next f--king cycle, dips--t.
Free, open factories!... People must be permitted to BUILD THEIR OWN COMPUTERS... In their own FACTORIES -- how, after all, can we trust that malicious code wasn't inserted into the hardware boards? We must have the right to melt down our own sand! The molecules could be corrupted!
Oh. Wait... Never mind....
(and for the humor impaired, I run Gentoo and Debian servers at work with a Win2000 Domain Server -- I believe in coexistance.)
Huh. We must have never worked together. Or maybe you were on the development side of the house.
1. Create an impact analysis document (how is what we are about to do going to affect current operations). This should tell you if what you are planning to do is possible and should have all of the systems affected listed. You may have to travel out to the field and interview people directly.
2. Develop the specifications before implementation (programming) begins. Having those battles at this point (before coding) is better than having them while you are coding. Create prototype reports and screenshots and have people sign them if you have to...
3. Make it incredibly hard (and let people know it will be) to change the specifications once they have been agreed to (this will help with scope creep).
4. Document, document, document. Program based off of the documentation. These documents, completed as you go, will bring new team members up to speed on what is happening.
5. Have team members check each other. Have people read other people's documentation.
6. Test, test, test (use the documentation as a basis to develop test plans). Preferably have someone who didn't write or implement the code test it based off of an independently developed test plan.
7. Create backout procedures (make it so that you can get out of trouble as fast as you go into it).
8. Communicate the installation date/time to operational units. Try not to do the whole company at once (pilot it at typical sites or locations). Do not hesitate to back it out if your end users report trouble. Backout first and figure out what went wrong later.
9. After all units are up to date, do one final install to the entire company to make sure that the codebase is consistent.
10. Follow up.
Customer service and communication are critical to the success of any systems change that will affect operations.
Why should you listen to me? I did manufacturing and planning applications maintainence for a Fortune 100 company for 6 and half years and all the plant managers loved me, because I follow this method. I never interrupted a facility's operations, ever -- and neither did anyone whose work I supervised.
You could always send him to the SALT Center. We have an array of assitive technology, including Kurzweil 3000, Inspiration and others. As for math, that seems to be worked through with tutors and other aspects of the program.
"According to the article, this clause is unlikely to appear in the final version -- but stranger things have happened."
This is like saying that the scenario depicted in "The Day After Tomorrow" is unlikely to occur -- but stranger things have happened.
If you are stupid and hysterical enough to believe that something that would interfere with Intel's and AMD's profits to this extent would make it through Congress, you obviously aren't smart enough to work in technology. Get out and give the rest of us who are a chance.
Someone wanted a boost to their karma and submitted a totally idiotic story so their friends could help them out. Society is totally corrupt.
hearing about a supposed shortage of skilled labor in this country. That is such bulls---. Heaven forbid that a business (or the government) would actually have to INVEST in its people to keep them competative. (Or that the educational institutions would have to LOWER their TUITION charges to get more people in.)
How hard it is to be a business owner these days with all of these profits and stupid people.
of what they [the executives] are doing? Would executives feel differently if "management talent" were outsourced or offshored by shareholders? Do executives believe (as the CEO of Nike does) that US workers no longer want to program? And do they really (honestly) believe that there is a derth of talent in the US?
How far in the future do executives think? What is the current definition of "long-range"?
...boot from it? This would be an interesting option to explore... You could have a completely mobile, moduluar computer...You want to change hard drives, or have a faster CPU, no sweat -- connect to a different component.
(such as word processing and virtual meeting and collaborative tools that won't require groups to meet in the same place to work on group presentations/papers, for example)...There is the use of that technology for flushing out the "quiet ones" who normally wouldn't have the force of personality to cut across the background noise to support their assertions. Should make the class more lively.
Students could challenge each other's assertions with alternate, internet, sources. Isn't the OED online?
Of course, it raises the bar on your ability to impart knowledge in an insightful and engaging way, since you will, in effect, be competing with the computers.
You could have a website for your tests. No (hardcopy) papers. This would probably be most helpful for final exam, since you could make it live at the beginning of finals and then pull it down at midnight on the last day finals.
Who am I? Why should you listen?
I was an English major (B.A.) who now codes for a living (double minor in Computer Info Systems and TESL - and for the Lingustically Challenged, that's Teaching English as a Second Language).
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, why don't you shut up and go find some chairs or something?
No matter how much your great role model chants "developers," we know he can't fucking wait to offshore all those development jobs to India.
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
You should be modded redundant because this is now the third time in this discussion I've had to tear down this ideological pop-economic BULLSHIT.
Wow. You know, I wish I could just say the same to someone like yourself who appears (perhaps you only appear but don't actually) to hold a view that the world is coming to an end. THAT view is irrational. You don't see the Chinese or the Indians sitting around wringing their hands over these issues...But Westerners have wasted a lot of time and energy doing just that.
The market doesn't govern the physical universe. At all. The amounts of material and energy present on Earth are in no way related to the laws of supply and demand. The universe is indifferent to your over-applied, unfalsifiable theories. Applying your (almost certainly feeble) understanding of economics implies the universe responds like a rational actor, an idiotic notion that underpins most religion and superstition.
You are correct, sir, when you say that the market doesn't govern the physical universe. The markets do, however, affect human behavior and psychology. Which, if you treat a market as a tool, is it's purpose -- it highlights when a given resource is short and manages demand for it. (Not the supply of it.) That's not suggesting that the universe is a rational actor. It's suggesting that institutions that manage billions of dollars (or pounds or yuan) behave, over time, in a rational manner.
Sometimes 'cheaper alternatives' just don't exist. This is why your precious markets have never got to grips with spaceflight. The markets reaction has always been "Wait till it is cheaper" on the assumption that all technology gets cheaper - ignoring the fact that there is a physical constraint on what you must do to get into orbit. The required delta-V isn't going to change just because it would be financially efficient for it to do so.
Actually, we're waiting for a return on any such investment (in space travel) to be viable. If, for example, (let's indulge in a fantasy for the sake of the conversation) it was discovered that there was a large enough supply of gold on the moon and all you had to do was scoop it up, there would be a concerted effort (at current gold prices) to get up there and scrape it off. Again, the market is a means or tool, if you prefer, to force irrational actors (humans) to behave in a rational matter (through the enforcement and broadcast of scarcity).
At the moment, it's just now become viable (i.e. there are people who can afford it) to have space tourism. Two things have happened to make that possible -- the cost of a space flight has, in fact, dropped from 1970 levels and the number of people who want to pay that and can afford to pay it has increased.
And before you say "stupid markets!" consider that the other alternative that has been widely employed was war with a lot of killing and enslavement. Personally, I prefer the exchange of currency to bullets (or ICBMs). Your position on that appears to be unclear, however...
If you are a true economist, then fuck off and play with your stock markets and leave actual science to actual scientists.
Wow. Again, I marvel at your intellectual prowess. "Silly troll, forums are for adults!"
Hi.
You appear to be blind. The little icon at the top of the page here indicates that this is "Your Rights Online" story and you have wandered into the political discussion section of Slashdot.
(Whoa, looks like the PRC boys haven't figured this one out, but I imagine that they will be fixing that shortly, which means you won't have to be troubled by these stories, anymore.)
The reason we discuss this so much here is that the censoring techniques used in China are an interesting case study of what we, in the Western Democracies need to prevent from being deployed here. (Listen, what you guys do there, in your own country, is very little of my business -- unless you want to change it, and then I might care -- and what we do here is very little of your business. So, this isn't a judgement or a nationalistic thing. We just have different civil traditions. That are incompatible.)
The reason you see so many of these is because is really is interesting to see what lengths governments will go to to control the free exchange of information. We don't have it to that extent here. It's exotic for us (like a lot of other aspects of Chinese society and culture, but that is a different conversation -- one that Ms. Hu would definately not allow).
Anyway, I hope that answered your question.
By the way, since you are there, do you imagine that those censors get to have a lookie lookie (and maybe a copy copy) before they blocky blocky?
Oh, and by the way, I think you are a troll.
The problem is to be made into a mode of pure watching, a state of the same. In fact, if the environment is technologically-driven, so you crumple up the URL from the last tab you were already expecting.
I believe I speak for a large % of /. when I say:
What the hell did you just say?
This guy is pretty slick. It's called a Markov Chain, the specific application in this case is a Word Based Dissociated Press Props to you Mark, it's a slick little beastie. Add this intellegence to a bot and you've got a real spam machine there.
On the other hand, it could just be my ex-boss posting....
Uh, no. You are incorrect, sir. I can only infer from your comment above that you are not in the applications development industry (or have extremely limited experience with it...Perhaps you are a "Gates fanboy").
You, and Mr. Gates (if this is what he professes to believe), are also mistaken that a rising number of students in these programs will correlate to a rising amount of top-notch talent. There's no correlative or causative relationship there, as the last tech boom (in the late nineties) proved. (How many of those graduates were considered "top-notch"?) There is a finite number of people who will be interested in this sort of work and an even smaller number of those who will be "good" and an even smaller number who will be "great". Those people know who they are and will frequently self-select into the field. Even fewer of those will be willing to work in the high pressure, "always on," "Ballermized" culture of Microsoft. (Think of the famous Windows 1.0 sales pitch or the "I love this company" speech or the "Developers" chant. As you watch the segements, ask yourself, "Would I want to work for this man?"). More likely, they will go work for Google.
Basically, you either have the "skillz" or you don't. No amount of training will take you to that level if you don't have the ability to intuitively grasp the underpinnings of the field. You could still be a programmer, but it would be unlikely that Microsoft would consider you to be a "good enough" programmer.
While this may do some good, really (in terms of inspiring people who might not have had a clue what they would want to do for a living) it strikes me as a strategic play to keep the cost of good developers low and to placate those who are politically opposed to raising the quota for H1-B visas in the US.
Of course, all of this is irrelevant, as the undergraduates (as another poster already mentioned) are smarter than they look and have finally figured out that law and finance are the two industries in this country in which demand will never decrease. And it is, definately, the smart play.
Son, if you can't test your own code and you now admit that you felt like you had to pad your estimates, that's why you got canned. Management *hates* padding (unless they do it). And it sounds like the manager you reported to was smart enough to sniff it out. (Or you weren't smart enough to hide it.)
Such blanket padding is usually taken as a lack of confidence (could be subliminal on your part) in the padder's ability. As a technical team lead, I would lose patience with someone using "testing" as an excuse to explain why something couldn't be done on time. (For what it's worth, my approach would not be to fire that person, it would be to attempt to educate them out of that lack of confidence...Most people in the industry don't see the value in that.) And yeah, that means weekends and late nights. It sucks to be on the bottom, but initially, that's what people have to do.
And just so you know, most organizations can't afford to have a seperate testing department. EDS does (did?) it that way, but smaller organizations expect you to do your own testing.
And I'm sure that Google would just turn over the code in their toolbar and for their search engines and appliances if you just asked them?
If you do manage to get it from them, I would like to see it, because I could learn a lot from it!
They are a business, like any other. I suppose they try to do good, but the fact that they have to try tells us something right there, doesn't it?
What do you call a 401(k) retirement plan largely invested in stocks and bonds? Or a mutual fund largely held by unionised workers? If anything, this is what Marx meant about workers owning the means (the capital) of production.
Funny how he turned out to be right in ways people never considered. Ask any owner of a large (like multi-billion dollar) privately held company about employee owned retirement plans (or companies) and you will usually get a response similar to one that you would have gotten in the late 19th century. (Which would be shock and horror, largely.)
Chomsky's work was important because it re-oriented the way we look at language acquistion (much like Freud changed the way we look at pyschology). It doesn't mean that his model is accurate.
The fact that cognitive and sociolinguistic strategies work well to teach and learn languages post age 12 (which, if I remember correctly, is considered the "cut-off" for first language acquistion) is proof that Chomsky's theories of language acquistion are flawed. The implication here is that once the biology (in the brain) is there, congitive skills and the ability to analyze (and sensitivity to) cultural and pragmatic ques become more important than biology. Chomsky, if I remember my reading right, would contend that a non-native speaker of a language would never learn to speak "accent free" in a language he or she were attempting to acquire. This is false, as there have been many cases (not just with native English speakers going to, say, Russian, but also with Russian speakers to German -- Putin is a famous example -- or Chinese speakers to English) in which adult speakers of one language have acquired a second language without accent (or with an "appropriate" "place-able" accent -- German exchange students to the US appear to be examples of this, as every one I have ever met sounded like he or she came from Nebraska).
Chomsky's contribution was real -- in terms of provoking us to look at language in a different way -- and for that he should go down in history...But his model is, in fact, flawed.
Not that you Apple fanboys would be sensitive to / defensive about that or anything? Your reaction tells me more about you and Apple products than it does about the book.
Perhaps, on some level, you guys really do believe that you are getting raped on price and value...but are really emotional and wealthy and can't resist when someone puts a shiny box in front of you?
Though I do admire Jobs' ability to sell slow-ass shit and convince people that an OS that's 30 years old is "modern."
Oh, and by the way, I don't bitch about Linux -- the open source people aren't trying to sell me anything but their time (and that has value). Linux may be based on technology that's 30 years old, but at least I'm not paying a premium for it.
The boys from M$ are all business and they try (and Windows is *still* too expensive) so I'll take a hit in quality for a moderate price...
Uh, Physics...Let's see, nuclear weapons development, energy (nuclear reactors), ballistic missle defense, the list goes on. Math, a better targeting analysis algorithim... Comp Sci, ballistic missle defense, anti-tank weapons/air-to-air missle guidance systems (tell the missles when and where "to get kenitic")
So, not only were/are you poor, you aren't very creative, either. Weapons development and research people get paid very well...Sometimes by both sides.
Actually, that would be taking a cue from Palm -- who published their SDK and quite a few development tools and helped out on an open source implementation of a gcc tool chain.
When there are no other parties responsible for development, maybe that's cool.
But I doubt that you all are just going to start hacking on that Tomahawk's navigation system and not bother to tell anyone what you did...
Well, I suppose that if it's not documented, they won't know that you were the one responsible for having it boomerang back and sink the ship that launched it. Way to cover your ass.
I'll grant you -- having been there myself -- the best rarely f--k up, but when they do, the results are usually devastating (and career limiting). Of course, if no one knows it was you -- because you didn't document (or communicate) it, you could blame on the poor shumck who did do what he was supposed to, eh?
Or for suckers, eh?
And you're right. The communication was always the hardest part, even with a bunch of elite, top-notch programmers. Getting people to slow down, think about what they were doing and then document it -- all while thinking, what happens ten years from now when we have to redesign this b--tch? -- was always the hardest part.
It can even be executed in a hurry, with enough experience... Or even after the fact, after the dust has settled... As long as it will stand a peer review -- from someone who might have to support it -- it works.
Of course, if someone is working with idiots, they have my sympathy, but we found that the swift termination of a couple of the slowest ones really did a lot to help the other learn.
Asshole. I don't swear by an iPod -- 300 dollars for a f--king USB harddrive is a little steep for me.
Like you can run to Apple and change the UI after the product is produced.
If you must know, it was privately held and typically, my team had the fastest turn around in the department -- so that if you wanted a change, we had probably outrun your fat ass before you asked for it. That's why you don't want people changing the specs on you -- it slows the team down. Wait for the next f--king cycle, dips--t.
Free Computers!
Free, open factories! ... People must be permitted to BUILD THEIR OWN COMPUTERS ... In their own FACTORIES -- how, after all, can we trust that malicious code wasn't inserted into the hardware boards? We must have the right to melt down our own sand! The molecules could be corrupted!
Oh. Wait... Never mind....
(and for the humor impaired, I run Gentoo and Debian servers at work with a Win2000 Domain Server -- I believe in coexistance.)
Huh. We must have never worked together. Or maybe you were on the development side of the house.
1. Create an impact analysis document (how is what we are about to do going to affect current operations). This should tell you if what you are planning to do is possible and should have all of the systems affected listed. You may have to travel out to the field and interview people directly.
2. Develop the specifications before implementation (programming) begins. Having those battles at this point (before coding) is better than having them while you are coding. Create prototype reports and screenshots and have people sign them if you have to...
3. Make it incredibly hard (and let people know it will be) to change the specifications once they have been agreed to (this will help with scope creep).
4. Document, document, document. Program based off of the documentation. These documents, completed as you go, will bring new team members up to speed on what is happening.
5. Have team members check each other. Have people read other people's documentation.
6. Test, test, test (use the documentation as a basis to develop test plans). Preferably have someone who didn't write or implement the code test it based off of an independently developed test plan.
7. Create backout procedures (make it so that you can get out of trouble as fast as you go into it).
8. Communicate the installation date/time to operational units. Try not to do the whole company at once (pilot it at typical sites or locations). Do not hesitate to back it out if your end users report trouble. Backout first and figure out what went wrong later.
9. After all units are up to date, do one final install to the entire company to make sure that the codebase is consistent.
10. Follow up.
Customer service and communication are critical to the success of any systems change that will affect operations.
Why should you listen to me? I did manufacturing and planning applications maintainence for a Fortune 100 company for 6 and half years and all the plant managers loved me, because I follow this method. I never interrupted a facility's operations, ever -- and neither did anyone whose work I supervised.
Best of luck.
You could always send him to the SALT Center. We have an array of assitive technology, including Kurzweil 3000, Inspiration and others. As for math, that seems to be worked through with tutors and other aspects of the program.
Hope that helps....
You must be new here....
I, for one, welcome our new 6GHz overlords...
"According to the article, this clause is unlikely to appear in the final version -- but stranger things have happened." This is like saying that the scenario depicted in "The Day After Tomorrow" is unlikely to occur -- but stranger things have happened. If you are stupid and hysterical enough to believe that something that would interfere with Intel's and AMD's profits to this extent would make it through Congress, you obviously aren't smart enough to work in technology. Get out and give the rest of us who are a chance. Someone wanted a boost to their karma and submitted a totally idiotic story so their friends could help them out. Society is totally corrupt.
hearing about a supposed shortage of skilled labor in this country. That is such bulls---. Heaven forbid that a business (or the government) would actually have to INVEST in its people to keep them competative. (Or that the educational institutions would have to LOWER their TUITION charges to get more people in.) How hard it is to be a business owner these days with all of these profits and stupid people.
of what they [the executives] are doing? Would executives feel differently if "management talent" were outsourced or offshored by shareholders? Do executives believe (as the CEO of Nike does) that US workers no longer want to program? And do they really (honestly) believe that there is a derth of talent in the US?
How far in the future do executives think? What is the current definition of "long-range"?
...boot from it? This would be an interesting option to explore... You could have a completely mobile, moduluar computer...You want to change hard drives, or have a faster CPU, no sweat -- connect to a different component.
(such as word processing and virtual meeting and collaborative tools that won't require groups to meet in the same place to work on group presentations/papers, for example)...There is the use of that technology for flushing out the "quiet ones" who normally wouldn't have the force of personality to cut across the background noise to support their assertions. Should make the class more lively.
Students could challenge each other's assertions with alternate, internet, sources. Isn't the OED online?
Of course, it raises the bar on your ability to impart knowledge in an insightful and engaging way, since you will, in effect, be competing with the computers.
You could have a website for your tests. No (hardcopy) papers. This would probably be most helpful for final exam, since you could make it live at the beginning of finals and then pull it down at midnight on the last day finals.
Who am I? Why should you listen?
I was an English major (B.A.) who now codes for a living (double minor in Computer Info Systems and TESL - and for the Lingustically Challenged, that's Teaching English as a Second Language).
Good luck. It's the wave of the future.