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Can someone explain to me why "storing, retrieving, and analyzing molecular biology data" is considered to be its own field, where people actually get degrees specifically in bioinformatics, while storing, retrieving, and analyzing any other sort of data is just software engineering/computer science?

Not trying to troll or bait flames, I'm genuinely wondering if there's something I'm missing, or if there's just hype about "biochemistry, now with *computers*!" I've taken my plain vanilla CS degree to a wide array of fields including information security, space science, telephony, and e-commerce. What makes processing strings of ACTG different than processing other strings? Thanks.

Thinking you know better than your boss what your job is? Not so professional.

How's that? My doctor knows what her job is better than I do (at least, I hope!); that's professional.

I know tech better than my boss. He's an antiques dealer, for crying out loud. Of course I know better than him what my job is. That's professional.

When an architect is hired, he very often has to tell his client things like "no, we can't build you a building that high out of sticks and mud, because of local codes and because of the laws of physics." I often have to tell my boss "no, I can't create code to do that in a week, because we don't even fully understand the requirements yet, and the package you've required me to use doesn't have the functionality to do what you want."

Telling bosses and clients "no, you can't have that" is professional. Indeed, I'd have to say it's one of the hallmarks of professionalism: displaying greater loyalty to the art and to the impact on society as a whole, than to the desires of your current client or employer.

the failure of the existential quest - that moment when we wake up one morning and realize that what we're doing has appallingly little value.

I spent the first three years after graduate school working on the "Trusted Mach" project. The code I wrote, three years of my professional life, now sits on a shelf somewhere at the NSA, never deployed.

After that I spent a year working on a firewall product for Norman Data Defense systems. Ever hear of it? Europeans may know Norman ASA for its antivirus software, but I believe the firewall had all of about six customers worldwide.

There are a few other projects where I'm not sure whether the code i wrote was ever deployed or not. I believe my work on EDOS helped sling around the bits received from the Terra and Aqua satellites, that brings me some comfort.

But I've spent a good chunk of my professional career writing code that ultimately made no difference to anyone. That's why I'm satisfied now to do part-time less complex software development work for a small business (where what I write gets deployed immediately, and if it doesn't change the world at least helps our customers), and work part-time as a shiatsu therapist (where what I do makes a definite impact).

He also might need one of these

Where do you draw the line? Shouldn't you also avoid tables for the benefit of those still using NCSA Mosaic? What about the small but significant CERN Linemode demographic?

I don't have any Mosaic hits in my logs. I do have Netscape 4 and IE 4 hits - not a lot, but some. If you want the maximum audience for your content, that suggests where to draw the line.

Now that modern, standards-compliant browsers like Firefox exist and are freely available, it's more than about time to knock Netscape 4.7 on the head and tell those still using it to upgrade or be left behind.

Firefox requires a 233Mhz Pentium, and recommends a 500MHz box with 128 MB. Believe it or not, there are still people out there with computers that don't meet the required, much less recommended, spec.

For my personal websites, it's all content, and there's no reason to leave anyone behind for the sake of eye candy.

For the site that pays the bills, our members are antique dealers, and (at least according to the boss) as a whole they are a significantly non-tech-savvy bunch, so suggesting any sort of upgrade is right out. (Maybe antique dealers like using "antique" software and hardware, I dunno.) I pitch it to the lowest common denominator. I keep Javascript to a minimum and don't use the newest features.

It's menacing, and it will please your girlfriend. Drum roll please...

The company I work for is run by my boss and his wife. It seems to work well for them, both personally and professionaly.

And in my experience, no, employers don't negotiate employment contracts for any jobs below the Director (possibly Group Manager) level.

I'm no Director or Group Manager, just a hacker, but I've had such "All your time are belong to us" clauses striken from contracts twice.

I just pointed out that, under the clause as written, I couldn't teach my karate classes, or write my poetry. Surely they didn't mean such a silly thing as that, I know it's not their intention, but I can't sign a binding document that means I'd abandon my poor students, think of the children in my karate class, or the college kids in my writing workshop...

Of course, the increasing prevalance of bullshit like this is part of the reason I've cut back to doing tech work part-time, and am now studying massage and shiatsu. (Though it was not even an issue at my current tech job.) Do bodywork part-time, do some tech consulting on the side, and never again have to argue with morons about who gets to control my ideas and my spare time. (Or about peeing in a cup. Or have to worry about some guy in India doing my job for half the pay.)