Funny you mention Gran Turismo because GT2 _was_ in fact released before it was supposed to be. Early versions had a bug that would wipe out all your cars after the 10th save and you could only ever complete 98% of the game because the programmers had to leave out drag racing at the very last minute.
I love both PCs and Consoles and I really don't see them competing against each other for my money or attention. Of course I'm broke because of it, but that's another story.
That's what I thought, I just didn't know if clear display of the pitcher and a large vertical opening would play a part in it. Conventional pitching machines have one hole the pitch comes out of. This on, though it has one hole, may need to move the initial location up and down depensding on the pitch. I guess two plexiglass shields would work... hmmm...
Cool. I'm glad someone has tried one of these. My question is: How do do hit the ball and not smash the machine throwing it? Seriously, you don't want to whack a ball 90 mph back at the thing's LCD. How does this aspect work?
The one other point I want to make is: How do you attract potential employees when they know they have an 80% (4 out of 5) chance of being fired within a month? Yes you need some sort of feedback about a person. We used to do formal reviews at the six month mark, but have moved to annualy much to the chagrin of most of us.
"What, are you brain dead? I mean, shit, "Be proactive." twice in one paragraph. How goodthinkful of you. The motivational speakers who teach you to work hard for the company must love you. (and what a surprise: a Java programmer, who bought the hype early on!)
A) bought the hype early on?? I said I _just_ went to JavaOne. Like four weeks ago. I don't think I "bought the hype" early on since I just started working with it. B) Despite the fact that motivational speakers may spew "goodthink", being proactive has certainly got me more of what I want that sitting here like a bump on a log just getting handed stuff. I don't see what's wrong with being proactive, especially when it gets me what I want.
"As for "only had to fire a handful," that's the typical attitude: go through the incredible effort of one or two man-days evaluating someone you end up stuck with for ten or twenty years (only firing them for not showing up, or being blatantly disruptive), and call that "selective" recruiting"
The company has only been up for eight years and people that didn't fit _did_ leave on their own accord, but half the process is determining personality fits and so forth. We haven't had any people that "don't show up" or are "blatantly disruptive". We never hired those sort of people in the first place. I'll take two mediocre socially adjusted coders over one asshole super coder any day.
"I thought I made it quite clear that I wasn't talking about myself"
Fair enough. My mistake.
"You simply can't evaluate a programmer with less than a few weeks of working with them."
I understand and I agree to a point. We are very selective about who we hire. We mainly look for expertise (not necessarily "experience") and especially adaptability. We help the person develop experience in a field. And not by sending them to a two day Java class, but by putting them on a project. Like I said: I knew nothing about Java so we did some internal training. We created a mock e-commerce site. Now I can be a junior level developer on a project with other more experienced Java developers. If someone can't adapt, then we have a problem. Again, there have only been a few people that had that or other issues.
"People don't turn bitter like that unless they've been screwed repeatedly for years."
That's exactly what I was talking about. It should take a person six months to a year to get a feel for the job. If it isn't what they want, they should try working with their boss to resolve it (around six months). If that doesn't work, try for three to six months to work with their boss' boss. If it still isn't working, go somewhere else. That's only two years gone and when they go to look for another job, they can say that the company, depsite the employee's best efforts, wasn't willing to help them grow. It doesn't reflect badly on the employee, it reflects badly on the company and it shows that the employee had initiative. Who would you look for? A great programmer who didn't give a shit, or a potentially mediocre programmer who wants to become a great programmer? It's a matter of personal opinion. I understand and respect your points, and I think it is bullshit when a company shits on one of its employees, especially repeatedly, but its like a bad relationship. Sometimes you just have to know when to pull the plug and walk away.
"The real killer, though, is the tendency to stick someone in a role when you hire them, and never move them, regardless of ability."
Huh? If I work at a job and I want to do something different, I make it my responsibility to seek out new opportunities. Be proactive. If your manager isn't helping you, go to their manager. If that still doesn't work, go up another level. If that doesn't work, quit. Be proactive.
Just coming out of college I was happy to take whatever was assigned to me, even the shit jobs that no one wanted to do. But because I happily sucked it down, I got stuck with it (and even made fun of by my coworker friends for being stuck with it) and had trouble breaking free. After about two years (and some growing up) I realized my job is what I make of it. I started pressing on my boss to do Java work. Nothing came out of it for six months. I then told him I was going to have a 1+ meeting (a meeting with his boss) to address my concerns. Not with my manager, just some concerns in general. I then told my bosses boss I wanted to do Java work. I was tired of doing Product oriented work and not Technology oriented work. I said I felt my career was stagnating and that I was becoming less useful for the company and less marketable for myself. My boss's boss was cool with this and I started in-house j2ee training a week later. Then I got sent to JavaOne. Were there other people that probably should have gone to JavaOne in the company? Definitely. Some of the stuff was over my head. But it showed me that by being proactive about what I want, I got it (or at least the beginnings of it).
It is not the company's responsibility to direct your career, it is yours. It is the company's responsibility to help you develop the skills necessary to advance your career as long as it advances the company. If your career advancement doesn't involve benefitting the company, you should find a company where it does or you will never be happy.
"People should be hired on a trial basis, and you should reject 4 out of 5 trial hires in the first month."
That is insane. Do you know the amount of effort it takes to interview just one candidate? A candidate at my company goes through two rounds of interviews, the first being a half hour to an hour with two different people. The next round is with three or four people for a half hour. Multiply that by four or five more that you will just throw away and I spend all my day (as well as four other engineers) just interviewing. Not to mention the IS overhead of setting up a new machine, assigning passwords, removing accounts of people thrown away, etc. Horrible idea. Maybe your recruiting department should be more selective. Ours is. We've only had to fire a handful of people in the eight years we've been around.
psxndc
Re:Just want to point out
on
FreeBSD on DVD
·
· Score: 1
I'll answer this. I actually was wondering if OpendBSD had a subscription model because I'd like to give them the $ on a regular basis without the half hour hike to the store (yes, I'm lazy. So sue me). If anyone knows that they do, please point me to the link because I couldn't find it
Anyway: MS has a nasty habit of making changes to the OS that I don't particularly care for or want but it makes it shiny and happy for grandma and grandpa "I don't know how to use a computer". BSD and linux tend to add good functionality to their new releases for a resonable price. Do I want the latest kernel? Yup. The latest security fixes? Yup (that's even why I use WindowsUpdate frequently). Do I want to pay a couple hundred dollars to upgrade Win98 to win2K (not really a fair comparison I know) or XP? No. Win98 sucks but I keep it running for games becuase it works. I don't want/need the functionality that MS tries to shove down my throat by its subscription model. I'll rip my mp3s at whatever bitrate I want, thankyouverymuch
Pick a certain "vocalbulary" like say planes. Choose only certain ones like F-14, F-16, A-10, etc. Then make up a password based upon them like f14a10f4. Then if you _need_ to write it down to remember you can use tomcat-thunderbolt-phantom on a sticky (that you keep on your person). That way people can't find the sticky and instantly know your password. Best of all, if you stick with a set vocabulary, you can rearrange them without too much confusion. Crap, my password isn't f14a10f4. Lets try a10f14f4. Tada! Of course I really use something a lot more obscure than airplanes, but you get the idea.
My girlfriend was talking to her mom about it. I overheard my gf saying things like "people like [me, her boyfriend] don't like Microsoft because of things they've done and..." etc. When she got off the phone I asked what her mom thought of the decision reversal. My gf said that her mom didn't think anything of it. "My mom likes Microsoft." I almost shat myself. Like M$??? How?! Can't she see the abuse of power? Can't she smell the greed coming out of Redmond like limburger cheese stuff in old gym shoes??
And the simple answer is no. To her mom, a computer is just a computer. It sends her e-mail, she can put picture from her digital camera on it, but she doesn't even think about things like licensing or freedom. It's not that she doesn't care, she just doesn't know. Even if I explained it to her it would still be no big deal. Its this sort of attitude that will keep M$ around for a long time.
According to a new article on pocket.ign.com, that "contrast switch" actually adjusts the voltage in the LCD. Tampering with it could cause a charge build up, potentially resulting in the LCD blowing out. Its your $100...
Unfortunately I'm too broke to buy the GBA, but my worm light and GBC work fine together if I tilt the GBC away from me a little. Looking straight down on it though is a no go.:-(
Doh! I see what you're talking about (I only passed the NT exam a couple years ago by a slim margin. Blech). Silly me. Thanks for clearing that up. Thanks.
I wonder how many people out there actually know any lawyers. I bet 90% of the/. readers see Lawyer=bad without having a real opinion on it. Has anyone personally been burned by a lwayer or is everyone just shooting their mouth off because they can.
One of my good friends is an IP lawyer and yes, he gets paid a great salary for working his ass off, but I honestly feel that he's doing good work and protecting his clients (for all you naysayers his clients are typically the little guys getting screwed over by the big coporations). Could his firm charge less? Probably. But its not like lawyers are just bozos in suits. My friend has had to learn a whole lot of $h!+ just to understand his clients and their cases and people that can just pick something like that up on a daily basis should be compensated. He was a bio major yet he had to know everything there was to know about the dyeing processes used in circuit boards (or something like that. Go ahead, nitpick this one part of the post) in a couple days.
Call this a troll if you want, but I'm just sick of everyone bashing lawyers when <gasp><surprise> most of you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
"Currently Win2K outshines Linux in the granularity of the permissions and security model and filesystem support for things like encryption."
Can you explain this please? AFAIK, both allow user, group, and all/everyone type permissions. As for filesystem support, I don't know. I am genuinely curious what Win2K supports that Linux does not.
I just got back from JavaOne and Sun has got some pretty cool stuff coming down the pipe. On top of that, a lot of the things talked about were Open Source projects and how great Sun thinks the Open Source community is.
I'm a litle confused... When I interviewed at Daily Radar about a year and a half ago, I was told (and saw) that the site was PHP-cached-as-HTML files. And I don't think it was Linux back then, but actually Solaris (I may be wrong about that last one though...)
A friend told me about a company called TellMe that does something similar: you call them up and get stcok quotes and other info. I signed up as a beta tester (they haven't gone live yet as far as I know) and since the first e-mail I got from them (not too many, thanks for not spamming, TellMe) I've used the service once.
My question to the/. community is: Are people interested in this email-and-other-info-by-phone technology?
I have absolutley no interest in it and it seems like I'm the only one. Why sit there and listen through all my emails when I can go to a computer and _read_ them all in a quarter of the time. And if its important, I have a cell phone... ?? It just seems like a lot of companies are pushing for this and its one of the few things I don't see any demand for
United Parcel Service has a trademark on the brown they paint their trucks and uniforms. Info (brief and undetailed) can be found here. Looks like they have "Apollo", "Apollo I & design" and "Apollo II" trademarked as well. Watch out NASA, UPS is moving in:
"Well sir, our typical ground rate is $3.50, our overnight is $9 per pound, and we're having a special this week on our 'escaping earth's gravity' rate: only $2,543,789"
The short: Hire security experts to monitor your site. Have them notify the provider. If the provider fails to apply the patch within 12 hours, leave them for breech of contract (or something like that)
The long:
A similar thing happened to one of our clients. I work for a web development company and we have over the last year tried to get away from hosting. Its annoying, we don't want to do admin work, etc. so we partnered with a well known hosting provider (with pretty much a similar contract). The box was running NT (not my choice) and the day before they had scheduled to install a patch for a very well known (and for a good amount of time) bug, a script kiddie hacked the site. The first thing the hosting provider did? Blame us AND demand more money to get the site back up. WTF? Anyway, while they scrambled around with their heads cut off, we brought the servers back to our office, brought in security experts we were negotiating a partnership with anyway, and locked down the site and brought it back up (all in 24 hours;-) ourselves. Then, we had our new security partners go into the hosting providers rack area (the hp let us into the wrong closet first.. *sigh*) and effectively make the provider their bitch. "This is wrong, this is wrong", etc. The client is very happy with us and 5 seconds away from dumping the provider. Since then, the provider has pretty muched asked "how high" when we or the client has said jump.
This is completely true. My girlfriend's CC number got stolen somehow (no, she didn't give it to any non-reputable online store) and the thief charged a $500 stereo and a $2500 laptop to her card. The thief made errors in her billing address though (4 digit zip code?? c'mon) and the store that the thief bought the stuff from called my girlfriend's bank. The bank called her and confirmed that she didn't buy either of those and cancelled the transaction.
Well, being a little computer savvy and wanting to CATCH this guy, I got the IP address of the computer he ordered from, traced it back to a viginia cell phone company and... nothing. Though everyone involved: the bank, the store, and the cell phone company had records of the ordeal, and were helpful the day it happened, nothing came of it. The bank said that since it was only $3000, they weren't going to persue it, the store said "talk to the bank about trying to prosecute" and the cell phone provider said "hmm... well we did find some people using our services to steal porn, but not what you're talking about. Thanks". And the police effectively took the paperwork we filled out and put it in the circular file. If its not a large sum of money to the _company_, they don't care.
So bitter, yet so anonymous. At least I don't fucking hide behind posting anonymously. Shit, I even put my email address for everyone to see. And the "stuff that matters" rarely refers to the articles. Whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
I love both PCs and Consoles and I really don't see them competing against each other for my money or attention. Of course I'm broke because of it, but that's another story.
psxndc
That's what I thought, I just didn't know if clear display of the pitcher and a large vertical opening would play a part in it. Conventional pitching machines have one hole the pitch comes out of. This on, though it has one hole, may need to move the initial location up and down depensding on the pitch. I guess two plexiglass shields would work... hmmm...
psxndc
If you're not: Today, July 11th.
psxndc
A) bought the hype early on?? I said I _just_ went to JavaOne. Like four weeks ago. I don't think I "bought the hype" early on since I just started working with it. B) Despite the fact that motivational speakers may spew "goodthink", being proactive has certainly got me more of what I want that sitting here like a bump on a log just getting handed stuff. I don't see what's wrong with being proactive, especially when it gets me what I want.
"As for "only had to fire a handful," that's the typical attitude: go through the incredible effort of one or two man-days evaluating someone you end up stuck with for ten or twenty years (only firing them for not showing up, or being blatantly disruptive), and call that "selective" recruiting"
The company has only been up for eight years and people that didn't fit _did_ leave on their own accord, but half the process is determining personality fits and so forth. We haven't had any people that "don't show up" or are "blatantly disruptive". We never hired those sort of people in the first place. I'll take two mediocre socially adjusted coders over one asshole super coder any day.
"I thought I made it quite clear that I wasn't talking about myself"
Fair enough. My mistake.
"You simply can't evaluate a programmer with less than a few weeks of working with them."
I understand and I agree to a point. We are very selective about who we hire. We mainly look for expertise (not necessarily "experience") and especially adaptability. We help the person develop experience in a field. And not by sending them to a two day Java class, but by putting them on a project. Like I said: I knew nothing about Java so we did some internal training. We created a mock e-commerce site. Now I can be a junior level developer on a project with other more experienced Java developers. If someone can't adapt, then we have a problem. Again, there have only been a few people that had that or other issues.
"People don't turn bitter like that unless they've been screwed repeatedly for years."
That's exactly what I was talking about. It should take a person six months to a year to get a feel for the job. If it isn't what they want, they should try working with their boss to resolve it (around six months). If that doesn't work, try for three to six months to work with their boss' boss. If it still isn't working, go somewhere else. That's only two years gone and when they go to look for another job, they can say that the company, depsite the employee's best efforts, wasn't willing to help them grow. It doesn't reflect badly on the employee, it reflects badly on the company and it shows that the employee had initiative. Who would you look for? A great programmer who didn't give a shit, or a potentially mediocre programmer who wants to become a great programmer? It's a matter of personal opinion. I understand and respect your points, and I think it is bullshit when a company shits on one of its employees, especially repeatedly, but its like a bad relationship. Sometimes you just have to know when to pull the plug and walk away.
psxndc
Huh? If I work at a job and I want to do something different, I make it my responsibility to seek out new opportunities. Be proactive. If your manager isn't helping you, go to their manager. If that still doesn't work, go up another level. If that doesn't work, quit. Be proactive.
Just coming out of college I was happy to take whatever was assigned to me, even the shit jobs that no one wanted to do. But because I happily sucked it down, I got stuck with it (and even made fun of by my coworker friends for being stuck with it) and had trouble breaking free. After about two years (and some growing up) I realized my job is what I make of it. I started pressing on my boss to do Java work. Nothing came out of it for six months. I then told him I was going to have a 1+ meeting (a meeting with his boss) to address my concerns. Not with my manager, just some concerns in general. I then told my bosses boss I wanted to do Java work. I was tired of doing Product oriented work and not Technology oriented work. I said I felt my career was stagnating and that I was becoming less useful for the company and less marketable for myself. My boss's boss was cool with this and I started in-house j2ee training a week later. Then I got sent to JavaOne. Were there other people that probably should have gone to JavaOne in the company? Definitely. Some of the stuff was over my head. But it showed me that by being proactive about what I want, I got it (or at least the beginnings of it).
It is not the company's responsibility to direct your career, it is yours. It is the company's responsibility to help you develop the skills necessary to advance your career as long as it advances the company. If your career advancement doesn't involve benefitting the company, you should find a company where it does or you will never be happy.
"People should be hired on a trial basis, and you should reject 4 out of 5 trial hires in the first month."
That is insane. Do you know the amount of effort it takes to interview just one candidate? A candidate at my company goes through two rounds of interviews, the first being a half hour to an hour with two different people. The next round is with three or four people for a half hour. Multiply that by four or five more that you will just throw away and I spend all my day (as well as four other engineers) just interviewing. Not to mention the IS overhead of setting up a new machine, assigning passwords, removing accounts of people thrown away, etc. Horrible idea. Maybe your recruiting department should be more selective. Ours is. We've only had to fire a handful of people in the eight years we've been around.
psxndc
Anyway: MS has a nasty habit of making changes to the OS that I don't particularly care for or want but it makes it shiny and happy for grandma and grandpa "I don't know how to use a computer". BSD and linux tend to add good functionality to their new releases for a resonable price. Do I want the latest kernel? Yup. The latest security fixes? Yup (that's even why I use WindowsUpdate frequently). Do I want to pay a couple hundred dollars to upgrade Win98 to win2K (not really a fair comparison I know) or XP? No. Win98 sucks but I keep it running for games becuase it works. I don't want/need the functionality that MS tries to shove down my throat by its subscription model. I'll rip my mp3s at whatever bitrate I want, thankyouverymuch
psxndc
psxndc
My girlfriend was talking to her mom about it. I overheard my gf saying things like "people like [me, her boyfriend] don't like Microsoft because of things they've done and..." etc. When she got off the phone I asked what her mom thought of the decision reversal. My gf said that her mom didn't think anything of it. "My mom likes Microsoft." I almost shat myself. Like M$??? How?! Can't she see the abuse of power? Can't she smell the greed coming out of Redmond like limburger cheese stuff in old gym shoes??
And the simple answer is no. To her mom, a computer is just a computer. It sends her e-mail, she can put picture from her digital camera on it, but she doesn't even think about things like licensing or freedom. It's not that she doesn't care, she just doesn't know. Even if I explained it to her it would still be no big deal. Its this sort of attitude that will keep M$ around for a long time.
psxndc
psxndc
psxndc
For the hardware hackers out there, IGN has an article how to adjust the contrast on your GBA (and Neo Geo Pocket. w00t): Game Boy Advance Too Dark?
Sorry if this is all redundant, portablemonopoly is /.'ed and I can't get to it
psxndc
psxndc
/. - *yawn*
psxndc
One of my good friends is an IP lawyer and yes, he gets paid a great salary for working his ass off, but I honestly feel that he's doing good work and protecting his clients (for all you naysayers his clients are typically the little guys getting screwed over by the big coporations). Could his firm charge less? Probably. But its not like lawyers are just bozos in suits. My friend has had to learn a whole lot of $h!+ just to understand his clients and their cases and people that can just pick something like that up on a daily basis should be compensated. He was a bio major yet he had to know everything there was to know about the dyeing processes used in circuit boards (or something like that. Go ahead, nitpick this one part of the post) in a couple days.
Call this a troll if you want, but I'm just sick of everyone bashing lawyers when <gasp><surprise> most of you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
psxndc
Can you explain this please? AFAIK, both allow user, group, and all/everyone type permissions. As for filesystem support, I don't know. I am genuinely curious what Win2K supports that Linux does not.
Always a Linux newbie,
psxndc
Sun Open Net Environment
I just got back from JavaOne and Sun has got some pretty cool stuff coming down the pipe. On top of that, a lot of the things talked about were Open Source projects and how great Sun thinks the Open Source community is.
A recent Sun fanboy,
psxndc
psxndc
psxndc
My question to the /. community is: Are people interested in this email-and-other-info-by-phone technology?
I have absolutley no interest in it and it seems like I'm the only one. Why sit there and listen through all my emails when I can go to a computer and _read_ them all in a quarter of the time. And if its important, I have a cell phone... ?? It just seems like a lot of companies are pushing for this and its one of the few things I don't see any demand for
psxndc
Looks like they have "Apollo", "Apollo I & design" and "Apollo II" trademarked as well. Watch out NASA, UPS is moving in:
"Well sir, our typical ground rate is $3.50, our overnight is $9 per pound, and we're having a special this week on our 'escaping earth's gravity' rate: only $2,543,789"
-psxndc
The long: A similar thing happened to one of our clients. I work for a web development company and we have over the last year tried to get away from hosting. Its annoying, we don't want to do admin work, etc. so we partnered with a well known hosting provider (with pretty much a similar contract). The box was running NT (not my choice) and the day before they had scheduled to install a patch for a very well known (and for a good amount of time) bug, a script kiddie hacked the site. The first thing the hosting provider did? Blame us AND demand more money to get the site back up. WTF? Anyway, while they scrambled around with their heads cut off, we brought the servers back to our office, brought in security experts we were negotiating a partnership with anyway, and locked down the site and brought it back up (all in 24 hours ;-) ourselves. Then, we had our new security partners go into the hosting providers rack area (the hp let us into the wrong closet first.. *sigh*) and effectively make the provider their bitch. "This is wrong, this is wrong", etc. The client is very happy with us and 5 seconds away from dumping the provider. Since then, the provider has pretty muched asked "how high" when we or the client has said jump.
psxndc
Well, being a little computer savvy and wanting to CATCH this guy, I got the IP address of the computer he ordered from, traced it back to a viginia cell phone company and... nothing. Though everyone involved: the bank, the store, and the cell phone company had records of the ordeal, and were helpful the day it happened, nothing came of it. The bank said that since it was only $3000, they weren't going to persue it, the store said "talk to the bank about trying to prosecute" and the cell phone provider said "hmm... well we did find some people using our services to steal porn, but not what you're talking about. Thanks". And the police effectively took the paperwork we filled out and put it in the circular file. If its not a large sum of money to the _company_, they don't care.
crap, made me think about becoming a criminal...
psxndc
So bitter, yet so anonymous. At least I don't fucking hide behind posting anonymously. Shit, I even put my email address for everyone to see. And the "stuff that matters" rarely refers to the articles. Whatever.