Seriously, after Tyco, WorldCom and Enron, a CFO that is asked to support
accounting that might be considered questionable bears some serious risks
(as they should). The compensation just does not justify the risk of jail
time. At least not for your typical CFO.
Card is notorious (or at least should be) for his anti-gay rants and
his support for a view of morality that closely mirrors that of the
Christian Right. You can see echos of his strange world view in his
books.
Since/. tends more toward libertarianism if it tends toward
anything, why contantly suck up to card? What's next, notices
about the latest novels by Newt Gingrich?
Any way, you can read who ever you want. But for me it's hard to
forget who Card is and what kind of politics he promotes.
I was very surprised to see SCO shares selling for slightly more than $4 US.
As others have noted, SCO is doomed. The Linux community hates them, it
is difficult to imagine that they will gain any new customers and they have
no intellectual property that is worth much.
What is odd is that SCO stock is very thinly traded. Under 2K shares changed
hands today. With such thin trading, it is tempting to speculate that
most of the stock is help by lawyers and SCO executives. They should trade
a few shares among themselves to keep the stock price up, keeping what is,
in effect, a shell company, looking like it was real.
Otherwise we must assume that that the Efficient Market Hypothesis has
ever more holes in it that previously believed. How, after all, could
"the market" value SCO at much more than zero.
Look within, Grasshopper. Only you can answer this question.
There can be some advantages of being a big fish in a small pond.
I'm assuming that you're talking about moving to California. As
someone who managed to escape to Santa Fe, New Mexico for two
years before I was forced back, I'd say that California has
its share of problems. Traffic and sky-high cost of living
being only two.
I like my current job. The only way I'd take a different
job is if I was, for lack of a better term, in love with
the new opportunity. So I think that the question you
have to ask yourself is whether you're in love with the
new job or just the prestige of the company name.
People may find it cathartic to discuss some of their deepest feelings
on their blog. But sometimes they seem to forget that the medium they
are using to express these feelings is the Internet. Blogs may feel
like on-line journals, but they are journals millions of people can read.
Indeed most blogs are ignored, but you never know what will catch on.
Bloggers perhaps comfort themselves with the idea that this is an
anonymous medium. But in general the anonymity is illusionary
unless you have a hackers skill at hiding your tracks. And even then
you have to be careful about posting recognizable detail. The criticism
of your spouse or your boss may come back to haunt you. It has with
many people.
When ever you post material on the Internet in an anonymous forum you
should consider if you can live with it being connected back to you.
If you might find this unpleasant, but not horrible, then perhaps it
is worth the risk. But if you're blogging about your adventures with
sex workers, drugs or the stupidity of your boss and management chain, then
you may pay a price if you become known as the author.
This discussion about mainframes is odd. Much
of the discussion seems to assume that mainframes
use a different architecture than, say, a desk
side PC. The assumption seems to be that, as it
was twenty years ago, mainframe architecture
is different from PC architecture.
The fastest processors available are microprocessors.
I'm not very familiar with IBM's "mainframe" line
but I do know a bit about their PowerPC series.
I would guess that the "mainframes" that IBM
sells are all powerPC processor based. They
probably have several PowerPCs and they use
water cooling to keep them from melting down.
The other part of a "mainframe" processor is a high performance
memory system to allow the PowerPC(s) to run fast.
The rest of the "mainframe" is dedicated to
disk IO. As someone noted, IBM has a long history
of doing fast, intelligent, disk IO channels.
But that's it. That's all a "mainframe" is. The
rest is just IBM centric software. There is
no longer really any such thing as a mainframe.
The only way to can make logic circuts go fast
is to make them small. And that means a
microprocessor.
Should one invest time and money in this book?
on
Ending Spam
·
· Score: 1
Some of the previous posters mentioned the rather eccentric views (in my opinion) of the author
of Ending Spam (Jonathan Zdziarski). You
can sample some of these yourself by reading the
essays Mr. Zdziarski has posted on his web site NuclearElephant.com.
While someone might have, in practice, unlimited
amounts of money, none of us have unlimited
amounts of time. So a book is always an
investement in both time and, for those with
more finite amounts of money, cash. With this
in mind, there is the question of whether one
should read a book by someone who is rather
eccentric in their views. Will this eccentricity
and, in my opinion, limited knowledge outside
of narrow areas, also mean that the book is
equally flawed?
I'm undecided. My concern is that Mr. Zdziarski's
knowledge of Baysian filtering and other
topics has the same kind of holes that
seem to exist when he applies his intellect
to other areas (like evolution of both life
and the solar system). While this is a
concern, it is not a foregone conclusion.
The history of science and, especially,
mathematics, is full of giants in their field
who were also very eccentric.
Mr. Zdziarski seems to have what I would classify
as a narrowly focused intellect and perhaps within these narrow confines the
reader can rely on what he writes. DSPAM,
the SPAM filter written my Mr. Zdziarski,
seems to be a storng competitor to SpamAssassin.
So on this basis, perhaps the book may be
a good investment.
Sorry I don't have any moderator points, or
I'd "mod" you up. You are exactly right. Without
disposable income there is no one to buy all
the stuff that the factories all over the world
are churning out. Currently purchasing power
is supported by credit. Money taken out of
home equity, credit cards and the massive trade
deficit. This will not continue forever (or
even for that much longer).
I finished a essay on this in 2004 titled An
Economics Question, which
includes an extensive set of annotated, largely
web accessible, references.
I would rather pay a few dollars more for something
made in the US that provides US jobs that pay
rock bottom prices and hollow out our economy.
This would still allow competition within the
US (and kill off the buggywhip makers) but
would still provide a healthy local economy.
People forget that the free trade religion in the
US is certainly not shared by countries like
China and Japan.
Re:Another opinion: a mediocre book
on
Codex
·
· Score: 1
I suppose that it is possible that Mr. Grossman
could have submitted the review, but it does
not seem to have his style. It was too much like
a "geek" review. Also, you've got to be pretty
desperate for sales to be scraping the slash-dot
barrel. I would guess that the tastes on
slash-dot run to science fiction,thrillers
and science and technology books.
I actually purchased a copy of Codex
as a result of a good review in the New
York Times or perhaps The San Jose
Mercury News. It turns out that Grossman
is also a book critic (perhaps showing that
those who can't become critics). I speculate
that people went easy on him out of fear that
he would pay them back with a bad review
(which given Grossman's behavior is probably
not off base speculation). So if Grossman
wants more sales he could just crank out
another novel. Certainly the practice can
only improve his work.
Another opinion: a mediocre book
on
Codex
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
When it comes to matters of taste you can't say
that someone is wrong. Someone may think that
gold and red velvet wall paper is the height
of interior design. I think that it is ghastly,
something only Elton John could love. But my
opinion is no more valid that the person who
loves the wall paper.
I thought that the review was far too kind
to Codex.
I thought that Codex was a terrible
book. The characters were wooden and the plot
was predictable and empty. Yes there was some
open source software, but it really did nothing
for the plot. As others have noted, when it comes to mysteries/thrillers involving rare books,
Perez-Reverte's Club
Dumas is much better (the movie made from
Club Dumas, the Ninth Gate directed
by Polanski is also excellent).
It is worth nothing that not only is the author
of Codex a poor writer, he's a weasel too.
He wrote an article in Salon about how he
cooked his score on Amazon for his previous novel
(The Terrors of the Amazon). He appeared to
do this for Codex as well. There were
a number of rave reviews by people who had
never reviewed a book before on Amazon. Sure everyone
writes their first review at sometime. But
here is an admitted forger with a bunch of
suspecious reviews.
My advice is that if you must read Codex,
get it from the library. If you really must
buy it, purchase the book used. But life is
short and there are so many other good books.
I recommend that you read something else.
Diversity of opinion is what makes the world
interesting. So I respect the fact that you
don't like Gibson.
Obviously my take on things is different. In
my opinion Stranger in a Strange Land is
a work that would appeal only to teenagers.
I liked Mote in God's Eye but I don't find
it more than entertaining.
In contrast there are parts of Neuromancer
that fascinate me. The description of Tessier-Ashpool
as a wasp like organism.
Perhaps Neuromancer is a generational thing.
My parents generation love On the Road by Jack Kerouac which I hate.
One cannot reasonably argue that an opinion is
wrong. Opinions, as they say, are like assholes,
everyone has one.
As a William Gibson "fan boy" you could say that
I don't share your view of Neuromancer. In
my opinion Gibson is one of the best writers of
this century.
There is a clear path to a good Google ranking:
publish good content that people want to read.
If you sell widgets, publish material on widgets,
their use, development, etc... If you can't
find a constant stream of interesting material
to publish on your product and services then
perhaps you are in the wrong business.
Think about this: how many of us know about
Fog Creek Software because of Joel Spolsky's "Joel on Software" web page? I don't think that
this was Joel's original intent, but his
writing has been a great marketing tool for
his software business.
Rather than waste
money on web site marketing and trying to game
Google, invest in building content
on your site. If you do this, your links will
grow and your Google ranking will go up. It's
really that simple.
Of course this approach
does not have the attraction of a quick fix.
You actually have to invest in building your
business.
A number of people have commented on how poorly
researched
the Wired article is. I've subscribed
to Wired since the early days. At one
time Wired ran innovative and interesting articles.
For example, Neal Stephenson's excellent article on
undersea telecommunications cables. The magazine
is now a tragic shadow if its former self. My
subscription is expiring this year and I don't
intend to renew it. Wired's journalistic
and editorial standards have become pathetic.
It has become an attempt at a techno-geek version
of the "lad mag" Stuff without the
scantily clad women.
Is there something I don't know about my
domain, bearcave.com? I don't understand the
IRC reference. There was a bearcave.ORG,
which was a site for hairy gay men and
bearcave.NET, a site run by network
savy "Bears". Some of these are discussed
here
(another one of those bearcave links).
Anyway, would you care to let me know if
I've missed something? You can reach
me at iank at bearcave.com. Thanks.
I've tried to work on projects where we developed
new software as much as possible. However,
taken all together I think I've probably spent
many months of aggregate time reading other
peoples code, modifying it, adding new features
and fixing bugs. I hate doing this work,
not only because of poorly designed software
but because most software I've worked on is
almost entirely undocumented (e.g., no comments
and no external documentation).
Some posters have mentioned comments and documentation
in this thread. But in my opinion, it has not
been discussed in strong enough terms. For
a long rant on this topic, see my essay
Software and Documentation. I'll summarize
some of the points I try to make in this essay
here.
There were only a few people in this thread
who wrote that they think that software
source code is self documenting. This is a good
sign. In the past this was a widely held view.
Perhaps it is becoming less popular. Perhaps
pigs are becoming airborne.
To those of you who wrote that your code
is self documenting: you
are simply lazy and unprofessional.
Sure I can
understand what well written code does. But
I cannot understand why it does
what it does. I can show you three hundred
lines of wavelet signal processing code. You
can immediately understand what the code is
doing. But you will have no clue what-so-ever
about why it does what it does unless you
understand the thinking behind the code. The same is
true of any complex software.
Another problem is that even though I might
understand what components do and perhaps even
why they are doing what they do, getting an
overall understanding of the architecture of
a large application can be difficult and
time consuming.
By not writing comments in your code and, for
large applications, providing external
documentation on the architecture, you are saving
your time and effort, but forcing others to
spend effort that you could have saved them.
Even if you have no consideration for anyone
else who must maintain the application after
you write it, comments will help you find
bugs in your own code. Again and again I have
found that when I explain my code in a comment
I am forced to look over it again. In doing
this I have found that the code does not do
what I intended or that I left something out.
When it comes to documentation there is rarely
enough. Even if you make an effort to document
your code, when you are in the middle of it
you will not document things that you find
obvious. When you return later, these obvious
issues will have been forgotten and are not
obscure.
Documentation must be maintained along with the
code. And it should be extended where it
is incomplete or unclear. English (or what
ever your language is): it's another kind
of software.
Developers seem to fall into two camps: those
who believe documentation is important and who
do it and those who do not. I've managed
software groups where I mentioned documentation
in people's performace reviews and it still
did not good. So far I have not been able
to get someone who does not document to do it.
I have thought that perhaps one solution would
be to hold code reviews where one of the major
features that was looked at was understandability
in the code. But I have not experimented
enough to know if this will actually get people
to document their software.
Literate programming not only involves writing
well designed and well informed algorithms.
It also includes writing documentation that
explains these algorithms.
There is no magic degree bullet. I went to school
with a lot of pre-meds (my undergrad degree is
in biology). A number of the premeds wanted to
go into medicine because they thought that the
degree would be the magic carpet to a high income
and job security.
As it turned out, things were not so simple. HMOs
put pressure on doctor's fees and medicine is a
field where there is more burnout than people
want to admit. For people who are not good at
relationships with other people (most of the
premeds I knew) seeing people for the same
kind of thing year after year becomes a huge
bore. By the time they hit their forties some
doctors would like to do something else, but it
is too late to easily change professions and
they are used to making a lot of money.
Since there is no degree that I know of that
will guarantee a good income, job security AND
interesting work, you might was well go for a
degree in something that interests you and
might improve your job prospects.
If I were to get another degree I'd get a degree
in quantitative finance. That is, the application
of mathematical techniques to financial modeling
and trading of stocks, bonds, foreign exchange
and so on. Having a solid software background
and the ability to handle the math is a big
asset. Of course for some of us the downside
is that you may have to live in or around
New York city (but this is a feature for other
people).
Well color me clueless. I thought that in the
current job market you could not be an egotistical
software engineer, since there is no shortage
of engineers. This story sounds like something
from the 1990s.
But perhaps it is just that I am a humble mortal of
minimal skills and this is why I have this impression.
Ah, but I was around at the time. I've written
application software in Z80 macroassembler for
NCR.
The group I was working in built a bit-slice,
microcoded implementation of the UCSD Pascal
p-code instruction set. The I/O system was
handled by the Z80 and I worked on some of the
IO drivers.
I also owned a Compaq IBM compatible with an
8086 and 640K of memory. I've used DOS and
it sucked. For serious software development
I worked on a VAX 11/780 (at work) running
BSD 4.2 UNIX (Live Free Or Die). I did not
start developing software on PC's in a serious
fashion until Windows NT came out. DOS was
simply degrading.
As to system protection: the original UNIX
from Bell Labs did not have hardware protection.
Virtual memory did not arrive until BSD 4.1
(it's been a long time, so I may not remember
correctly). UNIX without memory protection
beats the hell out of DOS. And with an 8086
and 640K of memory the hardware was more powerful
than the PDP 11s that UNIX was running on at
Bell Labs.
Gary Kildall eventually died in a bar, but many (including myself) would say that Bill Gates drove Kildall toward suicidal drinking, which lead to him being killed in a bar with other drunks.
[...]
By contrast, Kildall did not even get the fame, i.e. the recognition that he deserved. Ask any Windows/MS-DOS user who Kildall is, and she will scratch her head with ignorance. If I were in Kildall's shoes, I would have been bitter every day of my life and would have probably committed suicide too.
I think that saying that Kildall was driven to
suicide by Bill Gates is a stretch. I know of
Kildall's story, but I really can't bring myself
to shed too many tears. Kildall was still rich
by the standards of most of us. He has successfully
founded Digital Research. There were many
innovative and interesting things that Kildall could
have done, either at Digital Research or on his
own.
You have the right to decide to kill yourself
if you were "robbed" of the massive wealth and
fame of Bill Gates (you make the point that it
is both, not just one that is the fatal poison).
In this case, I feel sorry for both you and Kildall in holding such egotistical world views.
Money may not buy happiness, but it can buy
freedom. The fact that Kildall is not recognized
for a crappy little operating systems like
CP/M and DR-DOS
is really no surprise. Looking back on CP/M,
MS-DOS and DR-DOS all we can really say is
"thank God we can use real operating systems
like UNIX, Linux and even Windows NT/XP". Xenix and the early UNIX
operating systems were far better and ran
on machines not much more powerful than
the Intel 286.
Instead of being famous for writing CP/M and DR-DOS
Kildall could have used
the money he made to do something really creative.
But he did not. The tragedy in the story is
that of wasted possibility, not lack of fame
or an extra 40 billion dollars. The inability
to take advantage of what fortune and hard work
had given Kildall can be laid at Kildall's feet
not Gates'.
I suspect that the real problem is that Kildall
had a drinking problem and was in the wrong
place at the wrong time (he died, as I recall,
in a bar fight).
Only an idiot like Larry Summers would not have
noticed the generation of women in applied mathematic,
biology research and many other areas of science.
But I'm not sure that I would encourage any
young person to go into our field.
Let us look at the current situation, at least
in the United States. There is very little
job security, offshoring has moved something like
400,000 jobs overseas (in a field where employment
is only a few million to start with). There
is age discrimination, regardless of your gender.
And yes, it is not the most welcoming field for
women.
I love computer science. But I hate what has
happened to my field. Can you really recommend
that someone pursue a demanding field of study
where the career prospects are jobs instability,
declining or stagnant pay (I have not had a raise
in over two years) and a career lifetime which
may only be a decade or so?
The parent post rambles around a bit but I take
it that the major point is that the infrastructure
in India is broken and that without infrastructure
support you can't move into the modern world.
There is more to infrastructure than just phones,
highways and clean water, although these may be
the most important part. Infrastructure also
includes a working legal system and something
approaching "the rule of law".
The book
Maximum City by Suketu Mehta makes the
point that India is broken on many levels, not the
least in the legal system where there is no
redress when someone rips you off except to go
to the local Mafia.
And then there is the violence between Hindus and
Muslims. And so on and so on...
I don't see India as being a superpower in the
next century. I see China in this role.
Newfoundlands are wonderful dogs. In fact,
at the risk of courting controversy, I'd say
that Newfi's are the worlds best dog. But...
If you live with a Newfi you have to get used to
drifts of hair piling up. Especially in the
spring during that dreaded time when a Newfi
"blows their coat".
So I imagine one of these little Roomba's doing
its thing over the tile floor when it encounters
a drift of Newfi hair. The Roomba would start
to suck up the hair, fill up, get clogged and
die. Newfi 1, Roomba 0
I have spent most of my career working in industry.
But I would say that right now government research
labs offer the best alternative. I work for
a national lab. Most people have security
clearances. In the department I work in, many have
high level clearances.
These are not jobs that are ever going to be moved
to India or China. There is a fair amount of
freedom. The projects can still be very demanding
and the hours long. You don't get much in the
way of raises and you'll never be rich.
The national labs have their own culture and
coming from industry this can be a bit of a
culture shock. At least in the group I work
in there is much less hierarchy and direction
than industry. In the beginning it was difficult
to even understand what was expected. You also
end up dealing with government agencies, which
can be disfuncational (no surprise).
But the national labs are about as stable as it
gets these days. And work on national security
related areas looks like it will be well funded
in the long term, regardless of who is in office.
The retirement plan is pretty good and will
hopefully remain so (some of our masters in the
government think or retirement is too generous
since it is better than many companies, which
have no retirement at all).
Large corporations, like HP and IBM, have been
firing people for years now. IBM is also infamous
for raiding its pension program.
So with this in mind, I'd be curious about which
US companies you can give as examples of work
places that treat their employes as long term
assets. Off hand, I can't think of any.
As far as I can see, there is a shortage of jobs,
especially jobs that pay well. So currently
a company can indeed treat employees like a FIFO.
These days you can hire experienced people with
almost any skill set. And the view these days
is when you no longer need them, just fire them.
It appears that you have different views and
experience. I'd like to know where these
companies are. Perhaps outside the United
States?
I have not looked up the reference, but I seem
to recall that there is another reason to dislike
Belkin and not purchase their products.
If I recall correctly, Belkin was using Free
Software components in one of their routers. They
refused requests to make the source code for their
router software available. This cause a bit of
an uproar on Slashdot. There were some
complaints lodged with Belkin, if I recall
(I wrote them). I don't know if they reformed
or not.
As a result, for low end home routers (which is
the only thing that I buy directly) I have not
considered Belkin, but purchase Linksys routers.
Slashdot Mirror
What's with the CFO shuffle at Oracle?
Oh, nothing more than fear of doing jail time.
Seriously, after Tyco, WorldCom and Enron, a CFO that is asked to support accounting that might be considered questionable bears some serious risks (as they should). The compensation just does not justify the risk of jail time. At least not for your typical CFO.
Card is notorious (or at least should be) for his anti-gay rants and his support for a view of morality that closely mirrors that of the Christian Right. You can see echos of his strange world view in his books.
Since /. tends more toward libertarianism if it tends toward
anything, why contantly suck up to card? What's next, notices
about the latest novels by Newt Gingrich?
Any way, you can read who ever you want. But for me it's hard to forget who Card is and what kind of politics he promotes.
I was very surprised to see SCO shares selling for slightly more than $4 US. As others have noted, SCO is doomed. The Linux community hates them, it is difficult to imagine that they will gain any new customers and they have no intellectual property that is worth much.
What is odd is that SCO stock is very thinly traded. Under 2K shares changed hands today. With such thin trading, it is tempting to speculate that most of the stock is help by lawyers and SCO executives. They should trade a few shares among themselves to keep the stock price up, keeping what is, in effect, a shell company, looking like it was real.
Otherwise we must assume that that the Efficient Market Hypothesis has ever more holes in it that previously believed. How, after all, could "the market" value SCO at much more than zero.
Look within, Grasshopper. Only you can answer this question.
There can be some advantages of being a big fish in a small pond. I'm assuming that you're talking about moving to California. As someone who managed to escape to Santa Fe, New Mexico for two years before I was forced back, I'd say that California has its share of problems. Traffic and sky-high cost of living being only two.
I like my current job. The only way I'd take a different job is if I was, for lack of a better term, in love with the new opportunity. So I think that the question you have to ask yourself is whether you're in love with the new job or just the prestige of the company name.
People may find it cathartic to discuss some of their deepest feelings on their blog. But sometimes they seem to forget that the medium they are using to express these feelings is the Internet. Blogs may feel like on-line journals, but they are journals millions of people can read. Indeed most blogs are ignored, but you never know what will catch on.
Bloggers perhaps comfort themselves with the idea that this is an anonymous medium. But in general the anonymity is illusionary unless you have a hackers skill at hiding your tracks. And even then you have to be careful about posting recognizable detail. The criticism of your spouse or your boss may come back to haunt you. It has with many people.
When ever you post material on the Internet in an anonymous forum you should consider if you can live with it being connected back to you. If you might find this unpleasant, but not horrible, then perhaps it is worth the risk. But if you're blogging about your adventures with sex workers, drugs or the stupidity of your boss and management chain, then you may pay a price if you become known as the author.
This discussion about mainframes is odd. Much of the discussion seems to assume that mainframes use a different architecture than, say, a desk side PC. The assumption seems to be that, as it was twenty years ago, mainframe architecture is different from PC architecture.
The fastest processors available are microprocessors. I'm not very familiar with IBM's "mainframe" line but I do know a bit about their PowerPC series. I would guess that the "mainframes" that IBM sells are all powerPC processor based. They probably have several PowerPCs and they use water cooling to keep them from melting down.
The other part of a "mainframe" processor is a high performance memory system to allow the PowerPC(s) to run fast. The rest of the "mainframe" is dedicated to disk IO. As someone noted, IBM has a long history of doing fast, intelligent, disk IO channels.
But that's it. That's all a "mainframe" is. The rest is just IBM centric software. There is no longer really any such thing as a mainframe. The only way to can make logic circuts go fast is to make them small. And that means a microprocessor.
Some of the previous posters mentioned the rather eccentric views (in my opinion) of the author of Ending Spam (Jonathan Zdziarski). You can sample some of these yourself by reading the essays Mr. Zdziarski has posted on his web site NuclearElephant.com.
While someone might have, in practice, unlimited amounts of money, none of us have unlimited amounts of time. So a book is always an investement in both time and, for those with more finite amounts of money, cash. With this in mind, there is the question of whether one should read a book by someone who is rather eccentric in their views. Will this eccentricity and, in my opinion, limited knowledge outside of narrow areas, also mean that the book is equally flawed?
I'm undecided. My concern is that Mr. Zdziarski's knowledge of Baysian filtering and other topics has the same kind of holes that seem to exist when he applies his intellect to other areas (like evolution of both life and the solar system). While this is a concern, it is not a foregone conclusion. The history of science and, especially, mathematics, is full of giants in their field who were also very eccentric.
Mr. Zdziarski seems to have what I would classify as a narrowly focused intellect and perhaps within these narrow confines the reader can rely on what he writes. DSPAM, the SPAM filter written my Mr. Zdziarski, seems to be a storng competitor to SpamAssassin. So on this basis, perhaps the book may be a good investment.
Sorry I don't have any moderator points, or I'd "mod" you up. You are exactly right. Without disposable income there is no one to buy all the stuff that the factories all over the world are churning out. Currently purchasing power is supported by credit. Money taken out of home equity, credit cards and the massive trade deficit. This will not continue forever (or even for that much longer).
I finished a essay on this in 2004 titled An Economics Question, which includes an extensive set of annotated, largely web accessible, references.
I would rather pay a few dollars more for something made in the US that provides US jobs that pay rock bottom prices and hollow out our economy. This would still allow competition within the US (and kill off the buggywhip makers) but would still provide a healthy local economy. People forget that the free trade religion in the US is certainly not shared by countries like China and Japan.
I suppose that it is possible that Mr. Grossman could have submitted the review, but it does not seem to have his style. It was too much like a "geek" review. Also, you've got to be pretty desperate for sales to be scraping the slash-dot barrel. I would guess that the tastes on slash-dot run to science fiction,thrillers and science and technology books.
I actually purchased a copy of Codex as a result of a good review in the New York Times or perhaps The San Jose Mercury News. It turns out that Grossman is also a book critic (perhaps showing that those who can't become critics). I speculate that people went easy on him out of fear that he would pay them back with a bad review (which given Grossman's behavior is probably not off base speculation). So if Grossman wants more sales he could just crank out another novel. Certainly the practice can only improve his work.
When it comes to matters of taste you can't say that someone is wrong. Someone may think that gold and red velvet wall paper is the height of interior design. I think that it is ghastly, something only Elton John could love. But my opinion is no more valid that the person who loves the wall paper.
I thought that the review was far too kind to Codex. I thought that Codex was a terrible book. The characters were wooden and the plot was predictable and empty. Yes there was some open source software, but it really did nothing for the plot. As others have noted, when it comes to mysteries/thrillers involving rare books, Perez-Reverte's Club Dumas is much better (the movie made from Club Dumas, the Ninth Gate directed by Polanski is also excellent).
It is worth nothing that not only is the author of Codex a poor writer, he's a weasel too. He wrote an article in Salon about how he cooked his score on Amazon for his previous novel ( The Terrors of the Amazon ). He appeared to do this for Codex as well. There were a number of rave reviews by people who had never reviewed a book before on Amazon. Sure everyone writes their first review at sometime. But here is an admitted forger with a bunch of suspecious reviews.
My advice is that if you must read Codex, get it from the library. If you really must buy it, purchase the book used. But life is short and there are so many other good books. I recommend that you read something else.
Diversity of opinion is what makes the world interesting. So I respect the fact that you don't like Gibson.
Obviously my take on things is different. In my opinion Stranger in a Strange Land is a work that would appeal only to teenagers. I liked Mote in God's Eye but I don't find it more than entertaining.
In contrast there are parts of Neuromancer that fascinate me. The description of Tessier-Ashpool as a wasp like organism.
Perhaps Neuromancer is a generational thing. My parents generation love On the Road by Jack Kerouac which I hate.
One cannot reasonably argue that an opinion is wrong. Opinions, as they say, are like assholes, everyone has one. As a William Gibson "fan boy" you could say that I don't share your view of Neuromancer. In my opinion Gibson is one of the best writers of this century.
There is a clear path to a good Google ranking: publish good content that people want to read. If you sell widgets, publish material on widgets, their use, development, etc... If you can't find a constant stream of interesting material to publish on your product and services then perhaps you are in the wrong business.
Think about this: how many of us know about Fog Creek Software because of Joel Spolsky's "Joel on Software" web page? I don't think that this was Joel's original intent, but his writing has been a great marketing tool for his software business.
Rather than waste money on web site marketing and trying to game Google, invest in building content on your site. If you do this, your links will grow and your Google ranking will go up. It's really that simple.
Of course this approach does not have the attraction of a quick fix. You actually have to invest in building your business.
A number of people have commented on how poorly researched the Wired article is. I've subscribed to Wired since the early days. At one time Wired ran innovative and interesting articles. For example, Neal Stephenson's excellent article on undersea telecommunications cables. The magazine is now a tragic shadow if its former self. My subscription is expiring this year and I don't intend to renew it. Wired's journalistic and editorial standards have become pathetic. It has become an attempt at a techno-geek version of the "lad mag" Stuff without the scantily clad women.
Is there something I don't know about my domain, bearcave.com? I don't understand the IRC reference. There was a bearcave.ORG, which was a site for hairy gay men and bearcave.NET, a site run by network savy "Bears". Some of these are discussed here (another one of those bearcave links).
Anyway, would you care to let me know if I've missed something? You can reach me at iank at bearcave.com. Thanks.
I've tried to work on projects where we developed new software as much as possible. However, taken all together I think I've probably spent many months of aggregate time reading other peoples code, modifying it, adding new features and fixing bugs. I hate doing this work, not only because of poorly designed software but because most software I've worked on is almost entirely undocumented (e.g., no comments and no external documentation).
Some posters have mentioned comments and documentation in this thread. But in my opinion, it has not been discussed in strong enough terms. For a long rant on this topic, see my essay Software and Documentation. I'll summarize some of the points I try to make in this essay here.
There were only a few people in this thread who wrote that they think that software source code is self documenting. This is a good sign. In the past this was a widely held view. Perhaps it is becoming less popular. Perhaps pigs are becoming airborne.
To those of you who wrote that your code is self documenting: you are simply lazy and unprofessional.
Sure I can understand what well written code does. But I cannot understand why it does what it does. I can show you three hundred lines of wavelet signal processing code. You can immediately understand what the code is doing. But you will have no clue what-so-ever about why it does what it does unless you understand the thinking behind the code. The same is true of any complex software.
Another problem is that even though I might understand what components do and perhaps even why they are doing what they do, getting an overall understanding of the architecture of a large application can be difficult and time consuming.
By not writing comments in your code and, for large applications, providing external documentation on the architecture, you are saving your time and effort, but forcing others to spend effort that you could have saved them.
Even if you have no consideration for anyone else who must maintain the application after you write it, comments will help you find bugs in your own code. Again and again I have found that when I explain my code in a comment I am forced to look over it again. In doing this I have found that the code does not do what I intended or that I left something out.
When it comes to documentation there is rarely enough. Even if you make an effort to document your code, when you are in the middle of it you will not document things that you find obvious. When you return later, these obvious issues will have been forgotten and are not obscure.
Documentation must be maintained along with the code. And it should be extended where it is incomplete or unclear. English (or what ever your language is): it's another kind of software.
Developers seem to fall into two camps: those who believe documentation is important and who do it and those who do not. I've managed software groups where I mentioned documentation in people's performace reviews and it still did not good. So far I have not been able to get someone who does not document to do it.
I have thought that perhaps one solution would be to hold code reviews where one of the major features that was looked at was understandability in the code. But I have not experimented enough to know if this will actually get people to document their software.
Literate programming not only involves writing well designed and well informed algorithms. It also includes writing documentation that explains these algorithms.
There is no magic degree bullet. I went to school with a lot of pre-meds (my undergrad degree is in biology). A number of the premeds wanted to go into medicine because they thought that the degree would be the magic carpet to a high income and job security.
As it turned out, things were not so simple. HMOs put pressure on doctor's fees and medicine is a field where there is more burnout than people want to admit. For people who are not good at relationships with other people (most of the premeds I knew) seeing people for the same kind of thing year after year becomes a huge bore. By the time they hit their forties some doctors would like to do something else, but it is too late to easily change professions and they are used to making a lot of money.
Since there is no degree that I know of that will guarantee a good income, job security AND interesting work, you might was well go for a degree in something that interests you and might improve your job prospects.
If I were to get another degree I'd get a degree in quantitative finance. That is, the application of mathematical techniques to financial modeling and trading of stocks, bonds, foreign exchange and so on. Having a solid software background and the ability to handle the math is a big asset. Of course for some of us the downside is that you may have to live in or around New York city (but this is a feature for other people).
Well color me clueless. I thought that in the current job market you could not be an egotistical software engineer, since there is no shortage of engineers. This story sounds like something from the 1990s.
But perhaps it is just that I am a humble mortal of minimal skills and this is why I have this impression.
Ah, but I was around at the time. I've written application software in Z80 macroassembler for NCR.
The group I was working in built a bit-slice, microcoded implementation of the UCSD Pascal p-code instruction set. The I/O system was handled by the Z80 and I worked on some of the IO drivers.
I also owned a Compaq IBM compatible with an 8086 and 640K of memory. I've used DOS and it sucked. For serious software development I worked on a VAX 11/780 (at work) running BSD 4.2 UNIX (Live Free Or Die). I did not start developing software on PC's in a serious fashion until Windows NT came out. DOS was simply degrading.
As to system protection: the original UNIX from Bell Labs did not have hardware protection. Virtual memory did not arrive until BSD 4.1 (it's been a long time, so I may not remember correctly). UNIX without memory protection beats the hell out of DOS. And with an 8086 and 640K of memory the hardware was more powerful than the PDP 11s that UNIX was running on at Bell Labs.
Gary Kildall eventually died in a bar, but many (including myself) would say that Bill Gates drove Kildall toward suicidal drinking, which lead to him being killed in a bar with other drunks.
[...]
By contrast, Kildall did not even get the fame, i.e. the recognition that he deserved. Ask any Windows/MS-DOS user who Kildall is, and she will scratch her head with ignorance. If I were in Kildall's shoes, I would have been bitter every day of my life and would have probably committed suicide too.
I think that saying that Kildall was driven to suicide by Bill Gates is a stretch. I know of Kildall's story, but I really can't bring myself to shed too many tears. Kildall was still rich by the standards of most of us. He has successfully founded Digital Research. There were many innovative and interesting things that Kildall could have done, either at Digital Research or on his own.
You have the right to decide to kill yourself if you were "robbed" of the massive wealth and fame of Bill Gates (you make the point that it is both, not just one that is the fatal poison). In this case, I feel sorry for both you and Kildall in holding such egotistical world views.
Money may not buy happiness, but it can buy freedom. The fact that Kildall is not recognized for a crappy little operating systems like CP/M and DR-DOS is really no surprise. Looking back on CP/M, MS-DOS and DR-DOS all we can really say is "thank God we can use real operating systems like UNIX, Linux and even Windows NT/XP". Xenix and the early UNIX operating systems were far better and ran on machines not much more powerful than the Intel 286.
Instead of being famous for writing CP/M and DR-DOS Kildall could have used the money he made to do something really creative. But he did not. The tragedy in the story is that of wasted possibility, not lack of fame or an extra 40 billion dollars. The inability to take advantage of what fortune and hard work had given Kildall can be laid at Kildall's feet not Gates'.
I suspect that the real problem is that Kildall had a drinking problem and was in the wrong place at the wrong time (he died, as I recall, in a bar fight).
Only an idiot like Larry Summers would not have noticed the generation of women in applied mathematic, biology research and many other areas of science. But I'm not sure that I would encourage any young person to go into our field.
Let us look at the current situation, at least in the United States. There is very little job security, offshoring has moved something like 400,000 jobs overseas (in a field where employment is only a few million to start with). There is age discrimination, regardless of your gender. And yes, it is not the most welcoming field for women.
I love computer science. But I hate what has happened to my field. Can you really recommend that someone pursue a demanding field of study where the career prospects are jobs instability, declining or stagnant pay (I have not had a raise in over two years) and a career lifetime which may only be a decade or so?
The parent post rambles around a bit but I take it that the major point is that the infrastructure in India is broken and that without infrastructure support you can't move into the modern world.
There is more to infrastructure than just phones, highways and clean water, although these may be the most important part. Infrastructure also includes a working legal system and something approaching "the rule of law".
The book Maximum City by Suketu Mehta makes the point that India is broken on many levels, not the least in the legal system where there is no redress when someone rips you off except to go to the local Mafia.And then there is the violence between Hindus and Muslims. And so on and so on...
I don't see India as being a superpower in the next century. I see China in this role.
Newfoundlands are wonderful dogs. In fact, at the risk of courting controversy, I'd say that Newfi's are the worlds best dog. But...
If you live with a Newfi you have to get used to drifts of hair piling up. Especially in the spring during that dreaded time when a Newfi "blows their coat".
So I imagine one of these little Roomba's doing its thing over the tile floor when it encounters a drift of Newfi hair. The Roomba would start to suck up the hair, fill up, get clogged and die. Newfi 1, Roomba 0
I have spent most of my career working in industry. But I would say that right now government research labs offer the best alternative. I work for a national lab. Most people have security clearances. In the department I work in, many have high level clearances.
These are not jobs that are ever going to be moved to India or China. There is a fair amount of freedom. The projects can still be very demanding and the hours long. You don't get much in the way of raises and you'll never be rich.
The national labs have their own culture and coming from industry this can be a bit of a culture shock. At least in the group I work in there is much less hierarchy and direction than industry. In the beginning it was difficult to even understand what was expected. You also end up dealing with government agencies, which can be disfuncational (no surprise).
But the national labs are about as stable as it gets these days. And work on national security related areas looks like it will be well funded in the long term, regardless of who is in office. The retirement plan is pretty good and will hopefully remain so (some of our masters in the government think or retirement is too generous since it is better than many companies, which have no retirement at all).
Large corporations, like HP and IBM, have been firing people for years now. IBM is also infamous for raiding its pension program.
So with this in mind, I'd be curious about which US companies you can give as examples of work places that treat their employes as long term assets. Off hand, I can't think of any.
As far as I can see, there is a shortage of jobs, especially jobs that pay well. So currently a company can indeed treat employees like a FIFO. These days you can hire experienced people with almost any skill set. And the view these days is when you no longer need them, just fire them.
It appears that you have different views and experience. I'd like to know where these companies are. Perhaps outside the United States?
I have not looked up the reference, but I seem to recall that there is another reason to dislike Belkin and not purchase their products.
If I recall correctly, Belkin was using Free Software components in one of their routers. They refused requests to make the source code for their router software available. This cause a bit of an uproar on Slashdot. There were some complaints lodged with Belkin, if I recall (I wrote them). I don't know if they reformed or not.
As a result, for low end home routers (which is the only thing that I buy directly) I have not considered Belkin, but purchase Linksys routers.