Not entirely sure what your point is. The problem with skilled labour (if you want to call programming as such), is that the intersection between skilled enough to be really useful and dumb enough to work for peanuts is pretty damned small, unless I'm getting a 6 figure salary for being really fucking handsome, which I very much doubt. The trend I've noticed over 30 years is that slowly but surely, there are smarter ways of getting some things done, and the "cheap work force" is getting pushed out, and will continue to get pushed out. I'm speaking here as someone who writes software which removes completely the requirement for numerous sorta-skilled programmers, who even 15 years ago might have validated the idea of having a large, cheap labout pool. Given that, Emanuel's idea is complete shit; most people will never be able to compete in the modern tech industry.
That's about my salary, and I work at home pretty much all the time. And I just solved a 5 beer problem. You smart people - you really need to start acting smart. The world is yours for the taking as a good, competent software engineer. So take it! And take no shit.
I lived in Woking, about 11 miles from Heathrow back in the 80's. About 2:00 pm on a Sunday, there would be a VERY loud airplane overhead, look up, and sure enough, it was a Concorde. I saw 002 at the Prestwick airshow about 1972; it flew low over the crowd, and was even louder. It was, however, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in the air; like a big paper dart. I kinda feel sorry that my sons will never look up and see something insanely impressive like that. Regardless of any other considerations, it was the most fantastic machine ever.
I very much doubt that anyone's data will be trashed, and the main account balance for RBS/NatWest does *not* live in a database (although many databases will be updated from there). I would think that they are currently trying to manually process a shit-ton of transactions which are usually processed via automatic nightly scheduling. When you have to do this, you want people around who really know the system, and it would appear that due to off-shoring, these people may not work for RBS any more. Hence getting things back in synch is taking an embarrassingly long time. In a sane world, a failure of CA-7 following an upgrade ought to be a piece of piss to remedy and recover from with competent staff, even in a major production system. Someone in the RBS hierarchy is going to have to explain how the discrepancy between this and what actually occurred arose, and if off-shoring was an aggravating factor, then heads should roll.
These are absolutely core business systems; making decisions which turn out to compromise their smooth running is unforgivable.
If I banked with any bank in the RBS group, I'd be out of there ASAP if this indicative of how they run their operations.
Ok, RBS group (which includes NatWest) updates customer accounts via a vast number of batch jobs on a (very big) mainframe overnight.
They use CA-7 (a job scheduler, originally written by Uccel) to manage the release, interdependencies and status of these jobs.
It would appear that an update to CA-7 resulted in the actual schedule for these being corrupted or deleted. Therefore they do not know how much any customer actually has in their account, since accounts were not updated with transactions from the previous day.
The problem now appears to be fixed (read: update backed out and control datasets restored), but they still have to run through three days of unprocessed transactions, so people are not getting money paid in during these three days into their accounts as expected, resulting in misery.
This is something which should have been detected and fixed in a competent mainframe site very quickly indeed, so I imagine that the wisdom of outsourcing any "back-office" function of this nature is shortly going to be a matter of very close scrutiny.
"There are people who perceive that these sensors are triggered by conversations, but that is just patently not true," he said. "They don't turn on unless they hear a gunshot."'"
So they can hear a gunshot when they're not turned on? And that's patently true? Jeez, have you americans invented magic and not told the rest of us?
Yes, I'm sure Slashdot readers can think of loads of ways to do just that (pressure sensitive switches, etc., etc.) but I was more askance at the sheer mendacity of the spokesman. The case is only extremely rare if he is lying through his teeth.
"The primary reason for this move is to lessen China's reliance on western intellectual property"
What, they might actually invent their own for a change?
Unless "lessen" is a synonym for totally abandon (and stop copying). Like that's going to happen anytime, real soon!
Interesting link but some of the text is reminiscent of Julian and Sandy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_and_Sandy) from "Round the Horne", I mean, "The Triple Island light was built to guide mariners through the rocky waters of Brown Passage, on their way to the port of Prince Rupert.", I ask ya!
Ok, people lust after '64 blackface Supers and Bassmen. And possibly blackface Deluxes (although I don't quite get than one), but you are comparing oranges with apples. Depends really what you are putting through them. Marshalls, generally, sound great with humbuckers (ie. Les Pauls), Fenders sound great with single coils (ie. Strats and Telecasters, and Gretsch). Which is not surprising, 'cos that's what they were designed for. If you heard someone slinging a Strat through a Marshall back in the old days, bet your life they had a treble booster in between. Or something in that vein. I've owned a few, and curse the day when I was left with a Fender Super Reverb to run a Les Paul through. It loves my Stratocaster though.
I'll second that. I use to own a WEM westminster combo (5 watts, 10 inch speaker) that sounded great. Years after I sold it, I saw Alvin Lee (no less) using one on the Old Grey Whistle test. Could have kicked myself (again).
Can only agee here. I saw Joe Bonamassa last night (in Glasgow), and I have to say that, despite Joe's undoubtedly good playing (with 4 Marshalls, RIP Jim), the entire experience was somewhat underwhelming. Sound mix was total shite to the point that we could hear the guitar, a bit of singing, but there were also keys & bass, who may have well as been miming. Could hear the cymbals acoustically, plus apparently soundless tom-toms & snare. To ice the cake, the front-of-house sound was about 1/10th second out of synch with what was actually being played. I played pub gigs for years, and have watched many others, and as the OP says, completely different (and better) quality of sound.
A drummer is generally very loud, so you will get along just fine with (variously) 40 watt Fender, 100 watt Marshall or anything in between, although perhaps two 4 x 12's will move maybe a wee bit too much air for the smaller venue. 300 watts for bass is not too much at all, but you have to be careful because larger speaker enclosures (eg. 15 inch speakers & up) don't sound loud until you are about 25 feet away from them.
The people in the '60s used backline amplification for instruments and PA for vocals only, and they were right.
It might be some modern thing; I don't seem to remember Blackmore, Hagar, Nugent, Gallaher, Moore et al sounding quite so bad 30-odd years ago, but that might just be old age, or perhaps the insidious creep of digital processing.
As an aside, I could kick myself for letting various point-to-point wired Marshalls go over the years, especially a little 20 watt head and 1 x 12 cabinet, and a Park 100 watt master volume combo. Lovely, lovely things...
Moral - avoid stadium rock if you care about sound quality.
I'm going to have to both agree with, and disagree with these points.
There are some things in education which are essential tools for anyone in the modern world - Arithmetic and basic English (or whatever native language you speak), aka. reading and writing, basic literacy. Then there are basic practical things, perhaps vocational if you will; a basic knowledge of carpentry, etc. plus the opportunity to practice it will in all possibility at least encourage a sense of self-reliance and competence in young people, and that can't be a bad thing.
As regards the case of Physics, Maths, Chemistry, Biology etc. (I'm old enough never to have studied a subject called "science" at school), well you'll need those if you go on to higher education, but you'll not really get enough depth at school to get any real use out of them otherwise; mostly, in the modern world, they are used as signifiers that an individual is on a certain place on the smartness scale.
I would be inclined to view the teaching of programming computers as straddling the vocational and essential areas here. Let's face it, the world now runs on software and anything which encourages more contributors, as opposed to consumers, is IMHO a good thing. If we are going to inflict computers on young people, better to show them that they (the computers!) are tools, and how these tools work. We would never have done otherwise with say, a chisel or a plane; to do with computers is at best a waste of time and at worst a totally squandered opportunity.
My $0.02 anyway
,,, I got my first break in the biz via the old IBM test (not with IBM). God only knows what it was intended to prove, but apparently it somehow was able to pick out potential programmers. Not so, in my experience, being good at programming was an endevour which required shitloads of learning how stuff actually worked, no matter how good you were at the test. So IMHO, just a case of jumping through a hoop to get elsewhere. That said, learn z/Arch assembly language. As far as I can tell, no-one can do that shit these days, and you can make real bucks at it. Especially because everyone else who tries is totally crap at it.
Ok, I posted a sarky one earlier, mainly due to the earing (or earring, if you prefer, comment), but let's get serious.
Once upon a time, having not worn a wristwatch for years, I bought a digital watch. After about two years, the battery died. When I went to get it replaced, it transpired that the watch had also died. I repeated this scenario twice. Finally I thought that enough was enough, and that if I ever bought another watch, I'd get something worth keeping, and repairing if necessary. Because you wear your watch every day, and you get used to having it there when you need to tell the time.
Well, I've had a long career in the software business, and I think that I've been through its many annoyances throught the years; stuff that was written in a hurry, stuff that was just simply half-arsed and stuff that was the work of a true professional (I'm talking about other people's work here); that was both elegant and delightful to read back over.
And I kinda like that stuff - done by someone who was an artist as well as just getting the job done. Things like that are just a delight and a pleasure to work with.
There is such a thing as "just feels right" - probably not something you could measure in any rational way, but you can feel it if it is there. I would think that if one had unlimited cash, there are many "good" things one could afford to buy - a Saville Row suite, a Porsche 911, a LearJet, even a big, fuck-off yacht like Larry Ellison.
I bought a Rolex. I could have paid more, but I couldn't buy better. 21 years on, it still does fine - it is the most perfectly engineered little machine, I can wear it on my wrist, and it even tells the time! Yeah, somewhat indulgent, but so what. A small and pleasing luxury which puts the daily grind in a different perspective. Something to remind me that I will aways be something more than a cog in a machine. If something else floats your boat, then do that thing, and I hope it gives you the same small pleasure every day as my silly little watch gives me. One day, it will be my son's, and given care, his son's or daughter's also, and it will still be as cool as fuck. I'll settle for that.
Well, I wear an earing. I also have a Rolex GMT Master, an Omega Seamaster, and a Longines Hour Angle Navigator (for rare watch fans), all bought from the spoils of writing software.
Perhaps that earing doesn't matter a fuck if you actually are good at what you do.
Close the paper anyway? It is (by far) the largest-selling rag in the UK. Murdoch's media has basically corrupted the police and Parilament here, using, frankly, illegal means for years. This is a gang of prize bastards desperately trying to avoid an inevitible shitstorm. All these shitty little laws, which penalise strictly personal things, who do you think benefited from that all these years, and gave those unelected bastards power over the body politic (and you guys in the USA, google William Randolph Hearst, if you don't believe it happens).
These bastard are suddenly on the back foot. And, believe me, this is a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Not entirely sure what your point is. The problem with skilled labour (if you want to call programming as such), is that the intersection between skilled enough to be really useful and dumb enough to work for peanuts is pretty damned small, unless I'm getting a 6 figure salary for being really fucking handsome, which I very much doubt. The trend I've noticed over 30 years is that slowly but surely, there are smarter ways of getting some things done, and the "cheap work force" is getting pushed out, and will continue to get pushed out. I'm speaking here as someone who writes software which removes completely the requirement for numerous sorta-skilled programmers, who even 15 years ago might have validated the idea of having a large, cheap labout pool. Given that, Emanuel's idea is complete shit; most people will never be able to compete in the modern tech industry.
That's about my salary, and I work at home pretty much all the time. And I just solved a 5 beer problem. You smart people - you really need to start acting smart. The world is yours for the taking as a good, competent software engineer. So take it! And take no shit.
I lived in Woking, about 11 miles from Heathrow back in the 80's. About 2:00 pm on a Sunday, there would be a VERY loud airplane overhead, look up, and sure enough, it was a Concorde. I saw 002 at the Prestwick airshow about 1972; it flew low over the crowd, and was even louder. It was, however, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in the air; like a big paper dart. I kinda feel sorry that my sons will never look up and see something insanely impressive like that. Regardless of any other considerations, it was the most fantastic machine ever.
Quite like "Charlottes's Web. Give that a go. If they complain, think again.
Erm, they are not using Gmail to process your bank transactions, you tool.
These are absolutely core business systems; making decisions which turn out to compromise their smooth running is unforgivable. If I banked with any bank in the RBS group, I'd be out of there ASAP if this indicative of how they run their operations.
It would appear that an update to CA-7 resulted in the actual schedule for these being corrupted or deleted. Therefore they do not know how much any customer actually has in their account, since accounts were not updated with transactions from the previous day.
The problem now appears to be fixed (read: update backed out and control datasets restored), but they still have to run through three days of unprocessed transactions, so people are not getting money paid in during these three days into their accounts as expected, resulting in misery.
This is something which should have been detected and fixed in a competent mainframe site very quickly indeed, so I imagine that the wisdom of outsourcing any "back-office" function of this nature is shortly going to be a matter of very close scrutiny.
Hope this helps.
So they can hear a gunshot when they're not turned on? And that's patently true? Jeez, have you americans invented magic and not told the rest of us? Yes, I'm sure Slashdot readers can think of loads of ways to do just that (pressure sensitive switches, etc., etc.) but I was more askance at the sheer mendacity of the spokesman. The case is only extremely rare if he is lying through his teeth.
What, they might actually invent their own for a change? Unless "lessen" is a synonym for totally abandon (and stop copying). Like that's going to happen anytime, real soon!
The many references to "rouge" waves don't help.
Interesting link but some of the text is reminiscent of Julian and Sandy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_and_Sandy) from "Round the Horne", I mean, "The Triple Island light was built to guide mariners through the rocky waters of Brown Passage, on their way to the port of Prince Rupert.", I ask ya!
Ok, people lust after '64 blackface Supers and Bassmen. And possibly blackface Deluxes (although I don't quite get than one), but you are comparing oranges with apples. Depends really what you are putting through them. Marshalls, generally, sound great with humbuckers (ie. Les Pauls), Fenders sound great with single coils (ie. Strats and Telecasters, and Gretsch). Which is not surprising, 'cos that's what they were designed for. If you heard someone slinging a Strat through a Marshall back in the old days, bet your life they had a treble booster in between. Or something in that vein. I've owned a few, and curse the day when I was left with a Fender Super Reverb to run a Les Paul through. It loves my Stratocaster though.
Just have to add, if you turn 'em up, they really do sound like that.
No it doesn't. A JTM45 on the other hand... Selmer also did a pretty much perfect clone of the bassman, again with different (UK) valves.
I'll second that. I use to own a WEM westminster combo (5 watts, 10 inch speaker) that sounded great. Years after I sold it, I saw Alvin Lee (no less) using one on the Old Grey Whistle test. Could have kicked myself (again).
A drummer is generally very loud, so you will get along just fine with (variously) 40 watt Fender, 100 watt Marshall or anything in between, although perhaps two 4 x 12's will move maybe a wee bit too much air for the smaller venue. 300 watts for bass is not too much at all, but you have to be careful because larger speaker enclosures (eg. 15 inch speakers & up) don't sound loud until you are about 25 feet away from them.
The people in the '60s used backline amplification for instruments and PA for vocals only, and they were right.
It might be some modern thing; I don't seem to remember Blackmore, Hagar, Nugent, Gallaher, Moore et al sounding quite so bad 30-odd years ago, but that might just be old age, or perhaps the insidious creep of digital processing.
As an aside, I could kick myself for letting various point-to-point wired Marshalls go over the years, especially a little 20 watt head and 1 x 12 cabinet, and a Park 100 watt master volume combo. Lovely, lovely things...
Moral - avoid stadium rock if you care about sound quality.
I'm going to have to both agree with, and disagree with these points.
There are some things in education which are essential tools for anyone in the modern world - Arithmetic and basic English (or whatever native language you speak), aka. reading and writing, basic literacy. Then there are basic practical things, perhaps vocational if you will; a basic knowledge of carpentry, etc. plus the opportunity to practice it will in all possibility at least encourage a sense of self-reliance and competence in young people, and that can't be a bad thing.
As regards the case of Physics, Maths, Chemistry, Biology etc. (I'm old enough never to have studied a subject called "science" at school), well you'll need those if you go on to higher education, but you'll not really get enough depth at school to get any real use out of them otherwise; mostly, in the modern world, they are used as signifiers that an individual is on a certain place on the smartness scale.
I would be inclined to view the teaching of programming computers as straddling the vocational and essential areas here. Let's face it, the world now runs on software and anything which encourages more contributors, as opposed to consumers, is IMHO a good thing. If we are going to inflict computers on young people, better to show them that they (the computers!) are tools, and how these tools work. We would never have done otherwise with say, a chisel or a plane; to do with computers is at best a waste of time and at worst a totally squandered opportunity.
My $0.02 anyway
,,, I got my first break in the biz via the old IBM test (not with IBM). God only knows what it was intended to prove, but apparently it somehow was able to pick out potential programmers. Not so, in my experience, being good at programming was an endevour which required shitloads of learning how stuff actually worked, no matter how good you were at the test. So IMHO, just a case of jumping through a hoop to get elsewhere. That said, learn z/Arch assembly language. As far as I can tell, no-one can do that shit these days, and you can make real bucks at it. Especially because everyone else who tries is totally crap at it.
I did too, but 20 minutes later I wanted to cure it again.
Once upon a time, having not worn a wristwatch for years, I bought a digital watch. After about two years, the battery died. When I went to get it replaced, it transpired that the watch had also died. I repeated this scenario twice. Finally I thought that enough was enough, and that if I ever bought another watch, I'd get something worth keeping, and repairing if necessary. Because you wear your watch every day, and you get used to having it there when you need to tell the time.
Well, I've had a long career in the software business, and I think that I've been through its many annoyances throught the years; stuff that was written in a hurry, stuff that was just simply half-arsed and stuff that was the work of a true professional (I'm talking about other people's work here); that was both elegant and delightful to read back over.
And I kinda like that stuff - done by someone who was an artist as well as just getting the job done. Things like that are just a delight and a pleasure to work with.
There is such a thing as "just feels right" - probably not something you could measure in any rational way, but you can feel it if it is there. I would think that if one had unlimited cash, there are many "good" things one could afford to buy - a Saville Row suite, a Porsche 911, a LearJet, even a big, fuck-off yacht like Larry Ellison.
I bought a Rolex. I could have paid more, but I couldn't buy better. 21 years on, it still does fine - it is the most perfectly engineered little machine, I can wear it on my wrist, and it even tells the time! Yeah, somewhat indulgent, but so what. A small and pleasing luxury which puts the daily grind in a different perspective. Something to remind me that I will aways be something more than a cog in a machine. If something else floats your boat, then do that thing, and I hope it gives you the same small pleasure every day as my silly little watch gives me. One day, it will be my son's, and given care, his son's or daughter's also, and it will still be as cool as fuck. I'll settle for that.
And if you prefer ear-ring, spelling obviously doesn't matter either :)
Perhaps that earing doesn't matter a fuck if you actually are good at what you do.
But I agree with the battery stuff.
These bastard are suddenly on the back foot. And, believe me, this is a good thing.
Seems like a perfectly fair comment to me.
... tyres slash you!
Ok, no real idea why I wanted to contribute that. Must be the sheer horror of seeing "ostracised" spelled with a "z".