谷歌收购摩托罗拉移动

http://www.williamlong.info/archives/2774.html

-月光博客

据谷歌官方博客报道，谷歌CEO拉里·佩奇（Larry Page）今日宣布，已与摩托罗拉移动签署最终协议，将以每股40美元的现金收购后者，总价约125亿美元。该交易已经得到两家公司董事会的批准。

10+1 things they never teach in college about programming

http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/2010/05/27/10-things-they-never-teach-in-college-about-programming/

. | Making Good Software

Written by Alberto Gutierrez

May 27th, 2010 at 4:29 am

中文翻译：伯乐在线

I still remember how naive I was just after I finished my studies. I was convinced that I was ready to join any software company and start shining as a top class developer. Obviously, no long after I started working, I realized how many things I didn't know.

As I have been acquiring experience, I have been learning things the hard way, stuff which I was never taught, and which its understanding, is basic to become a good developer. This is my list of the 10 things I wish I had been taught.

1.- We're always wrong.

Developers, among other non technical defects, have quite big egos, that´s why is very hard for us to recognize that we were wrong about something. I've seen many endless design discussions where developers will go on and on with their own ideas… well, guess what.. We are all wrong, the only difference between our positions is the degree of wrongness.

Is very important to understand and embrace this fact, only once that we do so we will be open to listen to others and use their own ideas to build a better solution.

2.- If something can break, it will break.

Aka "hope driven development", if you are not sure about something, if you find yourself using the word "should", then you are in trouble.

There is only one solution for this, do whatever is necessary to make sure that it doesn't break, this could mean that you will have to write a test, debug, clarify the requirements…

3.- All code is crap.

After 10 years complaining about all the code that surrounds me, I have come to a brilliant conclusion, all code (including mine), is crap. Of course there are many degrees of crappy code, but even the best code I've ever seen is not easy to read.

This doesn't mean that is not worthy trying to make your code better, all the opposite, there's a huge difference between the best kind of code and the worst kind of code.

4.- There is always a bug.

ALWAYS! Is just a matter of how hard you look for it.

5.- The most important thing is the client.

Among many things the client doesn't care are: the technologies you use in the project, how many more things that required the application does… or in general, if you use good practices.

And since I can imagine how much hate comments I will get if I only leave the previous paragraph, let me clarify what I want to say… We should never forget the client perspective, sometimes developers use technologies or insist in over engineering just for the sake of using best practices, but remember, if it doesn't add any value for the client, drop it.

6.- Design on paper doesn't work.

I used to believe that I could put my whole design in a paper upfront, and then just fill in the gaps, but it simply doesn't work.

Software development is complex, is hard to see all the entities and their relationships until you don't get the hands dirty. So keep planning and designing upfront, it is very helpful, just don't try too hard, and don't take the diagrams as contracts.

7.- Less is more.

Or as you probably know it better: "Keep it simple, stupid!" (KISS). So if is not necessary drop it, because remember: "If something can break, will break".

8.- Coding is only 20% of what we do.

Be ready to spent 80% of your time thinking, debugging, testing, in meetings, conversations… And all of the other activities are very important, so you have to develop a wide range of skills, not only technical, to become a good software developer.

9.- The customer doesn't know what he/she wants NEVER!.

Customers have a necessity, or an idea, but they don't know the details… Software development is all about discovering the details and removing all the uncertainty and converting them into an application.

10.- Someone has done it before.

So don't reinvent the wheel, use Google, or better yet, ask your colleagues, many times they may have done already the same or something very similar.

Bonus: Hey! Our job is cool!

On the bright side, programming is still cool!

How Google sets goals and measures success

http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/01/how-google-sets-goals-and-measures-success.html

Google sets impossible bodacious goals…and then achieves them. The engineering mindset of solving the impossible problem is part of the culture instilled in every group at Google. Tough engineering problems don't have obvious answers. You need to invent the solution, not just optimize something that exists. Every quarter every group at Google sets goals, called OKRs, for the next 90 days. Most big companies set annual goals like improving or growing something by x%, and then measure performance once a year. At Google a year is like a decade. Annual goals aren't good enough. Set quarterly goals, set them at impossible levels, and then figure out how to achieve them. Measure progress every quarter and reward outstanding achievement.

OKRs are Objectives and Key Results. I submitted my Q1 OKRs with what I thought were aggressive yet achievable goals. Not good enough. My manager explained that we needed to set stretch goals that seemed impossible to fully achieve. Hmmm…I said "This is just a 90 day window and we can predict with reasonable accuracy what is achievable. Why set unrealistic goals?" Because you can't achieve amazing results by setting modest targets. We want amazing results. We want to tackle the impossible.

Failure is not an option – A while ago I wrote a post about the culture of "failure is not an option" and how, taken the wrong way, that actually conditions people to set modest achievable goals that they are certain they can achieve. Because if they fail…they are fired. Taking great risks, pushing innovation, and striving to achieve the impossible will never happen at companies like that. In that post I discuss how startups definition of "failure is not an option" is completely different. For startups it means they will try 5 or 10 or 20 approaches until they find one that works. They won't stop until they succeed. Google's culture seems to follow the Thomas Edison approach which paraphrased is "I haven't failed, I've just found lots of approaches that don't work, and I am closer to the solution".

Achieving 65% of the impossible is better than 100% of the ordinary – Setting impossible goals and achieving part of them sets you on a completely different path than the safe route. Sometimes you can achieve the impossible in a quarter, but even when you don't, you are on a fast track to achieving it soon. Measuring success every quarter allows for mid course corrections and setting higher goals for the next quarter.

Rewards For Success – The rewards for achieving the impossible are significant. As you might expect there is an algorithm for calculating engineering bonuses with various multipliers. Google attracts the best people in the industry for many reasons, maybe most importantly because they give people the resources and support they need to achieve the impossible. Financial rewards are significant, but they are not the primary motivator. Working with the best people in the world and achieving greatness is the ultimate reward.

To use a sports analogy, do you think Peyton Manning or Kobe Bryant are motivated by money? No, they earned more money than they could possibly spend years ago. They are driven by the desire to be the best in the world. That desire and drive is far more powerful than any amount of money. That same drive and desire is evident all across Google.

Startup entrepreneurs are driven by similar desires. To achieve the impossible. To create something from nothing. To attract the best team. And, to make a difference. In many ways Google is still a startup, with the founders still working hard every day to achieve the impossible. Every company has a process for setting goals, measuring success, and calculating rewards. It is not that Google's process is significantly better…it is the mindset and culture that is totally different. There is an energy force field that you can feel when you are surrounded by top achievers. It is exhilarating, and inspires you to achieve more than you thought possible. It feels good!

Subscribe - To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via emailgo here and enter your email address in the box in the right column. You can also Follow me on Twitter @DonDodge .

An Archive of English, Spoken in Many Different Accents

http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/education/Speech-126723748.html

 | Education | Learning English

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Steven Weinberger is the director of linguistics in the English Department at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Professor Weinberger says students in his beginning phonetics class are mostly interested in teaching English as a second language. They wanted to study how non-native speakers pronounce different sounds.

STEVEN WEINBERGER: "So we sent the students out to record non-native speakers, and we compared those speakers to each other and to native speakers of English."

Professor Weinberger wrote a paragraph for all of the speakers to read. The paragraph uses common words but contains almost all of the sounds used in English. Here is that sixty-nine-word paragraph read by our own Bob Doughty:

BOB DOUGHTY: "Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station."

In nineteen ninety-nine, Professor Weinberger put the recordings online. The Speech Accent Archive is for anyone who wants to compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers.

For example, here is a thirty-two-year-old Iraqi man:

IRAQI MAN: "Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store."

And here is a twenty-three-year-old woman from Eritrea:

ERITREAN WOMAN: "Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob."

Some people think the archive would be better if it included natural speech -- people talking freely, not just reading the same words. Professor Weinberger recognizes the strengths and weaknesses of his site.

STEVEN WEINBERGER: "The biggest plus, of course, is that it is so uniform that you can immediately compare a Kiswahili speaker to a native English speaker. But the downside is that a less-than-skilled reader will have difficulties with the paragraph that might not demonstrate their true phonetic abilities."

People often use sounds from their first language until they can reproduce the ones used in the language they are learning.

Professor Weinberger says the site gets a million visits a month.

STEVEN WEINBERGER:  "We get notices from speech pathologists, from computational engineers who do speech processing, from PhD students who want to do research on bias and accent judgments, from actors who need to learn a special part."

The archive contains more than one thousand five hundred recordings. These can be searched many ways, including by place of birth and the age at which the speaker began to learn English.

Professor Weinberger would like more people to send in their own samples of the sixty-nine-word paragraph.

STEVEN WEINBERGER: "Right now we only have samples from about three hundred fifty languages, including English. You know, there are six thousand languages in the world today, so we need lots more. That's why the archive work will never be finished."

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. You can find a link to the Speech Accent Archive at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Christopher Cruise.

Sacramento County Office of Education’s website earns national honor

http://www.lodinews.com/news/article_5934f57d-5833-5741-91d1-afcfc2275e53.html

 - Lodi News-Sentinel: News

By News-Sentinel Staff | Posted: Thursday, August 4, 2011 12:00 am

The Sacramento County Office of Education's website, an online interactive English language learning website, has earned a 2011 Literacy Leadership Award from the National Coalition for Literacy.

The Literacy Leadership Award recognize individuals and/or organizations that have made extraordinary national contributions to improving adult literacy and English language learning in the United States.

SCOE assisted the U.S. Department of Education in the development of the U.S.A. Learns website. The site is an easily accessible Internet learning tool with simple directions, and offers free instructional materials to teach basic English skills, according to a press release.

The site, which receives more than 11,000 visitors each day, was developed primarily for immigrant adults with limited English language skills who cannot attend traditional classroom programs because of difficulty with schedules, transportation or other barriers.

Students are able to work from home or a public library. Learners do not need advanced computer skills to use U.S.A. Learns.

"We are very pleased to present these awards to such deserving individuals and organizations this year," John Segota, interim president of the National Coalition for Literacy, said in announcing the winners. "Each has made a unique contribution to advancing the cause of adult education and literacy through programmatic innovation or by raising public awareness of the issue."

The National Coalition for Literacy aims to advance family literacy, adult education and English language skills in the country.

60 Google+ Photographers to Inspire You

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/60-google-photographers-to-inspire-you?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DigitalPhotographySchool+%28Digital+Photography+School%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

by Jim Goldstein

One thing that photographers can always benefit from is inspiration, and what better way to find inspiration than to see what other photographers are doing. In the not so distant past I used to find inspiration looking in the photography section of local bookstores or magazine racks, but now the work of tens of thousands of photographers are with in reach to see with a simple mouse click.

Google+ has proven to be an incredible fountain of inspiration as photographers from around the world have been making good use of the service. Google+ not only makes finding photographers easy through recommendations of others,  it makes for a great photography viewing experience. Compiled in this list are professional and amateurs photographers alike, many of which were brought to my attention by the thriving community of photographers on Google+.

Here are 50 photographers to inspire you and if you'd like connect with me on Google+ here (editors note: connect with dPS founder, Darren Rowse here). Enjoy!

1. Seung Kye Lee (fine art nature)
2. Léon Leijdekkers (fine art B&W)
3. Guy Tal (fine art landscape)
4. John Paul Caponigro (fine art)
5. Tony Rath (underwater)
6. Ryan Doco Connors (portraiture)
7. William Burrard-Lucas (wildlife)
8. Olivier Du Tré (fine art nature)
9. Aaron Feinberg (fine art)
10. Ed Leveckis (fine art & portraiture)
11. Philippe Sainte-Laudy (fine art & nature)
12. David Sanger (travel)
13. Ron Niebrugge (wildlife & travel)
14. Michael McAreavy (landscape)
15. Craig Ferguson (travel & environment)
16. Gary Crabbe (travel)
17. QT Luong (nature & travel)
18. Jim Patterson (underwater & nature)
19. Jessy Eykendorp (nature)
20. G Dan Mitchell (landscape & nature)
21. Mike Cavaroc (nature & wildlife)
22. Dan Heller (travel)
23. Patrick Di Fruscia (fine art landscape)
24. Trey Ratcliff (travel & hdr)
25. Patrick Smith
26. Brian Matiash (urban & street)
27. Manuel Guerzoni (street)
28. Neil McShane (Fine Art B&W)
29. Jay Patel (landscape)
30. Varina Patel (landscape)
31. Peter West Carey (travel)
32. Matt Suess (fine art & hdr)
33. Marsel van Oosten (wildlife)
34. Ben Locke (fine art)
35. Rebecca Jackrel (wildlife)
36. Michael Kern (wildlife)
37. Inge Fernau (nature)
38. Dixon Hamby (iphoneography)
39. Richard Wong (travel & landscape)
40. Matt Weber (street)
41. Agustin Rafael Reyes (travel)
42. Helen Sotiriadis (various)
43. Pierre Beteille (photo art)
44. Ryan Brenizer (wedding)
45. Sarah R. Bloom (fine art)
46. Daniel Sroka (fine art)
47. Greg Schmigel (street)
48. Star Rush (iphoneography)
49. Chun Tong Chung (street)
50. Mike Moats (macro)
51. Ben Fullerton (adventure)
52. David La Spina (travel)
53. Vincent Favre (nature)
54. Mihailo Radi?evi? (street)
55. J A Mortram (environment & social documentary)
56. David English (street)
57. Laura C. Williams (wildlife)
58. Victor Lacken (HDR)
59. Patricia Gil Mayoral (landscape B&W)
60. Kalle Björklid (music)

Bonus: For more great photography insights to other great talent follow…

1. Miki Johnson
2. Andy Adams

Lastly you can fine me Jim Goldstein on Google+ as well as Darren Rowse of course.

This is but the tip of the iceberg there were numerous other photographers worthy of note, but they've not yet added many photos to their albums. Stay tuned there will no doubt be more photographers to recommend as Google+ opens to more people in the coming weeks.

Read more: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/60-google-photographers-to-inspire-you#ixzz1TzINyv9A