| last updated:26 Jul 2004 11:35 UK time |
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| JOS Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 25 Jul 2004) | View Other Weeks |
| Web page size still matters? | Sun 25 Jul | Justin Johnson |
| MarkTaw made a comment in another thread that his employer likes to shave a few bytes off every web page served. Ive seen pages like this: no indentation, no unnecessary closing tags, no alt tags for images... all to save a couple of K on whats already a minimal download, especially if images are involved. I cant imagine it making that big a difference in downloading time, even over a modem, and I thought that serious, high volume hosting deals dealt with the difference between single and dual T1s, or T3s, not byte transfers. It strikes me as a phantom concern. Or am I missing something? |
| Sun 25 Jul | Li-fan Chen | There are web events where thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of hits per second are the norm on a bad day. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Arron Bates | Thousands of hits per second... only if you're lucky enough to run a very high traffic and most likely profitable website. But the best reason to still be shaving the download size is that most web users still don't have broadband. If you're trying to make a commodity offering that it's important. If you're making an intranet where you know that everyone is on the LAN or broadband link, then it amounts to a complete waste of developer effort. |
| Book Recommendations on Software Effort Estimation | Sun 25 Jul | developer going to be analyst |
| I am nearly 4 yrs experienced in this field as a developer. I am going to start estimation for some projects. I have never done this before. any book recommendations on effort estimation for a beginner are helpful. |
| Sun 25 Jul | www.ChristopherHawkins.com | Well, you can start by reading Joel's articles on the subject. There is a decent article on the subject at my blog. Then you have Steve McConnell's books. Ready...set...go! ;) |
| Sun 25 Jul | TheGeezer | Search this forum. There are plenty of links relating to this subject. Here's a recent thread: http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=166394&ixReplies=13 |
| What's the best way to create web pages nowadays? | Sun 25 Jul | JWA |
| Hi All, Back in 98 - 00 or so I wrote a lot of static html and dynamic ASPweb pages for various sites, but havent had to since. I now need to put together a medium size website, but Im not sure where to begin. I pulled out a copy of FrontPage XP to put together tha basic layout, and while t renders perfectly in IE, Mozilla, Netscape, and Safari, it isnt even close to passing any of the validators, and is all straight html with only local css elements. So, what programs do people use to code web pages nowadays, with proper support for css/xhtml, etc? Also, any pointers to a breifing on the current state of the technology and/or any tips would be much appreciated. Thanks, --Josh |
| Sun 25 Jul | Anonx | I had the same background writing HTML sites. I recently have had to do a simple web entry db entry form. I used dreamweaver and I can’t tell you how impressed I am with it. It scalable with extensions, great support for db work. From what I have seen so far with it, it has taken about 90% of the grunt work out of writing html pages. |
| Sun 25 Jul | AnonymousCoward | Dreamweaver MX2004 is the way to go. It had some serious performance issues until a free update came out a few months back. The '2004' version improves the CSS handling over the old 'MX' version. I use it for PHP/MySQL pages, and find it great for building forms/queries/etc, but I tend to tweak and reorganize some of the auto generated code, such as where it stores db connection info. You might also like to look at TopStyle by Nick Bradbury. Haven't used it for anything dynamic, but really easy to use for static content and styling. Inexpensive. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Wilder | Pretty much like in 1993 : Notepad.exe |
| Sun 25 Jul | Thom Lawrence | FrontPage 2003 seems to create standards compliant HTML and CSS and stuff for me, but I can't say I care enough to make sure. Every time I've had to update a Dreamweaver site without a copy of Dreamweaver it's been a horror, so bear in mind the people who'll inherit your code (it amazes me the number of people who think it's really important to create valid XHTML 1.0/1.1 when no browser could care less, but who don't mind spewing out crap on the server side). SharpDevelop and Web Matrix are both free and aimed at the .NET side of things, so might be worth a look. To be honest, if you've got a database sorted and you or a colleague have a decent sense of design, the inbetween bits are pretty easy to work out on all but the most complex of sites. Go with whatever interface you feel most productive in, just spare a thought for the next guy. :) |
| Sun 25 Jul | www.marktaw.com | Dreamweaver. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Walter Rumsby | TopStyle - http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/ |
| Sun 25 Jul | Justin Johnson | I've always used Notepad, NoteTab, TextPad, or more recently Eclipse for JSP, and I've always been typing it in by hand, along with liberal cutting and pasting. It can be as fast as FrontPage or DreamWeaver, but only if you're disciplined about templating and trying to create very logical, strict HTML. Personally, I like that, since it enforces good design discipline on the site. |
| HW Question - which scanner? | Sun 25 Jul | TomA |
| I need a good, cheap scanner with quality drivers for WinXP and a simple user interface. What can you folks recommend? I really must stress the simple UI. No more custom pink embossed buttons please. Ive had a Mustek USB scanner for about 2 years and its been nothing but trouble. The drivers suck, non-standard installation crashes, leaves a partial install but uninstall doesnt work etc. Their latest driver update added SOUND EFFECTS to the user interface. Its not even worth for me trying to reinstall Windows because of this. Im throwing it away and need a new one. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Justin Johnson | I have a cheap HP scanjet that uses the same driver and software as most of their other stuff. It works very well and consistently. |
| Sun 25 Jul | r1ch | +1 for the HP ScanJet |
| Sun 25 Jul | Harry Krishna | Good Cheap You can only pick one. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Christian Xen | Any HP scanner works. I have an 3970, but even 3500 works greatly. The software is intuitive and lets you configure everything you can think about. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Chris Tavares | I've got a Canon U1220, and just love the thing. Single push button on the front to bring up the scan software, easily configurable options for various presets, it's only about an inch think, and best of all, no power cord - it's powered directly from the USB cable. |
| ms after google | Sun 25 Jul | |
| remember google automated news? now m$ has a similar one, quite a copy, http://uk.newsbot.msn.com/ |
| Sun 25 Jul | TheGeezer | Yeh! Go MS. What an innovator. NOT! |
| Sun 25 Jul | Roose | I've never had a problem with MS, and use their products very often... But the way they are ripping off Google is just shameless. Wow... |
| Sun 25 Jul | Uncle Bill | Don't they call this competition? |
| Sun 25 Jul | TheGeezer | Umm, I'd call it plagiarism. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=plagiarism |
| Sun 25 Jul | www.marktaw.com | I dunno, does Google do this: ' Newsbot (beta) responds to your reading preferences. Clicking on articles determines what we base your recommendations on.' |
| Why seek compliance with standards? | Sun 25 Jul | |
| I work on an intranet site. I know that the company uses IE only. Im wondering if we should validate our Html code, or put effort somewhere else (eg. into a new function). If we see the page correct in the browser in that case it doesnt matter if we forgot to close a tag, or forgot the doctype at the top of the page. So why bother? On the other side I believe that we need to add the extra effort to create correct Html files. If we dont do it now, we probably wont do it correctly in the future. And at some point we need to work with a client where this is a must have. And I know that it will be a pain in the ass. What do you think? |
| Sun 25 Jul | Justin Johnson | Standards compliance is a long-term investment in your code. Well, not that long term, but you can be guaranteed that if the code sticks around for more than a year or two, at some point you (or someone else) will be cursing the decision to quick-and-dirty it at the start. If there's no pressure to just get the damn thing up an running, I'd do it the standards compliant way first. |
| Sun 25 Jul | no name | It's a question of time and profitability. Will taking the time to make your site 100% correct HTML increase your profit? If yes then by all means go for it. If no then why bother? Are your customers complaining because they can't view it in Opera or Mozilla? Have you tested it in Opera or Mozilla? (Or that Mac browser Safari I think?) If you tested it in all of the browsers and it displays and functions according to your liking then don't bother investing more time in it. It's your time, your money and your priorities. Do with them as you see fit. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Eric Debois | Go for compliance. It doesnt have to be 100%, but make sure to do the doctype stuff. Otherwise the browser must guess how to interpret the page, and the next update of IE might well guess differently. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Justin Johnson | Who was it who coined the phrase "technical debt" to indicate that, when you take shortcuts at the beginning, you're incurring a debt that will later need to be paid off, with interest, because you'll have greater difficulties later on modifying or correcting the code? |
| Sun 25 Jul | no name | The problem is that it's hard to calculate profitability here. Maybe we get better profit for this particular project, but we know that this project will lead to the next ones. And customers choose based on quality. The question here was not really html compliance, but in general, compliance for quality aspects of your work. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Egor | Writing compliant HTML requires NO additional effort once you learn the rules. Standard-oriented design is a bitch to learn, but a great time-saver and pleasure to use. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Michael Ealem | Applications that were originally written for internal use only have a very nasty habit of hanging around for years, and then being snatched up by sales and sold to external customers. Then management starts complaining.... Do it right the first time, then you don't have to worry about it returning to bite you in the tuchis at some future date. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Peter | After the latest round of IE exploits, the developers where I work switched to FireFox. Sure, IE is embedded deeply inside outlook and .NET studio and things like that, but as we started using Mozilla based browers, we learned how sloppy IE is at rendering, and just how far off of the HTML standard you can get. As an example of the technical debt mentioned above: <asp:panel> tags do not render correctly in Mozilla based browers (or anything that looks for a proper html page). You have to wrap them in html comment tags so that they can be seen by the user. So they should all look like <!--<asp:panel>--> err. i hope that shows up |
| Sun 25 Jul | Peter | nope. lets try
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| Sun 25 Jul | kc | There is little difference between making IE-specific pages and making standards compliant pages. There are dozens of sources online which will layout the differences and the changes required. Once you're doing it for a while, it just comes naturally. If the application is used solely internal to your company, then you have some control over the environment which it it used. Of courcse if you're interacting with any vendors or clients OR you marketing crew decides 'hey this is useful and we can sell it', then you need to be prepared for more environments. DISCLAIMER: Our company makes dozens of apps, some used internally, some externally, some both, and some sold. Prior to me joining in December, they were IE-specific. I'm starting the movement to make them much more robust and flexible. |
| Sun 25 Jul | T. Norman | If you code to IE you're still coding to standards; you've chosen IE as the standard. Choosing to code to a more portable standard such as the W3C's isn't much harder, it's just that you have to learn that standard instead. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Simon Lucy | Compliance is not about running in different browsers, its about being able to use web pages under all circumstances. You may use a single browser but what proportion of your users have an eyesight defect, colour blindness, impaired use of one or more limbs that makes using a mouse difficult? Can you, by removing all the styling, read the content or have it translated into voice by another system? Can all the functionality of the site be managed by the user using only the keyboard? Are there alternate navigation methods? And if you have no users with special needs now, how can you be certain you won't in the future? |
| Sun 25 Jul | Thom Lawrence | The output of HTML to the browser should be the easiest, quickest, most flexible part of your application. Go with standards now, do it later - nobody will notice or care, and if they do, you should be able to change it all in an afternoon. I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's not hard to follow the standards, and frankly I like XHTML because it's nice and anal, but do whatever gets the job done. The browser is the standard, not some document at the W3C. |
| Sun 25 Jul | RocketJeff | Also, just because your page looks fine with the current version of IE doesn't mean that it'll look fine with the next. If you follow published standards you'll not only have a better shot ogf running on different browsers, but you'll have a better shot of being compatable with different versions of the same browser. |
| Sun 25 Jul | www.marktaw.com | I used to manage an Intranet, and brought it from 800 pages to 5,000 pages. The standard browser was netscape 4.x for the longest time & I always insisted on something that, if not standards compliant, at least worked on both of the major browsers, even when the company started going over to IE only, up until the point where we were given new computers with only IE & were told not to install any new software on them. (Strange, restrictive company policy for programmers, I know). I also had a no-flash policy because not everyone had flash. My general rule when designing web pages is: KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid. Given the choice, I won't do anything more complicated than Google (view the source on their page) or Yahoo! |
| Sun 25 Jul | Walter Rumsby | Google fails a W3C validation check :) |
| Sun 25 Jul | www.marktaw.com | Google "fails" gracefully. if a browser doesn't support CSS, it still renders the page, just with the default font. That's what I care about, more than actual standards compliance. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Walter Rumsby | That's what would happen anyway? I'm not sure why it would have to not support the standard to achieve that. Looks to me like there are font tags and unquoted attributes causing most of the validity problems - http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F - which shouldn't really be that much of an effort to clean up. |
| Sun 25 Jul | www.marktaw.com | The the doctype stuff is mostly fluff. It looks like mostly they're non compliant because a) the old stuff just works, and b) they want to shave a few bytes off of every page served. |
| Fog Creek Affiliate Program | Sun 25 Jul | Matthew Lock |
| Is the Fog Creek Affiliate program still running? http://www.fogcreek.com/Affiliates.html I cant find the sign up link on the page anywhere. |
| Sun 25 Jul | www.marktaw.com | Joel mentioned a while back that he was rethinking his strategy, and I believe he said he would get rid of the affiliate program, but still honor anyone who was in it already. I think. |
| Sun 25 Jul | www.marktaw.com | But a quick peek at the source code turns up this: https://shop.fogcreek.com/affiliate/default.asp?pg=pgSignup |
| Sun 25 Jul | no name | man, i receive a lot of javascript errors on that page. oh it's joel quality site, yup |
| Sun 25 Jul | Brad Wilson | Wait, someone scrounged a DEAD LINK to a page, and you're bitching because this page that NOBODY IS SUPPOSED TO EVER BE ABLE TO GO TO happens to be broken? What a flaming asshole you are. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Joel Spolsky | The administrative effort wasn't worth the benefit, so we stopped accepting new signups. |
| Sun 25 Jul | no name | maybe i'm a flaming asshole however it doesn't change my view that on the *live* online order form if I enter the letter A into the quantity field (the 'how many' column) then i got a nice error which is clearly that somebody didn't test correctly that page. and we all know that the owner of this site/forum is somebody who likes to rave about quality. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Eric Debois | >>and we all know that the owner of this site/forum is somebody who likes to rave about quality. We do? Are you sure you are really thinking about this site? AFAICT Joel raves alot more about the cost/benefit thing. |
| Sun 25 Jul | kc | THUS SAYETH THE JOEL. Wow, I thought he had been abducted by aliens... |
| Using .NET to develop a $30 Shareware | Sun 25 Jul | Brian Carmack |
| Im planning to publish through a web site a shareware, the price will be $30 I dont know if I should use Delphi or .NET yet. With .NET I will benefits from nicer API from the Framework but then people who do not have the .NET Framework installed would have to install it. The advantage with Delphi is that it just require a single .EXE file to run What would you guys advise me ? |
| Sun 25 Jul | Craig | Use Delphi. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Brian Carmack | Craig : 'For which reasons ?' I'm trying to have an extensive list of pros & cons between the dot net & Delphi. Do you now if Delphi applications will run on Longhorn without problems ? Does 16 bits applications (Windows 3.1) will run on LongHorn ? |
| Sun 25 Jul | trollop | Distribution economics say Delphi or anything else that zips your distro into less than 2MB. Unless you must have .NET features, (and your post indicates you don't) asking folks to install another 20Mb just to run your thingo won't help you sell it - until all the lemmings have migrated. Another issue is code obfuscation. It's a LOT easier in an .EXE ... Not to say .NET won't happen in time but I'm not in a real rush to convert from CBuilder to .NET yet. I guess that Delphi.NET could provide you with an upgrade path. Don't buy any your development tools until you've made up your mind. Good luck. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Bored Bystander | Another vote for Delphi. Instead of thinking 'Delphi app' think 'native Win32 app' for perspective. Delphi experience will almost certainly not help you land a full time job or a decent paying contract. But Delphi applications are very easy and reliable to deploy because they have few dependencies upon the computer's operating environment. If you are selling shareware, you must make support of your users as economical to you as possible. This implies distributing something as close to a native Win32 application as possible. The fact that you can compile (VCL) custom controls into the application also eases deployment issues. |
| Sun 25 Jul | MX | If you think that .NET will give you a better 'framework API' than Delphi you obviously don't have experience with both environments, so you can't compare them. If you make an enterprise application which involves XML, web services, SQL Server, and database access which is heavily cached on the client (ADO .NET does this) then C# and Visual Studio .NET will indeed be better than Delphi. But for the rest of the projects: - Delphi has more GUI components, .NET has a lot less components, also the .NET components are extremely buggy when compared to Delphi's - ADO .NET is a lot harder to use than the database engines (there are several) which are included in Delphi I have done both Delphi and C# development, and I think that for shareware software, or for software that must have a rich user interface, Delphi is a lot better. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Fred | BTW, the VB5 runtime ships with Windows since 98, so you don't need to ship the runtime, and you can combine any extra file (OCXs, DLLs, etc.) with the EXE using tools like PEBundle, EXEBundle, or Thinstall. And considering that you can still run clean DOS apps under XP, I wouldn't worry about MS killing support for Win32 apps any time soon. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Li-fan Chen | CityDesk uses a combination of Visual Basic 6 and Visual C++ 6/7--is this still valid? |
| Sun 25 Jul | anon | Do you have a link to EXEBundle? Google was no help... |
| Sun 25 Jul | Max Belugin (http://belugin.newmail.ru) | if you use delphi your app will also - be faster - have less startup time - eat less memory What frameworks are you require? - you have XML support (event pure delphi SAX parser) - free report engine (see freereport at http://www.fastreport.com) - lots of visual components (http://www.torry.ru http://www.delphi-jedi.org/ ) - ports of most APIs header files I think .NET is applicable only when you develop a web or an enterprise appication, targeted to MS Windows only (see amount of .aspx'es today), or a development tool. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Brad Wilson | There's only one reason you might choose .NET: because you can't afford Delphi. :) You can get the .NET SDK, which includes the command line compilers, for free. You can add a build tool like NAnt or an IDE like #develop for free as well. If you already have Delphi, or can afford to buy it, it's the better choice for stand alone apps today. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Fred | Do you have a link to EXEBundle? >> http://www.webtoolmaster.com/exeb_e.htm but PEBundle and Thin$tall seem richer. |
| Sun 25 Jul | RH | I'm curious what tools might have been suggested if the platform was Linux. |
Sun 25 Jul | mjwills | Max,
if you use delphi your app will also - be fasterGood to see you backed up that statement with a study or research proving your assertion. Seeya |
| Sun 25 Jul | Kalani | >Good to see you backed up that statement with a study >or research proving your assertion. I'm not Max, but I can tell you from a bit of my own research that this is true in some important cases. I made a program that would approximate a Bezier surface, whose control points were varied in a simple way, every 100 msecs. The triangles for the surface would actually be regenerated for every frame and the container class would be cleared and refilled (so clearly it's not the most efficient way of doing it). Finally the triangles would be run through my small software rasterizer and thereby clipped/projected on the screen (the whole surface would undergo rotation and such also). I made this program in Delphi and then I translated it to C#. The Delphi version ran the animation smoothly, never going above 40% CPU usage (and using very little memory). The C# version was pretty choppy and it used 100% of the CPU time (and it used a bit more memory). This probably isn't particularly surprising to most people, and obviously the poorer performance of C# can be overlooked in a huge number of cases, but there's one data point anyway. Actually I think that Delphi is an interesting case. The performance that you can get with it is impressive (even compared to the typical C++ environments where compiler optimization research is put to greatest use), and the facilities that its IDE provides for building nice user interfaces are really pretty good. The only complaint that I have about it is the poverty of language features. I'd like reflection, multiple inheritance, generic types/functions, operator overloading, continuations, etc etc (my list of complaints here is long and I guess to some degree it applies to many modern languages). C# is a good language too, and the libraries that come standard with VS.NET certainly do better than Delphi in a number of areas (a very simple example being regular expressions, which as far as I know STILL requires a third-party library with Delphi).l |
| Sun 25 Jul | Philo | Kalani - did you look at GDI+ for your rendering? Philo |
| blogs.msdn.com | Sat 24 Jul | Dennis Forbes |
| Ive found it highly entertaining seeing the catch all random snippets of Microsoft blogs on the main page of this site (although Im sure Microsoft might rethink this public experiment -- one post that week featured a joke with the punchline two sluts and a fag, whereas another went on an anti-intellectual property tirade, proclaiming the RIAA as all that is evil. How humorous for an employee of Microsoft, or any software company for that matter, to deride IP). Anyhoo, I just browsed there and caught this post - http://blogs.msdn.com/philipsu/archive/2004/07/24/194201.aspx 2001 called, and they want their fear mongering back. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Michael Ealem | Yes, I found all the "Your Job is Going to India" stuff quite amusing - I remember the time not too many years ago when a company I worked for gave Wipro a *ton* of money to write code for them, almost all of which had to be re-written. Cost the VP of Engineering his job. *chuckle* |
| Sat 24 Jul | PopCulture | I've been tuned in to msdn blogs very recently. Inappropriate jokes and fear mongering aside, the majority of blogs I have surfed to provided me with valuable insight and thoughts of the people in charge of making the products I deal with on a daily basis. I hope they stay around, though if hosted on ms servers there will no doubt be restrictions made- especially along the lines of the India comment (see 'Microsoft has a long term commitment to India' : http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/23/technology/microsoft_jobs.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes) I hate to hijack a thread, but very much on topic... does anyone else read the msdn blogs, and if so which ones provide the best technical content? |
| Sun 25 Jul | Tayssir John Gabbour | A good technique bloggers use is to write a firebrand entry, then let commenters write interesting replies. Yesterday I read up on Moleskine notebooks, those somewhat pretentious notebooks I like to buy that are significantly costlier than most. They don't seem to be worried about the proliferation of cheap paper. What normally happens when markets are entered by strong, cheap suppliers? (Problem left to the reader.) |
| Sun 25 Jul | Modern Cowboy | Are all of the Microsoft blogs on blogs.msdn.com now? I thought I had seen some on the asp.net domain but I can't find those now. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Prakash S | that's an excellent no BS blog...thanks dennis. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Rick | http://weblogs.asp.net/ is what you're looking for. There used to be a lot of MS bloggers on GotDotNet, but they were moved to blogs.msdn.com. |
| Character Set, Encoding and Fonts | Sat 24 Jul | WB |
| Im wondering what the relationship is between a character set and a character encoding and how they relate to fonts. I always thought that a character set was the actual set of characters from a certain language and character encoding describes how a stream of text from a given character set is encoded into a stream of bytes to be sent over a network, read/written to/from a disk or otherwise interpreted. Now a font comes in to play by providing glyphs for a given character set but it does not have anything to do directly with character encoding? Would someone please explain to me the relationship between these 3 terms? |
| Sun 25 Jul | Lou | http://www.sidhe.org/~dan/blog/ There are multiple posts covering these topics, I think you'll find that they cover most of the questions you have. |
| Sun 25 Jul | WB | Thanks Lou. After reading that and Joel's article I now, finally, think I have a grasp on this stuff. |
| Sun 25 Jul | no name | So if I created an HTML page in English with a content type of UTF-8 what benefit would it have to a Korean viewing the page? Isn't the benefit of an encoding only useful if the language it's written in needs that encoding? |
| Sun 25 Jul | mb | UTF-8 is a useful encoding because it's pretty much universal. For ASCII, it's identical. For extended characters, it's an easy to decode multibyte system. HTML has its own weird encoding (& # number), which is almost but not quite unicode. Plus it has named entitities (& eacute), which are sort of nice but make it hard for, say, XML parsers (which only have 2-4 named entities without external references) later. So if your page might ever have a word of Korean on it, may as well pick the almost-universal UTF-8. I believe the major problem area is the overlap with variants of Chinese characters, where you need to know what language (Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese (the last two being rare)) is being used to pick the right font. this looks informative: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=30893 |
| Universal MSDN or Empower Program | Sat 24 Jul | James Thomas |
| I dont know where else to ask. Does anyone who has the MSDN Universal Subscription know if it is possible to get older versions of MS Development tools, in particular the Visual Studio 6.0 by signing up to the Empower program (which includes 1 universal subscription). Microsofts website only mentions that the only Visual Studio available is the .NET one. I am currently trying to find an unused retail license for Visual Studio 6.0 and besides ebay, nobody on the internet sells MS Studio 6. Ebay is OK, but Id never know if the license was academic/non-retail/oem or whatnot, or at least there would be no guarantee. I am just trying to cover my ass in case I do develop a decent product in VB6 & C++ and only then to find out that it was done with a nonlegit copy of the MS Studio. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Christopher Wells | You know that MSVC v7 is able to compile non-.NET software ... MFC and so on? |
| Sat 24 Jul | James Thomas | Yes, I know that, but it is mostly the Visual Basic 6 that is of main interest to me. I've been developing a nifty application between classes in college, they have Visual Studio 6 on every PC but with the academic license, so now I wish to release the program but can't find a retail copy of VB6 to buy and compile my project in that. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Jonathan A. | Yes, MSDN Unverisal does include access to Visual Studio 6.0 including VB. Last time I checked it came on both the DVD and was available for download in the subscription area. |
| Sat 24 Jul | RocketJeff | You don't need MSDN Universal to get VB6 - I have MSDN Professional (all the company would shell out for) and VB6 is available via MSDN Downloads. It's only the Professional version, if you want VB6 Enterprise you'd probably need an MSDN Enterprise subscription. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Alex Tronin | Yes, see what I can download via Empower: Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Edition Visual Studio 6.0 Professional Edition |
| Sun 25 Jul | James Thomas | Thanks to everyone for the information. |
| Sun 25 Jul | RocketJeff | 'I've been developing a nifty application between classes in college, they have Visual Studio 6 on every PC but with the academic license, so now I wish to release the program but can't find a retail copy of VB6 to buy and compile my project in that. ' Find a copy of the License that covers the copies of VB you've been using. If it's Microsoft's standard Academic License then you shouldn't have anything to worry about - it only restricts who's able to buy the Microsoft product, the rest of the license is the standard licence for their product. If you still want your own copy, go ahead and buy an Academic copy (if you're still eligable). Again, the last time I looked, the only addition to the license was who was able to buy the Microsoft product, not what they did with it after they bought it. |
| Lookout gone | Sat 24 Jul | RT |
| The microsoft.com Lookout download link no longer works ... |
| Sat 24 Jul | RT | PS just a quick recap: As of July 19, Microsoft says, 'The existing Lookout product will no longer be available.' As of July 23, Microsoft makes Lookout available through its download center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=09b835ee-16e5-4961-91b8-2200ba31ea37&displaylang=en As of July 24, Lookout disappears (?) from the download center, both at the link above and in a date-sorted list of Outlook downloads: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?sortCriteria=date&OSID=&productID=50663FD1-DBAD-4705-B915-E4CF683E70FE&CategoryID=&freetext=&DisplayLang=en&DisplayEnglishAlso= |
| Sat 24 Jul | mb | As July (23?), Lookout is again available from http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/download.html |
| Sat 24 Jul | TheGeezer | Yeh, I'm as confused as you are. Begs the question - why are they flip-flopping around with this product |
| Sat 24 Jul | no name | i told in the prev forums to WatchOut before LookOut |
| Sat 24 Jul | LannyD | my guess is MS wants to make it available, but doesn't want to support it or have it seen as theirs. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Chris Altmann | The link 'mb' provided can also be found here: http://sandbox.msn.com/ Kinda like http://labs.google.com/ |
| Why to never use sentinal values | Sat 24 Jul | mb |
| Or, why null has a special meaning. http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/07/22notagtagsbringf.html |
| Sat 24 Jul | no name | it's funny ... and sad from a sw perspective |
| Sat 24 Jul | example | Same thing happened to a guy in California a few years ago. Tried to be clever, and started getting tickets from around the state. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Almost Anonymous | I think I'm going to get a personalized license plate that just says "NULL". |
| Sun 25 Jul | L. Ellison | This is hilarious. It is an excellent example of why you hobbyist programmers drawing a salary ought to learn how to use null. DBA's rule! |
| Conferences as an Independant? | Sat 24 Jul | Brad |
| Back when I was working for The Man, I attended a fair share of conferences, some more worthwhile than others, but I usually got something out of all of them. The best part, however, was that I wasnt paying. Now, though, Im an independant developer--and loving it. Except that I can only dream about going to some of these conferences. I cant afford to spend $1K to go--nor would I; they arent really worth *that* much in the end. Now I know that some conferences give free passes out like candy. So...how do I get in on that? |
| Sat 24 Jul | Mark Bessey | Find out what magazines are published by the media company that runs the show, and subscribe to them -Mark (still haven't been able to use my free passes to the Embedded Systems Conference, but someday...) |
| Sat 24 Jul | sgf | I've gotten many free passes to the Embedded Systems conference - but only the exhibition floor. I don't think there are many passes for the classes and tutorials. :( |
| Sun 25 Jul | the artist formerly known as prince | Dont forget they are an excellent way to tax deduct vacations |
| Why is there an extra pseudo-item in a listbox? | Sat 24 Jul | S. Tanna |
| Create a Windows listbox Make it exactly big enough (or even a few pixels bigger just to be safe) for N items. Fill the list with N items What happens? The scrollbar appears, sized, as if the list contains N+1 items. But when you scroll - there is of course no extra just a blank gap for a potential item after the last actual item. Its almost as if the listbox scrollbar things theres an extra imaginary-item after the last actual item. - Is this is a bug or a feature in Windows? - Is there any good reason why it was designed this way? - Is there any way to make the listbox scrollbar not think theres an extra imaginary-item after the last actual item. (Note: Ive only been tested this thoroughly in certain combinations of Listbox styles, and Windows versions, etc, so the it is possible this bug/feature doesnt always appear or is fixed in later Windows versions) |
| Sat 24 Jul | Bored Bystander | I had to stare at your question for a few moments to grasp the issue. Sometimes it appears that there is a phantom first item in an unpopulated list box, but this is probably just so that the listbox has something to display in its interior and is not really a list item. You seem to really be asking about the scroll bar behavior. Scroll bars are a separate Windows control. In fact there is a scroll bar available in Windows that can be placed by itself. The scrollbar control is parameterized with a minimum and maximum data value (range) and a current position ,as well as values for line and page stepping (the amount by which the scroll moves if you click on an end button or on the interior of the scroller outside the slider button.) My guess is that unless the client area of the listbox is an exact integer multiple of the list item height, then the scrollbar will always be programmed to have a range of lines one greater than the visible count of lines. Why: so that the final item is always accessible by the scroll bar. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Bored Bystander | >> scrollbar will always be programmed to have a range of lines one greater That is, the scroller is PROGRAMMED to GENERATE data values that are one greater than... yatta yatta... |
| Sat 24 Jul | Alex | Scrollbars are sometimes not implemented as distinct child controls: http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/10/129068.aspx |
| Sat 24 Jul | VPC | I had another issue with listboxes. They seem to try to adjust their size so that even number of items is completely visible. I tried to create a listbox and a simple pushbutton next to it and they both had to align at the bottom. But it didn't work. List was always below or above the button until I started calculating these positions myself and adjusted both controls to align nicely. There must be a rule about it I suppose but I couldn't find it documented. |
| Sat 24 Jul | S. Tanna | In this particular case, the scrollbar is not a separate control but triggered by a style associated with the listbox. The range of the scrollbar is, in this case, set by Windows itself, in whatever code in Windows handles the listbox. And it is this that I am questioning, as I can't find rhyme nor reason to the range it chooses. However, after some experimenting I have hit on a combination of other style settings and sizing, that seems to eliminate the problem. (Whcih solves my immediate issue). That said, it's still an open question for me, as pure intellectual one. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Raymond Chen | LBS_NOINTEGRALHEIGHT |
| Sun 25 Jul | VPC | Thanks, LBS_NOINTEGRALHEIGHT magically appeared in MSDN, Win32.hlp by Borland and in several books I have. I can swear it wasn't there before;) |
| Hidden license information | Sat 24 Jul | Jenny Svensson |
| Theres been discussion and speculation lately in the forum regarding lookout beeing aquired by microsoft as a result of the original developer beeing cought of using pirated development tools. Big IT also tells tales about how his company aquired assets of others in similar cases. How were these compaines actually cought? Is the license information hidden inside the executables produced by the compilers? Does microsoft development tools hide this kind of information? |
| Sat 24 Jul | no name | That explanation is complete crap. Microsoft does not buy companies by catching them using tools without licences. For a start, most of them are so cosy with Microsoft developer relations they've got licences to tools coming out of their ears. Don't believe every little rumour you hear. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Tayssir John Gabbour | I assumed it was a troll/joke. But I'm sure I have the advantage of being mostly detached from the Microsoft dev world. If it turns out to be true, I'll take the movie 'Antitrust' more seriously. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Gill Bates | I really doubt Microsoft's lawyers advised them to engage in criminal racketeering, just to get the assets of some little company. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Jenny Svensson | Why would it be criminal to include such information (license key) in, for example, a executable? |
| Sat 24 Jul | James Thomas | After reading "I, Cringely" articles on Microsoft and their competitive strategies, I tend to side with the belief that they will go to any lengths to get rid of competition. |
| Sat 24 Jul | no name | I, Cringely, would know, wouldn't he. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Observer | Sometimes there is info about licensee in generated files whether they be executables or spreadsheet documents. More commonly, there is global user and machine ID information embedded in executables and documents. Even if the person has not registered and thinks themselves anonymous, they are likely to have at some point used their machine to generate a document or executable that includes identifying information. These facts are used by the fbi and others when tracking down suspects. But it can also be used, to locate and people companies that are using unlicensed software. Usually its not worth going after them. But if they have desirable assets, then it is worth going after them. Racketeering has nothing to do with this: it is a long established legal tactic that if you are going to bother going after someone its best to choose someone with assets. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Mr. O | 'More commonly, there is global user and machine ID information embedded in executables and documents' Prove it. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Observer | It's not like this is even a big secret - it was even in plain text for a while and readily viewable. But you believe what you like, Mr. Ononymous. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Observer | I guess as proof, why don't you download any one of the numerous programs that offer to scrub this information and review the documentation. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Mr. O | How about I just compile on two different computers with two different licenses and see that the exe's are exactly identical? |
| Sun 25 Jul | Peter | >More commonly, there is global user and machine ID information embedded in executables and documents. That is how the guy who wrote the Melissa virus was caught. MS Word 2k, by default, includes a UUID in every document. The algorithm for creating GUID/UUIDs includes the MAC address off your ethernet card. |
| Sun 25 Jul | mb | 'The algorithm for creating GUID/UUIDs includes the MAC address off your ethernet card. ' Not really now. There are two algorithms, and they switched to the 'random number' algorithm by default after that. You can still use the 'MAC address' algorithm with an API call, useful if you want to generate a series of IIDs or similar. |
| Google's Picasa | Sat 24 Jul | janonymous |
| Can anyone tell me why Google went into this: http://www.picasa.com/google/ ? Picasa. Everything you need to enjoy your digital photos in a single software product. Are they trying to fortify their position against microsoft? |
| Sat 24 Jul | janonymous | D'oh. Link problem crap bug thing. http://www.picasa.com/google |
| Sat 24 Jul | GinG | It is always very 'funny' to see people try to explain software companies strategies only by their 'need to fortify their position against Microsoft'? IMHO, Google is trying to make more money. Picasa can be their trojan for an all-Internet digital photo service including archiving (1GB is more than enough for a family album), printing, sharing, and more. They'll put some ads here and there, and the project will be a commercial success. Later, when image recognition techniques will be available, they will show you ads according to the photos you have stored. But I guess that I am doing too much SciFi here :-) |
| Sat 24 Jul | Thom Lawrence | Some more sci-fi digital photo stuff: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=14275 |
| Sat 24 Jul | Berlin Brown | I am still trying to figure out how great technology companies, take Apple for example, who, some argue has the best OS and produces high-quality computer hardware, markets stuff like iTunes and the iPod as if it is their only product. I could be wrong, but I just dont see how a fancy music thingy is step towards advancing computing technology. |
| Sat 24 Jul | www.marktaw.com | Because the iPod is outselling the iMac & G5 put together? |
| Sat 24 Jul | Berlin Brown | Sellouts |
| Sat 24 Jul | Berlin Brown | but then again, you do what you have to do to survive |
| Sat 24 Jul | NotABlogger | They are also using this software at http://www.blogger.com - to upload photos to the site. If you want to upload photos to your blog they tell you that the best way is to download this tool. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Yukon | If you look at companies that stand the test of time many are doing things now that are very different than when they started. As one columnist recently observed, Apple will be regarded as a music company and not a computer company in a few years. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Jon Hendry | 'If you look at companies that stand the test of time many are doing things now that are very different than when they started. As one columnist recently observed, Apple will be regarded as a music company and not a computer company in a few years.' Kinda like how General Electric is known as a TV company. Er, no. Apple *may* end up a 'music' company, but then again, Microsoft isn't known as a 'cable news' company just because of MSNBC. It depends on what happens with Apple's other businesses in the next few years. I doubt they could really run their business on just the iTunes music store and iPods. iPods are probably a time-limited market niche, which could disappear in 5-10 years, or become just generally unprofitable. (Kinda like the PDA.) They don't really make any money on the store, either. Apple would have to start up their own music publishing unit, and sign bands directly, in order to get a larger chunk of the revenue from the iTunes store. And that's unlikely because they already have enough trouble from Apple Corps, the old Beatles label, which has sued Apple Computer for getting into the music biz. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Yanwoo | Nobidy mention that Picasa is actually a damn good piece of software? Much better than the rubbish that gets packaged with digital cameras. |
| Inquirer/Register:Whats with these British papers? | Sat 24 Jul | karthik |
| http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17382 Whom are they owned by?. Some of their punches are really . A few of them quite stale. But why are they so anti-microsoft?. Any real reasons?. You can understand about linux cowboys wanting to overthrow microsoft. But why does a newspaper feel the need to be so pro-linux? Here is one example. --------------------------------------------------------------- A MAN has claimed that the Microsoft browser is the best browser in the world. Scott Stearns, IE Test Manager at Microsoft makes the astonishing claim on the IE Blog. Stearns says: I really love browsing with IE. He continues: I realize that statement will cause some people to chuckle based on current press on security issues and perceived lack of innovation, but that is my job. Isnt it our job to make people chuckle, Scott? |
| Sat 24 Jul | karthik | Some of their punches are really good---> Thats the complete sentence |
| Sat 24 Jul | Eric Debois | Perhaps their writers just dont like MS for their own personal reasons. MS has been known to have that effect on people so I dont think a conspiracy theory is required. |
| Sat 24 Jul | www.marktaw.com | What do you expect from a "paper" whose tagline is "News, Reviews, Facts, and Friction" ??? |
| Sat 24 Jul | www.marktaw.com | And has a "Flame Editor" link on every page. |
| Sat 24 Jul | www.marktaw.com | Maybe you just don't get British Humor. They had to do something to get back at America for inventing Slashdot. |
| Sat 24 Jul | www.marktaw.com | Another useless post. |
| Sat 24 Jul | matt | I think you'll find there's the odd sarcastic dig at linux obsessives in there too ;-) |
| Sat 24 Jul | Iago | Answer: they aren't newspapers, they're websites. You might as well ask why the Onion never prints anything serious... |
| Sat 24 Jul | tree | There's your answer. They're not professional papers with journalists who worry about facts, accuracy and balance. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Brad Wilson | 'Answer: they aren't newspapers, they're websites. You might as well ask why the Onion never prints anything serious...' The Onion is an actual paper, and they do print serious articles. So much for that analogy! :) |
| Sat 24 Jul | Bored Bystander | Serious news, like: 'Denny's introduces 'Just a Humongous Bucket of Eggs and Meat'? or 'Tenth Circle Added to Rapidly Growing Hell'? Yes, the Onion is my choice for information in a confusing world... |
| Sat 24 Jul | Brad Wilson | As an example: http://www.theonionavclub.com/ There's one of these in every issue. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Stephen Jones | There is a long British tradition in this respect. 'Private Eye' is the best known. And 'Private Eye' was the first paper to publish many of the British corruption scandals of the seventies and eighties. One reason for the sarcasm and irony is British libel law. Being satirical gives you some degree of protection. 'The Inquirier' was founded by one of the founders of 'The Register'. Most consider it to be slightly more reliable. 'The Register' has certainly gone down since the split. 'The Register' is no more anti-MS than it is anti-IBM or anti-Intel ('Chipzilla'). |
| Sun 25 Jul | Neil Hewitt | The Reg doesn't really have one editorial voice - it has several. Each of the major reporters has a bias and an agenda, and is not usually too worried about keeping it out of articles. None of them are particularly pro-Microsoft, but only one or two of them are really emphatically anti-MS and pro-Linux; indeed, since half the regulars defected to The Inquirer, The Reg has become somewhat less vitriolic. I used to be a tech journalist back in the day, and I know most of the Reg staffers (particularly the longer-standing ones). One thing that's as true today as it was then is that British tech journalism does not take itself seriously the way that US tech journalism does. This is probably because most of the UK journos came out of the hobbyist/microcomputing background and have weird ideas about community; most are trained techies and not trained journalists. My experience is that many (although not all) US tech journos think of themselves as real journalists in the mould of those you'd find writing for the New York Times. One incident I recall with particular amusement is when Microsoft UK paid to ship about 25 UK tech journos (myself and at least one of The Reg's current writers included) to Seattle for the launch of Visual Studio 97. There was one big product launch press conference with UK and US journalists asking questions. Many pointed questions where asked by the UK contingent about the product's failings and omissions (such as the still-as-yet unrectified tendency for the HTML editor to reformat your code without asking). The US journos looked on, horrified, as we refused to ask the 'right' questions and write down the soundbites that emerged. The speakers (most of them fairly serious big shots at MS these days) were distinctly nonplussed, and ended up refusing to answer our questions and insisting we had to tackle them 'offline'. In other words, we had derailed a carefully planned spectacle in which the US journalists were, seemingly, happy to participate. After the briefing, I was asked several times why we Brits found it necessary to be 'rude' to the 'important' people from Microsoft. Needless to say, the next time an event of this type occurred, there were separate press conferences for US and UK press, with specially briefed speakers from Microsoft who had been told all about us 'difficult' Brits. Simply put, the UK and the US - in the tech space at least - have fundamentally different journalistic traditions, and while The Reg is certainly a little 'out there' and the Inquirer is definitely 'way out there', it's definitely a feature and not a bug. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Dennis Atkins | Neil, that's extremely interesting. Thanks. If it really went down as you say, then it is you guys that are the real journalists and the eweek people who are the talentless devotees to yellow journalism. |
| Sun 25 Jul | karthik | Thanks Neil. That was a fascinating post !. |
| Sun 25 Jul | www.marktaw.com | I don't think this is limited to tech journalism. Do you think a difficult reporter will get invited back to the White House? |
| Sun 25 Jul | The other side | I'm a former journalist too. There is another way of interpreting what Neil describes. It is likely that in the late 90's the US tech media were more familiar with the important directions in software development. Visual Studio 97 was an important release and lots of readers were interested in knowing what it was about, not just about the problems. Industry execs also wanted this information, because it affects how well the product will do, and what effect it will have in the market. As history has shown, quibbles with Visual Studio 97 were pretty much irrelevant. The product went from strength to strength and captured whole new swatches of developer users. I would say the US journalists provided the better coverage. Also, to this day, UK tech media often take their leads and stories from the US tech media. |
| Sun 25 Jul | a cynic writes... | Mark - over here one of our most famous BBC journalists a guy called Jeremy Paxman* once asked a government minister the same question 14 times - and his career florished. It really is a matter of different traditions. *Supposedly he asks himself ‘why is this lying bastard lying to me’ |
| MSDN magazine doublethink. | Fri 23 Jul | christopher (baus.net) |
| Today I was waiting for a meeting to start. A copy of the August 2004 MSDN magazine was in front of me, and I mindlessly started thumbing through it. The Editorial starts: Back around 1996 it was big news. People suddenly realized that with just a telephone line and Internet Explorer, they could go shopping without ever leaving the comfort of their own home! I dont know anybody in 1996 that used IE. It was Netscape all the way. The fact that MSDN (and Microsoft in general) refuses to admit that the rest of the industry exists drives me nuts. There arent great new ways of thinking in these magazines. There are Microsoft ways of thinking. MSDN mag seems like the developer brainwashing department. Do developers really fall for this stuff? BTW, I think the Sears catalog came out before 1996. |
| Fri 23 Jul | AMS | Just typical marketing drivel. I like advert I saw on www.technewsworld.com: 'Older PCs may be more vulnerable to viruses. Don’t get caught with your guard down. Upgrade to a new HP Business Desktop dc 5000 featuring the Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with HT Technology today.' Yes, we all know that P4s are have inherent immunity to viruses, unlike older x86 processors. Sad thing is, some people probably believe it. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Me and the view out the window | I used IE in 1996. (As well as Netscape.) |
| Fri 23 Jul | Dennis Forbes | While I've been critical of MSDN Magazine for being a little too forward thinking at times (focusing entire issues exclusively on products that aren't even in beta), I do think it's fair that they present the world from Microsoft's perspective, just as a Mac magazine would word the same historical observation as if we were all sitting in front of our Mac IIIfx or whatever back in 96. I don't know the economics behind the MSDN Magazine empire, but I suspect there is substantial Microsoft subsidies given that they freely put their content online, with minimal advertising, shortly after hitting newstands. In their defense, as an aside, I wrote an article for them that featured a technology that wasn't in Microsoft's strategic interest, I included references to leveraging Java applications as well as open source projects, and promoted the idea of supporting all browsers. None of this was disuaded or diluted to push the Microsoft line. |
| Sat 24 Jul | free(malloc(-1)) | 'Back around 1996 it was big news. People suddenly realized that with just a telephone line and Internet Explorer, they could go shopping without ever leaving the comfort of their own home!' Obviously this was not edited for technical errors before publishing. It should read: 'Back around 1996 it was big news. People suddenly realized that with Internet Explorer, they had to reboot every 5 minutes!' |
| Sat 24 Jul | TheGeezer | They're trying to re-write history. If I recall rightly, Internet Exploiter wasn't even in the game until late 1997. Up until then it was Nutscrape all the way. ;-) |
| Sat 24 Jul | Humbug | You're memory's fading Geezer. I was developing web-application (not websites) for IE 3.0 using ISAPI DLLs and <gasp> ActiveXForms in 1996. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Me and the view out the window | And I was making Java be compatible with IE as well as Netscape back then, in 1996. Ah, what fun. |
| Sat 24 Jul | christopher (baus.net) | Ok so maybe the question is when was IE 3 released? |
| Sat 24 Jul | christopher (baus.net) | Ok according to this: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=fh;%5Bln%5D;lifeprodi IE 3 was released in August 1996. I know exactly where I was then. I was interning at Adobe in San Jose. In my memory IE was not the dominate browser. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Dennis Forbes | The Plus! pack for Windows 95, which came out in concert with Windows 95, included IE (presumably 1.0). Mind you it was a rather spartan browser (basically mosaic), but they did have a browser out. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Me and the view out the window | IE was not the dominant browser in 1996. All the experts insisted Netscape would rule and IE would never be more than a tiny niche. These days they've gone on to open source. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Hub Dublin | I went from Mosaic to IE, and never used Netscape until later when I was creating web pages and needed compatability testing. I know others who did the same. |
| Non compete prior to knowing the client? | Fri 23 Jul | Bored Bystander |
| I have had a spirited debate with some contractor acquaintances over the following agreement. Basically, the contract agency/broker would not disclose the identity of the client that they wanted to submit me to w/o my signature on the following pile of dreck. My contention is that only an idiot would sign a piece of paper without knowing who the subject of the agreement is. I know the job & contract market are rough, but I let this one go, to the tune of some acquaintances tsk-tsking my obviously poor judgement. ---------- This is an agreement entered into as of the 7/23/2004 between Obviously Curried Web, Inc., referred to as OCWI, an Ohio based company with it’s principle place of business at 1183 E Screwems Road, Dacron, Ohio 45499 and Bored Bystander, residing at Contractor Address, hereby referred to as Contractor. OCWI agrees to submit Bored Bystander to its client company. Upon the establishment of an interview (phone, face to face, video, or other) the Contractor agrees that they will represent themselves as an associate of Curried Web, Inc. and will not represent themselves as an independent associate nor to be represented by an affiliated company of Contractor or another firm doing, or seeking to do business with Interviewing Manager/Division for a period of 1 year after establishment and/or completion of an initial interview. This agreement will not apply to any full time position taken with the client company. Contractor agrees that it will not provide any compensation information, contract negotiations or otherwise information that could be harmful to the OCWI and OCWI’s end client relationship. Nor will the Contractor provide any service to OCWI end client to which it has been introduced. For purposes of this paragraph the term “client” implies any location, division or group to which Contractor has been introduced. --- etc etc |
| Fri 23 Jul | Bored Bystander | And FYI, here is the response of the crooter to my refusal to sign as is, typically as all recruiters do - elevating their moral position to a level with The Almighty, and insulting and condescending in that it makes me seem defective to even articulate an objection: ----------- ... it is standard policy whether you are an independent or sub contractor that we do not release the name of our clients without a signed Interview Agreement in place. We understand that you are in business for yourself, and that you would not be able to turn over this client with a single meeting. But it still remains that our contracts are in place to protect OCWI's reputation and relationship with our clients. I have never had an Independent Contractor have a problem with this part of our contract in the past, so it is a bit of a surprise to hear that this is an issue for you. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Peter | All these weasel words mean is that they want their comission for steering you to the client. Worry not, grasshopper. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Kyralessa | Anything that is "standard" that "no one else has an issue" with _always_ causes me to worry. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Dino | The only phrase which bothers me is 'Nor will the Contractor provide any service to OCWI end client to which it has been introduced. ' There's no time limit to this - most probably would be short lived in court, but that doesn't make it right. When brokers don't want to disclose their client's name, I just tell them I have submitted my resume to a bunch of other places through other brokers - most probably a true statement - and therefore we risk to be disqualified due to multiple representation. If they still refuse to disclose their client's name, then that's a good indication something's not kosher or they're just a bunch of idiots. Either way, it's time to say goodbye. The brokers I work with do not have a problem telling me who their client is. |
| Fri 23 Jul | T. Norman | They really expect that agreement to hold up in court, when the only consideration they are giving is an *interview*? |
| Fri 23 Jul | Dennis Atkins | First, accolades to BB for posting teh actual text. This is so helpful to see what we are talking about. Agreed that this particular one looks pretty standard and not much of a problem - they do need you to sign a commision agreement before the intro. I'd ask for the definition of 'introduced' to be clarified, and also to put a time limit on it. Maybe specify that its only the particular location of the firm they introduce you to that stuff applies to. |
| Fri 23 Jul | www.marktaw.com | I can see your issues, but I can also understand how the company wants to protect their best interest. If they introduce you to the client before you sign this contract, you can make a separate bid. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Inside Job | The problem is that the recruiter requires the candidate to surrender something without any definite compensation. The undertaking the recruiter is imposing is similar to that imposed on an employee, but clearly the candidate is not receiving the benefits of an employee at this stage and might never do so. The worst thing is that this contract just makes explicit something that happens anyway. Even if the candidate doesn't sign something like this, the recruiter still applies this restriction via a contract with the employer. The candidate has no say in this. It is wrong. In this particular case, it's likely the employer refused to sign the recruiter's restrictive contract, and hence the recruiter is trying to make the candidate sign something that will be rougly equivalent. Recruiters prefer that it's the employer they lock up, because employers don't fight threats of lawsuits from recruiters, and they can easily find a new candidate. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Bored Bystander | The impression I got was that this 'bork' (broker) agency was absolutely non negotiable as to non compete terms. The contract was such a pile of crap that my attitude was basically f'em. Re: protection of their interest in the client, I have dealt with many agencies that do identify the client before demanding a signature. As pointed out, this is an unfair demand because you may be disqualifying yourself from a company that you were going to approach anyway. I'm not asking the agency to extend unwarranted trust. But the agency's position seems to be that they automatically distrust the candidate or they feel that their position with the client is so weak that they feel that the opportunity could be stolen easily. In either case, I had no interest in dealing with them. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Clay Dowling | The thing to keep in mind is that all recruiters are weasels at heart. If they were good upstanding people, they'd have jobs that actually produced something, rather than spending their days pestering HR managers with resumes that have the names blacked out. In truth, there probably are recruiters out there who aren't weasels. I just haven't had any professional dealings with them. Fortunately, we keep a cat that aces weasels in her spare time, so I don't have to deal with the normal variety of recruiter either. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Peter | Oh, my favorite weasel dealing with job placement agencies goes like this.... CompanyA hires some people through AgencyM (including PersonX). AgencyN finds out when they contact one of the people that had been hired to offer them another interview. That person tells them that they were hired by CompanyA thru AgencyM. AgencyN flips out and has a mismanager go to CompanyA to tell them that they should be paying the commission to AgencyN, not AgencyM; even though the job that PersonX is doing has nothing to do with the resume that AgencyN sent in 8 months prior. Attorneys for CompanyA say 'not to fight it, this is what we can do...' 3 (or was it 6) months later, the tail on the contract for PersonX expires, so he is hired to work at CompanyA. AgencyN is not notified, since they no longer get a big commission if PersonX is hired directly. Over the next 2 months, when there are layoffs, people hired through AgencyN are let go ahead of anyone else. When the last person represented by AgencyN departs, AgencyN is notified that they will never be getting business from CompanyA again, so they should stop calling and sending resumes. Heads roll at AgencyN, but one shortsighted mismanager blew more than $100k/year in fees with a company over job placement. too bad. |
| Sun 25 Jul | www.marktaw.com | Awesome. Speak quietly & carry a big stick. And just take your business somewhere else. |
| Daylight Saving Time | Fri 23 Jul | Minh |
| I am working on a project that requires converting UTC time to various time zones. To my surprises, the Daylight Saving Time (DST) is being used in many countries, not only in US. This site has much information: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/g.html The rules seem complicated. It may take days to write a good accurate conversions. Can any one give me a suggestion/tip to reduce this pain? It is nice to have an extra hour of daylight in summer evenings. But when it comes to coding, I wish all countries follow Japanese (they dont have DST). Thank you. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Christopher Wells | Windows is able to make this conversion for various places: which it does using information in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation section of the registry. |
| Fri 23 Jul | it's been done | There's gotta be existing OS calls or libraries that already do this sort of thing. What language are you using? |
| Fri 23 Jul | Code Monkey | Have a look at Olsen data at ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub . I think there are many libraries especially on Unix which use this to make general timezone calculations based on daylight savings. BTW Japan is the only industralized country which does not have DST. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Minh | I write for mobile devices, include CE and Symbian in C++. That was why I am trying to write some thing that not OS dependent. Anyway is the Windows API for time zones realiable? I mean does it work with the date before and after EU DTS law changed? |
| Fri 23 Jul | mb | dst is incrediablly dumb... but anyway, this looks like a good link: http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm the zoneinfo database goes back for a very long time. and thus is quite large. is singapore an industrialized nation? do they have dst? |
| Fri 23 Jul | mb | oh, and phoenix and indianapolis. |
| Fri 23 Jul | muppet | DST is not dumb in situations where your employer doesn't believe in Flex Time. In occupations like that, it can be invaluable. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Code Monkey | Singapore does not have DST but I do not think it is classified as 'Industralized' although it probably should be. From what I know the list of 'Industralized' nations is : Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Finland, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Ireland, United Kingdom, Austria, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Japan, and ofcourse the United States |
| Fri 23 Jul | Dave Benson | What a bizarre list. Singapore is certainly industrialized. They are not just outsourcing (I could see if you want to say that if they only do outsourced manufacturing they are not fully industrialized), but do a lot of their own design and development work as well. Taiwan obviously belongs on the list too. Probably a lot of countries. Mexico, Brazil, Chile. I guess since the revolution Argentina would not be on the list any more. How come some of teh euro states are listed more than once? If we do that, we should list California, Texas and Washington all as separate industrialized nations. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Dave Benson | Since Germany and Switzerland are no longer nations, the list should be tightened up to be: Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and the US. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Almost Anonymous | Use OS functions... I'm sure both Symbian and Windows CE have functions for handling time and date conversions. If you want cross platform -- wrap these with own functions and use those. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Dave Benson | I wouldn't include New Zealand on the list. They have some factories but certainly fewer than Mexico, Swaziland or South Africa. |
| Fri 23 Jul | kc | Ha! For all of our applications (which span multiple timezones, countires, *and* continents), we decided to punt local time and just use Zulu (Greenwich Mean Time) for everything. Sure, it takes some getting used to, but for a bunch of math-strong people who know that they are at -5 and some other people are at +2, it's not too bad. |
| Fri 23 Jul | - former car owner in Queens | ' dst is incrediablly dumb... ' I used to think so too, until I read the rationale behind it. In short: enables more outdoor activity during summertime evenings; saves energy (1-3.5%); reduces car crashes. http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/c.html |
| Fri 23 Jul | Lou | I believe Raymond Chen talked about problems with converting UTC to local time. There are many problems with historical conversion (some countries/areas didn't use DST during certain years (WWII), etc), but for current time it shouldn't be too much of a problem - there must be tested libraries for that. |
| Fri 23 Jul | John C. | Beware that your problem may not be solvable in an entirely algorithmic fashion. At least one country (Israel) converts to daylight saving time depending on the ruling of a local board of religious experts. As I understand it, the date is not reliably predictable in advance. Other countries have tweaked daylight saving time in an ad-hoc fashion in the past as a result of special situations -- including, IIRC, the presence of the Olympic Games and in wartime. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Yo | Theres also Indiana (US), which most of the state observes DST but parts don't. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Oren Miller | Jordan uses DST all year. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Oren Miller | Actually, in Indiana, most of the does *not* observer DST, while parts do. http://www.timetemperature.com/tzus/indiana_time_zone.shtml |
| Fri 23 Jul | Mongo | I don't know how much this is going to help, but you need to be aware that John C. is correct, and the problem is worse than you think. There is _no_ canonical source for determining worldwide observance of DST. Period. I work with airlines, and we we can at least cheat; there _is_ a canonical source for DST at all airports. If it's practical to correlate to the nearest airport, you can use GMT and apply the airport offset c/w DST offset. You can download the raw data from the Digital Aeronautical Flight Information Files (DAFIF) for free, but working with it is no fun. I don't have the url for the DAFIF files immediately in front of me, but you should be able to Google for them. Good luck, you'lll need it. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Roland Kaufmann | A few observations: (1) Daylight saving time (DST) does not magically give you any more daylight. There would be exactly as much daylight no matter what you set your watch to. At best, DST gives you a tradeoff between daylight in the morning and in the evening. If your employer simply said 'tomorrow you can come from 9 o'clock instead of 8 o'clock', you wouldn't have to run around and change the time on all your VCRs. (2) There is no mapping between a geographical longitude to a timezone or to a DST scheme. You have bizarre situations like the Arizona being in the Mountain time zone but, unlike Utah, not observing DST, except for the Navaho nation, which does. (3) There is no one-to-one mapping from a local time (observing DST) to UTC (although there is the other way around). This stems from the fact that there is an hour in local time that comes twice in the shift after the autumnal equinox and you don't know in which of these you are without extra information. http://www.standardtime.com/ 'Nuff said. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Code Monkey | >What a bizarre list Well if it is good enough for UNICEF I guess it is good enough for me. http://www.unicef.org/pon98/indust7.htm But your point about why Taiwan and Singapore is not on the list is a valid one and the reason I guess is that Taiwan is technically not a country and Singapore probably does not have the GDP but then how Luxembourg got on the list is a mystery! |
| Fri 23 Jul | ian | Dave: What Euro states are listed more than once? I don't see any duplication in Code Monkey's list. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Code Monkey | >Since Germany and Switzerland are no longer nations, Huh? That is news to me. Ofcourse they are nations...if they have a domain they are a nation :-) >the list should be tightened up to be: Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and the US. I do not think that nations like Serbia, Croatia, Albania etc can be classified as Industralized inspite of being in Europe. Also if you include Taiwan you have to include South Korea too! |
| Fri 23 Jul | AMS | There are also a handful of time zones that are 30 minute offset instead of an hour. I agree with the earlier comment -- convert everything to GMT on input, and convert back to local time on display, using locale info on the local machine. Do all behind-the-scenes computation using the GMT values. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Minh | Thank you all for your input. This is what I'm going to do: 1. Export HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones in my XP box to an array of TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION then embed this in my code. 2. Write my own logic to do the conversion using the time zone data. This approach may not cover all past time span, but will work for current time as good as Windows ;-). And it is platform independent. The database from http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm is comprehensive but too overkilled for my scope. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Kyralessa | I like Daylight Saving Time. What I hate is going _off_ Daylight Saving Time. I'd rather have it be dark when I go to work and light when I go home. Actually, they did that one year; does anybody remember? I think it was when I was in junior high, about '88 or '89... |
| Fri 23 Jul | mb | why not just convert on the local machine? of course you're assuming the time/timezone is set right, but is that an issue? basically, always send either GMT, or local time + local offset, to the server, and always send GMT to the client, which can then convert before display. |
| Fri 23 Jul | always amazed by pure ignorance | 'To my surprises, the Daylight Saving Time (DST) is being used in many countries, not only in US.' Brace yourself; English is spoken outside of America too. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Ankur | When I was working in Mexico, the company I was at didn't honor the local DST rules for their servers because the dates that DST changed over was different for Mexico than for the U.S. It hindered their ability to work with the U.S. It was a pain in the buttocks for me because I would authenticate on their servers and my clock would change by an hour because my computer was set to have DST when theirs did not, and then I couldn't log on remotely to my home server in the U.S. because my clock was off by an hour and the server didn't like that. |
| Fri 23 Jul | AMS | Server clocks should always be synched to GMT. Set the locale so that it shows local time properly, but the clock should be GMT. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Minh | 'Brace yourself; English is spoken outside of America too. ' Pls excuse my ignorance. I am from a culture that never has DST. 'why not just convert on the local machine? of course you're assuming the time/timezone is set right, but is that an issue?' The module is to convert the GMT time to multiple international time zones not set in the system level. So the machine's local time zone has no use here. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Michael Aldred | Just to let people know. Not all of Australia has DST. Here is Western Australia we don't have it, but most of Australia does. |
| Sat 24 Jul | mb | If you just want current offsets, not history, I believe Windows has this all built in, no need to export from your 'clients'. I dug up someone's .NET class to do this a month or two ago for someone who needed it, look on the gotdotnet messageboard (I think) for a discussion with multiple solutions, one of which is the one you want. It's just a short wrapper for Win32 calls, so even if you're not using .NET it's a useful hint on where to dig in the docs. |
| Sat 24 Jul | mb | ah, a quick search for 'timezone gotdotnet' turned this up. Wonder if adding 'gotdotnet' is always a good idea? http://forums.asp.net/Forums/PrintPost.aspx?PostID=453373 |
| Sat 24 Jul | John | Often the list of 'industrialized countries' is equated to the members of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). OECD now has 30 members. It includes all of the counties in 'code monkey's list, plus a few more: Turkey (in OECD from its start in 1961) and eastern European countries joining in the 1990s. Singapore is not a member. Not being in the OECD does not mean that a country is not industrialized, but it does mean that it will often be omitted from the list. List of OECD members: http://www.oecd.org/document/58/0,2340,en_2649_201185_1889402_1_1_1_1,00.html |
| Sun 25 Jul | Stephen Jones | Singapore doesn't have DST because it's a tropical country and there is almost no difference between 'summer' and 'winter' (also applies to temperature - this month in Sri Lanka has been incredibly cool and I 've often not even bothered to turn the fan on). ---'There are also a handful of time zones that are 30 minute offset instead of an hour.'---- Sri Lanka used to be one of them until a few years back. Arthur C. Clarke spent thirty years complaining. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Ori Berger | Israel's DST time is a political decision, often influenced by religious parties; Now that the ultra-religious are not part of the government, it seems like we'll have indefinite DST in Israel. Indefinite until they do enter the government once more ..... |
| I'm wrong EJBs are not allowed to access files | Fri 23 Jul | Name withheld out of cowardice |
| In an earlier thread I had a discussion with a dickhead about whether not using local files with EJBs was a restriction or a recommendation. Upon deeper reading of the EJB spec, I see I was wrong. Although the J2EE spec says the container should grant read write file permissions, the EJB spec says it should not. Even though JBoss seems to allow the Berkeley DB JE classes to access local files, this doesnt mean that it meets the spec. |
| Fri 23 Jul | ITECS | Threading is handled by the EJB container. Therefore the EJB can not know or make any attempt to know about threading. By accessing files you are force the EJB to consider and manage the possible co-current access to the file, taking that control away from the container. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Noname | J2EE != EJB. Servlets are part of J2EE, and they are allowed to do things that EJB's shouldn't or can't. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Name withheld out of cowardice | No name, you are quite right. ITECS- I'm not sure that is the reason. I think it's more that they want the Container to have flexibility when clustering. They think it's not appropriate to use the local file system. Anyway the file access is being done by berkeley DB Java edition which handles the concurrent file access issue, I think, by using the nio package. Since I am abusing EJBs just to avoid doing some of the work of RMI, it isn't so much a problem for me. |
| Fri 23 Jul | ITECS | The point is conceded - I never though of clustering .However I believe it might just be another aspect of the core concept of EJBs which is that they are managed by an third party. Anything that allows the EJB to break out of their containers is bad. One aspect on treading is that the tread may be running on another machine (clustering). Although it possible to make the file appear on other machine it takes control away from the container -all containers are no longer equal. Thus the container does not have freedom to tread your EJB as container/application manager sees fix (by for example running it else where). |
| Sat 24 Jul | Berlin Brown | Use mbeans |
| Sun 25 Jul | Dino | UNIX uses file descriptors for a number of types of resources - not just files. And different resources behave in different ways ... some block on io, some don't. In Win32 it's even worse. Any kernel resource can be handle - which is either an int or a void*. And again each resource type has its own specifics on io. I guess the container can't guess what's behind a particular file descriptor or handle and therefore cannot predict if the next call is blocking or not. But I don't see any problem working with files if there is no concurent access to the file and the io is non-blocking. More: one may ues JavaSpaces for resolving concurency on external resources - even in a clustered environment. For non-blocking io, one can try and use nio, but that may be a challenge - maybe easier with message beans. |
| Lookout owner speaks... | Fri 23 Jul | Blah |
| http://www.softwarereality.com/soapbox/lookout.jsp#id1 |
| Fri 23 Jul | Neat Chi | Telling... he basically admits that they sold out because they were afraid Microsoft would put them out of business with a free product. What self-respecting coder in his right mind would pull a great product like this after a buyout unless forced to? This shows how much Microsoft has poisoned its own well by scaring away developers from the Windows platform due to the threat of being torn down if you're successful. There isn't a single investor in the business anymore that will fund an ISV developing Windows software. All those potential Windows coders who could be making a living writing interesting Windows apps are instead doing something else in a boring job and coding Linux apps in their spare time. I can't think of a more perfect example of long-term corporate suicide than what we are seeing from Microsoft today. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Formerly someone else | Isn't it possible that their are ISV's that also hope to make a successful product AND hope that someday Microsoft buys them out. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Neat Chi | Lol I just saw that Microsoft has been shamed into offering Lookout as a free download again. Undoubtedly this wouldn't have happened without Joel's article. If only all developers had his influence... |
| Fri 23 Jul | Neat Chi | The number of software shops that Microsoft has bought for more than pocket change can be counted on one hand. Good luck! |
| Fri 23 Jul | mb | See also here: http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=164880 (you'll have to scroll down a bit.) |
| Fri 23 Jul | Yes. | Any details regarding the deal? I wonder how much they sold out for? |
| Fri 23 Jul | IT Giant | Sold out for a pittance - MS caught him with some pirated develoopment tools and it was sell out or see the inside of prison for a while and watch helplessly as the world's wealthiest lawyers come by once a year to explain why you should not make parole. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Bored Bystander | >> Sold out for a pittance - MS caught him with some pirated develoopment tools How do you know that? |
| Fri 23 Jul | Yes. | >> Sold out for a pittance - MS caught him with some pirated develoopment tools >How do you know that? Yeah, how do you know that? |
| Fri 23 Jul | Bored Bystander | That is pretty interesting because a lot of developers think they will use pirated copies of dev languages from their workplace while they try to get customers for their product and THEN buy a licensed version... |
| Fri 23 Jul | Jon Hendry | 'That is pretty interesting because a lot of developers think they will use pirated copies of dev languages from their workplace while they try to get customers for their product and THEN buy a licensed version...' Mac developers don't need to worry about that, 'cause the dev tools are free with the OS. At least, it's not a problem if they're using the released OS and not an unreleased, pirated beta OS they downloaded from bittorrent. On the downside, there's that 'trying to get customers' part... |
| Fri 23 Jul | Christopher Hester | Whoever thinks MS had to offer up that download b/c this board has a bloated perception of this small community. Hate to burst your bubble. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Harry Krishna | 'he basically admits that they sold out because they were afraid Microsoft would put them out of business with a free product.' That's the part I don't get. I don't mean this as Microsoft bashing -- I'm just trying to understand what the heck is going on. If Microsoft crushes all the other web browsers and everyone switches to Internet Explorer, the increase in revenue for Microsoft is exactly zero, (since IE is included with Windows at no extra charge.) So why attack Netscape so vigorously? If people buy Lookout to use with Outlook, how does that hurt Microsoft? If Microsoft comes out with a new version of Outlook that includes all the functionality of Lookout, and as a result, puts Lookout out of business, what's the benefit for Microsoft? Go Corp developes a pen-based platform. Microsoft announces their own version, eveyone says 'OK, we'll pass on this new company and wait for the product from big established company'. This drives Go of business. 3 months after Go folds, Microsoft kills their product. Why? Other than killing Go, what did they accomplish? Is there a startegy behnd Microsoft's bunsiness methods? Or is it just pure ego -- crushing other companies just because they can? |
| Fri 23 Jul | igor | Fire and motion, baby |
| Fri 23 Jul | Neat Chi | Netscape was attacked because the browser was seen (rightly or wrongly) to be of strategic importance as a potential platform replacement, i.e. (pun intended) an end-run around the Windows OS monopoly. When making these decisions, money is not the immediate concern for Microsoft. The money comes from the Windows OS monopoly, and anything seen to benefit that monopoliy is a strategy to be pursued by Microsoft. What they want is control not only of the ecosystem (the platform), but of all the organisms in it (the apps). Any bit of control that anyone else has over anything to do with Windows is a threat to to them. At heart, Microsoft is an autistic organization (I wouldn't go so far as to say psychopathic because their failing is more of a failing of amorality than immorality). |
| Fri 23 Jul | www.marktaw.com | It said in the post why MS wanted to put this plugin into Outlook - so people wouldn't go in to other email programs. Sheesh. Don't you people read? |
| Fri 23 Jul | Mr. Analogy | 'Go Corp developes a pen-based platform. Microsoft announces their own version, eveyone says 'OK, we'll pass on this new company and wait for the product from big established company'. ' Hmmm... Microsoft announced this back in,what, 1990 or something? And they came out with something 10 years or so later? I think Microsoftware deliberately does this (they invented vaporware, practically) to stifle competition. Look at what happened to ECCO PRO. That is the BEST PIM I've ever seen (and I've looked at dozens). They close up shop b/c they heard MS was developing a PIM. Ok, it's now about 7 years later and Microsoft is still working the bugs out of (One Note?). There's nothing really ILLEGAL about MS's actions,but it realy ends up hurting the customer. The rest of the business community needs to wizen up. Or at least read the Innovator's Solution. (Wow! good book). |
| Fri 23 Jul | Mr. Analogy | 'At heart, Microsoft is an autistic organization' What's interesting is that Bill Gates exhibits a lot of the symptoms of Autism: rythmic swaying when he's concentrating, poor empathy, emotional outbursts. If you just looked at him when he was hunched over rocking back and forth, you'd swear he was autistic. (True, we all exhibit those at one time or another.) |
| Fri 23 Jul | Neat Chi | He has Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism. Organizations with a strong leader often take on the personality of that leader, of course. Microsoft is at the point where it is so powerful that it does not need to behave in an ethical manner to survive. This situation is exceptional in the life of any organization, and is why Microsoft will not survive in the long run. They rose quickly, and will fall just as quickly with the world cheering the flames. Who can name a more hated corporation in the high-tech industry? |
| Fri 23 Jul | . | Neat Chi, maybe the world inside your head will be cheering if Microsoft falls, but I sincerely doubt the rest of the world will be, given the effect it would have on the IT industry and the world economy as a result. You are either a troll, or a very stunted individual. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Mongo | Neat Chi: ' ... I wouldn't go so far as to say psychopathic because their failing is more of a failing of amorality than immorality).' A tangent to your main point, perhaps, but psychopath (now more commonly sociopath) is defined as amoral behavior and the lack of a conscience, amongst other things. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Neat Chi | Thanks for the clarification Mongo... I had though that psycopathy necessarily involved actively immoral behavior, but more accurately is described by this paragraph: 'The psychopath is one of the most fascinating and distressing problems of human experience. For the most part, a psychopath never remains attached to anyone or anything. They live a 'predatory' lifestyle. They feel little or no regret, and little or no remorse - except when they are caught. They need relationships, but see people as obstacles to overcome and be eliminated.' That comes from this URL: http://www.oregoncounseling.org/Handouts/PsychopathicPersonality.htm My God, this fits Microsoft to a T, doesn't it? |
| Sat 24 Jul | Zahid | Thanks, Neat, that last post clarified that you are just making shit up. I'm unable to find anything on the web that indicates Gates has AS, though I found lots of speculation. AS and psychopathy are both clinical diagnoses. Unless you a) are professionally qualified to make such diagnoses and b) have personally interviewed Gates to determine if he meets the criteria, you should, as a matter of personal ethics, refrain from 'diagnosing' him. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Dave Bartleby | A corporation technically can't be psychopathic, psych diagnoses are for people and not fictions. But as far as Gates having mild Asperbergers that is certainly true. You don't need a psych evaluation to determine when someone is autistic, nor when they are schitzophrenic. Some afflictions actually manifest physical symptoms. Shoot, most people can even tell when someone is having a heart attack! Even people who are not trained heart surgeons! |
| Sat 24 Jul | Philo | 'Shoot, most people can even tell when someone is having a heart attack! Even people who are not trained heart surgeons!' And if it turns out to be a bad case of gas, maybe you shouldn't have grabbed a table knife and cut their chest open... First of all, corporations in and of themselves must be, by law, amoral. The law dictates that a corporation must act a) in compliance with the law b) in the best interests of its shareholders Period. Nothing in the law about 'corporations must be good citizens' or 'corporations must do good works.' Of course, 'compliance with the law' includes complying with various consumer protection laws, but that comes under the 'only if you get caught' thing. Thus the behavior you see from many companies. IMHO, strong, savvy CEO's recognize that companies that treat their customers well tend to be more successful - thus generous return policies, good customer service, corporate citizenship, etc. Maybe MS had some 'issues' with this idea in the past; I'm not in a position to comment. What I can tell you is that in the present security, arguing with facts instead of FUD, and customer satisfaction are serious directives from the top down. We are all evaluated on customer satisfaction (and those evaluations can affect our pay). I can also tell you that in my experience in almost a dozen companies, I've never seen more sincerity from management about taking these things seriously. Philo [Microsoft] |
| Sat 24 Jul | Mongo | Philo, you said: ==================================== First of all, corporations in and of themselves must be, by law, amoral. The law dictates that a corporation must act a) in compliance with the law b) in the best interests of its shareholders Period. Nothing in the law about 'corporations must be good citizens' or 'corporations must do good works.' Of course, 'compliance with the law' includes complying with various consumer protection laws, but that comes under the 'only if you get caught' thing.': ==================================== Philo, I don't understand your reasoning here. You're apparently claiming that because the law does not demand that corporations be moral, the law therefore demands they be amoral? Alternatively, are you perhaps claiming that from complying with your condition b), corporations cannot simutaneously act both morally and in the best interests of their shareholders? This seems dubious. Surely, under the law, corporations can do whatever they choose, including actiing morally, barring actions contrary to your points a) and b). |
| Sat 24 Jul | Mongo | I probably should have said: 'b) corporations cannot simultaneously choose to act both morally and in the best interests of their shareholders?' |
| Sat 24 Jul | Neat Chi | A psychopathic personality can justify any twisted scheme as necessary to advance his own survival. Since when do the 'interest of the shareholders' mean only monetary gain and preclude any interest in the maintainence of a civil, moral society? Are you beginning to see why so many people see Microsoft as an example of how not to be a good citizen, Philo? But if the only type of argument that Microsoft understands is one of self-interest, let's look at it that way. In a completely objective and amoral way, Microsoft is acting against its own self-interest by enforcing monoculture within their own ecosystem (Windows). Make any sort of profit with a Windows product and Gates will be after you with a knife. How does this encourage a healthy ecosystem? Ask any biologist what the eventual outcome will be. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Ward | Philo >>> What I can tell you is that in the present security, arguing with facts instead of FUD, and customer satisfaction are serious directives from the top down. We are all evaluated on customer satisfaction (and those evaluations can affect our pay). A counter-example to this that comes to mind is the new license programs (software assurance, etc.) I don't know if that was too far back to be included in 'the present,' but whoever was responsible for those should be getting negative pay... FUD per se wasn't a problem, but the facts about the new programs were too convoluted for anyone to really make heads or tails of, and customers certainly weren't very satisfied. |
| Sat 24 Jul | Philo | 'Since when do the 'interest of the shareholders' mean only monetary gain and preclude any interest in the maintainence of a civil, moral society?' Actually, according to the law, that's exactly what it means. Let's say BillG and Steve decided to take that $50B and pour it into 'fixing' NT4. They spend the whole chunk on getting the NT4 code base modernized and bug fixed as well as providing OS-level support for USB, DVD, SATA, and modern chipsets, as well as the API support necessary to run all our modern server products. That way, nobody really needs to buy Windows 2003. These fixes are offered as service packs for free. Money spent in the good-hearted interest of people who bought software from us five years ago. Of course, both revenues and the stock price would take a massive hit. Go look up 'shareholder derivative lawsuit' and see if you can figure out what would happen next. A sole proprietor can spend his money any way he wants - he can give all his profits to the church of his choice, he can mail it off to maintain a russian mail-order bride business. It's his money. But a publically-traded corporation has shareholders to answer to, and any major monetary or strategic action had better have either a profit or stock price motivation behind it, or the officers and the board of directors will have some explaining to do. Now generally directors are given a lot of leeway, and shareholders can't sue over every single decision (because companies would never get anything done); but major snafus that show a serious screwup in judgement can really bring the walls down. Corporations, in and of themselves, are, by law, amoral. A strong vision at the helm can avert this natural disaster by giving direction that *does* include the welfare of both its customers and the citizenry. Philo |
| Sat 24 Jul | Albert D. Kallal | >This shows how much Microsoft has poisoned its own well by scaring away developers from the Windows platform due to the threat of being torn down if you're successful. There isn't a single investor in the business anymore that will fund an ISV developing Windows software. All those potential Windows coders who could be making a living writing interesting Windows apps are instead doing something else in a boring job and coding Linux apps in their spare time. I can't think of a more perfect example of long-term corporate suicide than what we are seeing from Microsoft today. Huh? You mean a guy writes a little utility (he started in May 2003), gives the utility away for free, and then MS comes along and purchase his software? Contrast the above with Motorola: They wont purchase the palm platform for their phones, since some terrible software developers (or company) will get some royalties and make money (oh, gee that is so terrible!) Contrast the above with IBM: They don’t want to pay for OS software, so they use Linux. (after all, you do need to save a few extra million a year (nothing to them) for big corporate bonuses to the head guys…right!) I know of tons of small little software companies that used to get bought out by companies like Motorola or IBM. Thus, there was a time when these corporate companies did support small business. Sure, maybe these little companies only got a million or so, but today, companies like IBM or Motorola are obsessed with saving a million in royalty payments. I mean, why pay for software when you can use open source? > I can't think of a more perfect example of long-term corporate suicide than what we are seeing from Microsoft today. You mean instead of paying for this software, they should have hired their own developers, created the same thing, stole the idea, and said the hell with this guy? (just like IBM and Motorola?...lets just open source it…why pay?). Look, MS purchased a program, and DID NOT put some guy out of business. Further, that software was a FREE download. How on earth could you come with a BETER example of corporate responsibility in this case? MS did not come up with a competing product MS did not steal the idea, and make their own. MS paid this guy good money that he did on his spare time, and NEVER got any money in the first place? Tell, me, if you created a free software package and MS comes along and purchases it (gives YOU MONEY), are you not going to jump for joy? I mean, sure if MS comes up with a cheap low cost web content system that puts Joel out of business (his city desk product), then you would have SOMEWHAT of a better example, but this sure as the hell is not one! However, if MS comes along and purchases Citydesk from Joel, you tell me that is bad? Hell, I though the whole idea in the software business WAS TO GET purchased by a larger company? How can anyone with a functioning brain say this is a bad example of corporate behavior? You sure as the heck would not get this behavior from IBM, or Sun. Companies like IBM, Sun, Motorola have VERY quickly learned that you should NOT pay royalties to ANYONE for something like software! I mean, why is it so evil to pay royalties on software to developers? At least MS wants to do this…can’t say the same for the other players… Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada kallal@msn.com http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn |
| Sun 25 Jul | Stephen Jones | Philo knows of course that there is a big difference between being immoral and amoral, but one or two of the other posters seem less clear. There is, however, a lot that a company can do in the public interest that can be passed off as bettering the company's image and/or increasing its visibility. With regard to IBM, it is at present spending a load of money on software development. The payback of course is that it is breaking the companies dependance on sole supplier. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Zahid | '...as far as Gates having mild Asperbergers that is certainly true .... You don't need a psych evaluation to determine when someone is autistic, nor when they are schitzophrenic. Some afflictions actually manifest physical symptoms.' - Dave Bartleby Ummm, actually, you do. You might be surprised to know that some afflictions actually manifest the same physical symptoms as other afflictions. As a result, the minimal clinical requirements for a diagnosis of Asperger's go beyond the physical manifestations. And oh, by the way, it's 'Asperger's', not 'Asperbergers'. Thanks for playing anyway. |
| Sun 25 Jul | Mongo | Philo, I presume your response to my question would be simply that corporations are not recognized under law as moral agents, then? |
| Sun 25 Jul | TheWeasel | Bill Gates was described as being very good at poker in a bio I read a while ago (Accidental Empires? Can't remember). Being good at poker requires you to understand whats going on inside someone elses head. Autism/Aspergers relates to NOT being able to understand whats going on inside someones head... |
| Sun 25 Jul | GD | Autism / Asperger is about understanding the emotional reactions, not the logical ones, and poker is played with logic... |
| Challenge:Being contacted by prospect sight-unseen | Fri 23 Jul | Bored Bystander |
| Here is the scenario. I have a resume posted online at a (free) site that is specifically for Delphi developers. A company has been in contact with me for the past week after seeing this posted resume. The company sells a certain type of data analysis application suite, written in Delphi. I first got a call from (I guess) a lead engineer at this place last week. Basically, the gist appears to be that they lost their Delphi developer, and they need some user interface work done on contract. He asked my rate, and I quoted it. I am operating at a slight disadvantage in terms of pricing structure, because unlike many contract developers I actually have a healthy sense of self esteem and I know what real ability to do the work is worth. So I quoted a modest but realistic hourly rate. I then get contacted by an executive from the place. He says the owner is balking at my rate, as they have in hand multiple offers (from offshore people, natch) to work at 1/2 to 1/3 my quoted rate. So today I speak with the lead engineer again. He is wanting examples of my past UI work in Delphi. (Delphi, btw, is 1/20 of my career; being an EE, having done copious amounts of realtime, C++, etc etc). So wearily I give him: two references for past Delphi work, each a client of 5+ years; copies of letters of reference from these guys; and a pile of screen shots. It seems to me that they have no in-house development expertise to assess a candidates technical skill. I strongly suggested today that they release a small pilot project to me if they were uncertain. This just feels like the client is totally cheap and they are also clueless enough to try to weigh an intangible quality, that is, worth of a contract person, by asking for as much hard evidence as possible. My guess is that they see the screen shots I supplied and then they demand more. I dont even know if I want this work. I am thinking not, if cost of a piddly amount of work is a major driver. Can anyone suggest a tactic for moving these people off of dead center, or do you think its even worth doing? |
| Fri 23 Jul | bah_humbug | My tactic with jobs that seem like they might be a pain in the ass is to charge a premium, explain why, and not move. Eiither they go with you, in which case they might be a pain (first impressions like this are often right), but at east your getting a decent rate to compensate. Alternatively they walk away, and you've not lost anything because you didn't really want the work. I've never regeretted doing this, and quite often a far better job has turned up 23.5 seconds after the other lot finally shoot themselves in the foot. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Sam Livingston-Gray | If you don't want the job, lowering your rate is clearly not an option. I like the pilot project idea: give them an estimate to do their most-needed change at your standard rate, come in right on the nose, and let them figure out how much easier it is to work with you than to try to communicate with someone offshore. If they don't get it, you don't need to waste any more time on them. At least, not until they call you six months from now. Then you can quote them a higher rate. ;> |
| Fri 23 Jul | Jihn | Obviously, they would prefer you to do the work than the offshore groups or they would not have called back. To get them off the dime you could offer a discount if they decide in the next day or so (Limited time offer, Buy Now!!!!). But I agree with the other poster, tell them a rate you would be happy to do the work for and let them know that they can take it or leave it. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Dennis Atkins | Look, the y told you right off that they don't want to pay even 1/2 to 1/3 a fair rate. There is NO room for negotiation when you are THAT far off. I wouldn't waste ten seconds gathering work examples for them because there is NO chance of getting a contract. Tell them good luck with the offshore grunts and if they ever decide to grow up you'll be happy to talk to them, but from now on your rate for THEM is twice what you quoted because you don't like to be insulted and have your time wasted. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Dennis Atkins | Here's a rule that will serve you well ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the time. Ready for it? Here goes... Any potential client who is shopping on price is NOT worth it. I am not kidding. Really. If price becomes a big problem when selling consulting services or contract work, move on. In the case of contracts, most of the time you won't make a penny. Do NOT take on bargain shoppers for clients. DON'T. Listen to me here, I am not shitting you my man, you don't want these people for clients. The least important criteria in hiring a developer is price. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Inside Job | Bored, my reading of this situation is that you might have a good opportunity. As Jihn points out, they called you back. They obviously like you, but they're trying to reconcile your 'high' price. What you have to do is arrange a meeting where you effectively reassure them that they're going to get fantastic work from you, and none of the problems they would get from offshored. I think you will kill it in. Regarding them being a cheapskate, what typically happens is that once they get over the initial shock, the system flows, and you get paid, and you've helped educate another company into what quality is all about. |
| Fri 23 Jul | trollop | Never drop your rate (pants). You'll lose more than money. If you *are* getting hungry, consider taking a lower rate, but from someone else. Stare back. They'll either blink or walk away. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Nemesis | I'm with Dennis on this one. Taking a job from someone who is desperate to hire the cheapest possible resource is bound to turn out bad. Probably many of us have been there (I have), and most will have regretted it (I did). |
| Fri 23 Jul | no name | > Any potential client who is shopping on price is NOT worth it Next time you think of buying a car please let me know. I'll get you exactly what you want. It will just cost you twice what you could get away with paying. |
| Fri 23 Jul | Dennis Atkins | So you always buy a Yugo or a Prabst or whatever that Russian car is called? Really? |
| Fri 23 Jul | Steven | 'Next time you think of buying a car please let me know. I'll get you exactly wha |