Other people in other lands that are more passionate and hungrier than you are going to eat your lunch. If you're not passionate, you're going to be out of a job or paid to be a fungible code monkey.
If you're not passionate already at this point, you probably won't be, or it'll be an uphill battle.
It's not glamorous. Unless you work with Windows exclusively, it's slogging through a lot of text. No flashing lights, no hauwght hacker chix in spandex.
Long hours, especially when something goes wrong, your business head overpromises, or you get bullied by your project manager to cut your estimate.
Maths. Gotta have the maths, especially if you're going to do algorithms.
If you're going to strike out on your own, you're going to have to have an entrepreneur streak and/or business acumen. If you don't strike out on your own, your path to riches are going to be confined to being at the right place at the right time at the right startup with the right people that aren't going to screw you out of your fortune.
Along with the business acumen, network always so that the pump is primed for when the well goes dry (or whatever your favorite metaphor is).
If you work for a big company or the government, be ready to work on antiquated hardware and old versions of software because they don't want to upgrade. It's cheaper in their eyes to have you work longer, since you're exempt, than to pay for a new machine or new software.
Beware working for a small company that will never go public or doesn't give you equity. They'll overwork you, underpay you, and dangle big promotions for when they get bigger. Which they won't; or they'll give the good stuff to the outsider buddy of the C*O they just hired.
I still have mine sitting in an extra bedroom. Turn it on once every 5 years or so just to make sure that it's still running.
Ran WordStar and SuperCalc, and managed to get DBase II for it. Program disk in the left, data disk in the right. When it hit 10 years old it started munching diskette directories on writes infrequently, rendering them unusable. Have the 300 baud modem, too, which I used to connect to the university mainframe during undergrad. Uploading programs sometimes took a half-hour or more (and couldn't do anything else on it in the meantime). Was envious of my Kaypro-lugging buddies with their bigger screens until I got the 80-column mod which would output to a separate monochrome monitor.
Was totally adequate at the time, but started pining for that newfangled Apple Macintosh thingy when that came out.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that buying the CD gives me something that iTunes music downloaders don't get. That is unlimited access to my music without DRM and without having to pay some online service for it.
Not horribly obvious is how to update for Linux users. You have to go to the blog to see that instead of downloading the.dropbox-dist update, you just need to:
Open a terminal.
$ dropbox stop
$ dropbox status # Should report "not running"
$ rm -r ~/.dropbox-dist/
$ dropbox start -i
Easy as pie. Don't have to be root either. Assumes you've already installed a previous version (with nautilus integration for Gnome, etc., etc.).
I stopped using NoScript after they did shenanigans with Adblock Plus subscription settings. If they're going to do that sort of behind-the-scenes tomfoolery, what else are they up to?
Excepting that this is Microsoft, there's really nothing new to see here. A contract is a contract, no matter whether if it's with a 500 pound gorilla or with Guido from downtown (though the similarity is striking).
I had a relative that owned a wholesale food delivery service. Business was good, though the profit margin was small. During a small downturn in the economy back in the early 70s he had a couple restaurants declare bankruptcy on him. Unfortunately they were a couple of his biggest customers, and left him with pretty big bills. Well, guess what? He still had to pay his supplier, and that small fact finally drove him under (which would have happened anyway with the advent of Sysco, but that's a story for another day).
I guess the reasons we're complaining are that:
It's Microsoft
It's software
Granted, I like to get in on a little Microsoft-bashing myself, but I think that here they have them by rights. A little compassion would be nice, but perhaps they can appeal to the Gates Foundation for some of that.
[Here's hoping]... that some of this research actually helps Microsoft in turning in to a company that derives its revenues from the fruits of its innovations rather than monopoly-based marketing hacks, and lock-ins into poorly written code.
I just cancelled a 10-year Hotmail account and left to Gmail a few days ago because Microsoft thought that it would be cute to splice their own(poorly-implemented, I might add) version of MySpace into my goddamn e-mail account.
It's not like Hotmail is the only one. Yahoo!'s mail did it, too, with their "Connections," but perhaps it's easier to ignore on Yahoo!.
I've got my Clie SJ-22 that I've had for years (my Palm IIIx screen digitizer went out), and I still use it religiously, but now I've found out, horror of horrors, that it no longer syncs to my computer (Sony hardware issue, since I've tried my SO's cradle for nought; she's tried my cradle and it works for her). I can try an IR sync to see if that works. Either way, since the hardware is going, I need to find a place to put all those calendar items that I've been carrying around forever.
Aside from waiting for the Palm Pre, which I haven't heard if there's any way to migrate PalmOS info to, does anybody else have ideas for how and where to put all the Palm info? Extra credit: can't sync with Palm, but rather has to take the computer files. I don't want to buy anything from eBay either.
I'm no business analyst, but obviously Linux (the netbook market in particular) is severely cutting into the profits of computer giants like Microsoft, Apple, Intel, and IBM. If you needed a sign for the year of Linux, this is it!
Well, I've got a circa-1998 333MHz Pentium II processor with 128 MB of memory running my file server at the house. If it wasn't for Linux, I'd have replaced it a loooong time ago with some of that new fancy-shmancy Intel stuff. Now it sits there for months between reboots and hardly draws any power. And when that goes, I've got an 800MHz beastie waiting in the wings to take over.
What, Americans make up only 5% of the world population? (10% by body mass)
Yes, but if we don't like something, it suffers because we are the consumers of the world's resources. If it's not good enough for me to buy with my borrowed money off of my maxed-out credit cards, then it's not good enough for anyone else.
I originally looked at 9/80 and thought to myself, I can see requiring 80 hours a week, but what does the 9 mean?
At one employer, salaried people were expected to put in at least 9 hours per day. One (salaried) guy that did exactly 80 got canned when the boss put out a memo saying that extended weekday hours and a Saturday were required until further notice. When he didn't show up the first Saturday, the boss called it insubordination and thereby got around having to give him unemployment insurance.
Nope, I'm no longer there, and tell everyone about that employer at the drop of a hat.
During the last bust (are we in a bust yet?), a friend of mine in a small non-startup company that had had enough of the small-company silliness slacked off (i.e., still worked, but demonstrated lack of motivation by only putting in 40 hours a week) so that he was one of the first to get laid off, which also forced him to look for employment which he didn't do while he was with the small company.
He's a happy guy doing Python programming for a big-name managed server company now. Oh yeah, he got a nice raise, too.
Not having RTFA, I think that the biggest problem is, unless all you're doing is adding entrance ramp traffic lights, is the drivers. If they have to obey some sort of changing speed limit sign or something just as "voluntary," they're going to ignore it. Where I commute, as soon as people get on the highway, they stomp on it even though they know that in a mile and a half they're going to be going 5 mph.
But at least they'll be ahead of that Prius back there. Dang liberals!
That reminds me of my nephew's computer science teacher in high school. The buffoon assigned labs with the following grading structure: if you turned in what satisfied the requirements and it worked and it was commented well, you got a "C" for the lab. You got a higher grade if you added more "stuff." And it was very subjective on what the "stuff" was that would get you a higher grade.
It was all that I could do to keep from marching into that school and tell the teacher that if you add extra "stuff" in your programs in the real world, you get fired.
Sadly that experience pretty much ruined it for him as far as computer science goes. Now he's a lawyer. Pity.
Actually read some of your posts on skills shortages. Yep, there's nothing like seeing an ad for someone with 2 years of Java experience... oh and also J2EE, JSP, JSF, Struts, JDBC, Oracle, Swing, JavaScript, JavaFX version 1.0, Python, Perl... and.NET awesomeness on top of that. With 2 years of industry experience.
Translation: we want all those skills, but only want to pay a salary for a person that got their BS two years ago. And if you're awesome enough to have all those skills,... we still pay the 2 year seniority salary. Or we go out and get an H1-B person, because obviously the local CS mills ain't crankin' out the minimal talent we need.
... I paid market rates which I am sure you would say are low.
Ow. Every time I hear market rates, it means that they want to low-ball me. My impression is that market rates are whatever you want them to be, backed up reflexively by the phrase, "market rates."
Users could be infected with the Trojan either from a drive-by download,...
Depends on what TFAA meant by drive-by download... worst case in my imagination would be that it installs itself without asking mother may I. I believe that there is a little install countdown thingie that at least makes sure that the question stays on the screen long enough so that you can see that something is going on, rather than letting an errant keypress or mouse click install it.
They want more time off because they've been around longer (2 weeks for new hires don't cut it).
They usually have to see the doctor more since they're old (yearly physicals, colonoscopies), hence more time off, and they'll eat your insurance plan alive.
They like to get in at 7am and leave at 5pm, instead of getting in at 11am and leaving at 8pm like the Team Players.
They'll do it right the first time more often, leaving you less room to criticize their work. Self-documenting code, adherence to coding standards, not using every obscure feature of a language because they can.
The young whippersnappers will forgo life and sleep to put in the time they need to fix what they screwed up due to inexperience. But since they put in more time, it'll appear that they work harder. So if appearances count, don't hire the old people.
Considering the size of Yahoo, I think that it would take a lot for it to go under, and I'd like to think that there are plenty of vultures that would be circling around it to snap up whatever's worth anything and keep it running, again especially with the great number of users. Not that I'm wishful thinking or anything, but I don't think that we've seen a company the size of Yahoo go from where it is now to under in four months.
I'm thinking that it would be a lot slower and a lot more painful, with several layoff periods before it would go away.
I do like their email system, and I pay for the Mail Plus program, and I think that it's worth it, hence my reluctance to bail at this point.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'm not bitter.
DT
I still have mine sitting in an extra bedroom. Turn it on once every 5 years or so just to make sure that it's still running.
Ran WordStar and SuperCalc, and managed to get DBase II for it. Program disk in the left, data disk in the right. When it hit 10 years old it started munching diskette directories on writes infrequently, rendering them unusable. Have the 300 baud modem, too, which I used to connect to the university mainframe during undergrad. Uploading programs sometimes took a half-hour or more (and couldn't do anything else on it in the meantime). Was envious of my Kaypro-lugging buddies with their bigger screens until I got the 80-column mod which would output to a separate monochrome monitor.
Was totally adequate at the time, but started pining for that newfangled Apple Macintosh thingy when that came out.
Why I keep it, I have no idea.
DT
My list exactly. And right before I was going to purchase a 50+" LCD set from Samsung, too. Had it all picked out and everything.
Hard to avoid Belkin these days, tho. And Sony's movies.
DT
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that buying the CD gives me something that iTunes music downloaders don't get. That is unlimited access to my music without DRM and without having to pay some online service for it.
I think a house fire trumps physical CDs.
DT
Not horribly obvious is how to update for Linux users. You have to go to the blog to see that instead of downloading the .dropbox-dist update, you just need to:
Easy as pie. Don't have to be root either. Assumes you've already installed a previous version (with nautilus integration for Gnome, etc., etc.).
DT
Uninstalled and off my radar by then. Fool me, once, etc.
People probably still buy Belkin products after their routers redirected http requests to their advertisements and they paid for faked reviews, too.
DT
I stopped using NoScript after they did shenanigans with Adblock Plus subscription settings. If they're going to do that sort of behind-the-scenes tomfoolery, what else are they up to?
DT
Excepting that this is Microsoft, there's really nothing new to see here. A contract is a contract, no matter whether if it's with a 500 pound gorilla or with Guido from downtown (though the similarity is striking).
I had a relative that owned a wholesale food delivery service. Business was good, though the profit margin was small. During a small downturn in the economy back in the early 70s he had a couple restaurants declare bankruptcy on him. Unfortunately they were a couple of his biggest customers, and left him with pretty big bills. Well, guess what? He still had to pay his supplier, and that small fact finally drove him under (which would have happened anyway with the advent of Sysco, but that's a story for another day).
I guess the reasons we're complaining are that:
Granted, I like to get in on a little Microsoft-bashing myself, but I think that here they have them by rights. A little compassion would be nice, but perhaps they can appeal to the Gates Foundation for some of that.
Dt
[Here's hoping] ... that some of this research actually helps Microsoft in turning in to a company that derives its revenues from the fruits of its innovations rather than monopoly-based marketing hacks, and lock-ins into poorly written code.
(okay, here it comes...)
You must be new here.
DT
I just cancelled a 10-year Hotmail account and left to Gmail a few days ago because Microsoft thought that it would be cute to splice their own(poorly-implemented, I might add) version of MySpace into my goddamn e-mail account.
It's not like Hotmail is the only one. Yahoo!'s mail did it, too, with their "Connections," but perhaps it's easier to ignore on Yahoo!.
DT
Yes, it does have a slot. I can pursue that avenue if the IR sync doesn't work. Thanks!
DT
I've got my Clie SJ-22 that I've had for years (my Palm IIIx screen digitizer went out), and I still use it religiously, but now I've found out, horror of horrors, that it no longer syncs to my computer (Sony hardware issue, since I've tried my SO's cradle for nought; she's tried my cradle and it works for her). I can try an IR sync to see if that works. Either way, since the hardware is going, I need to find a place to put all those calendar items that I've been carrying around forever.
Aside from waiting for the Palm Pre, which I haven't heard if there's any way to migrate PalmOS info to, does anybody else have ideas for how and where to put all the Palm info? Extra credit: can't sync with Palm, but rather has to take the computer files. I don't want to buy anything from eBay either.
DT
I'm no business analyst, but obviously Linux (the netbook market in particular) is severely cutting into the profits of computer giants like Microsoft, Apple, Intel, and IBM. If you needed a sign for the year of Linux, this is it!
Well, I've got a circa-1998 333MHz Pentium II processor with 128 MB of memory running my file server at the house. If it wasn't for Linux, I'd have replaced it a loooong time ago with some of that new fancy-shmancy Intel stuff. Now it sits there for months between reboots and hardly draws any power. And when that goes, I've got an 800MHz beastie waiting in the wings to take over.
Nope, Linux hasn't hurt Intel at all.
DT
What, Americans make up only 5% of the world population? (10% by body mass)
Yes, but if we don't like something, it suffers because we are the consumers of the world's resources. If it's not good enough for me to buy with my borrowed money off of my maxed-out credit cards, then it's not good enough for anyone else.
DT
I originally looked at 9/80 and thought to myself, I can see requiring 80 hours a week, but what does the 9 mean?
At one employer, salaried people were expected to put in at least 9 hours per day. One (salaried) guy that did exactly 80 got canned when the boss put out a memo saying that extended weekday hours and a Saturday were required until further notice. When he didn't show up the first Saturday, the boss called it insubordination and thereby got around having to give him unemployment insurance.
Nope, I'm no longer there, and tell everyone about that employer at the drop of a hat.
DT
During the last bust (are we in a bust yet?), a friend of mine in a small non-startup company that had had enough of the small-company silliness slacked off (i.e., still worked, but demonstrated lack of motivation by only putting in 40 hours a week) so that he was one of the first to get laid off, which also forced him to look for employment which he didn't do while he was with the small company.
He's a happy guy doing Python programming for a big-name managed server company now. Oh yeah, he got a nice raise, too.
DT
Not having RTFA, I think that the biggest problem is, unless all you're doing is adding entrance ramp traffic lights, is the drivers. If they have to obey some sort of changing speed limit sign or something just as "voluntary," they're going to ignore it. Where I commute, as soon as people get on the highway, they stomp on it even though they know that in a mile and a half they're going to be going 5 mph.
But at least they'll be ahead of that Prius back there. Dang liberals!
DT
And you may find yourself
Wondering "why, in God's name, am I here?"
Beats working.
DT
That reminds me of my nephew's computer science teacher in high school. The buffoon assigned labs with the following grading structure: if you turned in what satisfied the requirements and it worked and it was commented well, you got a "C" for the lab. You got a higher grade if you added more "stuff." And it was very subjective on what the "stuff" was that would get you a higher grade.
It was all that I could do to keep from marching into that school and tell the teacher that if you add extra "stuff" in your programs in the real world, you get fired.
Sadly that experience pretty much ruined it for him as far as computer science goes. Now he's a lawyer. Pity.
DT
Actually read some of your posts on skills shortages. Yep, there's nothing like seeing an ad for someone with 2 years of Java experience... oh and also J2EE, JSP, JSF, Struts, JDBC, Oracle, Swing, JavaScript, JavaFX version 1.0, Python, Perl ... and .NET awesomeness on top of that. With 2 years of industry experience.
Translation: we want all those skills, but only want to pay a salary for a person that got their BS two years ago. And if you're awesome enough to have all those skills, ... we still pay the 2 year seniority salary. Or we go out and get an H1-B person, because obviously the local CS mills ain't crankin' out the minimal talent we need.
DT
... I paid market rates which I am sure you would say are low.
Ow. Every time I hear market rates, it means that they want to low-ball me. My impression is that market rates are whatever you want them to be, backed up reflexively by the phrase, "market rates."
DT
Users could be infected with the Trojan either from a drive-by download, ...
Depends on what TFAA meant by drive-by download... worst case in my imagination would be that it installs itself without asking mother may I. I believe that there is a little install countdown thingie that at least makes sure that the question stays on the screen long enough so that you can see that something is going on, rather than letting an errant keypress or mouse click install it.
DT
At that point, telling the truth becomes a very hard decision to make.
No, at that point the question is where is the nearest door.
DT
Ah, but the problem with older coders is:
The young whippersnappers will forgo life and sleep to put in the time they need to fix what they screwed up due to inexperience. But since they put in more time, it'll appear that they work harder. So if appearances count, don't hire the old people.
DT
Considering the size of Yahoo, I think that it would take a lot for it to go under, and I'd like to think that there are plenty of vultures that would be circling around it to snap up whatever's worth anything and keep it running, again especially with the great number of users. Not that I'm wishful thinking or anything, but I don't think that we've seen a company the size of Yahoo go from where it is now to under in four months.
I'm thinking that it would be a lot slower and a lot more painful, with several layoff periods before it would go away.
I do like their email system, and I pay for the Mail Plus program, and I think that it's worth it, hence my reluctance to bail at this point.
DT