I think you underestimate the value of those things. Most of these classes aren't strictly about history, english, and the like, but enhance your overall mental ability - such as the ability to write, comprehend, and reason, which frankly, is generally missing from those in our field.
If you don't have those things, that's fine, but that's not a BS or a BA, thats a trade school education.
MIT has only a very light requirement of courses dealing with anything that wasn't based in math or science. You don't consider MIT a trade school education, do you? I certainly didn't come out of there thinking I had a stunted ability to "write, comprehend, and reason".
Humanities are so much more open to abuse than science an math-based courses. To have to memorize meaningless facts, and teachers bore the hell out of you and shove their opinions down your throat, and expect that you agree with them if you want an A. Au contraire, I found the biggest offenders of courses that didn't let you think for yourself to be non-math/science.
Changing version numbers were a way for me to avoid updates until I had a chance to see if they completely ruined the UI with major changes. Now instead of just updating I have to research to see if it's "just a security update" or an "oh my god WTF" change that has me fighting the UI configuration to get it back to what I want it to be.
Same thing goes for releasing websites as a developer. Now that I can't rely on version numbers, how am I going to break down support and compatibility?
What are they thinking? Do they WANT to piss everyone off, or do they have their heads up their asses? If they keep this up, MS will be perfectly right to point out that they have kept a sane versioning system, and that it is kind of a big deal.
Again, no - its been well documented that Dropbox does global deduplication and single instance storage, across all data in their database. That would not work anywhere near as well for them if each account used its own encryption key - until they turned it off recently due to abuse, you could shove an Ubuntu iso into your local Dropbox and have it "synced" 100% in seconds, as the Dropbox servers realise that they already have it in their global pool, and simply tell your client not to upload it.
You know, if it wasn't for copyright trolls and whatnot, that would actually be a pretty damn good feature.
Try committing a violent crime, using some smuggled guns, in any country in EU and see if the cops don't shoot back at you. Even in England, the police have guns (esp. their equivalent of SWAT), and are prepared to use lethal force against criminals and terrorists.
How does that not equate to the government having the right to kill you? The government in any country absolutely does have the right to protect the public, and that necessarily includes using lethal force.
That's the problem with most WSYWIG HTML editors. HTML doesn't lend itself well to WSYWIG editing...
That's the problem with standardizing at that level of abstraction. It may be fine for Joe website editor to use, but as a standard for what browsers interpret, HTML is a stupid idea.
I totally agree with you. Decades of development have shown me that gathering requirements up front never works well; you have to put a user in front of working software for the real requirements-gathering process to begin. They start using something and it's like night and day, a light goes on and their minds expand. My most useful function, when I'm allowed to do it, is to creatively anticipate users' needs, deliver things they never would have thought of asking for because they'd never imagine them on their own. And I get happy users because to them, it seems like magic; I don't force them to conceive of every detail, but allow them to join in a relaxed, fluid, creative experience. We are not the machines we program. Users are not developers. "Less like Hell and more like Christmas".
Yeah, like they're going to pass legislation to change that, from the people that are all bought and paid for.
Any real change must come without their permission. That means "a big to-do". People are lazy though, so it would take a total crisis to get the ball rolling. That's not going to happen over something like this.
It makes me mad when I see an application that has lots of users and remains broken indefinitely. That's because I'm a software developer and I have to actually fix my mistakes before a project's considered done.
When I see obvious breakage, I ask myself, "What was going through developer X's mind? Did he just not care? I don't have to use./ so I guess it doesn't count, but when I see it in software I must use, it makes me want to give the developer/PM a good hard slap across the face and ask them if they know how many people they shit on by not having any pride of workmanship.
allow anyone to contribute? really??? have you tried to contribute? I tried a few times in my area of expertise and had my entries promptly deleted and replaced with garbage.
I've contributed to a number of articles and never had a problem with reverts or deletions. Stuff I put in years ago is still there. But it's mostly computer science. People tend to not get their nickers in a twist about that as much as, say, abortion.
But Wikipedia resembles less the masterpiece of a genius than the fixation of an idiot savant.
As a developer I know how hard it can be to use technology to get groups of people to accomplish even simple tasks.
Look at how useful Wikipedia is. And the SHEER SCALE. It is un-f***ing-believeable.
Coming from an engineer, I can say that there is absolutely no question - Wikipedia is a modern masterpiece.
Does it contain creative genius? Yes. The creative genius was the creator's decision to allow anyone to contribute, when everyone said it wouldn't work.
The only rule of thumb should be, have a techie help you if you're not one already.
Ask a guy (who has the knowledge) for technical advice. Could be a complete stranger in the store, it doesn't matter. 99 times out of 100 he'll fall all over himself to guide you through the purchase. It's a "guy thing" constructively interfering with a "geek thing" that creates a local maximum of altruism rarely seen in other contexts.
A lot of so-called standard software development processes treat its workers like the machines they use. This sentiment has permeated not just programming, but all industry for the last two hundred years.
Yet attempting to automate programming misses the whole point of what it is; it's akin to trying to reduce second-order logic to first-order logic.
All these process-related failures we see in software development are misguided attempts to recreate a traditional computer with people.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Wait... what?
Uh since I'm already off-topic now I've been dying to say this...
Whenever I go to click on a comment, most of the time instead of modding or expanding it, I get navigated up. So I scroll way down again, looking for where I clicked. Do it again, rinse, repeat... sometimes 5 times in a row before I get to actually do what I wanted to. Are they going to fix this at all? Why can't I find a feedback mechanism? What's the point of development if you don't allow users to tell you there is a BUG EFFING BUG IN THE UI? Huh? I thought this was news for nerds. And this has been broken forever. And I have to make a random post HERE because there's nobody to report it to. Really? News for nerds? Hello?
Despite what people here seem to think, 99% of programming is simply re-using a small, standard repertoire of patterns. It's called not re-inventing the wheel.
I love it how some people think that picking a more powerful or flexible way of doing something is RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL.
It's code for, "I'm scared of change and want to do things the way I've always done them, because I stopped learning a long time ago".
It's the sound of a manger that doesn't want to be made to look stupid in a code review.
I agree with you. I'd hate using this to code. Which is why all over-engineered projects will some day do it this way.
You know the ones I'm talking about - where you cross a Masters in CS with a jackass, subtract all common sense, give him the title of "Architect", and a budget roughly 20 times what the project should really cost.
Not only will all programming will be in diagram form, but the software will be shitty and nobody will like using it. But managers who don't code (but tell others how to) will love it because it "simplifies" programming, so much that they can sub almost everything out to India, even though it doesn't simplify it at all given the ugly, complicated, roundabout hacks required to accomplish nearly anything outside of a small, standard repertoire of patterns.
But on the bright side, it will actually provide a rather useful and appealing visual method of tacking unit tests onto the workflow.
I was really only half-joking. And Who said anything about pirate software?
The POS the author spoke of is by definition rogue equipment. Security with machines like that on a network? No, not with any MS OS.
Also, if they can't afford to replace it with even a $200 Wal-Mart special, then I doubt they have any kind of formal IT policy at all, let alone a "department".
Slashdot Mirror
I think you underestimate the value of those things. Most of these classes aren't strictly about history, english, and the like, but enhance your overall mental ability - such as the ability to write, comprehend, and reason, which frankly, is generally missing from those in our field.
If you don't have those things, that's fine, but that's not a BS or a BA, thats a trade school education.
MIT has only a very light requirement of courses dealing with anything that wasn't based in math or science. You don't consider MIT a trade school education, do you? I certainly didn't come out of there thinking I had a stunted ability to "write, comprehend, and reason".
Humanities are so much more open to abuse than science an math-based courses. To have to memorize meaningless facts, and teachers bore the hell out of you and shove their opinions down your throat, and expect that you agree with them if you want an A. Au contraire, I found the biggest offenders of courses that didn't let you think for yourself to be non-math/science.
Changing version numbers were a way for me to avoid updates until I had a chance to see if they completely ruined the UI with major changes. Now instead of just updating I have to research to see if it's "just a security update" or an "oh my god WTF" change that has me fighting the UI configuration to get it back to what I want it to be.
Same thing goes for releasing websites as a developer. Now that I can't rely on version numbers, how am I going to break down support and compatibility?
What are they thinking? Do they WANT to piss everyone off, or do they have their heads up their asses? If they keep this up, MS will be perfectly right to point out that they have kept a sane versioning system, and that it is kind of a big deal.
Tesla has announced that their business model has failed.
The technology failed, not the business model.
The battery tech remains unready and over-promised.
Again, no - its been well documented that Dropbox does global deduplication and single instance storage, across all data in their database. That would not work anywhere near as well for them if each account used its own encryption key - until they turned it off recently due to abuse, you could shove an Ubuntu iso into your local Dropbox and have it "synced" 100% in seconds, as the Dropbox servers realise that they already have it in their global pool, and simply tell your client not to upload it.
You know, if it wasn't for copyright trolls and whatnot, that would actually be a pretty damn good feature.
but half the population are intellectually below average
No. It's more like 20% of the population has 80% of the brain power. Contrary to what IQ stats say, intelligence is not a normal distribution.
...or not.
Wrong.
Try committing a violent crime, using some smuggled guns, in any country in EU and see if the cops don't shoot back at you. Even in England, the police have guns (esp. their equivalent of SWAT), and are prepared to use lethal force against criminals and terrorists.
How does that not equate to the government having the right to kill you? The government in any country absolutely does have the right to protect the public, and that necessarily includes using lethal force.
That's right, and they even have a name for it.
That's the problem with most WSYWIG HTML editors. HTML doesn't lend itself well to WSYWIG editing...
That's the problem with standardizing at that level of abstraction. It may be fine for Joe website editor to use, but as a standard for what browsers interpret, HTML is a stupid idea.
I got a puppy. And gave him a title.
As a business decision, it was AWESOME.
that these positively and negatively-charged gels would make fine additions to Portal 2?
OK, I'll acknowledge that some people are abandoning their land line and going only wireless
What planet do you live on? Everyone except the elderly has cell phones now, and most got rid of their land lines years ago.
I totally agree with you. Decades of development have shown me that gathering requirements up front never works well; you have to put a user in front of working software for the real requirements-gathering process to begin. They start using something and it's like night and day, a light goes on and their minds expand. My most useful function, when I'm allowed to do it, is to creatively anticipate users' needs, deliver things they never would have thought of asking for because they'd never imagine them on their own. And I get happy users because to them, it seems like magic; I don't force them to conceive of every detail, but allow them to join in a relaxed, fluid, creative experience. We are not the machines we program. Users are not developers. "Less like Hell and more like Christmas".
Yeah, like they're going to pass legislation to change that, from the people that are all bought and paid for.
Any real change must come without their permission. That means "a big to-do". People are lazy though, so it would take a total crisis to get the ball rolling. That's not going to happen over something like this.
This is a reaction to the iPad. It's designed for my Mom.
That's OK as long as they don't nerf up everything else.
It makes me mad when I see an application that has lots of users and remains broken indefinitely. That's because I'm a software developer and I have to actually fix my mistakes before a project's considered done.
When I see obvious breakage, I ask myself, "What was going through developer X's mind? Did he just not care? I don't have to use ./ so I guess it doesn't count, but when I see it in software I must use, it makes me want to give the developer/PM a good hard slap across the face and ask them if they know how many people they shit on by not having any pride of workmanship.
Old episodes: we can go anywhere in the universe and here we are in the English countryside AGAIN.
Hooray for CGI backdrops and larger budgets.
allow anyone to contribute? really??? have you tried to contribute? I tried a few times in my area of expertise and had my entries promptly deleted and replaced with garbage.
I've contributed to a number of articles and never had a problem with reverts or deletions. Stuff I put in years ago is still there. But it's mostly computer science. People tend to not get their nickers in a twist about that as much as, say, abortion.
But Wikipedia resembles less the masterpiece of a genius than the fixation of an idiot savant.
As a developer I know how hard it can be to use technology to get groups of people to accomplish even simple tasks.
Look at how useful Wikipedia is. And the SHEER SCALE. It is un-f***ing-believeable.
Coming from an engineer, I can say that there is absolutely no question - Wikipedia is a modern masterpiece.
Does it contain creative genius? Yes. The creative genius was the creator's decision to allow anyone to contribute, when everyone said it wouldn't work.
The only rule of thumb should be, have a techie help you if you're not one already.
Ask a guy (who has the knowledge) for technical advice. Could be a complete stranger in the store, it doesn't matter. 99 times out of 100 he'll fall all over himself to guide you through the purchase. It's a "guy thing" constructively interfering with a "geek thing" that creates a local maximum of altruism rarely seen in other contexts.
A lot of so-called standard software development processes treat its workers like the machines they use. This sentiment has permeated not just programming, but all industry for the last two hundred years.
Yet attempting to automate programming misses the whole point of what it is; it's akin to trying to reduce second-order logic to first-order logic.
All these process-related failures we see in software development are misguided attempts to recreate a traditional computer with people.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Wait... what?
Uh since I'm already off-topic now I've been dying to say this...
Whenever I go to click on a comment, most of the time instead of modding or expanding it, I get navigated up. So I scroll way down again, looking for where I clicked. Do it again, rinse, repeat... sometimes 5 times in a row before I get to actually do what I wanted to. Are they going to fix this at all? Why can't I find a feedback mechanism? What's the point of development if you don't allow users to tell you there is a BUG EFFING BUG IN THE UI? Huh? I thought this was news for nerds. And this has been broken forever. And I have to make a random post HERE because there's nobody to report it to. Really? News for nerds? Hello?
Sorry... random rant.
Despite what people here seem to think, 99% of programming is simply re-using a small, standard repertoire of patterns. It's called not re-inventing the wheel.
I love it how some people think that picking a more powerful or flexible way of doing something is RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL.
It's code for, "I'm scared of change and want to do things the way I've always done them, because I stopped learning a long time ago".
It's the sound of a manger that doesn't want to be made to look stupid in a code review.
I agree with you. I'd hate using this to code. Which is why all over-engineered projects will some day do it this way.
You know the ones I'm talking about - where you cross a Masters in CS with a jackass, subtract all common sense, give him the title of "Architect", and a budget roughly 20 times what the project should really cost.
Not only will all programming will be in diagram form, but the software will be shitty and nobody will like using it. But managers who don't code (but tell others how to) will love it because it "simplifies" programming, so much that they can sub almost everything out to India, even though it doesn't simplify it at all given the ugly, complicated, roundabout hacks required to accomplish nearly anything outside of a small, standard repertoire of patterns.
But on the bright side, it will actually provide a rather useful and appealing visual method of tacking unit tests onto the workflow.
I was really only half-joking. And Who said anything about pirate software?
The POS the author spoke of is by definition rogue equipment. Security with machines like that on a network? No, not with any MS OS.
Also, if they can't afford to replace it with even a $200 Wal-Mart special, then I doubt they have any kind of formal IT policy at all, let alone a "department".
... or install Windows 98 and use IE6 SP1