I can immediately think of two counter examples. My own company was purchased 18 months ago, and I couldn't be happier. I played golf this weekend with a guy from Aquantive, purchased by MSFT a year ago, and he was also quite satisfied.
Outsourcing is always done for one thing and one thing only. To save money.
Not true. It's done (if you're doing it correctly) to improve the performance of the business, which is subtly different. I have worked for Accenture, who is on the receiving end of outsourcing, and currently work for a company who is outsourcing functions to Accenture, while receiving outsourced business functions from other companies. I've been and currently am on both sides of this.
Companies can end up ahead after outsourcing through the outsourcer being better at managing the function than the customer was. The customer can end up better off from being able to reduce management load by offloading this to the outsourcer. In my company's case, to be blunt, I think we sucked at managing the IT functions that we are outsourcing, and I expect Accenture to be better at it. I think some folks are going to lose their jobs, but, you know what, they shouldn't have had those jobs in the first place if we were doing our job. I know, that's small comfort to them, but hey, the world can be a harsh place. You don't own your job, your employer does.
Now, that is actually agreeing with parent's point, that the employees will be probably expected to be more productive. In the case of my own company, many employees can be made to be more productive, simply by moving under the Accenture management structure, which in my experience was far more productive than most other companies I have worked for (disclosure, I left AC as a senior manager). At AC, we got more done before lunch than we do all day at my current outfit. And I didn't work a lot harder.
Why did I leave, you ask? Travel and kids. AC was the best job I've had in my career.
In all this ranting and raving, it would be good to remember that -all- businesses inherently are outsourcers. We're all doing something for someone else that they could be doing themselves.
Which is why the book is interesting. He looks into the impact on rates of crime after the passage of laws in both directions. The general trend is that laws that reduce regulations on possession of firearms are followed in subsequent years by generally reduced rates of crime. The reverse is true as well.
It's a worthwhile read - the studies are fairly well done, even if you don't want to agree with the findings.
I do mostly server side stuff. I find it pretty handy that my programs run without recompilation or modification between Windows and Linux. I find the JSP web development model productive. The cost of the language and Eclipse or NetBeans environments is very appealing.
I'd call those advantages. Certainly other language choices also have such advantages - I'm not saying that java is the only rational choice. But it's a very solid one.
No, that's the block *start* delimiter. There is no end delimiter.
Sure there is. It's the next piece of code structure. There is nothing stopping an editor from providing help. I believe NetBeans for one does, though I haven't tried it. The problems that I have used python for don't typically lend themselves to large file sizes.
I think most folks don't find the indentation style that restricting. If you do, that's cool. Java and python work pretty well together in my world, you might try python again, if you do any server side stuff.
your criticism of Java is based on bad experience using Java programs, not creating them. It would be like explaining the fine points of carpentry to somebody who's never picked up a saw or hammer.
Actually, if I may riff on your metaphor, it's exactly related to carpentry. The question is, when one sees a poorly built cabinet, was it the fault of the carpenter, or did he not have the right/best tool. We're simply arguing over whether Java is a sufficient tool to build a quality cabinet. I think most would agree that it's sufficient.
As with carpentry, there are multiple preferences in tools, and a good carpenter can often do better work with poor tools, than a poorer carpenter with better gear.
Particularly in internal, IT developed apps, there are some atrocious apps out there. I'm not sure it's fair to blame the toolset. I've seen crap developed in C++, VB/.Net, c#, and Java, all in the last 6 months.
3. It's fast(er). Older Java GUI stuff was not fast, and it gave people the impression that all of Java is not fast. Well, Java 1.6 is fast.
4. It's cross platform. This isn't a big deal for me so much, but it might be for some people.
These two work for me. I'm implementing some data warehouse load and cleanse routines right now, using 1.5. I need them to work across windows and Linux. I need them to be fast on meager hardware. I benchmarked one of them at ~1200 records/sec today, which is nicely within what I need. This was running with a laptop as the load client, and a four year old AMD as the server. I know it's not going to spin any heads, but it's excellent for what I need. And it runs perfectly on Windows, Linux, and can be made to run under Z/os, which is a hurdle I need to jump for the MF bigots in the mother company.
I like Perl, I like Python, I like Ruby, but Java/JSP is what I turn to when I need to do real work.
If you're interested in a more general analysis of your implicit question, see this.
The general case is that, in the US, gun violence seems to be inversely related to the level of legal restrictions. There are a lot of variables that go into this, obviously, but violence is highest in the most regulated areas (NYC, Washington DC) and lowest in the states and cities where possession is freely granted.
My own state, Washington, allows anyone who is a non felon to apply for and receive a concealed carry permit for firearms. Perhaps non-surprisingly, we have a very low rate of muggings.
First of all many drugs are indeed very pleasant. In fact, some of them, like cocaine, cause such extreme releases of serotonin and dopamine that this effect will on its own make virtually everybody who use it addicted to it relatively quickly.
To quibble a bit, the data don't support this statement. While cocaine and meth, for example, are very pleasant, this pleasure is followed by physical discomfort. Most people experience the up followed by the down, and conclude that the up isn't worth the down, and discontinue use. You can see this by looking at statistics for "current" versus "lifetime" use for these drugs at sites such as this. There are vastly more former users for cocaine and meth than current users, and large numbers of people who have used in the past year, but not in the past month. This is supported by my own experience, and that of my acquaintances. We grew up back in the day, and I have had hands on experience with all of this shit. The only thing I have ever had serious trouble putting down was a cigarette, and even that I seem to have kicked recently with the help of hypnosis.
The clinical evidence, government propaganda notwithstanding, is that most people have similar risks of addiction to cocaine/heroin/meth as they do for alcohol, which is to say that on average about 10% of the population has addictive tendencies (some segments, such as Native Americans, have a higher incidence). It is clearly a physical, inheritable trait. I personally know at least 50 people from my college days that used cocaine without incident, as well as about 5 who had severe issues. This tracks with my perceptions about people with alcohol problems, as well.
Clinical evidence from the State of Oregon's treatment program, which a relative of mine ran in the 80's, is that people with addictive problems express those problems across drugs. If they can't get coke, they'll use meth, or alcohol. To me, this suggests pretty strongly that it isn't the drugs that are the issue.
I'm not recommending that anyone run out and start using coke or meth, but I am of the opinion that we could legalize and regulate both without great social harm, and probably with significant social benefit. Cocaine, in the form of coca tea, for example, is widely used, legally, in Colombia, without apparent social problems. Amphetamines, of which meth is simply and easily produced variant, are prescribed for fighter pilots in the US military, and are in use in combat zones today. We don't see associated addiction. Alcoholism rates are much lower in France and Italy than the US, even when compared to french american or italian american populations, which suggests a cultural component to over-use.
Addiction is largely a physical and behavioral issue. The drugs don't -cause- addiction. The individual using the drug expresses addiction.
a heroin addiction makes nicotine look like a slight temptation in comparison
I have known a few heroin users, and they would argue that this statement is incorrect. While heroin is indeed quite addictive, nicotine is more so, and much harder to quit. History supports this assertion. Literally thousands of GI's came back from vietnam and quit heroin cold turkey immediately, without major issues, while continuing to smoke. Having both used opiates recreationally, and smoked for many years, my own experience supports this.
This is incidentally why I also like to write code in vim.
With no great disrespect intended, why on earth would you you use vim as a coding tool? I was with you until you uttered this blather. There are so many great, free tools, that your judgment comes into question. From Notepad++, to NetBeans, to Kdevelop, to Eclipse, surely there is something that can augment your productivity.
I use vim, or even more often vi, but not as my first choice.
I am wrestling with a Toshiba A215 that came with Vista Home Premium. It reliably pukes five minutes after waking up from suspend, and requires a hard boot to recover. I tried to run Ubuntu, but it won't recognize the wireless, even after the Mad wifi drivers were installed.
I dunno about you, but my salary is a substantial multiple of the median wage in the country. Sure, the job sucks some days, but it's better to suck for a good wage than not.
If you are miserable in your job, you need to look inward, my friend. We're as happy as we decide to be.
There are very few well paid jobs that don't require education and paying your dues. Since I don't have the prerequisites to be a $1000/hr hooker, technology will have to do.
I did go into economics, and look where I ended up... I've done a lot of things in my life, and technology is hard to beat.
BTW, economics was and is a great degree to get. Without a good understanding of economics, it's hard to really understand why the world and business work the way they do.
If you want to think about this, take a look at the income statement for a health insurance company. Compare the management cut for a publicly traded insurance company to that of Medicare.
Insurance companies take a cut of about 30-40% of the dollars that come in from premiums, with the balance going to actually paying for care. Medicare takes about 15%.
It was surprising because it was a monday playoff that wasn't on anyone's schedules. Golf tournaments normally end on the weekend, so they don't run into competing with business traffic. This went into monday, and also happened to be a see-sawing event which kept people's attention.
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I can immediately think of two counter examples. My own company was purchased 18 months ago, and I couldn't be happier. I played golf this weekend with a guy from Aquantive, purchased by MSFT a year ago, and he was also quite satisfied.
Outsourcing is always done for one thing and one thing only. To save money.
Not true. It's done (if you're doing it correctly) to improve the performance of the business, which is subtly different. I have worked for Accenture, who is on the receiving end of outsourcing, and currently work for a company who is outsourcing functions to Accenture, while receiving outsourced business functions from other companies. I've been and currently am on both sides of this.
Companies can end up ahead after outsourcing through the outsourcer being better at managing the function than the customer was. The customer can end up better off from being able to reduce management load by offloading this to the outsourcer. In my company's case, to be blunt, I think we sucked at managing the IT functions that we are outsourcing, and I expect Accenture to be better at it. I think some folks are going to lose their jobs, but, you know what, they shouldn't have had those jobs in the first place if we were doing our job. I know, that's small comfort to them, but hey, the world can be a harsh place. You don't own your job, your employer does.
Now, that is actually agreeing with parent's point, that the employees will be probably expected to be more productive. In the case of my own company, many employees can be made to be more productive, simply by moving under the Accenture management structure, which in my experience was far more productive than most other companies I have worked for (disclosure, I left AC as a senior manager). At AC, we got more done before lunch than we do all day at my current outfit. And I didn't work a lot harder.
Why did I leave, you ask? Travel and kids. AC was the best job I've had in my career.
In all this ranting and raving, it would be good to remember that -all- businesses inherently are outsourcers. We're all doing something for someone else that they could be doing themselves.
Which is why the book is interesting. He looks into the impact on rates of crime after the passage of laws in both directions. The general trend is that laws that reduce regulations on possession of firearms are followed in subsequent years by generally reduced rates of crime. The reverse is true as well.
It's a worthwhile read - the studies are fairly well done, even if you don't want to agree with the findings.
Java doesn't offer any advantages.
I do mostly server side stuff. I find it pretty handy that my programs run without recompilation or modification between Windows and Linux. I find the JSP web development model productive. The cost of the language and Eclipse or NetBeans environments is very appealing.
I'd call those advantages. Certainly other language choices also have such advantages - I'm not saying that java is the only rational choice. But it's a very solid one.
I think Bjarne is mistaken. Simply surf Amazon's help wanted ads in craigslist in Seattle. You don't see much C++, you see lots of Java and Oracle.
No, that's the block *start* delimiter. There is no end delimiter.
Sure there is. It's the next piece of code structure. There is nothing stopping an editor from providing help. I believe NetBeans for one does, though I haven't tried it. The problems that I have used python for don't typically lend themselves to large file sizes.
I think most folks don't find the indentation style that restricting. If you do, that's cool. Java and python work pretty well together in my world, you might try python again, if you do any server side stuff.
your criticism of Java is based on bad experience using Java programs, not creating them. It would be like explaining the fine points of carpentry to somebody who's never picked up a saw or hammer.
Actually, if I may riff on your metaphor, it's exactly related to carpentry. The question is, when one sees a poorly built cabinet, was it the fault of the carpenter, or did he not have the right/best tool. We're simply arguing over whether Java is a sufficient tool to build a quality cabinet. I think most would agree that it's sufficient.
As with carpentry, there are multiple preferences in tools, and a good carpenter can often do better work with poor tools, than a poorer carpenter with better gear.
Particularly in internal, IT developed apps, there are some atrocious apps out there. I'm not sure it's fair to blame the toolset. I've seen crap developed in C++, VB/.Net, c#, and Java, all in the last 6 months.
3. It's fast(er). Older Java GUI stuff was not fast, and it gave people the impression that all of Java is not fast. Well, Java 1.6 is fast.
4. It's cross platform. This isn't a big deal for me so much, but it might be for some people.
These two work for me. I'm implementing some data warehouse load and cleanse routines right now, using 1.5. I need them to work across windows and Linux. I need them to be fast on meager hardware. I benchmarked one of them at ~1200 records/sec today, which is nicely within what I need. This was running with a laptop as the load client, and a four year old AMD as the server. I know it's not going to spin any heads, but it's excellent for what I need. And it runs perfectly on Windows, Linux, and can be made to run under Z/os, which is a hurdle I need to jump for the MF bigots in the mother company.
I like Perl, I like Python, I like Ruby, but Java/JSP is what I turn to when I need to do real work.
If you're interested in a more general analysis of your implicit question, see this.
The general case is that, in the US, gun violence seems to be inversely related to the level of legal restrictions. There are a lot of variables that go into this, obviously, but violence is highest in the most regulated areas (NYC, Washington DC) and lowest in the states and cities where possession is freely granted.
My own state, Washington, allows anyone who is a non felon to apply for and receive a concealed carry permit for firearms. Perhaps non-surprisingly, we have a very low rate of muggings.
Outsourcing in general is caused by the existance of countries which lack of any kind of workers rights, minimum wage or safety standards.
Or environmental and social regulations. It is much easier to make cheap goods if you can pollute.
I'm a golfer and a fisherman. It's the same story there.
First of all many drugs are indeed very pleasant. In fact, some of them, like cocaine, cause such extreme releases of serotonin and dopamine that this effect will on its own make virtually everybody who use it addicted to it relatively quickly.
To quibble a bit, the data don't support this statement. While cocaine and meth, for example, are very pleasant, this pleasure is followed by physical discomfort. Most people experience the up followed by the down, and conclude that the up isn't worth the down, and discontinue use. You can see this by looking at statistics for "current" versus "lifetime" use for these drugs at sites such as this. There are vastly more former users for cocaine and meth than current users, and large numbers of people who have used in the past year, but not in the past month. This is supported by my own experience, and that of my acquaintances. We grew up back in the day, and I have had hands on experience with all of this shit. The only thing I have ever had serious trouble putting down was a cigarette, and even that I seem to have kicked recently with the help of hypnosis.
The clinical evidence, government propaganda notwithstanding, is that most people have similar risks of addiction to cocaine/heroin/meth as they do for alcohol, which is to say that on average about 10% of the population has addictive tendencies (some segments, such as Native Americans, have a higher incidence). It is clearly a physical, inheritable trait. I personally know at least 50 people from my college days that used cocaine without incident, as well as about 5 who had severe issues. This tracks with my perceptions about people with alcohol problems, as well.
Clinical evidence from the State of Oregon's treatment program, which a relative of mine ran in the 80's, is that people with addictive problems express those problems across drugs. If they can't get coke, they'll use meth, or alcohol. To me, this suggests pretty strongly that it isn't the drugs that are the issue.
I'm not recommending that anyone run out and start using coke or meth, but I am of the opinion that we could legalize and regulate both without great social harm, and probably with significant social benefit. Cocaine, in the form of coca tea, for example, is widely used, legally, in Colombia, without apparent social problems. Amphetamines, of which meth is simply and easily produced variant, are prescribed for fighter pilots in the US military, and are in use in combat zones today. We don't see associated addiction. Alcoholism rates are much lower in France and Italy than the US, even when compared to french american or italian american populations, which suggests a cultural component to over-use.
Addiction is largely a physical and behavioral issue. The drugs don't -cause- addiction. The individual using the drug expresses addiction.
a heroin addiction makes nicotine look like a slight temptation in comparison
I have known a few heroin users, and they would argue that this statement is incorrect. While heroin is indeed quite addictive, nicotine is more so, and much harder to quit. History supports this assertion. Literally thousands of GI's came back from vietnam and quit heroin cold turkey immediately, without major issues, while continuing to smoke. Having both used opiates recreationally, and smoked for many years, my own experience supports this.
Hello, my name is A.Turing Machine.
See, for example, teacher's unions in any state in the US.
I'm not anti-union, per se, but the Washington teachers' union is doing it's best to change my thinking.
It has the Atheros 5212 chipset. MAD Wifi is supposed to work with this, but I couldn't get it to.
Actually, I got this one precisely because I had read positive reviews of Linux installation to other toshiba laptops. So much for product research.
Just to simplify things, I have been attacked by a bear. 1968, Glacier National Park, at Trout Lake. Yes, thanks, I survived.
And I do check the addresses I submit to.
I have a date with a hardware repair depot tomorrow. I agree, something's probably toast.
This is incidentally why I also like to write code in vim.
With no great disrespect intended, why on earth would you you use vim as a coding tool? I was with you until you uttered this blather. There are so many great, free tools, that your judgment comes into question. From Notepad++, to NetBeans, to Kdevelop, to Eclipse, surely there is something that can augment your productivity.
I use vim, or even more often vi, but not as my first choice.
Ubuntu downloads strike a new high water mark.
I am wrestling with a Toshiba A215 that came with Vista Home Premium. It reliably pukes five minutes after waking up from suspend, and requires a hard boot to recover. I tried to run Ubuntu, but it won't recognize the wireless, even after the Mad wifi drivers were installed.
I dunno about you, but my salary is a substantial multiple of the median wage in the country. Sure, the job sucks some days, but it's better to suck for a good wage than not.
If you are miserable in your job, you need to look inward, my friend. We're as happy as we decide to be.
There are very few well paid jobs that don't require education and paying your dues. Since I don't have the prerequisites to be a $1000/hr hooker, technology will have to do.
I did go into economics, and look where I ended up... I've done a lot of things in my life, and technology is hard to beat.
BTW, economics was and is a great degree to get. Without a good understanding of economics, it's hard to really understand why the world and business work the way they do.
If you want to think about this, take a look at the income statement for a health insurance company. Compare the management cut for a publicly traded insurance company to that of Medicare.
Insurance companies take a cut of about 30-40% of the dollars that come in from premiums, with the balance going to actually paying for care. Medicare takes about 15%.
It was surprising because it was a monday playoff that wasn't on anyone's schedules. Golf tournaments normally end on the weekend, so they don't run into competing with business traffic. This went into monday, and also happened to be a see-sawing event which kept people's attention.
Damn good golf, too.
Specifically, it is that you may freely state your opinion about your government, and your government may not exact retribution.
You don't have unlimited rights to speak bad about your fellow citizens, or to say false things.