| last updated:23 Dec 2003 12:22 UK time |
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| JOS Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 21 Dec 2003) | View Other Weeks |
| Look! links to photos of my new baby | Sun 21 Dec | Philo |
| Oh come on now - it had to be done, he was asking for it! (near the end of the Bold Topics thread) [humbly bows head for editors axe] Philo |
| Sun 21 Dec | Philo | Oh wait! I can even make this on-topic! http://www.coolcasemods.com/customer/home.php Ha! Philo |
| Sun 21 Dec | www.marktaw.com | he was asking for it! -> she |
| kinds of sw development not likely 2 be outsourced | Sun 21 Dec | Mr. Jiggy Fly |
| What kinds of software development are not likely to be outsourced? |
| Sun 21 Dec | T. Norman | All software can be outsourced. However, probably less than 20% can be outsourced successfully and profitably. |
| Sun 21 Dec | FullNameRequired | 'probably less than 20% can be outsourced successfully and profitably.' I disagree, I believe the correect figure is 35.7% |
| Sun 21 Dec | Evgeny Gesin /Javadesk.com/ | May be 36.6, as the temperature of healthy boss. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Mr. Jiggy Fly | I appreciate the responses, but I'm not looking for a percentage of development not likely to be outsourced, but what kinds aren't likely to be outsourced. Like development done for the Dept. of Defense. |
| Sun 21 Dec | uncronopio | As you pointed out, work done for the Department of Defense. All the rest is fair game. Some people believe that whatever is part of the core activities of a company won't be outsourced. I think that what is considered 'core' keeps changing and evolving, so that won't necessary hold in the future. If you are considering a career path in something that won't be outsourced, forget it. Just do what you love and become pretty good at it, so you develop competitive advantages against outsourcing. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Philo | Actually, any healthcare CIO with half a brain won't outsource his IT, since HIPAA imposes personal criminal liability for violation of patient privacy. It's not an issue of trust, it's an issue of 'who can I touch with a lawsuit' For that matter, a wise CIO wouldn't outsource to anyone he can't meet personally and verify their identity and credentials. Philo |
| Sun 21 Dec | T. Norman | A better question might be "what are the kinds of software that will be least outsourced", because fad-chasing CIOs will try to outsource everything except themselves. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Frederic Faure | Besides, as 'In search of stupidity' shows, CEO's can make huge mistakes too :-) Generally speaking, I guess it's counter-productive to outsource - any software development that requires intimate knowledge of a country's legal climate where this software is sold (ie. how much do business software developers in Ukraine know about the Canadian tax system?) - software whose development, for some reason, cannot be entirely moved off-shore, and hence, requires communications with developers over here. Microsoft originally tried geographically-dispersed development, but moved everyone back to Redmond because communication is just too damn hard when developers don't have an easy way to work face to face - as said by others above, software or data that are just too sensitive, like medical or police records |
| Sun 21 Dec | no name | Maybe anything government related, anything that requires physical presence in the US. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Walter Rumsby | Re: government stuff - New York (not sure if it's city or state) fines for things like parking and litter violations are processed in an office in Africa. What's to say that a Ukranian developer working on software that requires intimate knowledge of Canadian tax law knows less about Canadian tax law than a Canadian developer? I'm sure it would be possible to find someone knowledgeable about Canadian tax law to sit with the developers in the Ukraine for an overall lower cost than employing n Canadian developers (hell, there is probably some tax loophole said knowledge holder might be able to exploit by being in the Ukraine :)). I think the least likely thing to be offshored (**not outsourced**) is software solutions for small businesses. Offshoring is something large businesses can pull off, but I have a feeling that there is too much overhead for companies with less than (say) 10 staff to handle. That means: websites, Access + Excel solutions, customer database apps, etc. |
| Sun 21 Dec | T. Norman | Among the 'least likely to be offshored' I would say game development. Games don't lend themselves to the 'here's the specs, develop this for me' model. The developers have to know and do things straight through from top to bottom for it be successful. They also require lots of creativity. With nearly all games, either all the developers and designers are located inside the US, or the whole company is located outside the US. Games also don't use large numbers of developers, they use a small number of expert individuals. With small development teams the overheads of offshoring become too large compared to the benefits. The art, music, and testing of it may be offshored, since a lot of it is already outsourced to specialist companies. But not the programming aspect of it. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Don't outsource city jobs, silly. | Ah, don't forget 'anything that might cause a political backlash' For example: 'Re: government stuff - New York (not sure if it's city or state) fines for things like parking and litter violations are processed in an office in Africa.' Paints a target on the forehead of the current Mayor of NYC - this is a nice juicy plum during the next election... |
| Sun 21 Dec | www.marktaw.com | Okay: a) Stuff with a stiff penalty for getting it wrong. b) Stuff where the development is closely integrated with the creative aspects of the software, such as video games. Though, I would argue that the thing that makes software outsourcing strange is that unlike manufacturing, it's not really a repeatable process - design and manufacturer are one and the same. Therefore, it's really just more of the same if they outsource something like video game manufacture. Let's say Game Makers Inc. make the engine, why not outsource the sequal, while your core team goes on to make the next version of the engine for another platform, or why not outsource the porting to another platform, while your core guys work on the sequal. I think once Company X gets a good enough reputation, they'll outsource anything to them. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Clay Dowling | Any project that requires a high degree of interaction with the end user. The project I'm working on now is, at least in theory, using a programmer on the other side of the country who works dirt cheap. The problem: there's a day or more lag to communicate with him. Since he was at one time the lead programmer on this project and knows the details better than anyone else, this is a little inconvenient. This communications gap has doubled the cost of developing the software so far, and may do a lot more damage before it's all done. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Walter Rumsby | T. Norman, EA have a development office in Australia. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Walter Rumsby | Also, Vaguely related to the whole 'creative' thing - how many movies are being made in New Zealand and Australia these days: - The Matrix trilogy (I missed Keanu Reeves by leaving a Sydney bar five minutes or so early) - The Star Wars trilogy - The Lord of the Rings trilogy i.e. Nine of the biggest earning films of the last four years. And these are by no means the only 'Hollywood' films being made there. This is great for NZ and Australia, but obviously some people in the US have probably missed out on work they could have had on these productions. This process repeats itself within a country: Adelaide gets film production from Sydney because it is cheaper to work there, the government is more accomodating. Same thing with call centers, they move from Sydney to Adelaide. The whole budget airline arrangement (at least in Europe) is based around small towns/cities bending over backwards to get the business of the budget airlines because of the flow on benefit to their economies. I can't really process any judgement on this right now but I do think will become more common over the next few years and I do anticipate some kind of backlash against it to (or perhaps a 'wider'/'noisier' backlash). |
| Sun 21 Dec | Me | Walter, I presume you present the EA office in support of offshoring, but it's not really. The complaints about offshoring are not about normal competition between countries, but about the dramatic undermining by India and other low wage countries. Australia is not a low wage country in that sense. In any case, if you mention the EA office to refute T Norman's claim that programming can't be offshored on its own, your reference is wrong. The EA office in Australia does complete titles, not just 'programming.' The reference to the movie industry highlights how other industries handle these things. The Screen Actors Guild forced movie studios to a balanced approach where they didn't just hire cheaper Australian film crew. They worked it out in conjunction with Australian film unions. |
| Master Pages in .NET make CityDesk obsolete? | Sun 21 Dec | true or false |
| http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/12/15/masterpages.html |
| Sun 21 Dec | Greg Hurlman | Nope, wrong target audience. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Michael Koziarski | Tiles and struts haven't made CityDesk obsolete, why would this? |
| Acceptable ways of displaying help | Sun 21 Dec | Big Donny |
| Is including a "Help Web" in your application an acceptable way to include help? Of course you would provide a browsing window within the application. I think this might be easier to maintain than a help file. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Joel Spolsky | Why easier? The Microsoft Help format *is* just a web, with a file for the table of contents. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Brad Wilson | Well, for starters, the documentation can improve over time w/o having to download anything. I think the primary question you have to ask before going down that path is: is your typical user always connected, and comfortable using a browser for help? |
| Sun 21 Dec | Matthew Lock | I find it annoying when an application launches a browser for its help window. On most computers there is still a bit of delay in spawning a new browser window. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Big Donny | I would incorporate my own "browser window" into the application using the webbrowser control. |
| Baffling Problem !! | Sun 21 Dec | Reaver |
| Well folks... i cant find a way to make a normal porxy server sending internet into a direct connection.. ISA client make the ISA server sending internet into a direct connection and all the softwares and applications can run on a direct connection...so is there any software that can make a proxy server into a direct connction and i can run applications on direct connection...? Your help in this regard will be appreciated.. Thank You...!! |
| Sun 21 Dec | FullNameRequired | wtf? |
| Sun 21 Dec | AndrewR | ISA clients are pretty old fashioned - you should really upgrade to PCI :) Seriously, though - Google for 'HTTP Tunnelling' |
| Outsourcing - making it work | Sun 21 Dec | Searching for Success |
| My company is ramping up for a project which will involve internal developers (including myself), local-but-offsite developers, and offshore developers. This is our first time working in such a distributed fashion. Naturally, the project schedule is too short and were looking for ways to mitigate the risks of failure. Here are some of the practices weve set up to (hopefully) do so in terms of improving the efficacy of the team: - Iterative development. Each development iteration will be two weeks. A customer delivery iteration is planned for the two, four and six-month marks, the first one being a dry run to prepare for the real deliveries. - An email equivalent to the daily stand-up meeting, where each developer sends an email detailing what he did today, what hes planning to do tomorrow, and what his roadblocks are. - Code reviews. All code is reviewed by a senior developer against a best practices guideline to catch both common design errors and faulty coding practices. Id like comments/feedback on these practices as well as your experiences on practices that have helped your own team when working with offshore/off-site developers. Lessons learned experiences are also appreciated. Thanks in advance. |
| Sun 21 Dec | tapiwa | Unless you have a specific business reason for not doing so, I suggest archiving said emails where they can be accessed by ALL involved in the project. Many eyes and all that. Someone in another part of the org might be able to solve the problems, or just make them go away. |
| Sun 21 Dec | T. Norman | Based on that geographic distribution, and the realization already that the schedule is too short, you're doomed. Unless the requirements are set in stone because you're doing something like converting an existing system into a new language to make it do EXACTLY the same thing as it was doing before, or you are writing drivers for hardware that is already built. Otherwise, if your job depends on the success of this project, start looking for another one now. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Evgeny Gesin /Javadesk.com/ | Create UML and generate classes and interfaces. Your off-site developers should fill in logic in all these methods/templates. This will also help to better do code review. Consider to use chat/whiteboard to talk to remote workers and quickly solve technical problems, if occur (it is also more cheaper than phone calls). |
| Sun 21 Dec | James Wann | I'm curious - is this a point and click database app? Or is it backend processing? Device Drivers? -james |
| Sun 21 Dec | Brad Wilson | A good choice for archiving those e-mails is a password protected Wiki. The team lead takes the e-mails, and quickly puts them up onto a new page for every day. Might take a couple hours to set up, and then a few minutes every day for the cut & paste. Anything heavier weight will probably fall into disuse. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Joel Spolsky | Or cc a copy of the emails to your FogBUGZ database. Then it's sorted, searchable, web visible, and no manual cut and paste required. |
| Sun 21 Dec | no name | You said it yourself - the project schedule is too short. If someone tries to load to much cargo into an aeroplane, do you know what the captain of the aircraft does? He refuses to fly it. |
| Sun 21 Dec | T. Norman | And when he doesn't refuse, tragedies like Aaliyah's crash happen. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Clay Dowling | I've done something similar, with some success. First, online chat is mandatory. Cancel the project now if you can't arrange to have all developers have access to it at all times. Also, everybody needs to work in the same time zone, even if they aren't physically in the same time zone. Otherwise you'll have tremendous lag. Second, you will still need face to face meetings from time to time. That's because the impersonal nature of electronic communication is going to cause problems. The fellow you think is a first class rectum via e-mail and phone will often turn out to be a really swell guy in person, who you can work with smoothly. |
| Outsourcing -But not the usual stuff | Sun 21 Dec | India |
| So, i read in the newspaper that Britian will lose a few more thousand software jobs to India. My sympathies to those in Britian and congats to those in India. The way many Indians see it, America and Britian are the ones who have promoted free trade ,globalization etc. Now, i understand the pain of an American or a British bloke losing their job. But both nations can hardly complain when its fruits turn bitter. Take Britian for example, For centuries, it looted India dry since it was an occupying power. Most of Indian manufacturing/trade was subverted for Britians needs. Add to this, the human cost. Massacres were pretty routine. In one instance, a group of British soldiers fired upon innocent Indians in Amritsar slaughtering hundreds. Mind you, all this was only to promote Britian and increase her wealth. I am not trying to get into a rant here against colonialism. But i want to point out that western nations (Britian especially) had (until 1950-1960) long assumed that the wealth of other nations (India, Pakistan, Africa,Middle East etc.) was meant for **their** upliftment. Now when British and American wealth ( a little bit atleast), goes to other nations in form of jobs, we think its only fair and would do a lot to uplift our country (and hopefully several other poor ones). If i had graduated 10 years before i actually did(1997), i would have been earning 50 dollars a month. Yes, 50 bucks a month. But thanks to globalization, i can earn 1000 dollars a month in India . Past desperation of India as a whole is slowly, but surely turning into some kind of cautious optimism. In fact does anyone here know why India is popular?. Its because Britian had introduced English at the expense of local languages. This is the reason why India is preferred more than China when it comes to software. In fact how many Europeans today think of or acknowledge the human cost of subverting another nations economy?. Prince Philips, on a visit to India even tried to play down the afore mentioned massacre. In Britian, you can see treasures looted from India as some kind of trophies.! So God forbid, if you lose a job to some Indian, please do know you have our sympathies. But we just want to remind that Asia and the middle east had paid a terrible human price for several hundred years at the hands of the west . As George Monbiot (on whose article this post is based on) commented in the Guardian, for centuries people in the West did not know how much their lifestyle depended on depriving other nations. Lastly i hope this post does not get censored! |
| Sun 21 Dec | George's older brother | Business, the media and politicians in America, the UK and Australia are not complaining about offshoring at all. Most of them love it. Last century they raped India and their working classes. This century they're still doing it to their working classes. Lots of journalists and business people think it's a scream that programmers are out of work. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | Monbiot's article was fairly inaccurate. The Amritsar massacre was a mistake; that doesn't excuse the attempts at a cover up but it was not exactly part of a great Machiavellian plan. English is strong in India because the South has always refused to accept the hegemony of Hindi. After all Hindi is no more related to Tamil than English is. The education system in India, which puts the emphasis on training the elite is another reason. And the Chinese education system deliberately discourages people from thinking. As far as the manufacture of computer hardware goes China more or less takes all. Most of the call centre jobs going to India will disappear in the next few years as companies realize they can't make money off premium call charges and people start using the internet instead of trying to explain their problems to somebody a few thousand miles away who can't distinguish Thai airways from Qatar airways. Indians who have made call centres a 'career' will be high and dry, though possibly they could retrain as waiters. The idea that software will lift the Indian economy is a joke. The figures involved are just ludicrously small. India's problems of chronic corruption, inefficiency, a ruling class formed of or controlled by armed goondas and fascist hoodlums, and the idea that the best way to make money is to cheat the other guy are not going to be solved by a couple of contracts to Infosys. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | ---'middle east had paid a terrible human price for several hundred years at the hands of the west '------ Eighty-six actually for the parts of the Middle East taken over by the British or French. Still why should wannabee Indian software developers bother about such little things as numerical accuracy. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | Dear the truth, Nice to know that Europeans still can beat the pants of Indians when it comes to producing loud mouthed ignorant bigotry. To suggest that Britain was saving the Indians from the savagery of its own local government is a joke. The early British rulers were there like all others to plunder. One of them, Warren Hastings, even got impeached for it, though his real crime doesn't appear to have been plundering the Indians, but rather not handing the plunder over to his British bosses. Blowing people out of cannons, as happened after the Mutiny, isn't exactly temperate civilized behaviour. As for teaching the Indians to work, that must be the biggest joke of all. Who the hell do you think build all the infrastructure of the British Empire (or was responsible for the armed repression in the Middle East) if it wasn't Indian labourers (or troops in the second case). At the moment it's not the Indians who are whining anyway; it's the Americans who don't like globalization and free trade when it affects them adversely. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Dennis Atkins | When did America rape India? I must have missed that part of history lesson. I do recall America being at war with the British though. And more recently attacked without provocation by the dirty Japanese! Rotten stinkers! That's less ancient history than what you are talking about and regarding the US 'raping' india, I think you made that all up! |
| Sun 21 Dec | Dennis Atkins | > t's the Americans who don't like globalization and free trade when it affects them adversely. Are you suggesting that we are supposed to like things that affect us adversely? How about you, do you like things that affect you adversely? |
| Sun 21 Dec | Dennis Atkins | You know I can't evven get any shoes anymore that don't fall apart after six months. I even went to Nordstrums and bought some nice italian shoes for a premium and they fell apart just like the cheap crap from indonesia does! Bring back the cobblers! I want some decent shoes! |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | Dear Dennis, He didn't mention America raping India; you're letting your fantasies run away with you! Try dating :) Anyway Americans aren't up the spout as much as the Brits. Not only do they lose their softwre jobs to India but the Sri Lankans have just hammered them at cricket. Sic transit gloria mundi |
| Sun 21 Dec | Dennis Atkins | 'Business, the media and politicians in America, the UK and Australia are not complaining about offshoring at all. Most of them love it. Last century they raped India and their working classes.' As far as Australia raping India, I don't know but that I am skeptical of as well. |
| Sun 21 Dec | George's older brother | Sorry. You're right. I didn't so much mean to include America and Australia, as to say that business and politicians raped India and their own working classes in Britain. |
| Sun 21 Dec | George's older brother | Also, India, the shooting at Amritsar followed a rape of an English woman, occurred in heated times when the British had good reason to fear violent rebellion and was a reaction to a large gathering that had been specifically banned. That's not to excuse it, but it wasn't as simple as you make out. Also, Stephen Jones, the business with the cannons followed some of the most appalling bloodthirsty massacres of British mothers and children. Again, not to excuse it, but it occurred in an atmosphere where people were shocked and horrified at atrocities committed by Indians. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Chris McEvoy | If anyone is interested in finding out more about British/Indian history, then I would recommend 'The Indian Mutiny 1857' by Saul David. 'The author is strong in revealing the rotten core of British India with its religious, racist and class divisions, encouraged by the colonial power in a divide-and-rule tactic. According to this account, the British came close to losing the so-called jewel in the crown a century before independence in 1947. Only luck and cutthroat countermeasures appear to have bought breathing space for the crown. Saul David makes a compelling case for the theory that the mutiny was a fairly well organised general uprising, rather than something sparked by a local row over the use of cartridges coated with fat from cows (sacred to Hindus) and pigs (anathema to Muslims). The reader is left wondering, however, about the author's slant on the mutiny, which he seems keen to blame on the poor wages and conditions of native troops. The implication that loyalty to the crown could have been bought by a pay rise, and by extension that the uprising had nothing to do with India's march towards nationhood, is hard to accept. The Victorians may have tried to make Nana Sahib and other rebel leaders look like common criminals (the same propaganda tactics were, after all, used throughout the empire) but, of course, they remain heroes in modern India. In the wake of the rebellion, London imposed direct rule and ensured that British troops would never be outnumbered more than two to one by armed Indians in traditional troublespots. Queen Victoria also abolished the East India Company whose 'corrupt' directors had over the years 'returned home with enormous fortunes.' |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | Dear George's older brother, So next time there is a rape in San Diego you reckon it's understandable if the National Guard fire on a few hundred innocent unarmed civilians. The British atrocities after the Mutiny were in reaction to the atrocities committed by the mutineers though of course, as is normal when the victor takes revenge, they were disproportionate and not admininstered to those responsible for the original atrocities. However it was 'the Truth' who claimed that the British took over India because of barberous Indian rule. It seems reasonable to point out that British rule could hardly be qualified as always civilized and beneficient. |
| Sun 21 Dec | George's older brother | There are several interpretations of British rule in India. It's It persisted for nearly two centuries without harsh rule, so can't have been entirely without merit. The British were also keen to create an Indian public service and they used Indian soldiers. As to the cause of the mutiny, there seem good grounds that declining relative pay was a factor, combined with declining quality of British officers since the early 1800's. The earlier officers were more attuned to Indian cultural practices. Nana Sahib was the most gruesome war criminal of all time. Do you know what he did? If you don't, you've been reading politically correct accounts. Note by the way that modern Indian political parties have tried to recast those old events. I certainly don't advocate the National Guard firing on crowds, but they were different times. When the Mutiny started, the British had been tolerant and failed to take any action. That led to the dreadful massacres by Indians. When Amritsar came up, there was a sense that the British would not just stand idly by yet again and let their wives and children be murdered. |
| Sun 21 Dec | A_bystander | There is no such thing as a war crime when fighting against a foreign occupier. Frankly speaking, I wouldn't have a problem with it if every single British citizen in India was executed by the resistance. |
| Sun 21 Dec | A_bystander | George's older brother is the classic British India apologist. In the same post he calls Nana Sahib a 'war criminal' while excusing British massacres. Guess what? If the British didn't like being killed for invading and occupying foreign lands, they should feel free to stay home. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Programmus Interruptus | Ok folks, so Indian Programmers are adequate in production but cheaper. Thus, their productivity is higher. There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe I should subcontract 4 indian programmers to do 2-4x the work I do at work. I could stay home delegating and making a nice profit. What's wrong with that? This is Globalization. The smart ones use the new opportunities and go ahead making a fortune. Like it's always been. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | I think it may be time to get back to the point. It was 'the Truth''s pretense that British rule was a godsend to India that got us off the point. Frankly I believe that the most accurate obituary for British rule in India would be 'Well, we didn't do too much', and it is a better record than many occupying countries have had. The original poster is referring to a real phenomenum though. British rule in India saw the destruction of much of the village economy. Whereas previously clothes would be made at the village level, often using hand weaving, under British rule the raw cloth was exported to Lancashire, where the textile mills would convert it to cloth and reship it to India. The same thing happened to a lesser extent with traditional village handicrafts. The effect of this on the village economies, and on social stabiltiy was devastating. And of course much of the prosperity of England was a direct result of this. When Ghandi organized a boycott of British textiles in the 1920's and 1930's the Lancashire weavers found themselves facing hunger and massive unemployment. Of course, what we are really seeing here is technological 'progress', which provided no advantage to the many poor it displaced, but the procedure was irreversible. Textiles in India are still produced in giant factories, though most of them now are Indian, and the handwoven kurta that Gandhi hoped would be the national dress of the new India is now worn only by politicians, and anybody wearing one in a Bollywood movie is immediately identified as one of the villains. The original posters point, copied from Monbiot, is that the present outsourcing to India is merely a pale reflection of the massive outsourcing of the whole textile and crafts industry of India to England during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Whether the point was worth making is a different matter. Dennis's seemingly off topic comments amount shoes actually fit in well with the theme. Because there is a simple solution open to him; do what I do and always buy American shoes. For the last seven or eight years I have always bought Sebagos, docksiders for casual wear, and normal slip ones for wearing with suit or jacket and tie. The normal Sebago shoes have the sole sewn on to the upper (if you get them glued on you can guarantee the shoe will fall apart quickly) and can easily be resoled and reheeled three or four times at the local cobblers. Now the point is that I am not American, am not living in America and have indeed never been within 5,000 km of the place, but buy American shoes because I have found that in Saudi or the UK they are the shoes that are the longest lasting. My dress shirts I always buy from India for the same reason. This is called free trade, and the same free trade that means that I help provide jobs for American shoe makers (and jean makers until Levis pulled out of the States), also means that Americans can help provide jobs for Indian software developers. But what really gets me is the 'We're hard done by ' attitude whenever the question of outsourcing comes up. Software developers, and before them electronic engineers, have spent their whole careers developing products to put others out of work. But since it was good for them they never complained, and felt superior to all the losers whose jobs they were automating. And now it happens to them they expect sympathy. They've had years writing software for use in Japan and Russia and Romania and not a peep from them about how those countries should be doing their own development instead of outsourcing to the States. This forum needs an Indian Bella (Belladin anybody?) to really rub their noses in it, because the only thing that is even more pathetic is hearing how they're losing all their jobs to Open Source. |
| Sun 21 Dec | NathanJ | -- Eighty-six actually for the parts of the Middle East taken over by the British or French. Still why should wannabee Indian software developers bother about such little things as numerical accuracy. -- Ever hear of the crusades? If I recall correctly those happened more than 86 years ago. The west has been kicking other parts of the world around for a long time. All of the apologists on here trying to deny these atrocities based on minor nitpicks are really sad. Whether past wrongs justify current job shifts to India is another story. I'm not sure on that one. If Indian professionals provide a better solution I don't see a problem (although it is annoying from my view as a US developer). |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | Ahh, but the crusades all happened before the siege of Vienna. You see it's all the fault of these Asians messing up and colonizing us poor Europeans. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Indian Developer in India | 'Indian', as a rallying cry was, to be truly honest, an unavoidabe consequene of the mis-management of the 'Raj' by the British. They just took the idea of 'Divide and Rule' too far. Colonization is always easier and more viable bottoms-up, like the US of A or Australia, success stories of colonization, than 'integration' and/or 'conversion', like Africa and/or India/Asia. India was always doomed to be un-Anglican, as expressed by Lord Mountbatten in many ways, unavailability of ready quotes notwithstanding and that too not merely beacuse of the sheer geographic size and the huge differences in approaches and philosophy, but the huge accumulated history (close to 10,000 years of _recorded_ history) of the lands. Indian economy and administration, insofar as 'India' is concerned, owes a lot to ther British legacy. As long as that 'cohesive unit' was the only face put forward (Kashmir se lekar Kanyakumari tak, ham ek hai) to the outside world, the world could easily deal with us. But when a break up of the one large monolith with one unifying ideal of 'Indianess' (as exemplified by the numerous stereotyping of *all* South Asians in the 70s and 80s) was replaced by individual, differential and sometimes contradictory facets of the many peoples of India (yes that _has_ to be with an 's'), the other large 'cohesive units' become uncomfortable dealing with us. Outsourcing that was envisaged as a function of economics becomes, now, a function of history and/or national identity. Only way past it is the two extremes of social governance. One single large society (One World) or the controlled anarchy of many small, independent and coherent social associations (such as Renaissance Italy or Ancient India). |
| Sun 21 Dec | T. Norman | 'Maybe I should subcontract 4 indian programmers to do 2-4x the work I do at work. I could stay home delegating and making a nice profit. What's wrong with that?' Ha, Ha, ha! If you think offshoring is so simple, try it. The reality is quite different. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Philo | You know, my wife and I get into discussions about our kids. When a daughter exhibits some random behavior that needs modification, my wife frets about 'what did we do to cause this?' My answer? 'It doesn't matter how we got here - that doesn't affect the problem. Where are we now, where do we need to go, and how do we get there?' The people who plundered India are dead or in nursing homes. IMHO the most productive way to deal with the issue is to look at today's playing field, look at where we want to go, and figure out how to get there. I know, I'm dreaming - people need to grind their axes and feel righteous indignation over things that happened generations ago. But I can hope, can't I? Philo |
| Sun 21 Dec | Trolling is a form of fishing | We need to establish international contracts to raise the minimum wages in countries like India and Mexico thus forcing the work back to it's rightful owners. |
| Sun 21 Dec | tim | The one common misconception about all of this seems to be that nationality matters at all. Corporations do not see themselves as American, British, or whatever as much as they see themselves as their own nation. They will continue to try to exploit disparities between production and the markets they server until the cycle collapses and reestablishes itself at a new lower level world wide. We can all attack each other like a bunch of ethnic gangs, but the corporations see us all the same, so if someday Finland becomes the hot IT spot, they'll drop India like a bad habit and move their facilites there. And no, I am not a communist, and someday I expect that I will have to reinvent myself if I want my career in software to continue. If you wish to play the Man's game, you have to play by his rules. Or become The Man yourself, and make your own rules. But you may still have to play with him if you want to make big $$$. |
| Sun 21 Dec | George's older brother | Nana Sahib talked the British garrison at Cawnpore into surrendering and then killed 1,500 or so soldiers, women and children in cold blood once they had surrendered. This occurred at the river. About 200 women and children survived that first massacre and were kept in a house for two weeks. Then Nana Sahib sent the town's butchers in to slaughter them too, in the same way they slaughter a pen of goats. A few tiny children were still alive next day and were thrown into a well. Nana Sahib's entourage had dancing and celebrations that night. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Philo | So your point is that people can be evil? Not really anything new, is it? You'd be hard pressed to find a nation that hasn't had atrocities committed by its citizens. Now seeing as how nobody responsible for Cawnpore is alive, how about discussing current events and how we can deal with situations that need resolving today? Philo |
| Sun 21 Dec | uncronopio | 'We need to establish international contracts to raise the minimum wages in countries like India and Mexico thus forcing the work back to it's rightful owners.' And who are the rightful owners? Why should I buy software made in the US if I live in Australia or any other part of the world? Are you willing to pay more for products made in the US? How many of you buy stuff only when is made in the US and support what you say with your wallet? Whinging programmers are turning outsourcing and open source discussions in a pathetically long complaint. Coming back to the original post, I think the point India was making is that the current level of development of 'first world' countries was, at least in part, supported by the extraction of natural resources and destruction of the local economies of 'third world' countries. Thus, 'first world' countries are suffering a similar fate now. Fair enough, but we do not need that explanation to understand that economic forces are moving jobs to cheaper places. Today is India and when India becomes expensive it will be to somewhere else. End of story. |
| Sun 21 Dec | A_bystander | 'Nana Sahib's entourage had dancing and celebrations that night. ' Again, I'd just point out that none of that would have happened if the British had stayed home. I don't have any sympathy for a foreign occupying army being executed by the local resistance. None at all. |
| Sun 21 Dec | George Bush | destruction of the local economies of 'third world' countries Listen, when britain came into india most of indua didn't have a local economy to destroy, the sitiation was similiar to modern day somalia |
| Sun 21 Dec | Gorge Bush | In fact if you think about it, the concept of india didn't really exist, before you go on ignorant tirades on how the british ruined your preindustrial paradise, why don't you take a minute and think aboutall the things england did give you, including knowledge of the english language so you can steal our jobs. Lets see, there is medicine, agricultural techniques, you first orderly system of government in 2000+ years |
| Sun 21 Dec | George's older brother | Philo, I was replying to Chris McEvoy who for some reason tried to defend Nana Sahib. Bystander, the 800 young women and defenceless young children at Cawnpore, and the others at other stations in the north of India, were part of no army. They posed no threat to anyone. |
| Sun 21 Dec | India | I was the original poster. Philo, I was not trying to start a flame. I was not crying victimhood or pointing out to atrocities generations ago, but was simply stating that the present software trend is a direct consequence of british colonial practices as well as the general trend of corporations not giving a damn to people and only to money. It was money that made British companies go to India and it is money that makes them ditch british laborers. As for American raping India, when the f*** did i say that? As for the historical accuracy of my quote on the middle east, Stephen jones stretched it a bit. When the f*** was i bigotted?. In fact, as i said i based my post on an article by monbiot in the guardian. My main point is that human suffering dont matter much to corporations . It was the east india company then, now it is HP,IBM etc. And dear jones, monbiot is by far among the best british journalists. I would trust him unhesitatingly. |
| Sun 21 Dec | American | I'm glad to see that a few people have taken a brief respite from bashing America for all of the world's ills and directed their frustration at the Brits for a moment. |
| Forced Subscriptions | Sun 21 Dec | Wayne |
| I know that Im going to have to work a lot harder to build a PC-PVR, than what it would cost me to buy a TIVO (even with the lifetime subscription). I just cant bring myself to give money to that company, because thats saying that I think its OK to force people into a subscription to use the hardware to its full potential. Furthermore, I just know theyre taking advantage of all those eyeballs by advertising while Im flipping thru the on-screen channel listing (even though I pay them $12.95/mo already or whatever). This is one of my life challenges though,. I know I should just relax, try to ignore it and go with the flow...but I cant. I get so mad when I feel forced into some kind of subscription that I know that I dont need to pay for (technically speaking). Its like trial subscriptions that you *have to* cancel or else they roll over on you automatically. I just hate always feeling like Im getting screwed somehow. I see it everywhere...ya know what I mean? |
| Sun 21 Dec | Ankur | Well, I have no clue what you're feeling. You seem to have a lot of anger built up. All I see is that the Tivo is expensive for me, and so I don't have one. As soon as the value proposition makes sense, I'll go for it. You may think it's unfair to both pay and watch advertisements. Then again, the advertisers think it's unfair for you to watch while skipping ads. Then the networks get pissy if you piss off the advertisers. So really, the ads are just an enabler of the content. Hmm, and if you know trial subscriptions are going to roll over, and that upsets you, why do you keep doing it? |
| Sun 21 Dec | Dennis Atkins | I don't use Tivo because I am not very big on TV. If I *was* big on TV, I would want to get a dvr like Tivo but I would not because of the privacy issue. I don't like to watch any nasty things I'd be ashamed of, I just simply can not stand the idea of any company monitoring my activities inside my own house without paying ME a hefty fee for the privledge. Now all that said, I don't have a problem with the subscription thing since you have to use a phone line to call up and get the listings and it costs them money to maintain the modems and compile the tv listings and so forth. If people didn't pay the subscription, the model wouldn't be sustainable because there would be no income to pay for costs. BUT I do think that the price they are charging per month is way too much since that's half of what a bare bones cable connection costs and also how much some ISPs charge for full blown dialup service. I think a better system would be for them to open up the machine to an ethernet connection and then we could have the choice of which provider to buy our tv listings from -- for example, TV guide might set up a secure site for their print subscribers so they could get tivo listings as a free bonus. Or non subscribers could pay $2/month or something for listings without print. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Brad Wilson | You see, the problem is, that TiVo is not just showing you a guide. The data is sliced and diced for a number of reasons. For starters, it can guess at things you might like and record them for you, based on your past recordings. It's pretty hard to do that kind of thing without extensive meta-data to back it up. (I don't personally use that feature, but I know others who do and love it.) Also, the monthly fee for TiVo is MUCH lower with DirecTiVo, because the listing data comes down from satellite. The only thing the modem does is get software updates (and, of course, report any Pay Per View usage, just like any normal satellite box). It's much more efficient, and thus, costs a lot less money to the end user. Personally, TV without TiVo is... well, not quite unwatchable, but getting there. It's easily akin to the life changing effects of the microwave. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Andrew Cherry | Just a small reply to a point raised in the first post... You say that you're annoyed that they're showing you advertising (and therefore making money) even though you've paid them 12.95/mo? Why does this disgust you? It's just a simple subisy of your viewing. It would simply be more expensive if they didn't. They haven't given you a choice, certainly. But neither did they claim that if you paid them, you'd never see any ads. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Brad Wilson | And, I'm not sure what ads the OP is referring to. TiVo doesn't force any ads on me, ever. Some things that are pushed are available from the main menu (I regularly watch the movie trailers, for instance), but I'm never _forced_ to watch anything. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Robert Jacobson | Just get a TiVo with a lifetime subscription. Consider the subscription a part of the cost of purchasing the unit. The $200 price for a basic TiVo doesn't even begin to cover manufacturing costs -- the company is selling the hardware at a loss, but makes up the difference through the subscription fees and advertising. (A variation on the old business model of 'give away the razor and sell the blades.') If you think of it as $500 for the hardware plus an unlimited subscription, it might seem like a better bargain. I agree that the advertising is pretty minimal. The TiVo usually has one advertising link in the main menu. If you select it, it will show a commercial (often a movie trailer.) I dislike this 'spam,' but it's not particularly intrusive. One caveat: a 'lifetime' subscription is for the lifetime of that particular unit, and usually isn't transferable to another machine if the original croaks after the warranty period or if you upgrade to a newer model. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Oren Miller | The comment above is not neccesarily correct. When I upgraded from my series 1 to series 2, I was able to move the lifetime subscription over to the new box. This did however disable the subscription on the old box. So If I sold it, the new owner would need to establish a new subscription. As for advertisement, you are absolutely never forced to watch any ads whatsoever. The placement of the menu selection for ads in the main menu is at the very bottom and easily ignorable. It also says exactly what the ad is for which is nice because it is occasionally something that peaks my interest. For instance they had trailers last year for the Two Towers that came to Tivo's before it was being advertised on TV. This was pretty cool and was happy to have it there. Some of the BMW ads they had from various famous directors were pretty cool as well. The philosophy for ads is the same as for TV. You watch them when *you* want to watch them. |
| Sun 21 Dec | T. Norman | The Series1->Series2 subscription transfer was a temporary thing which isn't guaranteed to happen again. Any box you buy now, be prepared to be stuck with it because you can't count on that happening in the future. 'The philosophy for ads is the same as for TV. You watch them when *you* want to watch them.' No, with TV you are essentially forced to watch ads. Not at gunpoint, but whether you watch it or not you have to wait while your show is interrupted. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Josh | Just to get back to wayne's original rant a bit.... I'm with you wayne! I haven't gotten a tivo yet bc I consider them too expensive at $500 (i just consider the 'lifetime subscription' as required). I just get the feeling with them that the mbas were like 'we need a recurring revenue stream', and so they invented one... even though their product doesn't _inherently_ have any recurring costs for them (c'mon, they could just have the tivo get its listings from any number of free Internet providers). It'd be like if Joel made citydesk $50 plus $9.95/mo... just because he thought it'd be nice if he just had a steady revenue stream. I think this is what microsoft etc are trying to get into with their new licenses and 'on demand' comput¤ |
| Sun 21 Dec | www.marktaw.com | My video card came with software that will display a list of TV shows (downloads them once a week or so), and when I click on one, it'll record. Get one of those Shuttle computers + Video card and we're not looking at much money or a big footprint. The TV itself can be the display, and it comes with a remote control. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Brad Wilson | 'c'mon, they could just have the tivo get its listings from any number of free Internet providers' This is perhaps the most naive opinion in this thread. You assume that every TiVo owner not only have an Internet connection, but that it's always available, and conveniently located to their TiVo to boot? |
| Help vs. Info | Sat 20 Dec | B# |
| I have been toying with changing all the menus etc. in my apps and web from Help to Info. The idea being, the user doesnt need help, she needs information. She knows her business better that I do, so its presumptuous of me to indicate otherwise. Just finished About Face 2.0 and it struck me as valid. Any thoughts? Am I being a hopeless semantic |
| Sat 20 Dec | Prakash S | 'Help' is the de-facto standard on most software products when it comes to looking for info. Steve Kurg's First law of usability: 'Don't make me think' :-) |
| Sat 20 Dec | Chris Altmann | The guidelines for all the major desktop GUIs I know of call it the 'Help' menu. Your app will stick out like a sore thumb. I wouldn't do it. |
| Sat 20 Dec | B# | I'm still not sure it isn't time to give it a bash... My apps are process control for Manufacturing Plants or Facilities. 2 years ago I changed the File menu to Facility. New, Open, Archive, etc. and I have yet to receive one comment either way. Not a huge user base but decent. I think I read that railroad tracks are x inches apart because that was the width between the wheels of Roman Chariots. Surely we don't have to wait millenia to get users to gurgitate this small change. I may be hallucinating, of course. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Kentasy | Change it to Info. If you've read and internalized Cooper's works, go with your gut. |
| Sat 20 Dec | B# | Yeah, I think you're right. |
| Sat 20 Dec | anon | I think 'Help' is the correct semantics. The user doesn't need help with their business, but that's not what the menu indicates. What the user does want is 'help' using your application. If they wanted 'info' they'd open a web browser or crack open a book. I agree that changing the 'File' menu may be a good idea, mainly because it's horribly broken metaphor for many applications and I have never understood why 'Exit' should be on the 'File' menu. But 'Help' is not a broken metaphor. Perhaps it should be changed into the exclamation, 'Help!' but 'Info' is no better and will confuse the average user who expects there to be a 'Help' menu. |
| Sat 20 Dec | www.marktaw.com | I agree with anon. I equate "Info" with information about... Maybe information about the page I'm on, the program itself (32% memory free), or an "About" page. I don't equate "Info" with "Help." |
| Sat 20 Dec | Andrew Cherry | Info has no meaning without context. The context of help can be inferred. I'm not clicking on anything specific, so it's help about the program. People know to expect that. But info? About what? |
| Sat 20 Dec | Philo | Why not call it 'How do I...?' ? Or 'What's this thing do?' Or 'Documentation' Or 'Online Manuals' I also think you should put it in the second position after 'Facility'. And use Ctrl-H for 'Hard Copy' instead of that silly 'Print' Ctrl-L for 'Locate' instead of Ctrl-F for 'Find' To resize the window, I've always thought it would be easier to right-click on the edge once, then right-click again where I want the edge to be. Ctrl-C should be 'Cut,' Ctrl-X for 'xerox' and Ctrl-P for 'Paste' Now go back to the book and learn about standards and why we should embrace them. Someone who's never used software again will have to read and parse for *something* whether it's 'Help' or 'Info.' But people who have used Windows applications will look for 'Help' - you are confusing them, which I believe runs counter to what *every* interface expert says on the subject. BTW, one more reason standards are nice - there's enough to do in developing a software application. Standards mean the DEVELOPER doesn't have to think... Philo |
| Sun 21 Dec | Danil | 'I've been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.' -- Rob Gordon. I don't know. The way to find out is to run an experiment, to actually measure which label gets a better reponse, and by how much. Generally, when a user invokes a program, it is with a particular goal in mind. I can't think of any occassion when my goal was to read a help page, but perhaps you have a different profile of users. I find it difficult to believe a label on a help menu is going to be a significant differentiator. Therefore, I guess that the improvement in the user experience will not be enough to justify the expense of the experiment. So I would stick with the standard. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Robert Jacobson | Renaming the 'Help' menu may not seem like a big change, but doing so would depart from a very strongly-used convention. Don't do it unless you have a compelling justification. (And I've never heard of someone being insulted by a 'Help' menu.) Think about how this change would affect your users -- when someone is confused by your program, he or she may look for the 'Help' menu. If there isn't one, the user will either (1) conclude that the program doesn't have a Help feature or (2) have to stop and think about whether 'Info' is actually a renamed 'Help' feature. ('Info' is so generic that it would be hard to guess what it does.) Either way, the user will quite possibly feel momentarily annoyed with the program. At the risk of souding like a Joel groupie, check out Chapter 5 of his User Interface book: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000061.html |
| Sun 21 Dec | Big B | Andrew has a point. Information is way too generic. Remember what IT stands for. Everything you do with a software application has to do with "Info." Help, on the other hand, as everyone else seems to be saying, has a very specific meaning in software. It's a convention that works, don't break it unless your "info" has different semantics than a regular "help" system. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Aphorist | If it ain't broke, don't fix it. |
| Sun 21 Dec | B# | Upon reflection, it really is no better. Newly minted zealots not withstanding, thanks for all the Help... er Info. I WAS hallucinating! |
| Sun 21 Dec | mb | Seem you've made a good decision. Info is quite generic. In fact, on the Mac, there is (or was?) a menu item called Get Info in the Finder and some other apps, which is the equivalent of Properties on Windows. |
| A topic that JOS hasn't covered yet? | Sat 20 Dec | one programmer's opinion |
| Going Independent - Part 1 - Assessing Your Gumption http://www.angrycoder.com/article.aspx?cid=6&y=2003&m=12&d=10 Imo, a topic of discussion that is relevant to many developers. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Sunish | Good article.. Hey but Joel recommends 9 to 5 I guess |
| Visual Basic .NET Resource Kit - FREE | Sat 20 Dec | heads.up |
| http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/vbrkit/default.aspx The kit contains Microsoft .NET controls, worth $899 US, from ComponentOne and other leading .NET component vendors. Technical content includes white papers, videos, and code samples to help you get the most from Visual Basic .NET. Download for free or order a CD for a small fee. |
| Sat 20 Dec | one programmer's opinion | I received a copy in the mail. That is, Microsoft simply sent me this CD along with a 60 day trial DVD version of Visual Studio .NET 2003. They must have gotten my name off of some mailing list since I never requested the material. While I haven't had time to look at the CD, I don't believe the .NET controls from ComponentOne are truly free. I skimmed over an October thread that was posted at the DevX Discussion .NET Discussion forum VB.NET Resource Kit http://news.devx.com/showthread.php?s=2ccdb92b8bf2e74f89bb6540db938356&threadid=95470 and it appears that there is some confusion as to whether you can legally convert the components over from trial to full version. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Chris Tavares | I read the license on these, and as I understand it, for the most part they're personal licenses only. You cannot distribute or deploy the controls in either a web or thick-client application. That being said, it's a great opportunity to experiment with some great (and, to be honest, some not-so-great) components and learn the ins and outs of them a lot better. |
| Contd..Display the sine graph of a sound file | Sat 20 Dec | Sathyaish Chakravarthy |
| This is to say a word of thanks for your help on the topic posted here http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=96078&ixReplies=22 Martin, Brad, Smiley and Trollumination! Thanks a zillion, guys, especially, Martin, Brad and Trollumination. First of all, an endless thanks to the person with the screen name Trollumination. It is sad to know that a guy as deserving as you are is in between employments. If I could do something about it, it would only make me a happier person. You seem to have an encyclopedic quotient on phonology. What I could so probably is recommend your name to one of my clients and if he could probably contact you. What part of the world do you stay in? Trollumination, I am overwhelmed by your informative excellence. Thanks, Martin, Smiley and Brad, I was completely lost when I started off. By now, Ive read your posts over and over again, munched them, chewed on every nibble of your writing, gone back to the Web and seen relevant links on Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), the Wave File Format, Codec and LAME (that Trollumination mentioned). Now, if not supremely confident of what I have ahead, I at least know where to start. You have given me a panorama into the distinctiveness of each of the three popular file formats - WAV, MIDI and MP3, the ones Ill need to use in this application. Smiley, the links you posted were useful. I wont say I got everything of what they said, but yet. Skeptical and Confused, your remark was extremely ignorant. I wont say I know everything I am asked to write a proposal on, but I try my bit to gather information. And I am the studious kinds. I am the guy who likes the nasty stuff and Ill sleep less but I know I will study what I am asked to thoroughly. I find this forum a place where many intelligent people meet, so I come here for advise. I dont think that must be understood as an appeal to do the legwork. |
| Sat 20 Dec | skeptical | The issue I have with you is twofold: 1. You did not even do basic research on google about mp3 and mid files, but rather decided to save time by getting free advice from desparate unemployed experts. That's good for you but I don't respect it at all and I pity the poor saps that sucked up to you hoping for a job referral which I know you will not give them. Standard etiquette is to at least do a tiny bit of research so you can talk somewhat knowledgeably about something before asking others for help. Your claim to be a hard worker who studies hard is a lie - if that was the least bit true, you would have known more before you asked. Googling is not hard but it does take a few minutes. 2. You are obviously applying for contracts that you are not suited for, taking work away from others that are far more deserving and will do a faster and better job because they have experience. Again, that's good for you but I don't have to pretend to respect it. I find it despicable and dishonest. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | >but rather decided to save time by getting free advice from desparate unemployed experts. >and I pity the poor saps that sucked up to you hoping for a job referral which I know you will not give them >Your claim to be a hard worker who studies hard is a lie - if that was the least bit true, you would have known more before you asked >You are obviously applying for contracts that you are not suited for, taking work away from others that are far more deserving and will do a faster and better job because they have experience Skeptical, you are presumptous and highly opinionated. |
| Sat 20 Dec | skeptical | Fair enough, but show where I am wrong: 1. Did you save time by getting free advise from desperate unemployed experts? 2. Can you demonstrate to us some job leads you have provided to those who helped you? 3. Can you show that you did some research into mp3 and mid file formats and audio dsp engineering before asking for help? 4. Can you show that you are better suited for these contracts than the folks such as Trollumination, an unemployed expert in the field. If you can show that I am wrong on these 4 points, then yes, I am presumptuous and opinionated. But if you can not prove these things to us, then it shows us what you really are -- lazy, an incompetant and a liar. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | >1. Did you save time by getting free advise from desperate unemployed experts? Excuse me! Mind what you say. As if I went looking for 'desperate unemployed experts'. Why do you have to disparage those who have helped me out? And what is the harm in asking for advise on a forum? >2. Can you demonstrate to us some job leads you have provided to those who helped you? This is ridiculous, Skeptical. Just look at what you are talking. If you saught advise from someone on this forum, are you obliged to find employment for the person who helped you? However, I also need not showcase my sincerity to you to prove that I will do my best that is within my rights and my means to refer Trollumination. >3. Can you show that you did some research into mp3 and mid file formats and audio dsp engineering before asking for help? I did not. I do not deny I that I did not research the file formats before asking the question and I am not attempting to hide it at all. If someone asks a basic question, do you then deduce that that someone is stupid? I do not see any logic in this deduction, Skeptical. >4. Can you show that you are better suited for these contracts than the folks such as Trollumination, an unemployed expert in the field. No, I cannot. And I also do not deny that I am not knowledgable *as of yet* even in the field. But that does not become your business to certify my capabilities. Do you know every darn thing under the sun before you bag the project? Of course, I would have loved to be at the helm and take only work that I know everything about. But I am not self-employed, ok? And I am trying with all earnestness to do a job that has been assigned to me. >But if you can not prove these things to ****us****, then it shows *****us***** what you really are -- lazy, an incompetant and a liar. Who's the ***us*** here? I am going to end it here because I do not wish to waste any more of my time debating your assessment of my professional individuality. I don't need no certification from you. Besides, I think you are probably biased because of your circumstances. No offence intended. |
| Sat 20 Dec | skeptical | Sat, My own situation, though none of your business is that I am CIO of a large corporation. My experience has been that I see lots of fakers getting proposals by submitting phoney credentials that they get by pullign net scams like yours. Con artists like your self are never able to deliver but just waste everybody's time as well as make things worse for legitimately skilled employees. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Guy, you seem to have lost communicability in your writing. You've been calling me many names. Anyway, what you forget is that the application I am talking about is for the vertical market, unlike an accounting or an office automation application which gels horizontally industry-wide. So with every specialized application, you would definitely spend time in R&D and you're not expected to know everything. For instance, if you were a science student and knew not what goes into debit and what comes into credit and you were to build a Document Management Solution for Sarbanes Oxley compliance, you would need to start somewhere with the basics. That wouldn't mean you were one of those conmen that you picture. |
| Sat 20 Dec | -- | How many more minutes until this thread is deleted? I am going to go a step farther than Skeptical and say that the real dishonesty lies elsewhere, most likely at a level beyond Sathyaish. The functionality described is so commonplace that the client is either fooling themselves, or allowing themselves to be fooled into reinventing the wheel. Sathyaish and/or Sathyaish's boss, and the client(s) should all be honest with themselves and each other and solve this by making some calls out to an existing piece of sound editing software instead of spending so much time and money to build a half-assed solution. When I had to write something that would send faxes from an application screen, I simply found some fax software that could be called from the application and figured out how to make those calls, instead of wasting time researching fax and modem protocols. |
| Sun 21 Dec | HeWhoMustBeConfused | Damn, I wish I hadn't been moving house while this thread was developing!! *grin* I'm the owner of a relatively small company (8 staff at present), and I'm 100% with Skeptical's comments. Your company is FAKING its expertise. Why doesn't this surprise me? It is the standard operating method of Infosys, Wipro, and others of their global consulting ilk. |
| Organizing Software Specs and Specs for Websites | Sat 20 Dec | o.s. |
| I’ve read Joel’s articles on writing software specifications. But I couldn’t find any specifics on the layout of these documents. He makes mention of a 500-page spec he wrote for Excel. How is such a massive document organized for easy readability? I imagine a document that large becomes difficult for the creator to maintain and for readers to navigate. Also, I’m very interested to hear how people write specs for a non-trivial website or web-based application. For example, it seems like the spec for FogBugz would be very similar to a spec for a typical database-driven website. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Philo | Two key things to remember when writing specs: 1) If I were a coder, would this spec tell me what to do without having to ask anyone? 2) If I were QA, would I be able to answer 'does the app meet this spec' with just 'yes' or 'no'? (would I even know what to test?) Philo |
| Sat 20 Dec | one programmer's opinion | I am pretty sure the Excel specification Joel was referring to was actually a technical specification (also known as a design specification). '... For example, it seems like the spec for FogBugz would be very similar to a spec for a typical database-driven website.' The type of spec you create really depends on who your intended audience is. For example, a requirements document is typically the only specification a project sponsor or an end-user might read. I am sure someone after me will post the URL for the Techwhirl forum (technical writers forum). You might find several discussions there that are relevant to what you trying to accomplish. |
| Sat 20 Dec | braid_ged | I also would be interested in some examples or info on how people construct specification documents. All of the ones I have seen in the three companies I have worked for are pretty weak, not specific enough and full of silly manager speak. I am developing my own software in my spare time and I created two documents, a functional spec and a technical design. The functional spec seperated the system into 4 modules, listed what the user would be able to do in each, what the limitations would be, sensible functionality not supported etc.. It also contained three detailed case studies of imaginary small businesses and how/why they were using the software. The technical spec listed database structure, 'sub-systems' and notes on the technology bieng used. As the documentation got bigger it became much harder to know where to put information. |
| Sat 20 Dec | DBC | One of the things I like about Eiffel and its associated development environment is that it allows you to put a lot of specification information directly into the code using its contracting mechanisms. This is typically what I do, where possible. For items that cannot be captured in this fashion, I generally put into special comments in code headers. There's also some graphical design tools to help specify non-logical constraints (structural constraints, temporal constraints, etc). Having the spec in this form makes it easier for me to keep everything in synch and makes the information easy to find for developers. |
| Sun 21 Dec | John C. | In my experience, Word's outline mode actually isn't half bad for managing largish spec documents. The key is to take a few minutes to decide what should be a Heading 1, a Heading 2, and so on, and then apply these rules consistently throughout the document. Then you can turn on the document map pane or switch into outline mode and collapse/expand the relevant sections of the spec. Adding bookmarks can help so you can quickly jump to key portions of the spec. One thing I don't like about using Word is that its native file format is some proprietary binary thing, but recent versions of Word also let you save in a lossless XML format, which plays nicely with your source control system and diff tools. For smaller specs, I usually just use text or a lightweight text-markup format like POD (plain old documentation). |
| Sun 21 Dec | Ben R | Could be worth reading - http://www.mojofat.com/tutorial/ |
| Philo's disclaimer | Sat 20 Dec | Philo |
| Now that Im settled into the new job, Id better come clean on where Im working. After five years of contract programming (read: body shopping), Ive got to tell you its nice to settle into a job where education is encouraged and expected, and where I get a steady paycheck (and paid holidays!) The big thing I have to say is that while Ive been accused of various allegiances, my zealous advocacy of products has never been motivated by anything but my own beliefs and experiences, and that remains true (but Im sure many wont believe it). Obviously, my participation here is my own, and not paid/endorsed by my employer or any other company. Sincerely, Philo Senior Technology Specialist Microsoft Corporation |
| Sat 20 Dec | Mark Hoffman | Gratz on the new job, Philo. Are you free to disclose which product(s) you work on? |
| Sat 20 Dec | Philo | I'm not a coder - I'm a sales engineer for SQL Server and Sharepoint. :-) But let me say - anyone who has the aptitude and interest - try to work for Microsoft. This is truly the best work environment I've ever seen or dreamed of. Everyone I work with has been here for *years* Philo |
| Sat 20 Dec | Mark Hoffman | SharePoint 'eh? Good...now I know who to call when my client upgrades their SharePoint to the newest version. I am sooo not looking forward to that. :') |
| Sat 20 Dec | Name Withheld by request | Congratulations. I'm glad you found a happy niche. Just to wrench the topic sideways, have you been pretty determined to find some kind of full time position for a while? It did not seem like you were very happy with freelancing. Were you ready to take any decent job with regular pay and benefits, or were you swept off your feet by the sparkle of a senior position at MS? |
| Sat 20 Dec | Indian Developer in India | "Sales Engineer" - What is that? Other than being an oxymoron. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Dave B. | Did you have to relocate for the position Philo? |
| Sat 20 Dec | Philo | Actually I'd been pretty anti-full time for a while, since IMO most companies run their staffs like 'contractors with benefits' - treated like serfs, paid less than they're worth ('you know, because you've got job security[1] and benefits[2]'). In that light, contracting just seemed more honest to me. Now that's not to say I wouldn't have minded a steadier paycheck on occasion. [grin] Well, in the short month I've been at MS, my eyes have been opened - they treat their employees like I think employees *should* be treated - with trust and respect. I was hired for my background and experience, and I'm treated that way, not like 'the new child we have to keep an eye on.' I'm quite happy. :) Philo [1] Job security in full-time work is generally a myth - I've seen full-time people fired without a moment's notice or consideration. [2] That you have to pay for. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Philo | A sales engineer is the guy who is the throttle on the typical 'yeah we can do that' salesperson - potential customer says 'we need to do [x].' The sales engineer is the person that analyzes requirements, reviews what the customer is trying to do, does proofs of concept, demonstrates the product, and generally works to ensure that the customer gets the right product to do what they're trying to accomplish. No, I didn't have to relocate - I'm working out of the Microsoft office in DC. Philo |
| Sat 20 Dec | Indian Developer in India | Get it. Thanx |
| Sat 20 Dec | Frederic Faure | Is the caf' in DC as good as in Redmond? :-) |
| Sat 20 Dec | one programmer's opinion | Congrats Philo, I hope you can still find the time to occasionally post here. It looks to me like you found yourself a 'once in a lifetime' type of job opportunity. I have three questions for you. If you can't or don't want to answer them I understand. 1) Did you send your resume to Microsoft (did you apply for an advertised position) or did Microsoft contact you first? 2) What was the interview process like? 3) It sounds like you are actually working within the business consulting division at Microsoft. Am I correct? |
| Sat 20 Dec | Philo | Ah, wouldn't the ego love it if they'd called me, but no - I had a friend who started working there and got my resume into the HR office. The interview process was grueling - I ended up talking to eleven people and giving a presentation to ten other tech specialists. I'm working for the sales branch, but Microsoft Consulting Service (MCS) is in the same building and we work very closely with them. Philo |
| Sat 20 Dec | Dennis Atkins | Oh! You're a programmer/analyst then. I know that the title of analyst had fallen by the wayside; had no idea it was supplanted with 'sales engineer'. That said, although I 'hate' microsoft, I also believe they deserve to succeed and take over the world because that is what -should- happen to companies that treat their employees like human beings. So Congrats! |
| Sat 20 Dec | Robert Jacobson | Congrats, Philo! |
| Sat 20 Dec | www.marktaw.com | Philo, I'm not the first to say it, CONGRADULATIONS. May the steady paycheck from Bill Gates serve you well. |
| Sat 20 Dec | mb | congrats. is working with (or for) sales people a big change? interesting you're working with sharepoint: it's a great example of the 'two cultures' issue raised by Joel earlier this week: the UI is decent, meant to be used by a 'knowledge worker' who doesn't care much about content management. but programming with it? oy, the API feels like they took the UI and replaced the input boxes with parameters. certain things just are not possible without jumping through hoops, just like a user might go through a wizard, get an error, and try something a little different. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Prakash S | Hurray, we are going to see more action on Philo's Camel Blog:-) Congrats, Philo - hope you have a good time at MSFT. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Jeff MacDonald | You kick ass, man!! Congratulations!! |
| Sun 21 Dec | tapiwa | Congrats. Hope you have fun |
| Sun 21 Dec | People | >> [ Ah, wouldn't the ego love it if they'd called me, but no - I had a friend who started working there and got my resume into the HR office. ] >> [ You kick ass, man!! ] ======= I don't think Philo kicks ass. He along with every other unemployed tech worker on this board have the same or above average skill level. Philo got lucky and got an 'in', of course he had to make it through the interview process, but how would he have gotten the interview without having a friend submit his resume to the HR office? Sure he could have submitted it over the internet like everyone else, but this made it stand apart. I don't have friends who employed in the IT business so it's tough to get a job. At any rate, congrats Philo. Working for a multi-billion dollar company has it's advantages. It's kind of ironic that people proclaim that Microsoft is 'a great place to work.' Most employers that are held in that light are done so because they have the financial capability to provide 'a great place to work.' They have the financial capability to provide great benefits, a steady paycheck, a nice salary, your own office, the latest technology, a cafeteria etc etc. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Philo | People - I haven't been unemployed for more than two weeks since I started working in the public sector in '98. I had a solid contracting job which I left to work for Microsoft. And as for the 'only rich companies treat their employees well' - you might consider that perhaps it's *because* they treat their employees well that those companies got rich. ;-) Philo |
| Sun 21 Dec | no name | >> 'And as for the 'only rich companies treat their employees well' - you might consider that perhaps it's *because* they treat their employees well that those companies got rich. ;-)' You're good at coming up with smart-assed, political answers that don't really mean anything. Companies don't get rich by treating their employees well, companies get rich by selling products that others consume. Whether or not they treat their employees well is a different story. Ever worked in a coal mine? I think you're a spoiled brat. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Bored Bystander | >> >> 'And as for the 'only rich companies treat their employees well' - you might consider that perhaps it's *because* they treat their employees well that those companies got rich. ;-)' >> Companies don't get rich by treating their employees well, companies get rich by selling products that others consume. Whether or not they treat their employees well is a different story. Ever worked in a coal mine? I don't think that coal mines or steel mills represent a valid comparison to tech companies. In those businesses the companies earn more by flogging their workers and creating legislation to cement monopolies. The most successful technology and knowledge based businesses have historically treated their employees with respect. IBM (pre Gerstner/mainframe falloff), HP (pre Carly), Microsoft, and Apple are key examples. I think it can be argued that the drop in the prestige and importance of working for an IBM or HP can be traced directly to use of outsourcing and a bottom-line obsession that outweighs maintenance of a decent workplace. When tech companies do well, it's because they foster a cooperative, basically enjoyable work environment. You can't shove professionals into a union or commodity environment and demand them to produce wealth. That's the mistake of outsourcing/absolute bottomline mentality applied to tech. As a consultant I've worked with several small technology businesses. Most of them aren't, never were, and never will go anywhere because they're too cheap and too shortsighted to properly appreciate or reward talent that has built them up. Bad technology company environments drive out talented people who have a choice in the matter, and leave such companies with underachievers to do the day to day work. So they never develop enough momentum to succeed, or they kill any momentum that develops. |
| Sun 21 Dec | FullNameRequired | 'I think you're a spoiled brat.' I have to agree. I mean, just because philo is extremely intelligent, articulate, knowledgable about a broad range of topics, with extensive programming and management experience _he_ gets all the good jobs. Its just unfair is what it is. Hes just a spoiled brat getting the good life just because hes luckier than the rest of us. I _could_ have been intelligent articulate etc as well you know if I had been as lucky as him, I just never got the breaks thats all dammit I could have been a contender I could have I know I could have if only I actually had a clue what I was talking about.... *sob* |
| Sun 21 Dec | FullNameRequired | oh...congratulations philo :) |
| Sun 21 Dec | Lorrence Tan | Bored - what's wrong with working with IBM? Did you mean by working with IBM in general or specific to the software developers? Because for the Consultants - most are coming from PWC Consulting - I think they are well taken care of. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Bored Bystander | I may not be totally right about IBM, but I've inferred that their forced buyouts of employees in the early 90's and other so called 'rightsizing' practices indicate a greatly diminished commitment to their employees. Maybe I'm wrong. It would be interesting if a current or recent 'beemer' posted their experience here. I recall working at IBM as a contractor in '88 and seeing a manager with an IBM personnel handbook, the topic of which was the selection of programs available through IBM to assist their employees with their aged parents. (!) |
| Sun 21 Dec | I Hate Whiners | 'I think you're a spoiled brat. ' Typical sentiment of the displaced. Anyone who gets ahead or lands a good job must of done so on the backs of the less fortunate, doing something unethical or was part of 'good ol' boys' network. Not to sound like a sycophant for Philo, but from what I've read, the guy went through the Naval Academy, got a EE and even earned a law degree. Now, providing he isn't a pathological liar, one might surmise that he is intelligent and hard-working. Last time I checked, those are pretty good traits to have to land a job. In other words, grow the f*** up. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Interaction Architect | 'I had a solid contracting job which I left to work for Microsoft.' So you bailed on a client for a better offer? Nice... :-) Just kidding. I left a high paying full time job to start my own company. I often think about going back to the corp world... Best of luck to you. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Mr. Jiggy Fly | >Not to sound like a sycophant for Philo, but from what I've read, the guy went through the Naval Academy, got a EE and even earned a law degree. Now, providing he isn't a pathological liar, one might surmise that he is intelligent and hard-working.< That clinches it! Let's draft Philo for President! :-P Seriously, congrats on the new job, Philo. |
| How many find wordweb indispensable ? | Sat 20 Dec | Sunish |
| Thought of sharing info on one of the most indispensable utility to JOS readers. The ui is so simple and userfriendly and you dont need to have to open up a browser to check the spelling or meaning, just select the word and ctrl-alt-W. One of the best tray apps I have ever used. havent yet checked the new version, but the old ones were pretty good. http://wordweb.info/free/ |
| Sat 20 Dec | Jimmy Jo-Jo | Whenever I feel bad about the quality of my side projects, there's WordWeb to make me feel better. Thanks, WordWeb! |
| Sat 20 Dec | anonymizer | Hey there Anthony Lewis. Thanks for pimping your product here. Hopefully it will get the bold "mark of distinction"! |
| Sat 20 Dec | Stephen Jones | What I want is a spell check for web forum dialog boxes. Word web doesn't appear to do that. And why should I use word web when I have a free copy of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary? |
| Sun 21 Dec | Sunish | I was talking about the free version of wordweb. To be honest I didn't even know who the hell was Anthony. A dictionary not necessarily gives similar words, it just gives meanings. This is a thesaurus and whatever you can think of about words, but it doesn't give usage. Its also available within any program by pressing ctrl-alt-w, it can act as a spell checker because if the word is not found its lists words closer to that spelling. I have not tried thr pro version to tell what's the additional benefit. |
| Buying hardware... computer recommendations? | Fri 19 Dec | Andrew Scott |
| To all, Recently Ive started a new company and am the CTO (as it were). Were in the process of evaluating computers for purchase and Im curious what folks here would recommend for a company that has a mix of users (developers, creative, and sales). Right now Im looking at notebooks for all main machines. What would you all suggest? Dell? IBM? Or something more exotic like Alienware? Im trying to keep in mind that the hardware requirements are pretty stiff for the creative folks and developers. Conversely, if you think I should buy desktops, convince me as to why. Thanks in advance. |
| Fri 19 Dec | ? | Your creatives will hate laptops because they can't get their colors right assuming you mean graphic designers) and because of the dinky screen. Your developers will hate laptops because they can't run dual head monitors. Let everybody get whatever computer they think best with the only restrictions being no gaming cards and acceleration kits or built in tivo cards. |
| Sat 20 Dec | K | Any fairly recent IBM laptop will allow for dual output to monitors - and you will want to give people real monitors. This should take care of both creatives and developers. If your sales force is going to spend a great deal of time out of house you should look at getting them lighter machines then the house-bound folks. One of the nice things about IBM machines is that you can buy from multiple product lines and still be assured that they are all using the same driver base. |
| Sat 20 Dec | ? | Didn't realize that. I'm not as big a fan as some others of laptops but if I had to get one, I'd get an IBM because I love the force-sensitive joystick in the keyboard. That rocks. Mousepads on the other hand suck. For sales guys laptops make sense. As a developer I would point blank refuse to use a laptop because I can not handle the ergonomic stress on my hands and neck. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Robert Jacobson | If you go with laptops, go with a 'brand name.' (Dell, Gateway, IBM, HP, etc.) Laptops tend to break more often and are harder to repair. The most important thing is to get ones from a manufacturer with good customer service and a good warranty program. (E.g., same-day or next-day service for 3 years.) |
| Sat 20 Dec | Stephen Jones | The reason for using desktops is simple: RSI. I find that after a fortnight of college vacation using the laptop my neck aches, my shoulder aches, my biceps and triceps ache, and my wrist aches. Unless you want to cripple your work force get them alll desktops, with dual monitors for the developers, and let them choose their own keyboards. Get laptops, possibly with docking stations for sales. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Andrew Scott | To give some further information about my thoughts: 1. Good god, there is no way I would make a laptop the main machines without providing full monitors (19' or more), keyboards and mice. That takes care of the RSI issues. There's a number of business reasons for this, such as the fact that our developers travel to client sites often for meetings and I'd like to have them be able to takes notes/prototype/whatever else on the fly. 2. Thanks for the input on IBM -- didn't know much about their product line. I'll have to look into that. |
| Sat 20 Dec | John Rose | I agree with the other posters... you don't want to use a laptop keyboard for vast amounts of time (8+ hours a day) unless you have tiny hands. And even then it's suboptimal compared to a full keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Why laptops? You can get two nice desktops for approximately the cost of one nice laptop. Are your people going to be constantly traveling, or frequently working from home? Seriously, give them one for home and one for work. You can always keep a couple of 'floater' laptops on hand that people can sign out when you really need to take something on the road. If you have some people with basic know-how, you can build your own PC's for a few hundred dollars each (sans software licenses). Athlon2500 cpu: $85 512MB ram: $75 (or $150 for 1GB) 80GB WD Hard Drive, 8MB: $80 Shuttle XPC small form factor case: ~$300 (includes sound, dual VGA video, network, USB2, Firewire) CDR Drive: $60 So... $600 for a really nice rig. They're small and quiet and perform like the 'big boys'. Only difference is the number of PCI/AGP slots (one of each). Very easy to build, since most of the components are built into the motherboard. Just drop in RAM+CPU+HDD+Optical. If you go with a generic case+regular mobo instead of the Shuttle (save $150) and go with a Duron 1600 instead of the Athlon 2500 (save ~$40) you can do it for $400 or so. The Duron is a great performer... I have a zillion coding tools open at once (IDE's, text editors, SQL tools), multiple web browsers, occaisonal Photoshop work, and the Duron1600 runs great- of course, for only $40 more, seems a shame not to have just gotten the Athlon. :P |
| Sat 20 Dec | John Rose | There's a number of business reasons for this, such as the fact that our developers travel to client sites often for meetings and I'd like to have them be able to takes notes/prototype/whatever else on the fly. ------------------------ Oops, Andrew, I apologize. I didn't see this post of yours before my reply. Depending on exactly how often your staff is on the fly, the 'many desktops+a few floater laptops' thing could still be the best bet in terms of balance between giving your developers the niceties of a desktop as well as the flexibility of having laptops to take to the clients. Naturally if 50% of your staff needs laptops at the same time, the economics aren't as rosy. :P With the multi-user features of XP it shouldn't be too much of a hassle for users to share laptops... |
| Sat 20 Dec | John Rose | 'Any fairly recent IBM laptop will allow for dual output to monitors - and you will want to give people real monitors.' ---------------- When you say 'dual output', are you talking about having dual VGA output from the laptop, so that you can hook up two external monitors? Or are you referring to the ability to use the built-in laptop monitor as well as one external monitor simultaneously? I think most modern laptops have the latter; I don't know of any with the former. The 'laptop screen + one external monitor setup' is pretty awkward... I used a setup like that for a number of months and hated it. Since I was using a separate keyboard with the laptop, the laptop screen had to be positioned way off to the side.... the huge honkin' laptop keyboard gets in the way; it's hard to position the screen next to your external monitor for anything approaching a seamless arrangement. I'm a HUGE fan of dual monitors and consider them a near-requirement for coding work, but that setup was so awkward that I just wound up keeping all apps on the external monitor and none on the laptop screen, effectively negating any dual-monitor-setup-goodness. :P That sort of setup miiiiiiight work if somebody doesn't mind using the laptop keyboard full-time. But I don't know anybody who enjoys doing that for 8+ hours a day. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Stephen Jones | Building your own machine is always more expensive than buying ready built; the labour costs of assembling a desktop are under $10 and the big companies get discounts for bulk buying ten to twenty times that. It's worth doing it once, just to know how, and if like me you are always replacing your machine piecemeal, then you will never actually get round to buying a whole new machine, but as a business proposition it's crazy. If you're going to have two docking stations for the laptop, one at home and one at work, together with the cost of the monitors and keyboard and mouse, then you are almost spending the cost of a desktop twice over on top of the cost of the laptop. If your workers are always commuting by car, and will not be doing much work at home, then it would probably be OK to have a laptop and a docking station just at work, but I wonder if it's worth it. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Philo | Have you people really never heard of docking stations? Laptop, docking station, 21' monitor, full-size keyboard of choice, mouse. Now indistiguishable from a PC. Two primary considerations regarding workforce and laptops: 1) Theft. If everyone's got a laptop, you want cameras and videotape on every entrance. It is too easy to walk out with one. You also need to put extra effort into protecting proprietary data on the laptops, since if one's stolen in a train station you may find all your contacts getting 'ha ha screw you' emails, ostensibly from you... 2) Why are you giving the workforce laptops? The only acceptable answer is 'so they can work from home.' Give your devs good laptops with the understanding that they can work from home a few days a week (if they show productivity), and they'll love you forever. Philo |
| Sat 20 Dec | anon | >>2) Why are you giving the workforce laptops? The only acceptable answer is 'so they can work from home.' A laptop is neither necessary nor ideal for working at home. As someone else already noted, you can buy two nice desktop PCs for roughly the same amount of money that you'd pay for a laptop, one for the office and one for home. I am posting this from home on a PC provided by my employer via broadband internet service, also provided by my employer. |
| Sat 20 Dec | j b | To all the people suggesting two desktops ... I've gone down that route, and I find I end up spending as much time dicking arround with my programming environment as I do programming. Every day at work, you'll change some small thing on your work machine (install new software, change an environment variable, or something). I found I wasted enough time every day replicating those changes that it really wasn't worth it to have that work machine at home. Get laptops, port replicators, and monitors. They're not THAT expensive. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Thomas | Andrew, The only data point you've given on usage patterns is that your developers going to do some flying and you 'want them to be able to take notes/prototype' on the fly. My suggestion is that you talk to your employees and find out what will help them be the most productive and effective. Some people work best when they're 'chained' to a desk -- they don't mix work time/space with the rest of their lives. Others are the opposite, working best when they are free to take their laptop and go down to Starbucks, or indulge in a late-evening coding session. Two other points to consider: First, it's a lot easier to manage a bunch of the same type of system than a variety. Second, consider the future: what are you likely to need in two years? -Thomas |
| Sat 20 Dec | tim | If you decide to build you own, give some thought about making it quiet before you jump in and purchase lots of stuff. IMO it is hard to make a PC yourself that is as quiet as a 'factory' model. If you have an office, your quiet zone will be destroyed by 'Megatron' humming away in the corner. I've bought stuff from www.quietpc.com before to try to quiet my home PC. I have tried to balance sound vs. heat buildup, which is a problem with my current machine, so I haven't tried some of their more exotic products. |
| Sat 20 Dec | John Rose | 'Have you people really never heard of docking stations? Laptop, docking station, 21' monitor, full-size keyboard of choice, mouse. Now indistiguishable from a PC. ' ---------------------------- I find dual monitors at 1280x1024 preferable to one 21' monitor presumably running at 1600x1200. Like has been discussed previously, dual external displays aren't an option with laptops. Also, do people really use docking stations anymore? Every laptop I've seen lately has keyboard and VGA out as well as all the necessary other ports... |
| Sat 20 Dec | John Rose | Well, if the difference of opinions on this thread has proven one thing, I think it's that there are a lot of people on either side of the issue, often with strong preferences. Therefore, perhaps it's best to let your devs choose on a person-by-person basis. :-) |
| Sat 20 Dec | Philo | John - actually I use a 21' CRT (1800x1440) and a 19' (1280x1024) LCD, and I highly recommend it. :-) As for docking stations - power, keyboard, network, usb and the reverse. In addition, the laptop takes up room on the desk. I've done docking stations in the past, and it's nice to just slide the thing in under my monitor and forget it's there. For the original poster - how about simply giving new hires a PC budget and letting them get what they want? Philo |
| Sun 21 Dec | Andrew Scott | Philo, That's actually not a bad idea, and one I hadn't considered. We're a small company at the moment so it might work. My one concern is that as we grow, that may become unmanageable in terms of support. I'm still pondering what should be done... in addition to this question, I also need a new machine personally as well. Too many decisions! :) |
| Sun 21 Dec | Robert Jacobson | How about just standardizing on one manufacturer to minimze support issues (you can't go wrong with Dell), and then giving your employees a choice of a desktop or laptop/docking station? |
| Did linux just show up on the radar? | Fri 19 Dec | Eric Debois |
| As you may know, Bruce Perens is leading a project called userlinux (www.userlinux.com). What separates it from other linux distros (all other afaict) is that it will not include tons of software, but standardize on a configuration. This has been done before, but the twist is that they will do it with all free software. Reading the material I get the distinct impression they are essentially trying to do an OSX. So far, not very interesting. Well, now Bruce put his foot down and decided that UserLinux will not include any other GUI/desktop than Gnome. And boom, large portions of the linux community suddenly became Anti-uselinux. Gnome in it self is perhaps not very interesting here, but the fact that Bruce dare to piss a great many linux geeks off, in his effort to create a standardized distro is. While reading slashdot comments along the lines of KDE is much better, userlinux will suck I couldnt help thinking, this pig might actually fly. ;-) See what Im getting at? |
| Fri 19 Dec | _ | 'See what Im getting at?' no. |
| Fri 19 Dec | Eric Debois | OK, Ill spell it out then. Given who Perens is and attitude he just demonstrated UserLinux may well reach its objectives. We will then have a standard platform that is free as in beer, and free to develop for. This includes commecial closed source development. This would be an opportunity for ISVs to stake claims. |
| Fri 19 Dec | ? | Yeah I'm not following you and I would like to please clarify what you're thinking. |
| Fri 19 Dec | ? | OK so he put his foot down and if that means that this distro is adopted then it will be the standard distro that will allow commercial apps to be developed if the main reason commercial quality apps are not avaiable is because of the difficulty in supporting so many distros. So was the stuff about the angry linux community a red herring? Is it not relevent then? |
| Fri 19 Dec | Dude | It show that Bruce has a vision and is a strong leader. But i think its more important that he has connections with novell. novell might back userlinux? |
| Fri 19 Dec | Dewd | I dunno, but with 3 hundred distros I think it is difficult to highlight anything *really* new. Is Linux advancing to a point where vapor wares for it are emerging ? :) |
| Fri 19 Dec | Eric Debois | Actually, the choosing of a desktop is a big deal in it self because the abundance of gui toolkits has keept commecial desktop app development down. But the big deal is that Perens is doing some 'real life' pragmatic thinking about UserLinux and about what is needed in order to get widespread adoption. (Speaking of novell, they reasently bought Ximian, makers of Evolution (Outlook-a-like) that runs on gnome. Could this perhaps have played a part in Perens' decision?) |
| Sat 20 Dec | Mike | Eric, I read the same article tonight http://www.newsforge.com/software/03/12/16/0029234.shtml and believe that Perens might be the person to dictate that no we don't want 47 text editors here and so on. I think he has a handle on what businesses want. He makes a couple points that I think are critical for Linux to become a popular desktop and have longterm viability. 1.'So, in order to get any Free Software into businesses, our Free system must promote the creation of a large collection of proprietary solutions that do not exist today.' Developers! Developers! Developers! 2. 'It's important for us to get more Free Software into business, so that businesses will be sympathetic with us when we need to ask for legislative changes to support the long-term viability of Free Software. You know the issues: software patents, DRM, etc. Today these are seen as business vs. fringe-party issues, and we're on the losing side. The extent to which our software penetrates the business world will govern our effectiveness in getting the legislative changes we need.' From this I gather he sees a limit to what Linux can do without having to rely on technologies currently locked up in patent? Without a doubt the first Linux article that shows Linux with a sense of direction as far as the desktop is concerned. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Stephen Depooter | >>(Speaking of novell, they reasently bought Ximian, makers of Evolution (Outlook-a-like) that runs on gnome. Could this perhaps have played a part in Perens' decision?) Novell also recently bought Suse which is a KDE based distro. While there have been rumors that Suse will switch to GNOME, nothing concrete has been said to my knowledge. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Almost Anonymous | If you read Perens' argument for GNOME over KDE it boils down to one simple point: The license for QT/KDE is GPL. This means you cannot link to it to build closed-source applications. You can, however, buy a license from Trolltech, the makers of QT, to get around this restriction (and some expense). The license for GNOME/GTK is LGPL. This means it can be used to build closed-source applications. The point of UserLinux is support commercial interests in Linux, so GNOME is the obvious choice. I personally feel that KDE is technically superior (and Windows developers would like it more) but you can't argue against its uselessness for commercial development because of it's license. |
| Sat 20 Dec | anon | Another major reason to choose Gnome over KDE is that Sun has embraced Gnome as their platform of choice and is dumping CDE for Gnome. As much as the slashdotters thumb their noses at Sun, the reality is that Sun matters in the marketplace. There are a lot of applications developed on Sun systems, both commericial shrinkwrap and internally developed Solaris apps and choosing Gnome for the desktop lowers the bar for Solaris developers to produce Linux ports of their software. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Simon Lucy | This is an unavoidable step if a standardised desktop and environment is going to happen on Linux and thus be acceptable and make sense to the average consumer. Those large organisations, governmental bodies, that have switched to Linux have also defined, or laid down the requirements, of a standard desktop and environment. That its Bruce Perens making the point only underscores the sanity. The licencing of Gnome isn't a small element in making that the standard desktop, there'll be some raising the standard for KDE, or KY Jelly or whatever other interface they love but I don't think the sound and fury will come to much. After all if they really love their favourite that much they can bolt it on afterwards. Standardising a distribution is the point. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Scot Doyle | Good quote by Alan Cox: 'There's a measure of community of people, where you can take the people to the computer, so to speak. But there's a large community of people where you have to take the technology to the people and give it to them in their own terms. There are lots of people who don't have a PC, or who have a PC but don't think of it as a personal computer - it's their Internet thingy.' http://www.itwales.com/cgi/showsite/showpage.cgi?998973 |
| Sat 20 Dec | Stephen Jones | I have no idea who this Perens guy is, but I doubt if he will have any success, and doubt even more if he deserves to. All Linux distributions give you both KDE and Gnome. Why the hell do you want to get rid of one of them, particularly the better one? May I suggest we standardize on common sense. People want to write an app for Gnome they do so, and every Linux user fires up Gnome to use it; and if they want to write one for KDE they do so, and every Linux user fires up KDE. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Andrew Hurst | -- I have no idea who this Perens guy is -- He's a major contributor to debian, and used to consult for HP on Open Source. He should probably be grouped with people like Eric Raymon, and Richard Stallman, but he's definitely a lot more thoughtful about what he says, and how it will come off to people reading it, in my opinion. The issue isn't whether Linux people will just restart the next window manager to use a program. UserLinux isn't aimed at them, its aimed at corporate desktops. And you know a corp. wouldn't use it if they had to switch desktops everytime they needed to check their email or write a document. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Frederic Faure | BTW, does someone know 1. how many APIs make up Windows today? 2. why the Wine project is still unable to provide 100% compatibility? Until Linux offers a 100% binary compatible API for Windows, I'm not sure Linux will go very far on the desktop, even with the best GUI in the world. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Stephen Jones | The point is that this guy is not going to standardize the whole Linux community on Gnome. There are simply too many things that work on KDE, and it is generally considered to be more advanced and better than Gnome. It seems silly to me to throw away all the stuff written for KDE while waiting for somebody to write the same for Gnome. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Almost Anonymous | Stephen, It doesn't matter how superior KDE is to GNOME (and I happen to agree with you on that). It cannot be used to develop commercial closed-source applications. UserLinux is a distribution geared towards the business community. Futhermore, supporting two desktop environments is a royal pain and definitely hurting Linux's chances on being adopted on the desktop. The choice to go with GNOME is a no-brainer because of the licensing issues. It should be noted that it's unlikely anyone (Sun) would have gone with GNOME except for the licensing issues. Now GNOME has all the corporate backing. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Namtar | Of course you can develop commercial closed-source applications for/with KDE. KDElibs themselves are all LGPL (in fact, they have to be or they wont be accepted in KDE), buy a QT commercial License and you are set. http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdemanifesto.php |
| Sat 20 Dec | Brazilian Dude | 'KDE supports and always has supported commercial uses of the desktop environment. All KDE core libraries are published under the LGPL. KDE is open to commercial use.' From the KDE manifest. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Eric Debois | Yes, you can buy a commercial QT license. I think however that Perens' scheme involves the whole world and not just western europe and the US. I.E I think he wants to get the ball rolling in eastern europe and asia where even the modest price of the QT license may stop some ventures. |
| Sat 20 Dec | Brazilian Dude | How much is it? |
| Sat 20 Dec | Eric Debois | I havent verified this but last I heard its $1500 USD per year. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | Here's the pricing: Single Platform (Either Qt/Windows or Qt/X11 or Qt/Mac) Prices per developer. Includes one year of support and maintenance. See also the Professional/Enterprise Comparison Chart Developers Professional Edition Enterprise Edition 1 $ 1550,- $ 2330,- 2 - 5 $ 1400,- $ 2100,- 6 - 10 $ 1320,- $ 1980,- 11 - 20 $ 1240,- $ 1870,- Now that is not per year; you can pay maintenance per year if you want to. Here are the prices: Maintenance and Support - Single Platform (Either Qt/Windows or Qt/X11 or Qt/Mac) Prices per developer. Includes one year of support and maintenance. See also the Professional/Enterprise Comparison Chart Developers Professional Edition Enterprise Edition 1 $ 480,- $ 720,- 2 - 5 $ 430,- $ 650,- 6 - 10 $ 410,- $ 620,- 11 - 20 $ 380,- $ 580,- Is anybody seriously suggesting that a big commercial company building apps for corporate America can't afford these prices? They are comparable to prices for Windows tools. This thread still amazes me. Somebody announces he's going to make yet another Linux distribution and suddenly everybody is pretending that the KDE/Gnome fight is solved, and everybody is going to throw away the distros they have been successfully using for years to jump on the bandwagon. There are three or four big players in the Linux distro market; Red Hat in the States and Suse elsewhere, whilst Mandrake is hugely popular among individuals and Debian and Slackware have the vote of aficionados. Of these Red Hat has announced it is putting the desktop on a second footing and Suse and Mandrake both use KDE, though Mandrake also gives you Gnome. What makes people think Perens vaporware is going to have any effect. |
| Sun 21 Dec | blargle | there's more to licensing issues than pure cost alone, for example: 1) lag time when a new developer joins - could take a week or three to purchase the new licence(s) - it's not uncommon at my place of work to install a demo version of some software whilst waiting for all the purchase order stuff to get authorised. (Note can't do this with QT, you can only develop free stuff under the QPL version, commercial with the commercial licence - can't switch from QPL to commercial licence mid-development.) 2) auditing of available licences - I don't know the details wrt auditing for licences etc - only it takes some manpower and if you get it wrong you can end up with a large fine ... |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | dear Blargle, What you are saying applies to developers tools under any OS or Windowing system. It might be an argument for using freeware whereever possible, but it has little relelvance to the matter in hand. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Simon Lucy | Query, how much does the MS Windows API cost, and how much does the licence cost to develop windows applications? Answer. Nada, Zilch, Zippo, Nowt. You might have to spend money on tools but nothing absolutely nothing to distribute your application. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | You do of course have to pay the same amount of money you have to pay to Qt simply to have the Developers kit with the OS licenses to test out your application. And it costs zilch to develop for Linux under KDE unless you want to make a closed source commercial application. |
| Sun 21 Dec | blargle | Developing a commercial app 1) under KDE: need licences, costs money, requires audits, purchase orders etc. 2) under Gnome: n/a |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | So what! Develop a commercial app under Windows and you have to pay for the OS's to develop under and then for the IDE. But there are a load more people developing for Windows than for Gnome. |
| Sun 21 Dec | T. Norman | To overcome the barriers that are present because of the extensive presence that Windows has, low cost is an important consideration. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Eric Debois | Stephen, I think you missed my post above. And, sure, development isnt free on windows, but thats beside the point. The point is to get as low an entry threshold as possible to make liux development more attractive than windows development. Especially in non western industrialised coutries. Its not like KDE is going away either. One can just install the debian KDE packages if they are wanted. The idea is to create a focal point for commecial development and with a bit of luck its going to have a bandwagon effect. And, yes it is still vapourware. But considering that development has started and most of the distro will be comming straight from debian, Im will to bet on a beta release within 6 months. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Stephen Jones | No, I didn't miss your post above. I just think your whole point is wrong. You're saying we going to get a bandwagon effect of vapourware, as opposed to the four or five recognized distributions which are all backing the other horse. And commercilal developers are going to start developing apps for third world countries too poor to pay for them? |
| Sun 21 Dec | Eric Debois | Actually, I dont have a point as such. I was just looking for opinions but I felt that you were basing yours on a missunderstanding which is why I argued. |
| Sun 21 Dec | Clay Dowling | To be perfectly honest, the whole KDE vs Gnome thing is a load of fertilizer. The fact that the argument exists at all is a major hurdle for development of GUI apps on free UNIX. The inability to determine which GUI libraries are going to be available has been a major hinderance for lots of programmers, myself included. I'd love to produce GUI apps for UNIX. But there's no way to know which set of libraries is installed. There are also major incompatibilities |