If you believe that you are there to support your team then you've cracked it. Everything else flows from this. e.g. protecting your team from pressure from other departments, not harassing them with pointless processes, letting them choose what to work on as much as possible etc.
I once worked for a great manager who simply called you into his office once or twice a week to ask what you were working on and whether you needed any help. He'd keep track of what tasks needed doing and let the team pick tasks for themselves. If anything was left over he'd assign it to someone.
Good luck!
This might be a great thing for small software companies. At the moment, they can't possibly afford defensive patent portfolios. This makes them extremely vulnerable to malicious suits from big companies that want to squash them.
Being able to buy a slice of protection from IBM would eliminate one of the biggest risks that small developers face. Of course, small companies can't pay millions of dollars in legal fees. IBM will have to offer to defend their clients in court in order to make this work.
I keep hearing the phrase "bands make most of their money from touring etc not from CD sales".
If this is true, then Radiohead aren't losing any money by giving away their music. They're just building a fan base by giving away music instead of building a fan base by getting a label to sell CDs. It also means that DRM protects the label and actively damages the band.
Has the internet finally created a world in which the bands don't need labels any more? Perhaps in 5 or ten years time, we'll see that the labels will morph into music marketing companies who are hired by bands as necessary. Either that, or they'll have to start paying the bands a decent royalty on CD sales.
I love these stories. I never know whether to be outraged that someone is ripping people off so badly or delighted to know that very rich, very pretentious people are being ripped off so badly.
In my experience, MS aren't interested in reports of security holes anyway.
I found a security hole in an MS product about 6 months ago so I sent a full description with working test code to secure@microsoft.com.
I got an automated response (so far so good) but then I heard nothing more. After a month, I sent them another email to ask if they were doing something. Silence. Another month later I rang Microsoft support and asked them to give me an update. They told me that the case number doesn't exist and that they don't have a department called the "Microsoft Security Response Center".
Eventually I found an engineer who does support for the product with the security hole. He said he'd heard a _rumour_ about the MSRC and offered to track them down. Eventually, I got an email update from them saying "we might get round to fixing it in a few months."
In short, if they're not interested in free security reports, why would they pay for them?
Personally, I haven't had to edit code with a fixed width terminal for 15 years. Consequently, my personal coding guidelines are a bit more flexible than this.
I format code to maximise readability and minimise the number of lines. (in that order) As far as possible I try to complete a line of code in under 80 characters. I'll happily stretch a line up to 100 characters to avoid a line break that makes it harder to read. I'll allow lines that are basically a single, very large token to extend much further than that. This usually means string literals.
I break comments and javadoc at 70 characters because it improves readability.
This means that my code is still readable if I print it out and the printer truncates the long lines.
For what it's worth, the windows I'm editing code in at the moment display 90 to 100 characters.
The numbers in TFA do not include "sales of PC games, PC game subscriptions, or downloaded content" and only apply to the US market.
I've found it surprisingly hard to find estimates for the size of the PC games market or figures for what PC games sell well. This makes it more or less impossible to compare the PC and console markets. I'm beginning to wonder whether why.
It looks like IE 7 doesn't support Windows 2000. That's pretty bizarre especially when you consider that Win2k is still heavily used in companies. (... and me)
I see what you're getting at but I don't really agree. After all, there are some sorts of tracking that we're happy with.
For example, the Battlefield games track who you killed, when and with what weapon. This information is uploaded to global EA servers. Similarly, all web servers log page requests by IP address. These are both types of tracking that everyone is comfortable with.
I don't think a tool can be considered "spyware" unless it's generally considered to be underhand in some way. e.g. reporting information without the user's permission or reporting information that the user is unwilling to share.
I don't think the BF2142 advert system fits this category. It's more like a website tracking page hits.
This story has been circulating on various BF2142 forums for some days now. It's been blown out of all proportion.
According to representatives of DICE, the game levels will contain billboards which will display real adverts. The game will track which billboards the player looks at and how long they look for. This information will be reported back to base with the player's IP address. No other information will be tracked with respect to advertising.
I believe that they will update the adverts from time to time but I haven't seen this confirmed yet.
It has nothing to do with web browsers. There's nothing secret about it. It doesn't identify individuals directly. (Only their PCs) All in all, I don't think this really deserves the word "spyware". It's just in game advertising with the equivalent of click tracking.
I've read extensively on WWII including many first hand accounts by all sides.
On the Western Front the German combat troops generally "played fair". I'd say they respected the Red Cross symbol as much or more than US troops. (The Germans seem to have a much stronger sense of "obeying the rules" than US troops.) Only the Canadians developed a better reputation for fighting hard but fair. There are _many_ documented cases of troops aiding enemy medics to care for wounded.
The Eastern Front was a different affair of course.
cheers,
Archie
Sorry - I posted as AC by mistake.:~) I'll try again.
(First of all, I should say that I've spent my career building bespoke systems for blue chip companies in the UK. I haven't been involved in the shrink wrapped product part of the industry.)
The author doesn't discuss the impact that sales, marketing and other corporate baggage has on software.
In every company that I've worked for, senior management work hard to prevent information that could embarrass the company from making it into the public domain. In other words, they tend to deny that they have any security problems unless they are forced to admit it.
Secondly, I'm always under pressure to short change the projects that I work on. Documentation, design, testing, security and reliability always take second place to creating and fixing the features that are most obvious to the end users.
Generally speaking, our customers are not prepared to pay for security and reliability. They seem to think that it's some sort of god given right that comes without any effort. We're almost always forced to bury the cost of these "extras" in the bowels of the project where the customer can't see it.
It seems to me that developers on OSS projects are not usually under the same pressure to hide the real cost of development.
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If you believe that you are there to support your team then you've cracked it. Everything else flows from this. e.g. protecting your team from pressure from other departments, not harassing them with pointless processes, letting them choose what to work on as much as possible etc. I once worked for a great manager who simply called you into his office once or twice a week to ask what you were working on and whether you needed any help. He'd keep track of what tasks needed doing and let the team pick tasks for themselves. If anything was left over he'd assign it to someone. Good luck!
This might be a great thing for small software companies. At the moment, they can't possibly afford defensive patent portfolios. This makes them extremely vulnerable to malicious suits from big companies that want to squash them.
Being able to buy a slice of protection from IBM would eliminate one of the biggest risks that small developers face. Of course, small companies can't pay millions of dollars in legal fees. IBM will have to offer to defend their clients in court in order to make this work.
I keep hearing the phrase "bands make most of their money from touring etc not from CD sales".
If this is true, then Radiohead aren't losing any money by giving away their music. They're just building a fan base by giving away music instead of building a fan base by getting a label to sell CDs. It also means that DRM protects the label and actively damages the band.
Has the internet finally created a world in which the bands don't need labels any more? Perhaps in 5 or ten years time, we'll see that the labels will morph into music marketing companies who are hired by bands as necessary. Either that, or they'll have to start paying the bands a decent royalty on CD sales.
I love these stories. I never know whether to be outraged that someone is ripping people off so badly or delighted to know that very rich, very pretentious people are being ripped off so badly.
I just tried this on my Vista 64 PC and I don't have any problem at all. There are other people at 2cpu who don't have this problem either.
Perhaps we're looking at a rather common bug rather than a fundamental design flaw with Vista.
In my experience, MS aren't interested in reports of security holes anyway.
I found a security hole in an MS product about 6 months ago so I sent a full description with working test code to secure@microsoft.com.
I got an automated response (so far so good) but then I heard nothing more. After a month, I sent them another email to ask if they were doing something. Silence. Another month later I rang Microsoft support and asked them to give me an update. They told me that the case number doesn't exist and that they don't have a department called the "Microsoft Security Response Center".
Eventually I found an engineer who does support for the product with the security hole. He said he'd heard a _rumour_ about the MSRC and offered to track them down. Eventually, I got an email update from them saying "we might get round to fixing it in a few months."
In short, if they're not interested in free security reports, why would they pay for them?
Personally, I haven't had to edit code with a fixed width terminal for 15 years. Consequently, my personal coding guidelines are a bit more flexible than this.
I format code to maximise readability and minimise the number of lines. (in that order) As far as possible I try to complete a line of code in under 80 characters. I'll happily stretch a line up to 100 characters to avoid a line break that makes it harder to read. I'll allow lines that are basically a single, very large token to extend much further than that. This usually means string literals.
I break comments and javadoc at 70 characters because it improves readability.
This means that my code is still readable if I print it out and the printer truncates the long lines.
For what it's worth, the windows I'm editing code in at the moment display 90 to 100 characters.
I just found out some good and bad things.
The numbers in TFA do not include "sales of PC games, PC game subscriptions, or downloaded content" and only apply to the US market.
I've found it surprisingly hard to find estimates for the size of the PC games market or figures for what PC games sell well. This makes it more or less impossible to compare the PC and console markets. I'm beginning to wonder whether why.
cheers,
Archie
It looks like IE 7 doesn't support Windows 2000. That's pretty bizarre especially when you consider that Win2k is still heavily used in companies. (... and me)
I see what you're getting at but I don't really agree. After all, there are some sorts of tracking that we're happy with.
For example, the Battlefield games track who you killed, when and with what weapon. This information is uploaded to global EA servers. Similarly, all web servers log page requests by IP address. These are both types of tracking that everyone is comfortable with.
I don't think a tool can be considered "spyware" unless it's generally considered to be underhand in some way. e.g. reporting information without the user's permission or reporting information that the user is unwilling to share.
I don't think the BF2142 advert system fits this category. It's more like a website tracking page hits.
This story has been circulating on various BF2142 forums for some days now. It's been blown out of all proportion.
According to representatives of DICE, the game levels will contain billboards which will display real adverts. The game will track which billboards the player looks at and how long they look for. This information will be reported back to base with the player's IP address. No other information will be tracked with respect to advertising.
I believe that they will update the adverts from time to time but I haven't seen this confirmed yet.
It has nothing to do with web browsers. There's nothing secret about it. It doesn't identify individuals directly. (Only their PCs) All in all, I don't think this really deserves the word "spyware". It's just in game advertising with the equivalent of click tracking.
I've read extensively on WWII including many first hand accounts by all sides. On the Western Front the German combat troops generally "played fair". I'd say they respected the Red Cross symbol as much or more than US troops. (The Germans seem to have a much stronger sense of "obeying the rules" than US troops.) Only the Canadians developed a better reputation for fighting hard but fair. There are _many_ documented cases of troops aiding enemy medics to care for wounded. The Eastern Front was a different affair of course. cheers, Archie
Sorry - I posted as AC by mistake. :~) I'll try again.
(First of all, I should say that I've spent my career building bespoke systems for blue chip companies in the UK. I haven't been involved in the shrink wrapped product part of the industry.)
The author doesn't discuss the impact that sales, marketing and other corporate baggage has on software.
In every company that I've worked for, senior management work hard to prevent information that could embarrass the company from making it into the public domain. In other words, they tend to deny that they have any security problems unless they are forced to admit it.
Secondly, I'm always under pressure to short change the projects that I work on. Documentation, design, testing, security and reliability always take second place to creating and fixing the features that are most obvious to the end users.
Generally speaking, our customers are not prepared to pay for security and reliability. They seem to think that it's some sort of god given right that comes without any effort. We're almost always forced to bury the cost of these "extras" in the bowels of the project where the customer can't see it.
It seems to me that developers on OSS projects are not usually under the same pressure to hide the real cost of development.