I wish I could have replied to this earlier in the day when it was still fresh, but for those still reading:
Some of the labels are already labeling the CDs exactly as you describe, and started doing so before this decision came down, so all this will do is get the labels onto all of the CDs even faster than they were already planning to. This decision may have just made things _worse_ for us.
You'll note that I said "tempted to suggest" and "if". No need for personal offense, and, for the record, I certainly felt no need nor was I defending a "shitty system".
I'm really glad to hear that you didn't end up having to take shit work.
It is odd, though, that you found that to have been "suggested by almost everyone". I generally find myself working with more immigrants than locals and none of them have had to take shit work or even had it suggested to them.
As for the university toppers comment, that is a North American thing for sure. North America cranks out way more degrees than it needs to employ, and as much as it ends up being a checklist item during hiring processes, when it comes to looking for qualified people, degrees end up counting for a lot less than solid experience. I do know some people that have come through university after the dot com boom, when anyone and everyone could get a great-paying job in tech, and found that their degrees still left them with shit work. However, those people almost always came out of university with fantasy degrees that didn't really map into professions in the real world.
Canada definitely has a shortage of qualified IT workers. Based on the GP's comments, however, especially those related to taking work in something that was "not your profession in Australia", I'm tempted to suggest that GP came to Canada without the aforementioned element of being qualified. If you need to take shit work in your country of destination, you should have thought about your applicable qualifications before moving there.
Taking shit work isn't going to do anything to help get you back into your preferred profession. If anything, it'll make your resume much more suspect, in that employers will look at the shit work you've had to do and wonder why you couldn't get work in your actual field. Their conclusion will be that you suck.
Same here. I'm undercharging on my current contract (longer term + interesting project = discount) but still making boatloads. Freaking boatloads. If freaking boatloads is "withered on the vine", I'm certainly not seeing this supposed withering or the results thereof.
If you understand how software development happens among professionals, it works just like this. The customer wants a working product and he wants to know when to expect it. The customer has a schedule, too.
True, but that doesn't make the customer right.
Just take a look around you some time to see all of the damage that has been done by shipping products on schedules instead of on completion.
And last time I checked, my SP2 installation already had all available security fixes, making SP3 a feature-only upgrade for me. The classic "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"-doesn't-apply-to-computers line from several parents back is bullshit, or at the very least it is bullshit if you like to place any reliance on your machine. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" most definitely does apply to computers.
I have a mission-critical Windows machine, for example, that I NEVER blindly patch. NEVER EVER. That this machine rarely goes on the internet (and even then is well protected) is obviously a very nice bonus, but still, it doesn't get patched unless there is an exact patch to fix an exact problem that has been identified on the machine, and even then it isn't done without first imaging the system and then doing significant testing during available downtime. To do otherwise is simple irresponsibility, to myself and the value of my own time at the very least. I can only imagine how such idiocy doesn't result in (more) firings when people dare skip these steps at their place of employment.
Who said anything about stumbling upon a working implementation? We're talking about iterative development here.
The problem with the concept of literate programming is simply this: Literate programming is for all intents and purposes incompatible with iterative development methodologies, the use of which vastly outstrips the use of non (or barely) iterative development methodologies.
It is that simple. Yes, as another replier mentioned, women are equally within their rights to have a career. However, once someone decides to be a parent, they are equally oblighed thusly: to be the best parent possible. That requires reprioritizing.
And please let's not get started with any of this "we need to both work because we need to live in this overly expensive neighbourhood and dress and dine too expensively and need to drive that big SUV over there." junk. People have to learn that a choice is required: a lifestyle focused on you as an individual with zero children, or one focused on the maximal development of your offspring.
Advanced medical technology and medicine-man magic do not go together
I suspect that plenty of Christians (and other religious folk) would disagree with that statement, if only they didn't abjectly (and unfairly) disagree with the "medicine-man" part of it. Advanced medical technology and medicine-man magic most definitely do go together, even now in 2008. Not that I subscribe to the latter, of course.;)
True, but what Microsoft has learned (especially with Vista) is that (practically) monolithic OS development, testing, etc. is even more of a nightmare.
Yes, yes, yes, subscription-based software could go in all sorts of wrong directions much more likely than in all sorts of right ones, but why oh why is it that an entire web site full of developers and admins seem constantly unable to imagine the following: perhaps Windows7 is going modular because thousands of developers, testers, etc. at Microsoft all screamed out against doing another (practically) monolithic Windows, pointing at Vista as the prime failure case in point.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that this screaming started even while Vista was still well under development, and I doubt anyone would argue against there being plenty of validating proof now that Vista has been out for a year.
Just because C# and VB.net have been largely in line in terms of syntax in the past (and this is becoming less and less so over time, if the introduction of things like VB.net's new XML Literals is any indication) it doesn't mean that VB.net and C# are implemented in a fashion that is at all different from how any other.net language is implemented.
VB.net, C#, IronPython, Boo, IronRuby, F#, Scala, and the list goes on. The are all implemented in the exact same way: by writing a compiler that targets IL.
Last time I checked, evolution was entirely orthogonal to being a killer.
The only thing that evolution says about me is that my chance of successfully forwarding my genes into the next generation is predicated on my genetically-predisposed ability to respond to the selective pressure of my environment, that my chance of forwarding them beyond the next generation will be predicated on my offspring's genetic predisposed ability as gained from the combination of my genes with those of my breeding partner, and so on and so forth.
Which part of that requires to become a killer, exactly? I'd really like to know, because if I missed it somewhere in there I'll hurry up and get myself booked into that firearms course I've occasionally thought of taking. I'd best get trained up quickly so I can get on with that killing you are implying I need to do to take part in evolution!
It is just as unfortunate that it has "Semantic" in the name. I spent a good few years working in the RDF space (we were frankly too far ahead of our time to be commercially viable, as the potential clients could see the value but the VC's didn't "get it") and if there is one thing that I have seen hurting semantic web proponents again and again is the damn name "semantic web", which is so ridiculously overloaded as to be outright dangerous to anyone trying to talk about it.
As a random aside, the other thing that needs to stop is people showing anything even remotely resembling a visualization of the raw graph, as it completely throws readers off and sends them into tangents about "these graphics will be useless" and "clicking on tags will suck", etc.
Same problem/solution as the non-semantic web: the page wouldn't have the official URL and would be excluded by engines due to lack of pagerank/whuffie/whatever.
What the semantic web does above and beyond the normal web is best summed up in two parts:
1. Allows for relations between concepts, identities, etc., not just documents.
2. Allows for the relations to be unambiguously typed (eg. "employed by" versus "employer of" for a quick off-the-top example.) Think "rel" on steroids.
Lots of interesting things can then be built on these two things (including, among other things, inferring likely information and relations from known information) but those two are the fundamental distinguishing elements.
What do you think would happen if, say, America lost proper government for a while and became a place ruled purely by the whims of religious men with absolute power and no desire to let things change?
There, fixed that for you.
As for your statement and my corrected version thereof, it has already happened. They just haven't sentenced anyone to death for using the internet just yet. Give it a few months, though.
I have run into a particular "scaling" problem with Lattix that I would like to make sure people know about:
Lattix doesn't "scale" past asking for pricing.
The response I got for a request regarding pricing was less than useless and was imbued with a tone that was on the edge of insulting. It had a very "one man shop" feel, and that one man was obviously not at all interested in selling his product to someone who was very, very interested in buying it. I can only imagine how interested he would be in supporting the product given how little interest he has in selling it.
Suffice it to say that Lattix was immediately dropped from our evaluation list.
I still have the 300 baud internal modem card in my jr, you insensitive 1200 baud clod!:)
In all seriousness, without my parents buying a jr when they came out, I doubt I would ever have started out in the computer industry, let alone still be working in it. That PCjr, as much as it doesn't get used any more, is NEVER EVER getting thrown away.
As keyboards go, I'm actually amazed that the chiclet keyboard topped their list! It wasn't nearly as bad as many of the others on the list. The jr's keyboard didn't kill it. The chiclet keyboard was great for schools (it is VERY easily washed) and the alternate keyboard was actually very, very nice to work with. Two things killed the jr as far as I'm concerned: 1) The sheer, absolute dominance of the C64 at the time, both in price and capability, even though it came out earlier. 2) the continual bashing the jr got for supposedly not quite having the same graphics capabilities as other PCs, even though it could do all CGA modes, most EGA modes, and a few modes that were way better than some of the EGA cards at the time.
I do know how businesses and loss leaders work, but you seem not to. Where do you think they get the money to offer loss leaders from? That's right, from the services and products that you are paying for. It certainly isn't coming out of their pockets because they feel like being nice.
Thanks also for firmly sticking your foot in your mouth while trying to insult my intelligence.
Had I even realized it was you that I was replying to, I wouldn't have bothered replying to your trolling. Worry not, it isn't a mistake I'll make again.
I'm paying for a physical disk delivery service. I didn't realize I needed to spell that out - twice. You don't pay for the video streaming.
I didn't realize they were taking money from their own profits to pay for the costs of streaming! What a wonderful gift from Netflix!
Wrong. You are paying for the streaming.
replying to slightly correct myself lest anyone think I missed this. I know this, I just hit Submit too fast: 3.5 is 2.0sp1 plus 3.0 plus the additional libraries that comprise 3.5
Yes.
In fact, you could simply install 1.1 and 3.5. Installing 3.5 will get you 2.0sp1, 3.0, and 3.5 all at once (since 3.0 is additional libraries for 2.0 and 3.5 is 2.0sp1 plus additional libraries.)
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I could have replied to this earlier in the day when it was still fresh, but for those still reading:
Some of the labels are already labeling the CDs exactly as you describe, and started doing so before this decision came down, so all this will do is get the labels onto all of the CDs even faster than they were already planning to. This decision may have just made things _worse_ for us.
You'll note that I said "tempted to suggest" and "if". No need for personal offense, and, for the record, I certainly felt no need nor was I defending a "shitty system".
I'm really glad to hear that you didn't end up having to take shit work.
It is odd, though, that you found that to have been "suggested by almost everyone". I generally find myself working with more immigrants than locals and none of them have had to take shit work or even had it suggested to them.
As for the university toppers comment, that is a North American thing for sure. North America cranks out way more degrees than it needs to employ, and as much as it ends up being a checklist item during hiring processes, when it comes to looking for qualified people, degrees end up counting for a lot less than solid experience. I do know some people that have come through university after the dot com boom, when anyone and everyone could get a great-paying job in tech, and found that their degrees still left them with shit work. However, those people almost always came out of university with fantasy degrees that didn't really map into professions in the real world.
Canada definitely has a shortage of qualified IT workers. Based on the GP's comments, however, especially those related to taking work in something that was "not your profession in Australia", I'm tempted to suggest that GP came to Canada without the aforementioned element of being qualified. If you need to take shit work in your country of destination, you should have thought about your applicable qualifications before moving there.
Taking shit work isn't going to do anything to help get you back into your preferred profession. If anything, it'll make your resume much more suspect, in that employers will look at the shit work you've had to do and wonder why you couldn't get work in your actual field. Their conclusion will be that you suck.
Same here. I'm undercharging on my current contract (longer term + interesting project = discount) but still making boatloads. Freaking boatloads. If freaking boatloads is "withered on the vine", I'm certainly not seeing this supposed withering or the results thereof.
It's okay to say Creator. I'm sure he parents won't mind you calling them that. :)
And last time I checked, my SP2 installation already had all available security fixes, making SP3 a feature-only upgrade for me. The classic "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"-doesn't-apply-to-computers line from several parents back is bullshit, or at the very least it is bullshit if you like to place any reliance on your machine. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" most definitely does apply to computers.
I have a mission-critical Windows machine, for example, that I NEVER blindly patch. NEVER EVER. That this machine rarely goes on the internet (and even then is well protected) is obviously a very nice bonus, but still, it doesn't get patched unless there is an exact patch to fix an exact problem that has been identified on the machine, and even then it isn't done without first imaging the system and then doing significant testing during available downtime. To do otherwise is simple irresponsibility, to myself and the value of my own time at the very least. I can only imagine how such idiocy doesn't result in (more) firings when people dare skip these steps at their place of employment.
Who said anything about stumbling upon a working implementation? We're talking about iterative development here.
The problem with the concept of literate programming is simply this: Literate programming is for all intents and purposes incompatible with iterative development methodologies, the use of which vastly outstrips the use of non (or barely) iterative development methodologies.
That's it, there's nothing else to it.
they have a problem with priorities.
It is that simple. Yes, as another replier mentioned, women are equally within their rights to have a career. However, once someone decides to be a parent, they are equally oblighed thusly: to be the best parent possible. That requires reprioritizing.
And please let's not get started with any of this "we need to both work because we need to live in this overly expensive neighbourhood and dress and dine too expensively and need to drive that big SUV over there." junk. People have to learn that a choice is required: a lifestyle focused on you as an individual with zero children, or one focused on the maximal development of your offspring.
True, but what Microsoft has learned (especially with Vista) is that (practically) monolithic OS development, testing, etc. is even more of a nightmare.
Yes, yes, yes, subscription-based software could go in all sorts of wrong directions much more likely than in all sorts of right ones, but why oh why is it that an entire web site full of developers and admins seem constantly unable to imagine the following: perhaps Windows7 is going modular because thousands of developers, testers, etc. at Microsoft all screamed out against doing another (practically) monolithic Windows, pointing at Vista as the prime failure case in point.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that this screaming started even while Vista was still well under development, and I doubt anyone would argue against there being plenty of validating proof now that Vista has been out for a year.
There, fixed that for ya.
I had some hopes for jPod, but after struggling through watching a few episodes I can easily see why CBC would have struggled to keep it running.
Just because C# and VB.net have been largely in line in terms of syntax in the past (and this is becoming less and less so over time, if the introduction of things like VB.net's new XML Literals is any indication) it doesn't mean that VB.net and C# are implemented in a fashion that is at all different from how any other .net language is implemented.
VB.net, C#, IronPython, Boo, IronRuby, F#, Scala, and the list goes on. The are all implemented in the exact same way: by writing a compiler that targets IL.
Last time I checked, evolution was entirely orthogonal to being a killer.
The only thing that evolution says about me is that my chance of successfully forwarding my genes into the next generation is predicated on my genetically-predisposed ability to respond to the selective pressure of my environment, that my chance of forwarding them beyond the next generation will be predicated on my offspring's genetic predisposed ability as gained from the combination of my genes with those of my breeding partner, and so on and so forth.
Which part of that requires to become a killer, exactly? I'd really like to know, because if I missed it somewhere in there I'll hurry up and get myself booked into that firearms course I've occasionally thought of taking. I'd best get trained up quickly so I can get on with that killing you are implying I need to do to take part in evolution!
This is anecdotal at best, but here goes:
Most of the best IT people I've ever worked with have no certs.
Most of the worst IT people I've ever worked with have one or more certs.
Go figure.
It is just as unfortunate that it has "Semantic" in the name. I spent a good few years working in the RDF space (we were frankly too far ahead of our time to be commercially viable, as the potential clients could see the value but the VC's didn't "get it") and if there is one thing that I have seen hurting semantic web proponents again and again is the damn name "semantic web", which is so ridiculously overloaded as to be outright dangerous to anyone trying to talk about it.
As a random aside, the other thing that needs to stop is people showing anything even remotely resembling a visualization of the raw graph, as it completely throws readers off and sends them into tangents about "these graphics will be useless" and "clicking on tags will suck", etc.
Same problem/solution as the non-semantic web: the page wouldn't have the official URL and would be excluded by engines due to lack of pagerank/whuffie/whatever.
What the semantic web does above and beyond the normal web is best summed up in two parts:
1. Allows for relations between concepts, identities, etc., not just documents.
2. Allows for the relations to be unambiguously typed (eg. "employed by" versus "employer of" for a quick off-the-top example.) Think "rel" on steroids.
Lots of interesting things can then be built on these two things (including, among other things, inferring likely information and relations from known information) but those two are the fundamental distinguishing elements.
There, fixed that for you.
As for your statement and my corrected version thereof, it has already happened. They just haven't sentenced anyone to death for using the internet just yet. Give it a few months, though.
I have run into a particular "scaling" problem with Lattix that I would like to make sure people know about:
Lattix doesn't "scale" past asking for pricing.
The response I got for a request regarding pricing was less than useless and was imbued with a tone that was on the edge of insulting. It had a very "one man shop" feel, and that one man was obviously not at all interested in selling his product to someone who was very, very interested in buying it. I can only imagine how interested he would be in supporting the product given how little interest he has in selling it.
Suffice it to say that Lattix was immediately dropped from our evaluation list.
I still have the 300 baud internal modem card in my jr, you insensitive 1200 baud clod! :)
In all seriousness, without my parents buying a jr when they came out, I doubt I would ever have started out in the computer industry, let alone still be working in it. That PCjr, as much as it doesn't get used any more, is NEVER EVER getting thrown away.
As keyboards go, I'm actually amazed that the chiclet keyboard topped their list! It wasn't nearly as bad as many of the others on the list. The jr's keyboard didn't kill it. The chiclet keyboard was great for schools (it is VERY easily washed) and the alternate keyboard was actually very, very nice to work with. Two things killed the jr as far as I'm concerned: 1) The sheer, absolute dominance of the C64 at the time, both in price and capability, even though it came out earlier. 2) the continual bashing the jr got for supposedly not quite having the same graphics capabilities as other PCs, even though it could do all CGA modes, most EGA modes, and a few modes that were way better than some of the EGA cards at the time.
I do know how businesses and loss leaders work, but you seem not to. Where do you think they get the money to offer loss leaders from? That's right, from the services and products that you are paying for. It certainly isn't coming out of their pockets because they feel like being nice.
Thanks also for firmly sticking your foot in your mouth while trying to insult my intelligence.
Had I even realized it was you that I was replying to, I wouldn't have bothered replying to your trolling. Worry not, it isn't a mistake I'll make again.
Perhaps, but can I buy a Mac without OSX?
replying to slightly correct myself lest anyone think I missed this. I know this, I just hit Submit too fast: 3.5 is 2.0sp1 plus 3.0 plus the additional libraries that comprise 3.5
Yes. In fact, you could simply install 1.1 and 3.5. Installing 3.5 will get you 2.0sp1, 3.0, and 3.5 all at once (since 3.0 is additional libraries for 2.0 and 3.5 is 2.0sp1 plus additional libraries.)