I have spent a LOT of time (like omg just too many hours to count) designing medical software, and I have to agree with this guy... these MDiety suckers can be the most arrogant people on the planet. They just look right over patients as a statistic.

I'm willing to allow that some guys just really can't deal very well with people, but even that does NOT excuse their dealings with staff. Some of these folks are mindblowingly self centered jerks, and see even praising their office folks as somehow beneath them. I do think that trying to enforce a 'please' policy is fairly dumb, but at the same time I think it is important to remember that typically people who don't have to be forced to say 'please' don't have this kind of problem in the first place (i.e. the guy who already knows and acknowledges the lab staff and works with them in reasonable ways can probably leave this kind of shit off anyway and have it be presumed...).

Seriously, if you take the worst BOFH in history and add a 500k/year salary you get a typical surgeon.

Ummm FTFL?

Timestamp equivalent * Eventually, MS will convert the current timestamp of a unique row number, to an actual date and time. * Use ROWVERSION instead of timestamp. Row version provides the same functionality and the same value as the current timestamp.

MSSQL 2008 and above is fine, and we use timestamps almost to an atomic precision in medical imaging... eventually came right after that post ... in 2007. SQL Server Vs. Oracle/MySQL is the only fight worth wasting time on. Here's the thing about RDBMS. Not only has it been the standard for 20 years, virtually assuring their own persistence because by very nature they grow.. a LOT, but it is one of the few standards that actually has a solid foundation. You see, in this age of marketing driven products, there are still a few things out there quietly running the world. And I assure you it's not XML pages.

my 2cents.

--chitlenz

A few years ago, I went to work for a start-up run by a Doctor who turned out to a true weasel, and who is still trying to clip the dev team out of any ownership in the software we wrote over 4 years. As a learning experience, it was good to know these people are not just theories, but as a practical life experience it sucks balls. How you ask? Well I develop radiology workstations for a living, and until you havea product, you have no product. Since we were a startup, we kept getting excuses about lawyer fees and not being able to settle the Stock issues until there was more money, and how we should just keep pressing forward to market, later to find that the CEO spend his free time dissolving his debts into the value of the company before trying to issue us his tax burden as part of the deal. ALWAYS get a contract, or everything stops. This is my message to all of you, but good luck, since there's a lot more people out there who would rather spend their time screwing people than attempting actual fairness. On top of the tax/value problem, the stock issue became a bludgeon which he could use to 'motivate' us, although this ceased to work after awhile. Be vigilant, and don't ever ever work for jerks if you can help it (or stupid people, but DEFINITELY figure out fast if you are working for BOTH). These people have their own ends in mind with our creations (as geeks/coders) and anything not on paper can be conveniently forgotten...

My hell is your warning..

-chitlenz

Man no kidding, we're just buying a second projector to play out with (we as a 3 man crew mix Dnb and psytrance) after the first one fried. A pocketsized projector that matches the lazers? Totally win, even at 500$. I remember seeing really cool demos done with lazer projection and fog machines too. I wonder what one of these looks like through haze.

It's like the old joke, "if you live in the desert, go where the water is". I think we as technology professionals should watch with interest the turmoil on Wall Street, another industry that saw people pooling together in set places. While I think that having Silicon Valleys IS a very important and critical starting place, I KNOW from firsthand experience that content creation happens all over for the people who do it. I code from maybe midnight to 7AM every day, like clockwork. I work this way because I like the quiet of working at night. I work alone more often than not, and I like that free design process. I USED to work in a cube in a technology center while I was learning to code, but I think that the future is in people getting out of the 'me too' Valley mentality, and into the self aware entrepenurial mentality. For me this is what it takes, but part of the process was moving to the mountains to avoid all the city life distractions.

Personally, I don't see how anything gets done in office buildings period. They're all so grey and structured. I think imagination is a prerequisite for invention, and that we stack the cards against ourselves by focusing on one or 2 holy grail areas for technology.

Remember, garages are everywhere (at least in America), and I think that this pooling effect is not only not necessarily a good thing, but it might be why computing breakthroughs are slowing down (despite the hype). The last real cycle of innovation ended in the late 90s, and I would say that I don't see much of it now either.

--chitlenz