This reeks of unmitigated, unsubstantiated horse crap...I think you need to
Give substantiation to your facts
Cite your sources
Pull this crap you made up
I cannot believe that/. wishes to be taken seriously when stuff like this is posted and allowed on line. Mr. Katz, how the hades does a person in a country with no basic infrastructure do the things you are speaking of? If I recall correctly, the US wiped out the infrastructure by bombing what was left of it. This means that someone is either filling your mind with nonsense, or you are just letting it out....please let us know which one so we know which one to ignore. I believe that you know which way the populace is leaning if you have read the responses here.
So, the place I work has tried this. I came in, and once I explained that I needed admin access for my machine, the head of IT was pretty quick to realize that a totally locked down box sucks for developers. The policy in place now asks us developers to "play nicely" and not screw up their machines. Not all have admin access, but we are getting there.
Of course, one screwball in support felt the need to muck around with my machine during a holiday, and I was less than impressed to find many useful apps were gone. Since then, I moved to a linux box for development on my new project, and I have to smirk when he walks by and scowls at my apps list. He may not like my MP3 player, but he hasn't the clues to remove it. Nor does he (or the rest of the support group) have root access. Tsk...
Some of our developers may not like administrating their own machines, but its the only way to ensure that the environment allows them to do the job. More guys here are demanding admin priviledges, and getting them as the bad policies get in the way. Most of the admin staff has static environments, which they hate, but since they don't have to have their computers rebuilt every week from the OS up, they don't complain much.
Microsoft says customers who sign up for.Net My Services, expected to debut in full next year, can expect to eventually get one-step access to electronic documents, contact lists and calendars; instant alerts on stock changes, weather forecasts and flight delays; and automated transactions, such as online banking, ticket purchases and stock trades, from Microsoft and its partners.
I do not mean to mindlessly flame Bill and the boys, but don't we already have all this, and the fact that I have different options from people doing their own solutions imply that maybe one single overarching architecture in the background may actually limit innovation?
I know that the cost of doing business with M$ in Canada has opened the door where I work to Linux and other open source solutions to internal software and product development. I also know that we can't afford the lack of consistency from M$ in their security, format, and licensing models.
Some folks here say that the best thing going for Linux is that its not M$. To an extent, that is true. I think rather it is that Linux is not managed in the way M$ is.
I wish to respectfully disagree with the reasoning to your conclusion, although not so much to your argument. I have basically non-stop MetaModerated for about a month, and I know that every couple or three days, I get a page full of anon coward postings to deal with. Most of these (please, no, not all) are unmitigated crap that really shouldn't be bothered with.
I would agree that keeping privacy for unpopular opinions and postings that are legitimately posted anonymously is a great goal. The current moderation system somewhat unjustly penalizes people for posting so. That is unfortunate. What is worse is the amount of crap that people post anonymously to a public forum where they choose NOT to respect the forum itself. Those abuses are the results of the automod down.
I would say that there needs to be a technical solution, but I do not believe this to be a technical problem. Its a (sorry for being rude) moronic problem. If people are morons and post garbage, they screw up the system. However, if registered users post anonymously, and its not crap (based on history), then maybe it shouldn't be modded down. This still does not fix the problem, but maybe its a start.
Nono, that is information (with my tongue in my cheek...)
The thing I don't get is how VIA thinks they can get away with it? By this time, we've all whined about patent law, but this is where it SHOULD be applied, right?
In the end, it doesn't matter, as I don't imagine this will make processors cheaper faster...
SEC. 201. FINDINGS.
The Congress finds the following:
(4) This Nation faces a shortage of trained, qualified information technology workers, including computer security professionals. As the demand for information technology workers grows, the Federal government will have an increasingly difficult time attracting such workers into the Federal workforce.
So, by virtue of creating an environment where the people they want to keep are growing increasingly unhappy about the laws they are implementing, they perpetuate this fact. Way to go..."Hey, where is everyone going? Don't you like our nicely circumvented freedoms?" I hear Canada is still open for business...
We actually panned VxWorks for our latest project and went Linux embedded, but that is another story....
I didn't have to convince them of anything. I have an MSc in comp sci, with a hardware background and admin experience. I didn't even have to go to the interview, they just hired me outright on my vague interest. I figured out early what I liked (hardware and the software that manages it), worked hard (MSc's are NOT easy), and made sure I had complementary skills (admin stuff, both machine and human, SQL background, UNIX and Windows management experience, etc). Finding a job was not hard at all. I still get offers a couple of times a month from people, even though I have been working full time since part way through my MSc studies. Yeah, I am a keener, but I am an EMPLOYED keener...
Likewise, I am an embedded systems programmer that works on hardware (the line between software and hardware has been blurred for me forever...you can't have one without the other). It is rewarding, fun, and challenging. I don't want to play with Nerf guns, I want to be challenged. I wouldn't mind being challenged for a bit more money, but its not bad.
Most of the folks loosing out on the dot bomb that we just went through are the people who I wouldn't hire anyways.
I keep a slide rule on my desk to remind myself that the computer is nice, but its just a tool. To run a computer, usually you need some arcane kind of information to get it to do what you need (ie, most people could run a computer, but far fewer program them).
For both the computer and the slide rule, the real power behind them is the mind of the user. Sorry to those of you who realize what I am saying about most computer users out there...
Very good point. It is unlikely that the government (yours or mine) will ever really go after such a huge company successfully again (sorry, I honestly think that break ups like AT&T are a thing of the past).
That leaves the other big boys to go after MicroSoft for their practices, and to cause them pain. There is little gain for the government to go after M$, but Kodak and others have all the reason in the world: survival. If M$ screws them over, you betcha the lawyers are gonna line up against M$ and start chewing on their ass.
Bill Gates (and M$) should never apologize for making money. He should not apologize for trying to corner the market. He should apologize for breaking the rules (legally proven already) and make due restitution. And when M$ steps on someone else's toes, they should expect the legal follies to start all over again. Litigation will eventually convince them to change, or other truly innovative products will come along and eat their lunch. Big Blue thought they were indestructable too...
Very good point. I have an external contact with the Google people, and I believe they do. If nothing else, they are doing some AMAZING research. --
The Hollow Man
I hate to be contrary, but you may have missed one possible reason. Capital exists to do things you cannont do right now. If you have more projects available than people, then you may need to hire people to get those projects going. Where would that cash come from? Your profits? For a while, yes. Finally, you get big enough that a large cash amount is necessary to get to the next step.
How do I know this? I work for such a company. We are (and have been for years) profitable. We have been growing. We want to go in a new direction in R&D, but need serious amounts of cash. We need another production floor, ergo more cash. We could (and have in the past) borrowed the money, but recently, investors have been knocking asking to get in on the action.
We did plan on going public last year, but didn't due to the market. This is a good sign from the employee point of view, since we have continued to grow anyways. In some ways it would be nice NOT to go public, since there are some headaches that are inevitable (yes, worrying about how much my stock options are worth is an issue...). The next couple of projects we want to do will require large amounts of capital, and that will probably require us going public.
It costs money to spend money. We need to get the money from somewhere. Borrow or go public. Going public is probably cheaper. Its a risk, but there is a chance for it to work well for the investor and the company. --
The Hollow Man
I honestly doubt that NC's are the future that the author of the article does. Many of the app's that people cannot work without are rather large (and perhaps bloated). These often include Big Bad Bill's homegrown programs. I do not see a lot of development for the PC (I speak specifically of the Windows environment here) for the public that is smaller, tighter, faster code.
Until NC's can deliver the same punch as a PC continuously (in terms of performance and customizability), people will continue to purchase PC's.
So, you wanna just program? That might be a tough sell. As many people here have pointed out, high level languages are making the art of programming easier. However, often (not always) HLL's done by someone who taught themselves to code versus someone who understands how to design code and program is like comparing paint by numbers to Piccasso.
Yes, there are jobs for people who are grunt programmers. They get paid less than degreed software designers, but their skills are just not the same. They also are the first to go when its time to trim staff. The person who can solve the problem at the design level and figure out the best plan of action is someone who gets kept.
Just another arguement for bothering to get all those funny letters after your name. --
The Hollow Man
Except of course for computer scientists that work with I/O gates and get engineers that program them. The line just isn't always there... --
The Hollow Man
For those not too familiar with this gag order in Canada, I'd like to let you know why its important to keep. Fifteen years or so ago when I got to vote in my first Fed Election, I lived on the Pacific Coast. I got home from work to find out that a certain party had won, and my vote was irrelevant. The decision was made, thanks for coming. Went out for a beer with others instead. What the Hell, my vote REALLY DIDN'T MATTER. The gag order exists to try to limit voter apathy.
A comedy program used to joke about this by saying "Good evening British Columbia (where I lived). Don't bother voting, its over." Guess what? We didn't.
Keep the gag order, intercourse the guy who wants to be "first to post...." --
The Hollow Man
If you can get an IP address where you are at. Here, unless you are willing to sell your firstborn and your right arm, you can get an IP address. If you want to run servers behind it, a couple of fingers on the left arm are required as well. --
The Hollow Man
Okay, its NOT a sexy shade of some bizarre colour that eases your senses. Who gives a rat's ass? How much? How fast? Can it run whatever OS I want to put on it? What can I plug into it...
Maybe how it works might be, oh I don't know, just a bit important rather than whether its looks soothe your soul... --
The Hollow Man
Wow, kind of counter what a lot of HCI people would say. However, most users of the Web probably do ignore the visual crap and look for content after a short intro time.... -- The Hollow Man
One thing I hate about Netscape 4.X is the Smart Browsing. It never seemed to find what I was looking for, so I junked it. How about a truly intelligent agent that prefetches based on a history of usage rather than just the current page? If I had just completed several searches for subject X, then there is a high probability of me looking for more of X. -- The Hollow Man
Slashdot Mirror
This reeks of unmitigated, unsubstantiated horse crap...I think you need to
- Give substantiation to your facts
- Cite your sources
- Pull this crap you made up
I cannot believe thatOf course, one screwball in support felt the need to muck around with my machine during a holiday, and I was less than impressed to find many useful apps were gone. Since then, I moved to a linux box for development on my new project, and I have to smirk when he walks by and scowls at my apps list. He may not like my MP3 player, but he hasn't the clues to remove it. Nor does he (or the rest of the support group) have root access. Tsk...
Some of our developers may not like administrating their own machines, but its the only way to ensure that the environment allows them to do the job. More guys here are demanding admin priviledges, and getting them as the bad policies get in the way. Most of the admin staff has static environments, which they hate, but since they don't have to have their computers rebuilt every week from the OS up, they don't complain much.
I do not mean to mindlessly flame Bill and the boys, but don't we already have all this, and the fact that I have different options from people doing their own solutions imply that maybe one single overarching architecture in the background may actually limit innovation?
I know that the cost of doing business with M$ in Canada has opened the door where I work to Linux and other open source solutions to internal software and product development. I also know that we can't afford the lack of consistency from M$ in their security, format, and licensing models.
Some folks here say that the best thing going for Linux is that its not M$. To an extent, that is true. I think rather it is that Linux is not managed in the way M$ is.
I would agree that keeping privacy for unpopular opinions and postings that are legitimately posted anonymously is a great goal. The current moderation system somewhat unjustly penalizes people for posting so. That is unfortunate. What is worse is the amount of crap that people post anonymously to a public forum where they choose NOT to respect the forum itself. Those abuses are the results of the automod down.
I would say that there needs to be a technical solution, but I do not believe this to be a technical problem. Its a (sorry for being rude) moronic problem. If people are morons and post garbage, they screw up the system. However, if registered users post anonymously, and its not crap (based on history), then maybe it shouldn't be modded down. This still does not fix the problem, but maybe its a start.
davis...
The thing I don't get is how VIA thinks they can get away with it? By this time, we've all whined about patent law, but this is where it SHOULD be applied, right?
In the end, it doesn't matter, as I don't imagine this will make processors cheaper faster...
Seems that in this case, a lawsuit makes sense. If I made something, had a competitor copy it (and not have my okay), you bet I'd sue.
So, by virtue of creating an environment where the people they want to keep are growing increasingly unhappy about the laws they are implementing, they perpetuate this fact. Way to go..."Hey, where is everyone going? Don't you like our nicely circumvented freedoms?" I hear Canada is still open for business...
I didn't have to convince them of anything. I have an MSc in comp sci, with a hardware background and admin experience. I didn't even have to go to the interview, they just hired me outright on my vague interest. I figured out early what I liked (hardware and the software that manages it), worked hard (MSc's are NOT easy), and made sure I had complementary skills (admin stuff, both machine and human, SQL background, UNIX and Windows management experience, etc). Finding a job was not hard at all. I still get offers a couple of times a month from people, even though I have been working full time since part way through my MSc studies. Yeah, I am a keener, but I am an EMPLOYED keener...
Most of the folks loosing out on the dot bomb that we just went through are the people who I wouldn't hire anyways.
End rant....
With insight like this, I may actually have to get my membership again. Wanna use science? Don't piss of the scientists....
For both the computer and the slide rule, the real power behind them is the mind of the user. Sorry to those of you who realize what I am saying about most computer users out there...
-- The Hollow Man
That leaves the other big boys to go after MicroSoft for their practices, and to cause them pain. There is little gain for the government to go after M$, but Kodak and others have all the reason in the world: survival. If M$ screws them over, you betcha the lawyers are gonna line up against M$ and start chewing on their ass.
Bill Gates (and M$) should never apologize for making money. He should not apologize for trying to corner the market. He should apologize for breaking the rules (legally proven already) and make due restitution. And when M$ steps on someone else's toes, they should expect the legal follies to start all over again. Litigation will eventually convince them to change, or other truly innovative products will come along and eat their lunch. Big Blue thought they were indestructable too...
-- The Hollow Man
Very good point. I have an external contact with the Google people, and I believe they do. If nothing else, they are doing some AMAZING research.
-- The Hollow Man
How do I know this? I work for such a company. We are (and have been for years) profitable. We have been growing. We want to go in a new direction in R&D, but need serious amounts of cash. We need another production floor, ergo more cash. We could (and have in the past) borrowed the money, but recently, investors have been knocking asking to get in on the action.
We did plan on going public last year, but didn't due to the market. This is a good sign from the employee point of view, since we have continued to grow anyways. In some ways it would be nice NOT to go public, since there are some headaches that are inevitable (yes, worrying about how much my stock options are worth is an issue...). The next couple of projects we want to do will require large amounts of capital, and that will probably require us going public.
It costs money to spend money. We need to get the money from somewhere. Borrow or go public. Going public is probably cheaper. Its a risk, but there is a chance for it to work well for the investor and the company.
-- The Hollow Man
Until NC's can deliver the same punch as a PC continuously (in terms of performance and customizability), people will continue to purchase PC's.
-- The Hollow Man
Horseshit....
-- The Hollow Man
Yes, there are jobs for people who are grunt programmers. They get paid less than degreed software designers, but their skills are just not the same. They also are the first to go when its time to trim staff. The person who can solve the problem at the design level and figure out the best plan of action is someone who gets kept.
Just another arguement for bothering to get all those funny letters after your name.
-- The Hollow Man
Except of course for computer scientists that work with I/O gates and get engineers that program them. The line just isn't always there...
-- The Hollow Man
A comedy program used to joke about this by saying "Good evening British Columbia (where I lived). Don't bother voting, its over." Guess what? We didn't.
Keep the gag order, intercourse the guy who wants to be "first to post...."
-- The Hollow Man
If you can get an IP address where you are at. Here, unless you are willing to sell your firstborn and your right arm, you can get an IP address. If you want to run servers behind it, a couple of fingers on the left arm are required as well.
-- The Hollow Man
Maybe how it works might be, oh I don't know, just a bit important rather than whether its looks soothe your soul...
-- The Hollow Man
Seriously though. Best patent ever:Energy. Well, energy delivery...
-- The Hollow Man
-- The Hollow Man
Wow, kind of counter what a lot of HCI people would say. However, most users of the Web probably do ignore the visual crap and look for content after a short intro time....
-- The Hollow Man
One thing I hate about Netscape 4.X is the Smart Browsing. It never seemed to find what I was looking for, so I junked it. How about a truly intelligent agent that prefetches based on a history of usage rather than just the current page? If I had just completed several searches for subject X, then there is a high probability of me looking for more of X.
-- The Hollow Man