My office does duct-tape programming (well, Agile / "Extreme Programming") in Perl. When you do something new, the objective is basically "do the simplest thing possible... that doesn't completely suck".
The result could turn into a mess quickly, but the key is managing your transition to the awesomely-architected 99% solution. You need a boatload of automated tests so that it's actually relatively safe to go back and refactor things without breaking everything.
My understanding is that while USB2 is theoretically faster, when it's going that fast it's also usually more of a strain on your system's CPU. As such people doing very CPU-and-IO-intensive operations (mixing twenty-some-odd channels of digital audio with some effects, for instance) may be better served with FireWire audio capture devices.
I don't do anything intense enough to saturate my system like that, so personally, I don't care, but there you go.
I had an ultra-low-speed bike accident the other week. My ankle was really sore for a while. I couldn't walk on it for a couple days. I wonder if a device like this would have helped. (Though I'm obviously not interested in spending a few grand if I was only going to use it for a week).
I can't speak for the rest of News Corp property, but: love it or hate it, The Wall Street Journal is one of those newspapers which still does that meaningful investigation and reporting. And they charge for (full) online access. And people pay for it.
I was disappointed this judge wasn't saying a few things in some of the Mosanto lawsuits (you know, plant a field of genetically modified corn of some sort, sue the farmer next door for patent infringement when his stuff gets pollinated from it, win...)
It's also an accounting and bureaucratic nightmare, and really hurts software development places (like Microsoft, hmm) where they add all the value at once. How do you account for what part of the value comes from the software before it's actually licensed out (under a variety of individual licenses, site licenses and subscriptions, OEMs and bundle deals, and various pieces of software which may be produced in a variety of places)? How much of the value-add is the coding in Redmond and how much is the QA in India? How much of it is business-synergy mumbo jumbo?
Tax games, tax games, tax games. Also not very conducive to the manufacturing sector, especially if none of the other states have them.
No, no, sir! You owe it to pay as much in taxes as possible because otherwise it's just a race to the bottom! In fact, you're doing the world a disservice if you're living somewhere with lower taxes than California or New York or Washington and you ought to be ashamed and move to these states as soon as possible. And the same thing goes for outsourcing! and wages! fair pay! a hundred thousand dollars a year for all your entry-level assembly line employees, at least!
(Okay, so I exaggerate the position. What's that? The world is more complicated than that? Well whaddaya know! Yes it is!:P)
I'm a trivial shareholder (it's in one of my ETFs or mutual funds somewhere, I guarantee you, but I have no idea how much).
Neither am I exposed to Washington State taxes, and whatever fiscal irresponsibility bore them unto the current crisis.
Neither do I see "arbitrary financial activity of the Washington State government" as being sufficiently morally superior to "arbitrary financial activity at Microsoft" to justify taking money from Microsoft as "fair". It's expedient, certainly. And there are certainly more important things in the world than perfect fairness. But I just don't see the logic which says they owe it to Washington State to pay as much of their income in tax as they can. Where's the justification for this, besides "we can, and we don't like them anyway"?
Seriously, people. I hate Microsoft as much as the next developer. But you know how it goes: "First they came for Microsoft, but I did not speak out, because Microsoft is 3vil."
I'm dubious about the concept that Washington state deserves a slice of a cool billion dollars or so from the-rest-of-the-world just because they have developers in the state. If Ford were to put a factory in Redmond where they make cars, does Washington have some moral right to collect taxes on all the cars sold by Ford anywhere? (Or even just all the cars sold by Ford from that factory?) How about a factory and the corporate HQ building? How about corporate HQ, a factory, and a random dealership? What's so special about any of those workplaces that they should expose the company's entire product line to a certain tax regime? What makes that "fair"? The whims of the legislature of the state of Washington and whatever situational ethics they may or may not have today?
It's true. They're unlikely to move overnight. There have been studies, you know. However, at some point or another various companies, including Microsoft, will think twice before exposing their revenue to the Washington State tax regime. It could inhibit the local economy in hard-to-measure ways.
On the other hand, if they *did* want to be crazy and move all their developers to Texas (canonical big state with cheap living and reasonable exposure to the software industry), this would be the perfect time to do it. What, do you think all the developers developers developers are going to magically find a job somewhere else in Washington State in this market? You'd have them over a barrel. And for a significant fraction of the state of Washington's taxes, it be worth whatever brain-drain there is.
Good managers on the right kinds of projects approve of cleaning up code. They won't make it the number one priority, but if it makes the product easier to extend with new features, easier to maintain, and less likely to develop subtle and icky bugs which will be hard to track down and fix, they'll be fine with it (assuming it's not that hard to regression-test).
(Of course, my company's product is almost freakishly complex, that it even necessitates this sort of management, but that's why our customers pay us the big big bucks. Also, we have a sweet test suite which uses about as much effort as the product itself...)
You keep the saltwater on one side of a heat exchanger; it minimizes the vulnerable piping, and helps a lot. Heck, you could build the big seawater pipes out of concrete.
The problem with Parmesan and Champagne is there's not a good generic term for foodstuffs of that type not from that origin, whereas if you could get decent maple syrup outside of Vermont you could call it "maple syrup" and people would actually understand what it is.
I'm all for reasonable PDO's where there's a meaningful common generic name for the product; it's basic truth-in-advertising.
Also, if you want to do writing which is fast, good-looking, and legible, italics can beat down cursive any day of the week. And if you want to go the extra mile with it to make it look pretty, it turns readily into calligraphy.
FYI, E*Trade offers online banking and will let you use an RSA dongle for authentication. They'll charge you for it, mind you, unless you have a boatload of money parked with them, but it's available.
The "tubes" are unfortunately only "tubular" through four-dimensional spacetime. In three-dimensional space, they're just a spot (a LaGrange point) that moves around as the various bodies orbit. If you are trying to move faster than that, then you're essentially leaving the tube and entirely to navigate spacetime on your own power.
Whatever the ultimate solution to America's woes is, you are subscribing to an excessively commodity-oriented/mercantalist notion of wealth. People have found that there is more to life, and more to a comfortable and enjoyable lifestyle, than mere Stuff. Sooner or later you need to get out and enjoy things, or what's the point of all the wealth you've been accumulating? And that means "services". Granted, the specifics of Americans' prudence is debatable, certainly, but the premise that these services are worthless and a drain on the economy is false. Heck, health care is a service (and a major one, and one that we spend a lot of money on, as we've all been made painfully aware of lately) and I think it's fair to say that if you don't have your health, you haven't got much of anything.
Also consider that if we didn't have burger-flippers out there at McDonald's, we'd have to flip our own burgers at home - and that doesn't actually reduce the size of the "service economy", it just moves it somewhere it's harder to measure.
As long as the rest of the world is willing to give us manufactured goods in exchange for a share of our not-so-manufactured economy, I don't see any problems intrinsic to America doing its manufacturing overseas. When the rest of the world decides that America isn't making enough Stuff to interet them anymore, the value of the dollar will fall (heck, it's falling now) and American products will become more competitive again, and then we can spend a bunch of money building factories and such. Until then, though, we have plenty of other things to spend money on as a nation.
With a motor vehicle, sure, your point about roads and trepidity is fair. Under your own power, however, I'd say biking a few good mountain chains, even on a road, is decently intrepid.
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The result could turn into a mess quickly, but the key is managing your transition to the awesomely-architected 99% solution. You need a boatload of automated tests so that it's actually relatively safe to go back and refactor things without breaking everything.
That works. Fusion power is only 30 years away, after all, and I'm sure meaningful Mars missions will have to wait longer than that.
My understanding is that while USB2 is theoretically faster, when it's going that fast it's also usually more of a strain on your system's CPU. As such people doing very CPU-and-IO-intensive operations (mixing twenty-some-odd channels of digital audio with some effects, for instance) may be better served with FireWire audio capture devices.
I don't do anything intense enough to saturate my system like that, so personally, I don't care, but there you go.
I had an ultra-low-speed bike accident the other week. My ankle was really sore for a while. I couldn't walk on it for a couple days. I wonder if a device like this would have helped. (Though I'm obviously not interested in spending a few grand if I was only going to use it for a week).
Other websites won't have it so bad! They'll just have 99% spam.
I can't speak for the rest of News Corp property, but: love it or hate it, The Wall Street Journal is one of those newspapers which still does that meaningful investigation and reporting. And they charge for (full) online access. And people pay for it.
I was disappointed this judge wasn't saying a few things in some of the Mosanto lawsuits (you know, plant a field of genetically modified corn of some sort, sue the farmer next door for patent infringement when his stuff gets pollinated from it, win...)
Tax games, tax games, tax games. Also not very conducive to the manufacturing sector, especially if none of the other states have them.
(Okay, so I exaggerate the position. What's that? The world is more complicated than that? Well whaddaya know! Yes it is! :P)
Seriously, people. I hate Microsoft as much as the next developer. But you know how it goes: "First they came for Microsoft, but I did not speak out, because Microsoft is 3vil."
I'm dubious about the concept that Washington state deserves a slice of a cool billion dollars or so from the-rest-of-the-world just because they have developers in the state. If Ford were to put a factory in Redmond where they make cars, does Washington have some moral right to collect taxes on all the cars sold by Ford anywhere? (Or even just all the cars sold by Ford from that factory?) How about a factory and the corporate HQ building? How about corporate HQ, a factory, and a random dealership? What's so special about any of those workplaces that they should expose the company's entire product line to a certain tax regime? What makes that "fair"? The whims of the legislature of the state of Washington and whatever situational ethics they may or may not have today?
On the other hand, if they *did* want to be crazy and move all their developers to Texas (canonical big state with cheap living and reasonable exposure to the software industry), this would be the perfect time to do it. What, do you think all the developers developers developers are going to magically find a job somewhere else in Washington State in this market? You'd have them over a barrel. And for a significant fraction of the state of Washington's taxes, it be worth whatever brain-drain there is.
No. Just you. You're special. (You can even ride the short bus if you'd like.)
(Of course, my company's product is almost freakishly complex, that it even necessitates this sort of management, but that's why our customers pay us the big big bucks. Also, we have a sweet test suite which uses about as much effort as the product itself...)
btw my job is awesome.
You keep the saltwater on one side of a heat exchanger; it minimizes the vulnerable piping, and helps a lot. Heck, you could build the big seawater pipes out of concrete.
I'm all for reasonable PDO's where there's a meaningful common generic name for the product; it's basic truth-in-advertising.
Also, if you want to do writing which is fast, good-looking, and legible, italics can beat down cursive any day of the week. And if you want to go the extra mile with it to make it look pretty, it turns readily into calligraphy.
FYI, E*Trade offers online banking and will let you use an RSA dongle for authentication. They'll charge you for it, mind you, unless you have a boatload of money parked with them, but it's available.
Don't worry! You see, by using IPv6 you can guarantee that no normal host on the Internet is ever going to be capable of reaching it! :)
Here's my question: what happens when you find one under your car? Do you have to leave it there? For how long -- forever?
The "tubes" are unfortunately only "tubular" through four-dimensional spacetime. In three-dimensional space, they're just a spot (a LaGrange point) that moves around as the various bodies orbit. If you are trying to move faster than that, then you're essentially leaving the tube and entirely to navigate spacetime on your own power.
Also consider that if we didn't have burger-flippers out there at McDonald's, we'd have to flip our own burgers at home - and that doesn't actually reduce the size of the "service economy", it just moves it somewhere it's harder to measure.
As long as the rest of the world is willing to give us manufactured goods in exchange for a share of our not-so-manufactured economy, I don't see any problems intrinsic to America doing its manufacturing overseas. When the rest of the world decides that America isn't making enough Stuff to interet them anymore, the value of the dollar will fall (heck, it's falling now) and American products will become more competitive again, and then we can spend a bunch of money building factories and such. Until then, though, we have plenty of other things to spend money on as a nation.
You think the stuff we get from China's overpriced? You should see the cost of stuff made in America.
With a motor vehicle, sure, your point about roads and trepidity is fair. Under your own power, however, I'd say biking a few good mountain chains, even on a road, is decently intrepid.
It also contributes to the perception of "we are not nickel-and-diming you to death."