We have an approach that appears to work for us. We have an EULA, that forbids distributing, then we give our customers the source code and trust them.
It appears to be working. We even encourage our customers to modify the code and we will work our updates around their changes as much as we can.
I too am constantly looking for good programmers. I have tried (and still do hire) students. The problem is that they have not lived enough years to also have other life skills and experiences that are required for a good programmer. In my opinion, a good programmer needs to have enough experience to understand the context that the application will be used in. It's the full understanding of context that allows a good programmer to become an excellent programmer. Only experience can give the context. (Or a multi-disiplanary education which is unlikely)
I am VP of software development at a software company. I hire a lot of recent graduates (and am always looking for more good talent).
What I look for as a starting point is a solid understanding of how programs work, and enough programming experience that I am not teaching the basics. Experience with both lower level languages (C++) and higher level languages (Java, VB, etc) is required just to get past HR. Also, knowledge of the context (networks, operating systems, databases) is required.
The above just gets you to the point that HR will really read your resume, and possibly pass it on to me. Once I get a resume, I assume those skills are present. What I look for are things that are more intangible.
Passion (The love of the art of programming)
Communication skills (The ability to understand and be understood, both written and verbal)
flexibility (If the decision is made to accomplish something that does not agree with your idea of the best way, attack the problem as if you believe it truly is the best way. This does not mean silencing your opinion before a decision is made)
teamwork, cooperation, social skills. I don't want prima donnas
Potential. Hard to judge in a recent grad, but I want people who strive to accomplish more than their current position.
Business Knowledge. Since our software is designed to solve business problems, it is essential that all of our staff understands what a business is.
The graduates that can show these traits are very likely to be hired. Those that don't, won't. Some of these characteristics can be taught in formal courses, others have more to do with personal development and maturity. Specific languages can be taught to the right person very quickly. A solid background in math is also essential (Algebra, Statistics and Calculus) but I have yet to use n-dimensional calculus in non-cartesian space for practical business applications.
I am VP of software development at a software company. I hire a lot of recent graduates (and am always looking for more good talent).
What I look for as a starting point is a solid understanding of how programs work, and enough programming experience that I am not teaching the basics. Experience with both lower level languages (C++) and higher level languages (Java, VB, etc) is required just to get past HR. Also, knowledge of the context (networks, operating systems, databases) is required.
The above just gets you to the point that HR will really read your resume, and possibly pass it on to me. Once I get a resume, I assume those skills are present. What I look for are things that are more intangible.
Passion (The love of the art of programming)
Communication skills (The ability to understand and be understood, both written and verbal)
flexibility (If the decision is made to accomplish something that does not agree with your idea of the best way, attack the problem as if you believe it truly is the best way. This does not mean silencing your opinion before a decision is made)
teamwork, cooperation, social skills. I don't want prima donnas
Potential. Hard to judge in a recent grad, but I want people who strive to accomplish more than their current position.
Business Knowledge. Since our software is designed to solve business problems, it is essential that all of our staff understands what a business is.
The graduates that can show these traits are very likely to be hired. Those that don't, won't. Some of the characteristics can be taught in formal courses, others have more to do with personal development and maturity. The specifics of the software development cycle are less important, as are specific languages. We can teach these things to the right person very quickly.
Computers are processors, and they are and should be in everything. Data centers are places where related data is physically in the same place. I don't want my AR tables on my salesmens blackberries and my ap data on my purchasers desk. I want them both in the same place, with very tight security and tons of backups.
If your microsoft side of the equation is right, then your comparison gets even better. Net income is AFTER Expenses, not just after taxes. So $150,000 less 30% taxes, less $45,000 for living expenses is $60,000. 11.4% of that is $6840. So their fine works out to the equivalent of a $7,000 to a high income earner. Since I am in this income bracket, I know that $7,000 would hurt, but would be preferable to dropping my earinings by 10% or 20%.
FucAllahAndAllHisFollowers would still get past secondary filter. I think the question is more about global censorship as opposed to personal censorship. Rather than preventing the creation of questionable name, could they not have personal ban lists. "Don't show me any mesasges from people with the 7 bad words in their name, nor with baglicker in their name". People who create these tags then just become invisible over time.
Late post, but someone might read it. I have used Ingres extensively since '93 and postges since '98. Both are robust and reliable, however the tools surrounding the Ingres database engine are more mature than those available for postgres. I'm also not aware of 4gl application development tools available for postgres. The report writer that comes with ingres is a bit week, but still good enough, but the 4gl is great. Also, some of the administration tools are powerful and easy to use. ( like the way postgres does some things (data typing, udf's, blobs), and what I would really like to see is some merging of the two products into a much better one.
Prediction 1 - Timing is everything. If unified desktop can be ready 6 months before Longhorn, history will be changed.
Prediction 2 - If Linux gets a significant market share, watch for forks. I do not trust Compaq, HP and Novell. I still remember the 70's and 80's, so IBM isn't completely off the hook yet in my books. Each will do what ever they can (we let them) to make their version incompatable with the others (lock in).
Prediction 3 - If we let #3 happen, then #1 gets reversed.
As usual, I'm a day late, so no one will likely see this.
Copyright is a privaledge. If a company is found to be in an abusive monopoly position, then I think all copyrights and patents held by that company during the period of abuse should be transferred to the commons. This would encourage the competition that they stifled.
I'm no expert, and my idea may be full of crap, but it also might work. I have described it in my journal (no idea how to link it to this note) so if you know something about the protocols, take a peak and let me know what you think.
In a nutshell, it is a method to slow down the delivery of spam to the point that it is no longer profitable.
Back in the early 80's, I was as close as they came to a support desk for PC's at national bank. A few calls I got:
Bank manager calls and is having problems reading a diskette. I ask if he knows how to copy it, and he says yes. I ask for a copy, and 20 minutes later a fax gets delivered to me.
Different bank manager always has problems with diskettes after first use. Many days of troubleshooting by phone, hardware replacements, and of course countless replacement diskettes being shipped out. Finall I fly to the other side of the country to see what is happening. He bought a bunch of large donut magnets specifically to stick diskettes on to his whiteboard so they woud be easy to find when he needed them.
These examples humbled me. These were intellegent people, they just had a different assumption set than I did.
This is a late post, so it is likely no one will read it, but no matter.
The problem is not with spam, nor with laws. The problem is with the SMTP protocol. There is currently no way to track the originator's IP, nor any way set 'content type' flags. If the originator's IP were known to be accurate and preserved, it would be easy(ier) for routers to implement "The first 200 emails in x seconds are fast, then kick down to one email per minute" or "When (threshold) emails from a source is reached, insert 'Bulk Mail' flag if it doen't exist". Mail readers could then be set to accept email from 'my favourite mailing list' but ignore all other 'Bulk Mail'. At this point, spamming becomes non profitable, as most people have it auto-deleted.
This still allows people to send well targetted, unsolicited email in low volumes (Most of my clients appreciated getting an unsolicited email offering my services, because I did the research to find out they were looking for someone like me, but were unaware of me). The typical "spam" will disapear, because the volumes will not be received to make it cost justifiable.
Any laws passed on the current technology will fail because not ALL countries will pass identical laws. A slight tweek to the protocol will allow filter/routers (yes higher layer than just IP routers) and readers to, over time, eliminate the problem.
Putting limits on what can and cannot be shown in a game (movie or book) may be sensorship, but isn't always bad.
If I were to write a game that gorified chid rape, I'm certain the game would be banned and destroyed. If I wrote a research paper describing the thought processes of a chid rapist, and of necesisty, had some graphic descriptions, I don't think anyone would mind. If I produced a movie that had a chid rape as a central plot theme (without glorifying the act), I'm sure the consensus would be mixed.
I know this is about a game of violence (and I have never seen the game), but the same principles apply. It is a trade off between public decency and freedom of speech. Did this game cause these boys to do this act, not likely. Would a game glorifying child rape be a single cause for someone to rape a child, unikely (both possibly true, but not too damned likely). Would an onslaught of games, movies, books etc desensitize people to violence, and cause a general rise in the level of violence, probably, but difficut to prove. This topic touches on a very large issue. Much larger than a simple 'blame the parents' or 'blame the software company'.
As a parent of 2 teens, I know the best of parenting abilities do not always lead to the desired resuts. That does not mean that I can blame society for the wrongs my chidren may commit, I still need to take responsibility for their actions, as I am the gaurdian. At the same time ALL parents need to take responsibility for the actions and EVERYONE needs to be aware of the approtiatness of their behavior. At that point, parents and society would be working hand in hand to produce better children, and at that point silly content laws would not be required, but until then, perhaps they do.
I tell peope to assign a word for each symbol above the numbers. They can write this down (better than writing down the actual passwords). Then come up with a phrase that uses the some of the words selected. (if 1=love, 2=kids, the "I love my kids" would give a password of I!@MyKids.) I use this method to teach people who would otherwise just write their passwords on a sticky. Not recommended for sys-admins.
I once owned such a database. It was a collection of every publically elected official in the nation (from school board trustees up to federal representatives). It took a few years to collect al the information, and since I'm not teribbly good at marketing, I had to close it about 10 years ago.
At the time, I never thought of any of the information in the database as being copyrighted. The format it was presented in certainly was, and I would have been upset if someone with better marketing skills just took my research (and data entry costs) and republished it, but I don't think I would have minded at all if they took exerpts and republished (it is freely availabe information anyway). Don't know if anyone cares, but that is my thoughts.
new features include 'a redesigned Options dialogue, spell checker improvements, enhancements to the default theme and better performance and stability'.
Open Office has a spel checker, gnome has one, firebird has one, why don't they all use the same fabulous one. Less code and more functionality.Just a pasing thought, congratulations to the team.
Just create a script that auto-replies to bot created messages.
This is an automated reply to you automated violation message. You will get a real response from a real person when you have a real person verify the claim and send a real note.
This is very close to my long held belief that we could design games to perform peoples jobs.
Stock brokers log in, they buy and sell items, talk to people to learn their opinions, and try to influence others with what they say. Sounds like an MRPG to me.
Salesmen and purchasing agents to similar things.
There are too many people out there who are bored with their jobs, this might be the way to make it more interesting for them.
For 15 years now, I have hired nothing but 'work at home' programmers, both locally (in Canada) and abroad. Locally is definately easier. I spend 5 to 15 hours per week on the phone with programmers, all of them long distance, but at least in the same country. When I hired abroad, I found I was much more concious of phone costs, and conversations were much briefer. There is also the curency issue. We get paid in our local currency, and I don't like taking the exchange risk. It can quickly take a marginal profit (a project gone bad) to a loss.
I have no problem trying overseas programmers again, but only for very well defined projects, and not where the client requirements are in the slightest bit fluid.
Slashdot Mirror
We have an approach that appears to work for us. We have an EULA, that forbids distributing, then we give our customers the source code and trust them. It appears to be working. We even encourage our customers to modify the code and we will work our updates around their changes as much as we can.
No, but if I threw you through your monitor, we would be through with you.
I thought it represented server density (Closely relate to population and wealth density?)
I too am constantly looking for good programmers. I have tried (and still do hire) students. The problem is that they have not lived enough years to also have other life skills and experiences that are required for a good programmer. In my opinion, a good programmer needs to have enough experience to understand the context that the application will be used in. It's the full understanding of context that allows a good programmer to become an excellent programmer. Only experience can give the context. (Or a multi-disiplanary education which is unlikely)
I am VP of software development at a software company. I hire a lot of recent graduates (and am always looking for more good talent).
What I look for as a starting point is a solid understanding of how programs work, and enough programming experience that I am not teaching the basics. Experience with both lower level languages (C++) and higher level languages (Java, VB, etc) is required just to get past HR. Also, knowledge of the context (networks, operating systems, databases) is required.The above just gets you to the point that HR will really read your resume, and possibly pass it on to me. Once I get a resume, I assume those skills are present. What I look for are things that are more intangible.
The graduates that can show these traits are very likely to be hired. Those that don't, won't. Some of these characteristics can be taught in formal courses, others have more to do with personal development and maturity. Specific languages can be taught to the right person very quickly. A solid background in math is also essential (Algebra, Statistics and Calculus) but I have yet to use n-dimensional calculus in non-cartesian space for practical business applications.
What I look for as a starting point is a solid understanding of how programs work, and enough programming experience that I am not teaching the basics. Experience with both lower level languages (C++) and higher level languages (Java, VB, etc) is required just to get past HR. Also, knowledge of the context (networks, operating systems, databases) is required.
The above just gets you to the point that HR will really read your resume, and possibly pass it on to me. Once I get a resume, I assume those skills are present. What I look for are things that are more intangible.
The graduates that can show these traits are very likely to be hired. Those that don't, won't. Some of the characteristics can be taught in formal courses, others have more to do with personal development and maturity. The specifics of the software development cycle are less important, as are specific languages. We can teach these things to the right person very quickly.
Computers are processors, and they are and should be in everything. Data centers are places where related data is physically in the same place. I don't want my AR tables on my salesmens blackberries and my ap data on my purchasers desk. I want them both in the same place, with very tight security and tons of backups.
If your microsoft side of the equation is right, then your comparison gets even better. Net income is AFTER Expenses, not just after taxes. So $150,000 less 30% taxes, less $45,000 for living expenses is $60,000. 11.4% of that is $6840. So their fine works out to the equivalent of a $7,000 to a high income earner. Since I am in this income bracket, I know that $7,000 would hurt, but would be preferable to dropping my earinings by 10% or 20%.
FucAllahAndAllHisFollowers would still get past secondary filter. I think the question is more about global censorship as opposed to personal censorship. Rather than preventing the creation of questionable name, could they not have personal ban lists. "Don't show me any mesasges from people with the 7 bad words in their name, nor with baglicker in their name". People who create these tags then just become invisible over time.
I see future clients being configurable for handling unauthenticated email:
1) Reject,
2) Display a visual flag or warning that email may not be trustworthy.
3) Continue as normal
Late post, but someone might read it. I have used Ingres extensively since '93 and postges since '98. Both are robust and reliable, however the tools surrounding the Ingres database engine are more mature than those available for postgres. I'm also not aware of 4gl application development tools available for postgres. The report writer that comes with ingres is a bit week, but still good enough, but the 4gl is great. Also, some of the administration tools are powerful and easy to use. ( like the way postgres does some things (data typing, udf's, blobs), and what I would really like to see is some merging of the two products into a much better one.
Prediction 2 - If Linux gets a significant market share, watch for forks. I do not trust Compaq, HP and Novell. I still remember the 70's and 80's, so IBM isn't completely off the hook yet in my books. Each will do what ever they can (we let them) to make their version incompatable with the others (lock in).
Prediction 3 - If we let #3 happen, then #1 gets reversed.
Copyright is a privaledge. If a company is found to be in an abusive monopoly position, then I think all copyrights and patents held by that company during the period of abuse should be transferred to the commons. This would encourage the competition that they stifled.
I have had this idea floating around for some time now. Anyone seriously interested is invited to look at my journal
Try putting VOIP on a different internal subnet. No computers on that subnet, just VOIP devices.
In a nutshell, it is a method to slow down the delivery of spam to the point that it is no longer profitable.
Back in the early 80's, I was as close as they came to a support desk for PC's at national bank. A few calls I got:
Bank manager calls and is having problems reading a diskette. I ask if he knows how to copy it, and he says yes. I ask for a copy, and 20 minutes later a fax gets delivered to me.
Different bank manager always has problems with diskettes after first use. Many days of troubleshooting by phone, hardware replacements, and of course countless replacement diskettes being shipped out. Finall I fly to the other side of the country to see what is happening. He bought a bunch of large donut magnets specifically to stick diskettes on to his whiteboard so they woud be easy to find when he needed them.
These examples humbled me. These were intellegent people, they just had a different assumption set than I did.
The problem is not with spam, nor with laws. The problem is with the SMTP protocol. There is currently no way to track the originator's IP, nor any way set 'content type' flags. If the originator's IP were known to be accurate and preserved, it would be easy(ier) for routers to implement "The first 200 emails in x seconds are fast, then kick down to one email per minute" or "When (threshold) emails from a source is reached, insert 'Bulk Mail' flag if it doen't exist". Mail readers could then be set to accept email from 'my favourite mailing list' but ignore all other 'Bulk Mail'. At this point, spamming becomes non profitable, as most people have it auto-deleted.
This still allows people to send well targetted, unsolicited email in low volumes (Most of my clients appreciated getting an unsolicited email offering my services, because I did the research to find out they were looking for someone like me, but were unaware of me). The typical "spam" will disapear, because the volumes will not be received to make it cost justifiable.
Any laws passed on the current technology will fail because not ALL countries will pass identical laws. A slight tweek to the protocol will allow filter/routers (yes higher layer than just IP routers) and readers to, over time, eliminate the problem.
If I were to write a game that gorified chid rape, I'm certain the game would be banned and destroyed. If I wrote a research paper describing the thought processes of a chid rapist, and of necesisty, had some graphic descriptions, I don't think anyone would mind. If I produced a movie that had a chid rape as a central plot theme (without glorifying the act), I'm sure the consensus would be mixed.
I know this is about a game of violence (and I have never seen the game), but the same principles apply. It is a trade off between public decency and freedom of speech. Did this game cause these boys to do this act, not likely. Would a game glorifying child rape be a single cause for someone to rape a child, unikely (both possibly true, but not too damned likely). Would an onslaught of games, movies, books etc desensitize people to violence, and cause a general rise in the level of violence, probably, but difficut to prove. This topic touches on a very large issue. Much larger than a simple 'blame the parents' or 'blame the software company'.
As a parent of 2 teens, I know the best of parenting abilities do not always lead to the desired resuts. That does not mean that I can blame society for the wrongs my chidren may commit, I still need to take responsibility for their actions, as I am the gaurdian. At the same time ALL parents need to take responsibility for the actions and EVERYONE needs to be aware of the approtiatness of their behavior. At that point, parents and society would be working hand in hand to produce better children, and at that point silly content laws would not be required, but until then, perhaps they do.
I rambled, sorry.
I tell peope to assign a word for each symbol above the numbers. They can write this down (better than writing down the actual passwords). Then come up with a phrase that uses the some of the words selected. (if 1=love, 2=kids, the "I love my kids" would give a password of I!@MyKids.) I use this method to teach people who would otherwise just write their passwords on a sticky. Not recommended for sys-admins.
At the time, I never thought of any of the information in the database as being copyrighted. The format it was presented in certainly was, and I would have been upset if someone with better marketing skills just took my research (and data entry costs) and republished it, but I don't think I would have minded at all if they took exerpts and republished (it is freely availabe information anyway). Don't know if anyone cares, but that is my thoughts.
Open Office has a spel checker, gnome has one, firebird has one, why don't they all use the same fabulous one. Less code and more functionality.Just a pasing thought, congratulations to the team.
This is an automated reply to you automated violation message. You will get a real response from a real person when you have a real person verify the claim and send a real note.
Stock brokers log in, they buy and sell items, talk to people to learn their opinions, and try to influence others with what they say. Sounds like an MRPG to me.
Salesmen and purchasing agents to similar things.
There are too many people out there who are bored with their jobs, this might be the way to make it more interesting for them.
Just my $0.02 worth.
I have no problem trying overseas programmers again, but only for very well defined projects, and not where the client requirements are in the slightest bit fluid.