Thank you for finally explaining why Powerpoint might have a place in schools. I worked with Powerpoint while working as a management consultant and was originally thinking that teaching kids to think with powerpoint would be like teachings to write by looking by using IM.
I hope you weren't thinking you'd only have to read one book...
Learning the.NET API is key. For that, I would recommend:
* read CLR via C#, Second Edition, by Richter
I taught myself C# and my first year of code was rather hideous until I started spending time on Design Patterns. The following books are good:
* Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (Hardcover) by Martin Fowler
* Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design A Brain Friendly Guide to OOA&D By Brett McLaughlin, Gary Pollice, David West
* Design Patterns C# (Hardcover) by Steven John Metsker (Author)
For web, I would recommend the following ASP.NET books:
* Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics by Dino Esposito (Paperback - Mar 15, 2006)
* Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Core Reference by Dino Esposito (Paperback - Nov 30, 2005)
You definitely need to do code so I would start some sort of project for someone, like a non-profit, in.NET. Unless you have a preference I would start with web as there are more jobs there. I think.
.NET 3.0 is here and there are new ways you can structure your programs, particularly for a winform application. I would really learn that as well and try to do something interesting there.
Also, C# isn't the only language thats hiring. You might want to consider Java or other alternatives to the windows world. Windows keeps me employed, but if I was to start my own company, the startup costs are too high for a windows environment.
I don't know of any general product evaluation sites so I don't think you'll find a standard research approach. In gathing and organizing information from a multitude of diverse sources, I would do the following:
* get a spreadsheet...
* define what you want. This should become a long list of function points.
* evaluate the importance by weighting the important of each function point (eg. 1 to 10)
* get your stakeholders to review and approve your list if they haven't already when providing the importance score
* start looking at potential solutions. For each function point, input a percent of coverage provided by that solution. Footnote your source for future reference.
* group related function points for clarity so you can evaluate a products weaknesses at a higher level
* Scores will be higher for packages providing better function point coverage
* start communicating your findings via charts, graphs, etc.
For extra credit, you can correlate your function points with gross margin (i.e., to what extent and to what level of impact a given function point will have on gross margin). Get with the accounting or operations folks.
That's my approach. It's not cool, but I haven't found anything better.
Re:anyone know of a good "schema cookbook"
on
SQL Hacks
·
· Score: 1
Jim Arlow's Enterprise Patterns and MDA may also have what you want, but in UML.
The archetypes are abstract organization and business models. Instead of customers and vendors, for example, you might have parties and roles.
The models should give you some ideas on what a generalized database should look like.
In my oft-questioned opinion, the downside to coming up with a generalized layout, regardless of the tier, is that your complexity is fixed. Sometimes such an approach feels like driving a 18-wheeler down your driveway to pick up your mail.
I remember an interview "The Wang" he gave in Forbes during the late 80's or early 90's...
He said that when a project ran late, he's fire the 2 most junior people on the team. He thought that the method sent the right sort of message and was effective in getting the project back on track.
With all the negative posts by AC's on Celko, I just had to recommend that folks read the reviews on Amazon before writing off Celko's books.
I like the guys on DbDebunk (the site referred to in several of the anti-Celko links), and I recommend their books as well, but I wouldn't recommend their books or their site as the best place to learn practical SQL. But, check out their site and decide for yourself.
Porsche is nowhere near the most profitable automaker in the world. According to their financial report, Nissan made upwards of $3.6 billion in 6 months last year with a profit margin of over 10%. In the same time frame, Porsche made a mere $336 million on $4 billion in sales.
That's operating profit, not total profit. Although you stated that Nissan had 3.6 billion over 41.billion (8.7%) versus Porche's.336 over 4 (8.4%), Nissan's number is operating profit (which may not include overhead) versus the Porche's number, which is net pre-tax profit. But, enough of that.
If you have any sort of interest in unique local versus standardized global products the documentary film Monovino will be of interest.
The documentary film interviews both small and large wine vinters regarding the art and/or business of making wine. As a geek, the interviews with the individuals and families of independent producers who took personal pride in their product were of interest. (As a side note, the extras on the USA DVDs were great.)
The film actually made me curious enough to want to discuss the wine biz (looking for a slashdot for wine), but the only decent wine geek discussions I found were on the wine spectator's web site. Which is ironic since the wine spectator is a key player in the globalization of wine by providing a standard rating scale.
My question, what will happen to the Robert Parker's and the Wine Spectators and every other player in the global wine industry once a 100 point wine can be bought at WalMart for $2. On npr.org, there is an article covering a recent tasting where a wine, nicknamed 2 Buck Chuck, won the top prize. From the article:
When it comes to wine, some consumers still equate quality with price. But at the 28th Annual International Eastern Wine Competition, a $1.99 bottle of California Wine, the 2002 Charles Shaw Shiraz, beat out 2,300 wines to win a prestigious double gold medal. Hear NPR's Steve Inkseep.
Re:Waste of money unless your taxes are simple
on
Best Tax Programs?
·
· Score: 1
Go to a real tax guy, not one of those H&R block things. They will hire anyone, give them a couple days of training and send them out to do your taxes.
As a CPA, I did a season with H&R in Minneapolis my first year out of college - the hours were flexible and I learned plenty during the tax training. There were also typically at least 2 reps in a given office that have been doing taxes for +5, maybe even +10, years.
If you are filing a middle class return like many of the other customers, then I think the service is worth considering. For business returns, I would use someone who did mostly business returns, possibly a CPA.
To optimize your service at a H&R-like tax shop, call and ask who does the most returns, has the most experience, and request that they do your tax return. If you have a slightly unusual situation, you may want to ask the candidate about the situation to assess their familiarity with the type of situation. If you just walk in, you will likely get the person with the least experience.
Just responding to your comment on H&R - nothing against your current tax preparer who appears to be doing a good job.
I liked the analysis, but your figures do not appear to adjust for the infant mortatility rate.
The statistic that I keep seeing is that a person who is 40 years old today has a life expectancy only 4 years greater than a person that was born in 1900. So, we appear to have the forces of lifestyle and medicine cancelling each other out.
When I was in business school in the 80's I also remember reading that pension funds were typically 40 to 60 percent overfunded. Unfortunately, many of these overfunded pension funds were restructured by corporate raiders to pay off their junk bonds. And now, we have several large companies with underfunded pension plans.
I haven't thought this through, but after reading your post and following through on the path of another post, I came across the following regarding the
Rete alogorithm.
The rete algorithm appears to relate to creating a tree structure where each node is a rule and each leaf is a function. So, as the process goes from node to node, and the process evaluates rule after rule, the process comes to the final leaf and calls the desired function.
Celko's books deal with the implementation of trees in databases and he's written some
other articles as well.
So, perhaps a person could also handle the rules in the database by a Rete (there's also a Rete 2) algorithm based on nested sets.
I spent the last year working with xslt and storing data files in xml. At one point I did a search on xml databases and was pretty excited when I read about the DBXML product. (Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to learn more about the product, the alternatives, or the actual preformance.)
Although you have a point on full disclosure, her/her company's background is as much a reason to listen as to remain skeptical. They are the one's that have decided to spend time (and I assume money) on the effort.
Just to reinforce recommendations others have made...
It's been years, but for me, simultaneously struggling through Date's Intro to Databases to understand the theory and
Celko's SQL For Smarties to understand SQL did the trick.
I did not not like Hernandez's (sp?) book database design for mere mortals. Although I appreciate the author's consulting approach, I prefer to develop my understandings on the more theoretical works - such as Date's work. I also like Date's aggressively opinionated style - check out his website database.
Does anyone know of a case where any company that said "We're giving out free computers" and actually did it? I sure do'nt! It's just one of those buisness ploys that morons always indulge in.
I think so -only they're called cell phones - but that's the difference. Perhaps, the average person's computer hardware is changing to become more special purpose which will encourage the issuing of free digital devices in those areas that provide a positive revenue model.
Also, the sometimes successful idea of giving away stuff for free is at least as old as giving away the razor and selling the blades.
I survived through 3 rounds of layoffs as guys who worked a bunch of hours and were more senior got laid off... it's not how much but HOW you work..
I wasted several years doing reengineering in the 90's and I think that where you work in the organization is more important than how you work or how long you work. If you have the wrong parent in the org or activity chart, you are probably gone regardless of your work style or perceived productivity.
Managers and others with influence occasionally intervened to save certain people. But often, they did little. As an eager-to-do-well outsider trying to get the highest reductions I could, I was often suprised to find out how quick and casually certain individuals would sell out others. (I sometimes found myself thinking, "Hey, isn't he/she a friend of yours...").
Cars are a bad metaphore. Mostly made by large comglomerates.
I think you may have over simplified the industry. Toyota does make cars. But Toyota buys parts from suppliers are and are more of an assembly then a manufacturing operation. I think the big car companies may be more "Dell" like and less "Intel" like then you imply. Maybe not too much alike, but directionally, they're pointed in the same way - shorter product cycles, lower inventory, product differentiation for yield management, etc. etc.
I also don't think it's all that far fetched to say that as manufacturing batch sizes shrink, information improves, and outsourcing increases, that the opportunities for a new car company the serves a niche that the larger companies consider a joke increases, not decreases, over time.
Interesting to me, the whole series of posts that have followed the parent post hopefully exhibit the sort of complacent arrogance that precedes the unforeseen industry upset.
I would have to go with the other poster on this one and say that he is probably not some technically impoverished harvard mba coming to slashdot for a business plan.
And if he is, I don't think you'll have to worry about him getting insanely rich anytime soon.
I reckon economics is, like theology, euclidean geometry and the propositional calculus, a formal system, which doesn't really apply to the real world. It certainly isn't a science.
By your implied definition, picking up chicks isn't a science either. However, such plebian courtship behavior does have major implications in the real world (or so I'm told by people that claim to know).
Also, most corporate strategy is based on short-circuiting the requirements for free markets - and the grocery list of requirements can be learned in a decent intro to econ course. Check out Michael Porter's book on Corporate Strategy if you haven't already and want to know more.
You may be right on the "publicated" word. I thought that I had both seen and heard the word, but I can't find it in any sort of legitimate dictionary.
Perhaps you can exploit those court cases in which a company loses a patent. I would assume that the formly protected patent and technology would be publicated by that time.
Further, the patent-losing company would also have gambled that their patent would hold and would therefore have developed a large cost structure that a small but good coder could profitably compete against.
With a little homework you might be even able to figure out who their current customers are. Or, just get a free demo from Monster.com, find a fired sales guy (no patent, no job) using the company name as a keyword search, and hire him on commission to bring in customers.
I don't know if that would work, should work, or would be positive experience to try. But that's just what I was thinking when I read the post.
Looking into how one follows patent cases, I think I'll put that on my list of things to do someday.
Who modded my comment interesting? I trying being sarcastic, not interesting or insightful - which I typically fail at anyway.
In the future, I think I'll try to avoid sarcasm on slashdot.
Supposedly, on a tour of the Texas capital one of the guide's informed her elementary school aged group that "Mexico used to be a part of Texas". I always thought that was sorta funny and was sorta the original source of my sorta funny attempt at humor that I sorta tried to make.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for finally explaining why Powerpoint might have a place in schools. I worked with Powerpoint while working as a management consultant and was originally thinking that teaching kids to think with powerpoint would be like teachings to write by looking by using IM.
I hope you weren't thinking you'd only have to read one book...
.NET API is key. For that, I would recommend:
.NET. Unless you have a preference I would start with web as there are more jobs there. I think.
.NET 3.0 is here and there are new ways you can structure your programs, particularly for a winform application. I would really learn that as well and try to do something interesting there.
Learning the
* read CLR via C#, Second Edition, by Richter
I taught myself C# and my first year of code was rather hideous until I started spending time on Design Patterns. The following books are good:
* Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (Hardcover) by Martin Fowler
* Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design A Brain Friendly Guide to OOA&D By Brett McLaughlin, Gary Pollice, David West
* Design Patterns C# (Hardcover) by Steven John Metsker (Author)
For web, I would recommend the following ASP.NET books:
* Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics by Dino Esposito (Paperback - Mar 15, 2006)
* Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Core Reference by Dino Esposito (Paperback - Nov 30, 2005)
You definitely need to do code so I would start some sort of project for someone, like a non-profit, in
Also, C# isn't the only language thats hiring. You might want to consider Java or other alternatives to the windows world. Windows keeps me employed, but if I was to start my own company, the startup costs are too high for a windows environment.
I don't know of any general product evaluation sites so I don't think you'll find a standard research approach. In gathing and organizing information from a multitude of diverse sources, I would do the following:
* get a spreadsheet...
* define what you want. This should become a long list of function points.
* evaluate the importance by weighting the important of each function point (eg. 1 to 10)
* get your stakeholders to review and approve your list if they haven't already when providing the importance score
* start looking at potential solutions. For each function point, input a percent of coverage provided by that solution. Footnote your source for future reference.
* group related function points for clarity so you can evaluate a products weaknesses at a higher level
* Scores will be higher for packages providing better function point coverage * start communicating your findings via charts, graphs, etc.
For extra credit, you can correlate your function points with gross margin (i.e., to what extent and to what level of impact a given function point will have on gross margin). Get with the accounting or operations folks.
That's my approach. It's not cool, but I haven't found anything better.
Jim Arlow's Enterprise Patterns and MDA may also have what you want, but in UML.
The archetypes are abstract organization and business models. Instead of customers and vendors, for example, you might have parties and roles.
The models should give you some ideas on what a generalized database should look like.
In my oft-questioned opinion, the downside to coming up with a generalized layout, regardless of the tier, is that your complexity is fixed. Sometimes such an approach feels like driving a 18-wheeler down your driveway to pick up your mail.
He didn't specify and Forbes didn't ask.
My guess is that he didn't try to understand the cause, he was just trying to "send a message".
I wonder what the managers did think when they realized they got they got the most innocent workers fired.
I remember an interview "The Wang" he gave in Forbes during the late 80's or early 90's...
He said that when a project ran late, he's fire the 2 most junior people on the team. He thought that the method sent the right sort of message and was effective in getting the project back on track.
With all the negative posts by AC's on Celko, I just had to recommend that folks read the reviews on Amazon before writing off Celko's books.
I like the guys on DbDebunk (the site referred to in several of the anti-Celko links), and I recommend their books as well, but I wouldn't recommend their books or their site as the best place to learn practical SQL. But, check out their site and decide for yourself.
Throw a party with an IMAX version of the Matrix. Offer free beer and food in exchange for a resume. Advertise on Slashdot and Dr Dobbs.
That should do it.
Porsche is nowhere near the most profitable automaker in the world. According to their financial report, Nissan made upwards of $3.6 billion in 6 months last year with a profit margin of over 10%. In the same time frame, Porsche made a mere $336 million on $4 billion in sales.
.336 over 4 (8.4%), Nissan's number is operating profit (which may not include overhead) versus the Porche's number, which is net pre-tax profit. But, enough of that.
That's operating profit, not total profit. Although you stated that Nissan had 3.6 billion over 41.billion (8.7%) versus Porche's
Thanks for the useful links. I have not been to those sites and I'll check them out.
In case it hasn't already been mentioned...
If you have any sort of interest in unique local versus standardized global products the documentary film Monovino will be of interest.
The documentary film interviews both small and large wine vinters regarding the art and/or business of making wine. As a geek, the interviews with the individuals and families of independent producers who took personal pride in their product were of interest. (As a side note, the extras on the USA DVDs were great.)
The film actually made me curious enough to want to discuss the wine biz (looking for a slashdot for wine), but the only decent wine geek discussions I found were on the wine spectator's web site. Which is ironic since the wine spectator is a key player in the globalization of wine by providing a standard rating scale.
My question, what will happen to the Robert Parker's and the Wine Spectators and every other player in the global wine industry once a 100 point wine can be bought at WalMart for $2. On npr.org, there is an article covering a recent tasting where a wine, nicknamed 2 Buck Chuck, won the top prize. From the article:
When it comes to wine, some consumers still equate quality with price. But at the 28th Annual International Eastern Wine Competition, a $1.99 bottle of California Wine, the 2002 Charles Shaw Shiraz, beat out 2,300 wines to win a prestigious double gold medal. Hear NPR's Steve Inkseep.
Go to a real tax guy, not one of those H&R block things. They will hire anyone, give them a couple days of training and send them out to do your taxes.
As a CPA, I did a season with H&R in Minneapolis my first year out of college - the hours were flexible and I learned plenty during the tax training. There were also typically at least 2 reps in a given office that have been doing taxes for +5, maybe even +10, years.
If you are filing a middle class return like many of the other customers, then I think the service is worth considering. For business returns, I would use someone who did mostly business returns, possibly a CPA.
To optimize your service at a H&R-like tax shop, call and ask who does the most returns, has the most experience, and request that they do your tax return. If you have a slightly unusual situation, you may want to ask the candidate about the situation to assess their familiarity with the type of situation. If you just walk in, you will likely get the person with the least experience.
Just responding to your comment on H&R - nothing against your current tax preparer who appears to be doing a good job.
I liked the analysis, but your figures do not appear to adjust for the infant mortatility rate.
The statistic that I keep seeing is that a person who is 40 years old today has a life expectancy only 4 years greater than a person that was born in 1900. So, we appear to have the forces of lifestyle and medicine cancelling each other out.
When I was in business school in the 80's I also remember reading that pension funds were typically 40 to 60 percent overfunded. Unfortunately, many of these overfunded pension funds were restructured by corporate raiders to pay off their junk bonds. And now, we have several large companies with underfunded pension plans.
I haven't thought this through, but after reading your post and following through on the path of another post, I came across the following regarding the Rete alogorithm.
The rete algorithm appears to relate to creating a tree structure where each node is a rule and each leaf is a function. So, as the process goes from node to node, and the process evaluates rule after rule, the process comes to the final leaf and calls the desired function.
Celko's books deal with the implementation of trees in databases and he's written some other articles as well.
So, perhaps a person could also handle the rules in the database by a Rete (there's also a Rete 2) algorithm based on nested sets.
I spent the last year working with xslt and storing data files in xml. At one point I did a search on xml databases and was pretty excited when I read about the DBXML product. (Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to learn more about the product, the alternatives, or the actual preformance.)
Although you have a point on full disclosure, her/her company's background is as much a reason to listen as to remain skeptical. They are the one's that have decided to spend time (and I assume money) on the effort.
Just to reinforce recommendations others have made...
It's been years, but for me, simultaneously struggling through Date's Intro to Databases to understand the theory and Celko's SQL For Smarties to understand SQL did the trick.
I did not not like Hernandez's (sp?) book database design for mere mortals. Although I appreciate the author's consulting approach, I prefer to develop my understandings on the more theoretical works - such as Date's work. I also like Date's aggressively opinionated style - check out his website database.
Does anyone know of a case where any company that said "We're giving out free computers" and actually did it? I sure do'nt! It's just one of those buisness ploys that morons always indulge in.
I think so -only they're called cell phones - but that's the difference. Perhaps, the average person's computer hardware is changing to become more special purpose which will encourage the issuing of free digital devices in those areas that provide a positive revenue model.
Also, the sometimes successful idea of giving away stuff for free is at least as old as giving away the razor and selling the blades.
I survived through 3 rounds of layoffs as guys who worked a bunch of hours and were more senior got laid off... it's not how much but HOW you work..
I wasted several years doing reengineering in the 90's and I think that where you work in the organization is more important than how you work or how long you work. If you have the wrong parent in the org or activity chart, you are probably gone regardless of your work style or perceived productivity.
Managers and others with influence occasionally intervened to save certain people. But often, they did little. As an eager-to-do-well outsider trying to get the highest reductions I could, I was often suprised to find out how quick and casually certain individuals would sell out others. (I sometimes found myself thinking, "Hey, isn't he/she a friend of yours...").
Cars are a bad metaphore. Mostly made by large comglomerates.
I think you may have over simplified the industry. Toyota does make cars. But Toyota buys parts from suppliers are and are more of an assembly then a manufacturing operation. I think the big car companies may be more "Dell" like and less "Intel" like then you imply. Maybe not too much alike, but directionally, they're pointed in the same way - shorter product cycles, lower inventory, product differentiation for yield management, etc. etc.
I also don't think it's all that far fetched to say that as manufacturing batch sizes shrink, information improves, and outsourcing increases, that the opportunities for a new car company the serves a niche that the larger companies consider a joke increases, not decreases, over time.
Interesting to me, the whole series of posts that have followed the parent post hopefully exhibit the sort of complacent arrogance that precedes the unforeseen industry upset.
I would have to go with the other poster on this one and say that he is probably not some technically impoverished harvard mba coming to slashdot for a business plan.
And if he is, I don't think you'll have to worry about him getting insanely rich anytime soon.
I bet they soon do a better job at forecasting things than Gartner, making all tech-industry-analyst jobs go away as well.
At that point, Gartner will start charging their huge fees to interpret these fine reports for the rest of mere humans - and also CEOs.
I reckon economics is, like theology, euclidean geometry and the propositional calculus, a formal system, which doesn't really apply to the real world. It certainly isn't a science.
By your implied definition, picking up chicks isn't a science either. However, such plebian courtship behavior does have major implications in the real world (or so I'm told by people that claim to know).
Also, most corporate strategy is based on short-circuiting the requirements for free markets - and the grocery list of requirements can be learned in a decent intro to econ course. Check out Michael Porter's book on Corporate Strategy if you haven't already and want to know more.
You may be right on the "publicated" word. I thought that I had both seen and heard the word, but I can't find it in any sort of legitimate dictionary.
Perhaps you can exploit those court cases in which a company loses a patent. I would assume that the formly protected patent and technology would be publicated by that time.
Further, the patent-losing company would also have gambled that their patent would hold and would therefore have developed a large cost structure that a small but good coder could profitably compete against.
With a little homework you might be even able to figure out who their current customers are. Or, just get a free demo from Monster.com, find a fired sales guy (no patent, no job) using the company name as a keyword search, and hire him on commission to bring in customers.
I don't know if that would work, should work, or would be positive experience to try. But that's just what I was thinking when I read the post.
Looking into how one follows patent cases, I think I'll put that on my list of things to do someday.
Who modded my comment interesting? I trying being sarcastic, not interesting or insightful - which I typically fail at anyway.
In the future, I think I'll try to avoid sarcasm on slashdot.
Supposedly, on a tour of the Texas capital one of the guide's informed her elementary school aged group that "Mexico used to be a part of Texas". I always thought that was sorta funny and was sorta the original source of my sorta funny attempt at humor that I sorta tried to make.