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Comment Re:What it takes (Score 4, Interesting) 997

by glenstar (#34871564) Attached to: Are 10-11 Hour Programming Days Feasible?
As a startup founder, director, and CTO (not all at the same time, mind you) I would frequently send developers home if they weren't being productive... even if they were only there for 4 or 5 hours. Sometimes you hit a wall and no amount of staring at that screen is going to help. Why would I want to pay you to sit there and do nothing when I could send you home and you come back tomorrow refreshed and ready to tackle the problem? I rarely let anyone work more than 10 or 11 hours because my experience taught me that the quality of what is produced is *drastically* reduced during those death marches. Again... sure a team may roll out a dozen new features over an 18 hour day but how many bugs will that produce? More importantly, how demotivated will they be the next day on 3 hours of sleep? It's a vicious cycle that I never allow my teams to enter. It's all about the bottom line and to me inching a race forward is no good unless you meet the finish line. That being said, a developer who has to be sent home after 5 or 6 hours every day is completely worthless to me. You are either on-board or you are not. I don't care how or when you work as long as you produce product that is exceptional. A rule that I had at my first CTO gig was as follows: "I don't care if I ever see you in the office. If you miss a deadline without giving me sufficient advance warning I will fire you. You were hired because you are smart and a quality coder. I shouldn't have to babysit you." Works well if you have a driven team.
Image

Geek Squad Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter To God Squad Screenshot-sm 357

Posted by samzenpus from the who-would-jesus-sue dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A Wisconsin priest has God on his car but Best Buy's lawyers on his back. Father Luke Strand at the Holy Family Parish in Fond Du Lac says he has received a cease-and-desist letter from the electronics retailer. From the article: 'At issue is Strand's black Volkswagen Beetle with door stickers bearing the name "God Squad" in a logo similar to that of Best Buy's Geek Squad, a group of electronics troubleshooters. Strand told the Fond du Lac Reporter that the car is a creative way to spur discussion and bring his faith to others. Best Buy Co. tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that it appreciates what Strand is trying to do, but it's bad precedent to let groups violate its trademarks.'"
Image

Girl Quits On Dry Erase Board a Hoax Screenshot-sm 147

Posted by samzenpus from the take-this-job-and-shove-it dept.
suraj.sun writes "It's the same old story: young woman quits, uses dry erase board and series of pictures to let entire office know the boss is a sexist pig, exposes his love of playing FarmVille during work hours." Story seem too good to be true? It probably is, at least according to writer Peter Kafka. Even so, Jay Leno and Good Morning America have already reached out to "Jenny."
KDE

KDE 4.5 Released 302

Posted by Soulskill from the newer-and-shinier dept.
An anonymous reader writes "KDE 4.5.0 has been released to the world. See the release announcement for details. Highlights include a Webkit browser rendering option for Konqueror, a new caching mechanism for a faster experience and a re-worked notification system. Another new feature is Perl bindings, in addition to Python, Ruby and JavaScript support. The Phonon multimedia library now integrates with PulseAudio. See this interview with KDE developer and spokesperson Sebastian Kugler on how KDE can continue to be innovative in the KDE4 age. Packages should be available for most Linux distributions in the coming days. More than 16000 bug fixes were committed since 4.4."
Linux Business

SoftMaker Office 2010 For Linux Nearing Release 110

Posted by timothy from the put-your-words-in-a-row dept.
martin-k writes "SoftMaker Office is a Microsoft-compatible office suite that competes with OpenOffice.org. Its creator, German software publisher SoftMaker, is nearing completion of the latest release, SoftMaker Office 2010 for Linux. This new release offers document tabs, high-quality filters for the Microsoft Office 2007 file formats DOCX and XLSX, and presentation-quality charts in the spreadsheet. It also brings integration into KDE and Gnome, using the system's colors and fonts. A release candidate is available as a free download."
Bug

Outlook 2010 Bug Creates Monster Email Files 126

Posted by timothy from the rodents-of-unusual-size dept.
Julie188 writes with this snippet from Network World "Office 2010 is still in beta and a patch is already out. Microsoft is trying to fix a bug in the email program Outlook 2010 Beta that creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space. The Outlook product team has offered a bug fix for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems that fixes the problem going forward, although previous emails will remain super-sized. This could be a problem for email programs that limit message sizes, such as Gmail or BlackBerry."
Cellphones

Carriers, Manufacturers Are Strangling Android 306

Posted by kdawson from the fate-of-cuckoo-chicks dept.
loconet writes "This article in Gizmodo claims that Android's fragmented model is harming it, but Google has the power to save it. The rumored Google Phone could be a ploy to upset the wireless industry, or it could be an expensive niche device. Either way, it would be a bid to take Android back from the companies that seem hell-bent on destroying it. '...once handset manufacturers (and carriers, through handset manufacturers) have built their own version of Android, they've effectively taken it out of the development stream. Updating it is their responsibility, which they have to choose to uphold. Or not! Who cares? The phones are already sold."
Idle

Hand Written Clock Screenshot-sm 86

Posted by samzenpus from the up-to-the-minute dept.
a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."
Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"
Programming

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill from the take-your-pick dept.
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

Submission + - Best Social Network For Geeks?

Submitted by base65_encoded
base65_encoded writes: By nature we geeks are not terribly social creatures and tend to stay away for social networks and the like unless there is something intellectually compelling for us. The flurry of status updates, quiz results, and photo albums that are the norm on sites like Facebook and MySpace tend to turn our stomachs. Outside of keeping in contact with old friends and/or family (Facebook's specialty), or chechecking out new bands (MySpace). What social network out there (if any) caters to the geek mindset of high-minded conversation on topics of interest to us?

I began with that premise (and a list of social networking sites and did mini reviews of a few old school sites (Facebook, MySpace, Orkut), specialized sites (last.fm, imeem) and a few up-and-comers (Jaiku, Advogato, Simler). Read on for my analysis.

Facebook: Primarily used or reconnecting with friends, family and colleagues. High signal-to-noise ratio.

MySpace: Hideously ugly layouts. Nearly impossible to find relevant information. Considered an also-ran by most social networking 'mavens'.

Orkut: Nice, clean user interface but mostly only popular in Brazil and parts of Asia. I had a hard time finding things that interested me on Orkut.

Last.fm/Imeem: I am lumping these together since they both focus on music discovery. While their topic may not have a whole lot to do with geeks (other than they fact that most of us really enjoy music), the way that they specialize in a topic and allow you to find other, related information is a breath of fresh air. I am a rather avid last.fm user.

Jaiku: A kind of Facebook meets Twitter meets Friend Feed venture from Google. I really like the concept of Jaiku but the homepage shows a list of recent activity and the last time I looked it was all from one guy pimping airline tickets. I may give Jaiku another shot when they clean up their spam problem.

Advogato: It may be a stretch to call Advogato a 'social network'; it is really more of a bulletin board for techies. All of the normal OSS and Free Software suspects can be found here. I found it to be gratifying on an intellectual level but didn't do much for me on the social level. I do recommend that you check this out though if you like to discuss technical stuff with some very learned people.

Simler: I just came across this site and am currently rather addicted. It is a social networking site whose focus is on the discussion of ideas (called 'tags') and not a whole lot of emphasis on the friends aspect. The concept is that by joining tags and commenting on them you can begin to find people who are similar to you. I can't do a very good job of explaining it, but here is the article that got me interested in the first place.

In summary, I don't think that there is a one-size-fits-all social network for geeks but with a combination of sites like Facebook, Advogato and Simler we can get what we need out of them.

What social networks do you recommend for geeks?
Education

US Colleges Say Hiring US Students a Bad Deal 490

Posted by CmdrTaco from the talking-to-you-cliff dept.
theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago."

Comment Re:Poor guy... (Score 1) 514

by glenstar (#28778467) Attached to: Chinese Employee Loses iPhone Prototype, Kills Self
I had an office in the Hanzomon area of Tokyo that had a deck that looked across the street into an engineering firm. Yes, the workers were there from 8AM-6 or 7PM every single day (including the ubiquitous half-day Saturdays). HOWEVER... 9 times out of ten when I went out on the deck to smoke a good portion of them were staring into space, slumped in their chairs, or outright napping. Sure, they worked long hours but I highly doubt they were any more productive than workers nearly anywhere else in the world. That's not to say the Japanese are not industrious... rather that the image of the busy-bee worker putting in long hours is more important than the actual output.

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