"But it does what it does fairly well for 1/10th the cost and time compared to Enterprise Application Server oriented platforms like Java EE and.NET. "
I should also add that such an agreement is gross overkill where I live. According to State law here, anything you do while on your employer's clock belongs to the employer anyway, unless you have made specific, prior arrangements.
I was hired by a company that gave me one of those, too.
I went to the manager and told him I wouldn't sign it, because I worked on my own (non-job-related) projects at home. He understood and said I didn't have to sign it, that it was for the more run-of-the-mill employee who would be tempted to take company secrets and run.
"The ownership of anything you do during your work hours would be in question (at best)."
He was asking about learning how to program. It is not likely that he will come up with the next "killer app" in the process. Although what you say is good advice, it probably could have waited a year or two.
As for paying work, he already stated that work was slow. Better that he spend the time learning something that might be somewhat job-related, than spend half a day on Reddit.
Anybody who tries to edit code in nano is pretty much by definition a masochist. And emacs is not something I would even begin to suggest for a newby programmer.
I suggest Sublime Text, which has a terrible name but excellent functionality, and is available for Linux, OS X, and Windows. No need for a limited, monochrome text-based editor when you can easily have it all.
I should add that you can install the Ruby interpreter into a flash drive, or perhaps better for your purposes, use Jruby which runs on the Java Virtual Machine that is already pre-installed on most computers today.
No matter how many people tell you otherwise, stay the hell away from PHP. Honest. It won't teach you anything useful about programming, except how to use PHP.:o(
I don't even consider PHP a "language". It has no internal consistency, and ultimately no future.
I would suggest Python, or even better in my opinion, Ruby.
"It's unfortunate that Craigslist is the most popular wanted-ads site on the Internet, since they insist on remaining stuck in the past, and making it as hard as possible for people to access their content."
Others here have said the same thing, and it is difficult for me to express just how ridiculous this point of view is.
Craiglslist is a "classified ad" service. Nothing more. You don't have a search function in your newspaper. Neither do you have much of one on Craigslist.
Accept it for what it is, or don't use it. Do you have ANY idea how much trouble it would be for the Craigslist people to add specific data fields, and search functions on them? I do, since that's what I do for a living.
If you want that kind of functionality, then go somewhere you can pay for it. Craigslist ain't it. The fact that many others use it to post real estate listings does not make your particular desires any more important to Craigslist, unless you feel like paying for them.
As recently re-affirmed by the Federal Supreme Court, what is considered "tabular data" is not copyrightable.
There was a case a few years ago, in which a small-town telephone directory company saw a big-name telephone directory company come to town and take over their business.
Due to economies of scale, the smaller company could not compete on a cost basis. So what they did, was just use information from the bigger company in their own listings. The bigger company sued.
Although this was already an established legal principle, it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court re-affirmed: if it's FACTUAL DATA -- such as names, addresses, phone numberes, real-estate listings, etc. -- it is not covered by copyright and can be used and reproduced by anybody.
The lesson to be learned here is that you don't want to spend a fortune tabulating data, unless your business model takes into account that if you publish it, others will use it too.
I think this is the important point OP was making in that last paragraph.
We may see crowdsourced maps replacing commercial services, or we may see a gamut of various services. The real question is whether the commercial services can changes their business models rapidly enough to keep up.
I made this point last year. No matter how "low power" you make it, if it uses RF it can be detected at a distance with the proper equipment.
Remember the security researcher who read passport RFIDs in people's pockets 30 feet away, from inside his car, in San Francisco? All it takes is a well-designed and large enough antenna. It could also be 30 feet away, and even behind a wall.
Nobody paid any attention to me. Well... guess what? Not only are they being intercepted -- and it doesn't even take special equipment -- they are being decrypted, as well.
Actually, no. I didn't want to waste my time in some sort of elaborate baiting scheme. I wanted them to stop wasting MY time, and either put up or shut up. I gave them the option. They shut up.
"First of all, reducing terms from 20 to 5 years would reduce the effect of software patents by 75% all by itself."
I don't look at it quite that way. The harmful effect isn't minimized, it's just shortened. Not -- quite -- the same thing.
"... perhaps they thought it would be a more effective strategy to lobby for weaker patents instead."
But my point was: with the courts already questioning their validity, it seems to me EFF should strike as hard as they can, "while the iron is hot", as they say. Rather than back off and push for a "compromise" that nobody wants.
Mod up. This is precisely the point. Until very recently software basically wasn't patentable. And since it became so, it has caused huge, huge problems.
Put it back the way it was before, and cover software by copyright, but not patent, and most of these problems simply go away.
In a day when even the courts are questioning the validity of the very concept of software patents, EFF should be taking up this issue. Instead, they are lobbying for "shorter durations"???
Boo, hiss. EFF, I expect a lot more from you guys.
All you have to do, is tell them that you are not available to meet them personally, but you have a friend who lives nearby and can meet them (wherever they suggest). This will result in immediate cessation of contact on their part, because they suspect they will be meeting authorities instead.
It worked for me, when I received one of these scam letters (this one ostensibly from the Netherlands) and I replied to them just to find out how far they would go. They wanted me to meet them in Amsterdam to seal the deal (which they claimed was worth millions).
I told them that rather than travel many thousand miles, I had a friend who lived a few miles away, just outside of Amsterdam, and she would meet them to talk about it.
I never heard another word out of those people.
All you have to do is pretend to be interested in their offer, then propose something other than THEIR plan, but which is perfectly reasonable. They will back down every time.
Should have read "... into more organic compounds AND free oxygen".
After all, that's what Earth plants do. But they have more energy input. So it might have to be some kind of chemical reaction, supplying thermal energy, to allow a catalysis to take place.
This is not beyond the reach of current technology.
What it needs, is a (more energetic?) form of life to turn that CO2, along with other elements, into more organic compounds. This might require energy gathering from more than just photosynthesis.
I would far rather support genetic engineering in an effort to terraform Mars, than support sterile monocultures with royalty payments by Earthling large, greedy corporations.
The main difference is, rainbows (and possibly Sun Dogs) are caused by lower-atmosphere particles (or droplets, what have you) while other halos tend to designate upper-atmospheric conditions.
The higher-atmospheric conditions are well-known and form halos at distinctive angles (i.e., a "10-degree" halo), while lower-atmospheric halos are far more variable.
"Do you understand that the threat of not expunging the records is effectively the "gunpoint" - since otherwise quite a few of them would likely get hefty sentences as part of denazification, and particularly von Braun himself (who was an SS officer)."
Absolute nonsense. If you have committed a felony, and I say to you, "We will drop the charges and pay you handsomely if you come to work for us," that is NOT coercion at the point of a gun. It is incentive. There is a huge difference between positive incentive and threats.
"Just because Goddard was the first to experiment with liquid fuel rockets doesn't mean that von Braun took his work wholesale without adding anything significant of his own."
I didn't say he did. What I said was: Goddard invented it pretty much independently, and Von Braun borrowed a great deal from his accomplishments. I made no claim beyond that. So look to your own logic, fella.
"Tsiolkovskiy has designed (not built - but it was a solid engineered design, not just a vague idea) a multistage liquid fueled rocket in 1903."
So what? Da Vinci drew well-engineered designs of flying machines, in a day when there simply weren't the materials or subtlety of design to make them work. A drawn concept, no matter how well thought out, is not the same thing as building something. If it were that easy, then anybody could have used Tsiolkovsky's design and just built it, right?
But nobody did. Because as designed, it didn't work.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, modders: If you want to really do your jobs, you're supposed to remember that "disagree" != "troll".
"But it does what it does fairly well for 1/10th the cost and time compared to Enterprise Application Server oriented platforms like Java EE and .NET. "
So does everything else.
I should also add that such an agreement is gross overkill where I live. According to State law here, anything you do while on your employer's clock belongs to the employer anyway, unless you have made specific, prior arrangements.
I was hired by a company that gave me one of those, too.
I went to the manager and told him I wouldn't sign it, because I worked on my own (non-job-related) projects at home. He understood and said I didn't have to sign it, that it was for the more run-of-the-mill employee who would be tempted to take company secrets and run.
"The ownership of anything you do during your work hours would be in question (at best)."
He was asking about learning how to program. It is not likely that he will come up with the next "killer app" in the process. Although what you say is good advice, it probably could have waited a year or two.
As for paying work, he already stated that work was slow. Better that he spend the time learning something that might be somewhat job-related, than spend half a day on Reddit.
Anybody who tries to edit code in nano is pretty much by definition a masochist. And emacs is not something I would even begin to suggest for a newby programmer.
I suggest Sublime Text, which has a terrible name but excellent functionality, and is available for Linux, OS X, and Windows. No need for a limited, monochrome text-based editor when you can easily have it all.
OP has admitted to not being a programmer.
I think you just jargoned him into an afternoon nap.
I should add that you can install the Ruby interpreter into a flash drive, or perhaps better for your purposes, use Jruby which runs on the Java Virtual Machine that is already pre-installed on most computers today.
No matter how many people tell you otherwise, stay the hell away from PHP. Honest. It won't teach you anything useful about programming, except how to use PHP. :o(
I don't even consider PHP a "language". It has no internal consistency, and ultimately no future.
I would suggest Python, or even better in my opinion, Ruby.
Um... I hate to tell you this, but ANYBODY is free to create a similar website, with any business model behind it that they want.
Your argument doesn't hold water, because nobody else has built anything that beats them. Therefore, by simple logic, CL *is* what people want.
Build it better, make a fortune. Nobody is stopping you. Until then, quitcher bitchin'.
"It's unfortunate that Craigslist is the most popular wanted-ads site on the Internet, since they insist on remaining stuck in the past, and making it as hard as possible for people to access their content."
Others here have said the same thing, and it is difficult for me to express just how ridiculous this point of view is.
Craiglslist is a "classified ad" service. Nothing more. You don't have a search function in your newspaper. Neither do you have much of one on Craigslist.
Accept it for what it is, or don't use it. Do you have ANY idea how much trouble it would be for the Craigslist people to add specific data fields, and search functions on them? I do, since that's what I do for a living.
If you want that kind of functionality, then go somewhere you can pay for it. Craigslist ain't it. The fact that many others use it to post real estate listings does not make your particular desires any more important to Craigslist, unless you feel like paying for them.
"Of course they do, the data on craigslist in © craigslist, they can tell you anything about what you do with it."
No, you are quite wrong.
As recently re-affirmed by the Federal Supreme Court, what is considered "tabular data" is not copyrightable.
There was a case a few years ago, in which a small-town telephone directory company saw a big-name telephone directory company come to town and take over their business.
Due to economies of scale, the smaller company could not compete on a cost basis. So what they did, was just use information from the bigger company in their own listings. The bigger company sued.
Although this was already an established legal principle, it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court re-affirmed: if it's FACTUAL DATA -- such as names, addresses, phone numberes, real-estate listings, etc. -- it is not covered by copyright and can be used and reproduced by anybody.
The lesson to be learned here is that you don't want to spend a fortune tabulating data, unless your business model takes into account that if you publish it, others will use it too.
"LISP had MAPCAR 50 years ago."
And it didn't work then, either.
I think this is the important point OP was making in that last paragraph.
We may see crowdsourced maps replacing commercial services, or we may see a gamut of various services. The real question is whether the commercial services can changes their business models rapidly enough to keep up.
I made this point last year. No matter how "low power" you make it, if it uses RF it can be detected at a distance with the proper equipment.
Remember the security researcher who read passport RFIDs in people's pockets 30 feet away, from inside his car, in San Francisco? All it takes is a well-designed and large enough antenna. It could also be 30 feet away, and even behind a wall.
Nobody paid any attention to me. Well... guess what? Not only are they being intercepted -- and it doesn't even take special equipment -- they are being decrypted, as well.
NFC has always been a Bad Idea.
Actually, no. I didn't want to waste my time in some sort of elaborate baiting scheme. I wanted them to stop wasting MY time, and either put up or shut up. I gave them the option. They shut up.
"First of all, reducing terms from 20 to 5 years would reduce the effect of software patents by 75% all by itself."
I don't look at it quite that way. The harmful effect isn't minimized, it's just shortened. Not -- quite -- the same thing.
"... perhaps they thought it would be a more effective strategy to lobby for weaker patents instead."
But my point was: with the courts already questioning their validity, it seems to me EFF should strike as hard as they can, "while the iron is hot", as they say. Rather than back off and push for a "compromise" that nobody wants.
Mod up. This is precisely the point. Until very recently software basically wasn't patentable. And since it became so, it has caused huge, huge problems.
Put it back the way it was before, and cover software by copyright, but not patent, and most of these problems simply go away.
In a day when even the courts are questioning the validity of the very concept of software patents, EFF should be taking up this issue. Instead, they are lobbying for "shorter durations"???
Boo, hiss. EFF, I expect a lot more from you guys.
By the way: it's also fun to do.
All you have to do, is tell them that you are not available to meet them personally, but you have a friend who lives nearby and can meet them (wherever they suggest). This will result in immediate cessation of contact on their part, because they suspect they will be meeting authorities instead.
It worked for me, when I received one of these scam letters (this one ostensibly from the Netherlands) and I replied to them just to find out how far they would go. They wanted me to meet them in Amsterdam to seal the deal (which they claimed was worth millions).
I told them that rather than travel many thousand miles, I had a friend who lived a few miles away, just outside of Amsterdam, and she would meet them to talk about it.
I never heard another word out of those people.
All you have to do is pretend to be interested in their offer, then propose something other than THEIR plan, but which is perfectly reasonable. They will back down every time.
Should have read "... into more organic compounds AND free oxygen".
After all, that's what Earth plants do. But they have more energy input. So it might have to be some kind of chemical reaction, supplying thermal energy, to allow a catalysis to take place.
This is not beyond the reach of current technology.
What it needs, is a (more energetic?) form of life to turn that CO2, along with other elements, into more organic compounds. This might require energy gathering from more than just photosynthesis.
I would far rather support genetic engineering in an effort to terraform Mars, than support sterile monocultures with royalty payments by Earthling large, greedy corporations.
I could go on, but I think I will stop at that.
Sun Dogs are a form of halo, as are rainbows.
The main difference is, rainbows (and possibly Sun Dogs) are caused by lower-atmosphere particles (or droplets, what have you) while other halos tend to designate upper-atmospheric conditions.
The higher-atmospheric conditions are well-known and form halos at distinctive angles (i.e., a "10-degree" halo), while lower-atmospheric halos are far more variable.
"Do you understand that the threat of not expunging the records is effectively the "gunpoint" - since otherwise quite a few of them would likely get hefty sentences as part of denazification, and particularly von Braun himself (who was an SS officer)."
Absolute nonsense. If you have committed a felony, and I say to you, "We will drop the charges and pay you handsomely if you come to work for us," that is NOT coercion at the point of a gun. It is incentive. There is a huge difference between positive incentive and threats.
"Just because Goddard was the first to experiment with liquid fuel rockets doesn't mean that von Braun took his work wholesale without adding anything significant of his own."
I didn't say he did. What I said was: Goddard invented it pretty much independently, and Von Braun borrowed a great deal from his accomplishments. I made no claim beyond that. So look to your own logic, fella.
"Tsiolkovskiy has designed (not built - but it was a solid engineered design, not just a vague idea) a multistage liquid fueled rocket in 1903."
So what? Da Vinci drew well-engineered designs of flying machines, in a day when there simply weren't the materials or subtlety of design to make them work. A drawn concept, no matter how well thought out, is not the same thing as building something. If it were that easy, then anybody could have used Tsiolkovsky's design and just built it, right?
But nobody did. Because as designed, it didn't work.