In other news today, the United States Senate is considering a bill that would cause every person buying a computer without an operating system to be charged a $57.94 fee to be given to Microsoft, Inc., because research shows that the vast majority of people buying an OS-less computer are going to pirate Microsoft's Windows anyway. "This is a great step towards saving us all money!" chortled Microsoft's head dude Steve Ballmer. "I can't tell you how many times I needed to make another payment on my Maserati, and I couldn't because some kid in Austin, TX, copied his buddy's Windows 98 CD-ROM. This will make life better for us all!"
"Without this levy, the terrorists would have won," declared President George W. Bush.
Shares in Microsoft, Inc., (MSFT) rose 15% in response to this legislation.
One of the fun things about enlisted nuclear power is that during your schooling you have to maintain a high enough average to keep going through the nuclear program. So during 'A' school and nuke school, you have to do well. But it isn't until you get to the prototype part that you finally get a clue as to what you'll be doing in the fleet, and by then it's essentially too late to flunk out without it being obvious what you're doing.
When we got to prototype, one of my roommates finally figured out that living in the engineroom wasn't his idea of a good time (and he's a reactor operator). So he went over the hill for 29 days: long enough to demonstrate unreliability, but not so long that he'd really get slapped. So he loses a stripe, and he's kicked out of the program.
But as luck would have it, when he gets to his ship, they reinstate his stripe (he told them the truth: he wanted out of nuclear power), and he gets to go to a great 'C' school. Go figure.
Topside Electronics Tech: best way to go in the enlisted Navy.
Wanna see some nuke ships get theirs? Check out Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (go about halfway down -- long load due to pics).
I'm surprised that they called you. Reactor techs on nuclear subs (or nu-cu-lar, if you're Dubya) are enlisted posts, not orficer. And the above poster was correct, it's a paperwork nightmare. And nuclear engineering types on subs have the crappiest sea-shore rotation. So, if you like wearing dungarees, getting dirty, loud working conditions, and crappy pay, hey, the Navy is looking for you!!! Oh, did I mention occupational exposure to radiation?]
I used my Newton 120 for note-taking, scheduling, the usual phone-list type stuff that I currently use my Palm for. I also used Grafitti on my Newton almost exclusively since I couldn't get the automatic recognition to work. But as soon as I got a non-trivial amount of data in it, especially in the phone list, things really slowed down. So off to the bookshelf it went; $1000 down the drain. Back to the Franklin planner.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that Palms used Grafitti. But I still waited a little while longer (> 1 year) to make sure that Palms were going to be around before springing for a Palm IIIx (4MB!! whoo hoo!).
Was the Newton before its time? Hardware wasn't up to it, but I think that people were ready for it.
If anyone has taken a look at writers magazines, they usually have an ad or two in them from companies whose names are surely turning into English words (like Victrola).
A couple of the ads I've seen are Xerox(tm) and, of all places, Laundromat(tm). Seems that Laundromat(tm) is a trademarked name, too, and the erstwhile owners would like you to say "commercial coin-op[erated] self-serve laundry" rather than Laundromat(tm).
However with writers they are somewhat powerless as far as their influence goes (other than having a couple guys both named Guido visiting you some night) to have you stop.
Dunno if you can go after web sites legally for misrepresenting a trademark like this isn't, but I didn't see anything in the letter saying that they'd sic their lawyers (or both Guidos) on the guy. But you never know. Oh yeah: IANAL.
I think that the bad part about vintage computers is that they're still a dime a dozen, relatively speaking. I've had my Osborne I for some time, trucking it all over the place (14 moves) even though I didn't use it after the 6th move (1988). And for all that trouble, it still only commands roughly $100 on a good night on Ebay.
I've also got an Apple Newton 120 that I didn't use past about 6 months -- way too slow once you get a non-trivial amount of information in it. About the same price.
It's hard keeping hold of them. But at least my SO understands. For now.
I think that in the past where I've come up short, I've gone ahead and applied anyway, noting the delta, but still showing interest in those deficient areas. At that point, the decision is up to them, and I don't have to lie. Who knows? They might not be able to find anybody, and I'll be in line.
I've also had the experience of sending my resume out and have people call for a tech interview, and asking me about something not on the resume. Duh.
I believe that if you lie on a response or a resume, your credibility for other consideration right goes down the tubes. I don't think that it hurts to show interest, or to bone up on it and then put it on a resume as a tech that you have knowledge of, but make sure that you don't have any fake projects where you supposedly used that tech.
I've had people not be able to talk on things in the front of their tech list, and their resume hits the bit bucket, or goes to the don't-consider-this-person-again list. I've had people apply twice for a job, with their deficiency magically appearing the second time (but one applicant misspelled the key acronym). Bzzt!/i.
In the past (> 6 mos. ago) when I would pose a question to Ask Jeeves, most of their answers would be in line with, "You can buy anthrax at Microbes 'R' Us." As far as I'm concerned, they've been a commercial site anyway. So I guess now instead of annoying me greatly with ad-answers and popups, I'd be only mildly annoyed with just ad-answers.
Hey, boys and girls! Let's take a look at a sample job posting on O'Reilly's XML IT Career Center:
Required knowledge and experience with the following: Java, JSPs, EJBs, JavaScript, ASPs, VBScript, C/C++, HTML, XML, WebSphere Application Server, UNIX (AIX) platform, Windows 2000/NT platform.
Alright, there must be a ton of people out there with these credentials, especially all that Java plus VBScript. I can think of only one person that I know that maybe has these. Read on:
Preferred knowledge and experience with the following: OOA&D, UML, Together/J, Visual Age for Java, Visual Age for C++, DB2/UDB, MQ Series, MS SQL server, Perl and other scripting languages, Interwoven Teamsite. 5-8 years web application development or support in either UNIX or Windows platforms. Bachelor's degree in computer sciences, business or engineering.
Damn, job's written for me!
Seriously, who's got these credentials? And if you do, why are you still at the same job? Or are you consulting by now?
And if you don't have all the required skills, do you apply anyway?
Payphones carry diseases and god knows what else on them. It'd be like putting a public urinal up to my mouth when you make a phone call. No thanks!
Not too far from the truth: the article mentions that people (women?) would sometimes urinate on pay phones. And I can rmember a movie or two where the protagonist would always pull out a hankie to handle a pay phone handset with.
I'm waiting for the disappearance of the office phone, which may happen sooner than later, esp. with corporate rightsizing.
I went into one of those electronics boutique shops (the kind that sell high-end stuff, not the computer games) a while ago, and just happened to set my eyes on a plasma screen showing one of the more recent computer graphics animation movies, and it was all I could do to wipe the drool up off the floor. When I talked extensively to the [high-end] salesdroid, he mentioned a failure half-life of the plasma pixels.
Whoa. These things fail?
I don't remember his numbers, but it sounded to me that a non-trivial number of pixels would be gone within a few years; and the droid also mentioned that plasma pixels tend to fail a scan line at a time.
Can anybody shed some light on how/if/why plasma panel screens fail? I'd hate to plunk down some serious buckage just to have the thing start looking nasty in a couple years.
I don't want to be a pioneer here. You can tell the pioneers: they're the ones with the arrows in their backs.
Get out. Programming sucks. You'll work your tail off for nothing. As soon as the schedule gets a little tight, disciplined software development goes out the window and its CODE, CODE, CODE! You'll do months of overtime and weekends, and they'll change the requirements on you and then you'll have to work harder, oh yeah and smarter, to make up for the time you spent coding to bad or outdated requirements.
Find some other career. Like be a male stripper or something else that has regular hours.
Um, isn't this illegal to put out under the DMCA? I mean, this will give every script kiddie on the planet the ammunition to put viri and other unpleasantness inside ELF headers. No telling what they'll end up putting in the unused comment header, too.
Better not answer the door today, Mr. Raiter. Could be Flowers By Irene.
My sis-in-law works for Chrysler-- sorry, Daimler-Chrysler. In her building, the non-Chrysler cars get parked in a separate lot. For the cars' protection, mostly.
I'm not exactly sure that what I read in the article (yes, I read the article) makes sense to me. Where Oram tries to make a case for where a human rights organization publicly presents its results, and it needs to be beyond dispute, he tries to say that the software has to be as trustworthy as the method used to collect the data.
As well as it should be, but I believe that the effort to "prove" that the program used to process the data is trustworthy is going to be as difficult as "proving" that the collected raw data is trustworthy. One could, perhaps not easily, take the data that was collected and plug and chug it into another statistical program to see if the results were anywhere close to what the first presented results where. That could be considered one way to "prove" that the processing was legitimate, as long as the programs were not from the same software house.
But just go ahead and try to prove that the data were correct. But that's not the argument here.
I'm wondering if Oram's argument was more of an idealogical one rather than a practical one. I don't see why someone should be disbelieved just because they used a Microsoft product or a SAS product. I would also think it highly unlikely that a maker of shrink-wrap software would somehow be at fault, except perhaps through their own stupidity, for erroneous results, especially since their credibility is on the line.
On top of all that, wouldn't an open software package created mostly by, or presumed created by, a group of a particular nationality (KDE presumably made mostly by Germans, for one) come under more criticism if that particular nationality was related to the question that the(ir) software was being used to solve? Hmmm....
I'm starting to think that this article was an excercise in political correctness since I would highly doubt that someone would want to go through the effort in taking apart the program used to prove that it was correct. It would instead have to be an assumption that it was correct because it was Open Source. And how often have we had perfect Open Source programs that never needed patching?
Disclaimer: I use Open Source software, except for Quicken (sorry).
Slashdot Mirror
"Without this levy, the terrorists would have won," declared President George W. Bush.
Shares in Microsoft, Inc., (MSFT) rose 15% in response to this legislation.
When we got to prototype, one of my roommates finally figured out that living in the engineroom wasn't his idea of a good time (and he's a reactor operator). So he went over the hill for 29 days: long enough to demonstrate unreliability, but not so long that he'd really get slapped. So he loses a stripe, and he's kicked out of the program.
But as luck would have it, when he gets to his ship, they reinstate his stripe (he told them the truth: he wanted out of nuclear power), and he gets to go to a great 'C' school. Go figure.
Topside Electronics Tech: best way to go in the enlisted Navy.
Wanna see some nuke ships get theirs? Check out Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (go about halfway down -- long load due to pics).
Ah, so you've never been enlisted, then. Otherwise you'd get the joke.
I'm surprised that they called you. Reactor techs on nuclear subs (or nu-cu-lar, if you're Dubya) are enlisted posts, not orficer. And the above poster was correct, it's a paperwork nightmare. And nuclear engineering types on subs have the crappiest sea-shore rotation. So, if you like wearing dungarees, getting dirty, loud working conditions, and crappy pay, hey, the Navy is looking for you!!! Oh, did I mention occupational exposure to radiation?]
Did they follow the process? They got the patent anyway! Go figure.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that Palms used Grafitti. But I still waited a little while longer (> 1 year) to make sure that Palms were going to be around before springing for a Palm IIIx (4MB!! whoo hoo!).
Was the Newton before its time? Hardware wasn't up to it, but I think that people were ready for it.
A couple of the ads I've seen are Xerox(tm) and, of all places, Laundromat(tm). Seems that Laundromat(tm) is a trademarked name, too, and the erstwhile owners would like you to say "commercial coin-op[erated] self-serve laundry" rather than Laundromat(tm).
However with writers they are somewhat powerless as far as their influence goes (other than having a couple guys both named Guido visiting you some night) to have you stop.
Dunno if you can go after web sites legally for misrepresenting a trademark like this isn't, but I didn't see anything in the letter saying that they'd sic their lawyers (or both Guidos) on the guy. But you never know. Oh yeah: IANAL.
Go figure.
They would have won if they'd have been Microsoft.
Having been to plenty of customer sites, when you go to a customer, if there's a chance of using their product, you show up with their product.
You don't go into Dell with a HP/Compaq laptop. Not good! And depending upon the customer company, you may be asked to leave.
I've also got an Apple Newton 120 that I didn't use past about 6 months -- way too slow once you get a non-trivial amount of information in it. About the same price.
It's hard keeping hold of them. But at least my SO understands. For now.
I've also had the experience of sending my resume out and have people call for a tech interview, and asking me about something not on the resume. Duh.
I believe that if you lie on a response or a resume, your credibility for other consideration right goes down the tubes. I don't think that it hurts to show interest, or to bone up on it and then put it on a resume as a tech that you have knowledge of, but make sure that you don't have any fake projects where you supposedly used that tech.
I've had people not be able to talk on things in the front of their tech list, and their resume hits the bit bucket, or goes to the don't-consider-this-person-again list. I've had people apply twice for a job, with their deficiency magically appearing the second time (but one applicant misspelled the key acronym). Bzzt!/i.
Gee, what was the URL for Google again?
Required knowledge and experience with the following: Java, JSPs, EJBs, JavaScript, ASPs, VBScript, C/C++, HTML, XML, WebSphere Application Server, UNIX (AIX) platform, Windows 2000/NT platform.
Alright, there must be a ton of people out there with these credentials, especially all that Java plus VBScript. I can think of only one person that I know that maybe has these. Read on:
Preferred knowledge and experience with the following: OOA&D, UML, Together/J, Visual Age for Java, Visual Age for C++, DB2/UDB, MQ Series, MS SQL server, Perl and other scripting languages, Interwoven Teamsite. 5-8 years web application development or support in either UNIX or Windows platforms. Bachelor's degree in computer sciences, business or engineering.
Damn, job's written for me!
Seriously, who's got these credentials? And if you do, why are you still at the same job? Or are you consulting by now?
And if you don't have all the required skills, do you apply anyway?
DT
Not too far from the truth: the article mentions that people (women?) would sometimes urinate on pay phones. And I can rmember a movie or two where the protagonist would always pull out a hankie to handle a pay phone handset with.
I'm waiting for the disappearance of the office phone, which may happen sooner than later, esp. with corporate rightsizing.
Whoa. These things fail?
I don't remember his numbers, but it sounded to me that a non-trivial number of pixels would be gone within a few years; and the droid also mentioned that plasma pixels tend to fail a scan line at a time.
Can anybody shed some light on how/if/why plasma panel screens fail? I'd hate to plunk down some serious buckage just to have the thing start looking nasty in a couple years.
I don't want to be a pioneer here. You can tell the pioneers: they're the ones with the arrows in their backs.
I know who'll meet them at the airport.
I thought Microsoft bit off more than it could chew when it bought the Catholic church.
Find some other career. Like be a male stripper or something else that has regular hours.
Wait... makes too much sense, and the numbers would come close to reflecting reality.
Never mind.
She used The Voice.
Better not answer the door today, Mr. Raiter. Could be Flowers By Irene.
My sis-in-law works for Chrysler-- sorry, Daimler-Chrysler. In her building, the non-Chrysler cars get parked in a separate lot. For the cars' protection, mostly.
That couldn't have been RMS in that quote. He didn't say GNU/Linux.
As well as it should be, but I believe that the effort to "prove" that the program used to process the data is trustworthy is going to be as difficult as "proving" that the collected raw data is trustworthy. One could, perhaps not easily, take the data that was collected and plug and chug it into another statistical program to see if the results were anywhere close to what the first presented results where. That could be considered one way to "prove" that the processing was legitimate, as long as the programs were not from the same software house.
But just go ahead and try to prove that the data were correct. But that's not the argument here.
I'm wondering if Oram's argument was more of an idealogical one rather than a practical one. I don't see why someone should be disbelieved just because they used a Microsoft product or a SAS product. I would also think it highly unlikely that a maker of shrink-wrap software would somehow be at fault, except perhaps through their own stupidity, for erroneous results, especially since their credibility is on the line.
On top of all that, wouldn't an open software package created mostly by, or presumed created by, a group of a particular nationality (KDE presumably made mostly by Germans, for one) come under more criticism if that particular nationality was related to the question that the(ir) software was being used to solve? Hmmm....
I'm starting to think that this article was an excercise in political correctness since I would highly doubt that someone would want to go through the effort in taking apart the program used to prove that it was correct. It would instead have to be an assumption that it was correct because it was Open Source. And how often have we had perfect Open Source programs that never needed patching?
Disclaimer: I use Open Source software, except for Quicken (sorry).