Brad McCormick wrote:
> I worked on a big educational website (just a
> lot of HTML an Javascript -- pretty "simple"
> stuff, as computer programming goes!), where,
> every time Netscape came out with a new
> "maintenance release" of their web browser, it
> was time for me to find out how it would
> cause my application to break "this time", so
> that I'd expect to spend from a few hours to
> a few days getting back to where I had been
> before.
Well, that's how the guild of programmers makes sure they'll _never_
run out of work. Micro$oft is the master of this particular "art" of
"creating" work (and income!). I know of a big corporation that
first migrated all their applications from DOS to Unix, and a few
years later "back" from Unix to Windows. Some "smart" programmers
got really rich of this back-and-forth (or rather, forth-and-back!),
without "creating" anything -- just migrating the same applications.
Another big company is now desperately looking for some "genius" to
"sidegrade" their 600 PCs from Windows 95 to Windows NT (talk about
"industry standard"!) -- to later "backgrade" to Windows 00, probably.
If other industries would finally "learn" this art, it could be the
end of unemployment. ;-)
(Who will *pay* this idling nonsense is a different question, of course.)
Cynically yours,
Chris
___________________________________________________________________________
CORPORATION, n. -- A miniature totalitarian state governed by an unelected
hierarchy of officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech,
equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies.
--==(The Cynic's Dictionary)==--
