Re:From the "Reminds me of this classic prose" guy
on
Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I refuse to buy the third and fourth in hardback)
Then do what we're doing -- check them out from the public library.
We and our 8 yr old enjoyed it a great deal but I was rather surprised that the theatre was clearly less than full (even though it was a day that all the kids were out of school -- we showed up about 15 mins before starting time thinking we'd have to get tickets for at least the next show, but we walked right in and got good seats in the middle!
Judging from news reports I'm guessing that's an anomoly.
Yea, Columbus was a packet switcher, he divided his message, "Here have some smallpox", into three packets, put one on each of the Nova, Pinto, and Santa Montero, and then reassembled it on the other end of the trans-Atlantic hop.
Seriously, I doubt there was much ancient application of packet-switching -- why would anyone whack parchment or stone tablets into "packets"?
creating user accounts, installations,... adding hardware, backup strategies
These things are nice, but I'm looking for when I interview you are these:
Can you show that you learn and adapt on your own.
Can you deal with people.
Will you work a problem until it's solved.
Here's what I don't give a rat's ass about:
Any certification.
Your grade point average.
That you can use "foo" package.
I used to give applicants a 10-question quiz that was designed to see what you did under pressure and when you didn't know the answer (one guy came close, but nobody ever got a 10).
My boss made me stop when its reputation kept even good people from applying.:)
I guess they didn't realize it wasn't supposed to be like the lame classroom exams they were used to around here.
Writing software is not like building bridges because halfway through the project some dumbass from marketing doesn't come down and tell you that concrete is out and so it needs to be a steel bridge. Oh, and those tacky cables have got to go -- the focus group hated them.
Those guys crank through film. It's not like they buy it at the Rite Aid -- they get those shrink-wrapped blocks of what, 20 or 25 rolls?
When I was a newspaper photograper, which admittedly was 20 years ago, we bought film in bulk (like 100' lengths) and we rolled our own canisters.
The paper liked it because it was cheaper, we liked it because we could make 50-shot rolls
so we had less down time changing rolls.
Particularly important when shooting something like sports where you can miss the 'big play' in an instant (and my Nikon autowinder can blast through a whole roll faster than you can say
"Jordan's playing for who?").
There is a company I am familiar with where
letting someone 'tailgate' you through the
card reader at the door is an automatic
firing offense.
You can believe that my escort while I
was there made sure I swipped my 1-day
visitor card every time.
Why put up with the threat of 404 errors with long timeouts How on earth does google save you here? If the original server is dead, you're going to get *longer* timeouts, as it tries to load *each* image from the original server. If you'd gone direct to the site, you'd only get one timeout.
Which illustrates what google should be doing is replacing all those references in their cached copy to refer to their cached copy of the images too!
No more timeouts (and boo hoo, no more ad revenue for the original site:)
Since I've already resolved that management is not a track I want to get into, is architecture my most logical next step?
You're already on that track.
You may no realize it yet, but you are.
After all, you will be directing (perhaps indirectly) how many people will be spending their efforts.
My advise, hone your people skills -- the higher you go the fewer and fewer people you will deal with who will 'just see the technically correct answer' -- you'll have to see things from their point of view and then convince either them (or yourself) of the correct answer.:)
Oh yeah, and the advice about being wary of meetings eating your time is good too...
A lot of x86 hardware won't boot without an attached keyboard.
We actually use a serial console system for most of the ~200 servers in our machine room (we have an actual monitor/keyboard/mouse on a little cart we wheel around for when we need it, which is rarely).
Anyway, to the point, you can make a simple little loopback plug for the keyboard and/or mouse if the system is fussy about that sort of thing.
New Sets != Death of Imagination
on
Battle Over Blocks
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Again, I see yet another adult decrying that the new (more than just rectangles) sets are the death of creativity for kids.
As the parent of an eight year old boy who has spent virtually every dime of allowance he has ever received on Logos, I just don't see it.
Sure, roughly 4 nanoseconds after getting it home
(only because we banned doing it in the backseat) he has it open and is building it according to the directions -- BUT in a couple of hours he'll have it apart and he'll NEVER build it that way again.
Forget economics, it's all about cool (and saving time).
If you really want to be cool (er, save time), a jet helicopter is for you...:)
I can't tell you how unbelievably cool it was to rip down the Charles in Digital's Bell Jet Ranger, and swoop up over Air Force One to land at Logan
(Clinton fouling Boston traffic even more than usual is why we got the ride in the first place).
The general idea is that image-processing software will examine the CCTV image, and in real-time attempt to characterize and describe what you are doing. So the software might be able to determine itself with reasonable probability whether or not you are attempting to shoplift.
Actually, most shoplifters have nervous behaviors that are precursors to the actual shoplifting.
And indeed, software can (probably already) recognize these behaviors.
Presumably dispatching a security person to the suspects elbow, or electrifying the shelf or whatever...
I, on the other hand, am a school board member in Iowa.
The State gives each school in Iowa a flat rate per student -- this amount is about $4600, a district can do a few other minor things to raise money, but we're all basically working with around $5500 or so per student (outside of building bonds, etc).
The cost of living in Iowa is just a little below the national average.
Starting salary in our district is ~$25K and you'd be hard pressed to find a 4BR house for $150K (you couldn't get a shack for $50K).
Oh, and our median on standardized test is around the national 90%ile.
Teaching kids is about people (teachers, parents, community members) that really care.
Period.
Slashdot Mirror
Then do what we're doing -- check them out from the public library.
We and our 8 yr old enjoyed it a great deal but I was rather surprised that the theatre was clearly less than full (even though it was a day that all the kids were out of school -- we showed up about 15 mins before starting time thinking we'd have to get tickets for at least the next show, but we walked right in and got good seats in the middle!
Judging from news reports I'm guessing that's an anomoly.
Seriously, I doubt there was much ancient application of packet-switching -- why would anyone whack parchment or stone tablets into "packets"?
These things are nice, but I'm looking for when I interview you are these:
- Can you show that you learn and adapt on your own.
- Can you deal with people.
- Will you work a problem until it's solved.
Here's what I don't give a rat's ass about:I used to give applicants a 10-question quiz that was designed to see what you did under pressure and when you didn't know the answer (one guy came close, but nobody ever got a 10). My boss made me stop when its reputation kept even good people from applying. :)
I guess they didn't realize it wasn't supposed to be like the lame classroom exams they were used to around here.
It's James "Sully" Sullivan.
I just got back from this movie and it rocks, but I think some of it may have been lost on non-parents. Of course, kids got it on another level.
We just took the pictures, we didn't have to write the captions :)
When I was a newspaper photograper, which admittedly was 20 years ago, we bought film in bulk (like 100' lengths) and we rolled our own canisters.
The paper liked it because it was cheaper, we liked it because we could make 50-shot rolls so we had less down time changing rolls. Particularly important when shooting something like sports where you can miss the 'big play' in an instant (and my Nikon autowinder can blast through a whole roll faster than you can say "Jordan's playing for who?").
How on earth does google save you here? If the original server is dead, you're going to get *longer* timeouts, as it tries to load *each* image from the original server. If you'd gone direct to the site, you'd only get one timeout.
Which illustrates what google should be doing is replacing all those references in their cached copy to refer to their cached copy of the images too! No more timeouts (and boo hoo, no more ad revenue for the original site :)
And if it doesn't play well here, it isn't going to go down any better at work...
You're already on that track. You may no realize it yet, but you are.
After all, you will be directing (perhaps indirectly) how many people will be spending their efforts.
My advise, hone your people skills -- the higher you go the fewer and fewer people you will deal with who will 'just see the technically correct answer' -- you'll have to see things from their point of view and then convince either them (or yourself) of the correct answer. :)
Oh yeah, and the advice about being wary of meetings eating your time is good too...
We actually use a serial console system for most of the ~200 servers in our machine room (we have an actual monitor/keyboard/mouse on a little cart we wheel around for when we need it, which is rarely).
Anyway, to the point, you can make a simple little loopback plug for the keyboard and/or mouse if the system is fussy about that sort of thing.
I personally, like to use C and DB files for most things (I don't need Oracles firepower, complexity, or price :)
My templates look something like this:
${include head.html}
<form method=post action="${path_url}">
$?{messages}${messages}<hr>$.
$?{gt ${v_count} 0}<table border=1>
<tr><th>Mark</th><th>Volum e Class</th></tr>
$@{for i 0 lt ${v_count}}<tr>
<td>${radio volclass ${v_class[${i}]}}</td>
<td>${v_class[${i}]}</td>
</tr>$.
</table>
<input type=submit name=action value="View/Edit Properties of Marked Class">
<hr>$.
$.${include buttons.html}
</form>
${include tail.html}
As the parent of an eight year old boy who has spent virtually every dime of allowance he has ever received on Logos, I just don't see it.
Sure, roughly 4 nanoseconds after getting it home (only because we banned doing it in the backseat) he has it open and is building it according to the directions -- BUT in a couple of hours he'll have it apart and he'll NEVER build it that way again.
The exception is probably your local governments (city, county, school).
Certainly, I (a school board member) vastly prefer e-mail over snail-mail -- it is much easier to reply to.
And in my experience, this is true for just about everyone I've served with as well as the city officials I have corresponded with.
Of course, YMMV...
Hardly! It's about the more technology advances, the more people become worthless lumps.
PS, It's Zager and Evans.
Oh fergawdsakes, will this urban legend ever die!
It simply isn't true.
3) Linux will comply:
/* ... evil stuff ... */ }
/* ... */
/* ... more evil stuff ... */ }
/* ... */
int sssca = 1;
if (sssca) {
if (sssca) {
Now, how hard will that be to turn off?
(of, course, then we can look forward to the
"Source Security Act" to outlaw open source too).
About 10 times longer, I should say. Take, for example, strdup:
char * strdup (char * s) {
return strcpy(malloc(strlen(s) + 1), s);
}
Now write it checking for every possible error... Mp
If you really want to be cool (er, save time), a jet helicopter is for you... :)
I can't tell you how unbelievably cool it was to rip down the Charles in Digital's Bell Jet Ranger, and swoop up over Air Force One to land at Logan (Clinton fouling Boston traffic even more than usual is why we got the ride in the first place).
Seriously, are we approaching the day that windows will cost more than the computer it runs on for most people?
I, on the other hand, am a school board member in Iowa.
The State gives each school in Iowa a flat rate per student -- this amount is about $4600, a district can do a few other minor things to raise money, but we're all basically working with around $5500 or so per student (outside of building bonds, etc).
The cost of living in Iowa is just a little below the national average.
Starting salary in our district is ~$25K and you'd be hard pressed to find a 4BR house for $150K (you couldn't get a shack for $50K).
Oh, and our median on standardized test is around the national 90%ile.
Teaching kids is about people (teachers, parents, community members) that really care. Period.