Gee, what do these have in common: "Java, Pascal/Delphi, Python 2.6, Python 3.1, Visual Basic 6, and VB.Net 2008".
That's right, managed code. Or a comparable facsimile thereof.
That's right, boys and girls. Forget about wasting time learning such useless concepts as proper memory management, or such useless fundamental concepts as the heap, the stack, etc... Just slap together a bunch of code, and it'll run just fine. No sweat. Dumb things down, so that everyone can now be a soooper hacker!
If I was living in UK right now, I'll be celebrating right now. It's clear as day this will result in the schools will now start churning out masses of wide-eyed ignoramuses who will go forth and start churning out volumes of code which they won't really understand themselves. Perpetual job security for me, AFAIK.
Geoffrey Miller is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at University of New Mexico.
I'm sure the guy is looking for a government grant, to study this intriguing possibility. Great job, if you can get it: spend government money to study if aliens are busy playing videogames
Somebody's tracking me on the Intertubes! Oh-noes.
Privoxy FTW. I wish the marketdroids the best of luck in trying to cherry-pick whatever obnoxious ad they wish to throw in front of my eyes. I find blatant advertising as obnoxious as the next person, but I find it somewhat difficult to get excited over something that I'll never see.
So what if some database somewhere says that I enjoy midget w... uh, whatever. If someone's bothered by the existence of some database entry which besides its actual existence carries no other impact, then here's what they should do: now that summer is here and the weather is nicer (in my hemisphere, at least), is to go outside, fire up the grill, and enjoy a good barbecue. Life's too short.
With a Tivo for the boob tube, and privoxy for the Intertubes, I enjoy a generally ad-free existence. I've come to the conclusion that the best way to fight obnoxious and invasive advertising is via technical means. You can't legislate it away, any more than you can legislate away rudeness.
These privacy groups may have good intentions, but I think it's a waste of time. I am skeptical that the legal route will accomplish anything. What they should be doing, instead, is educating people and promoting ways for them to filter out obnoxious advertising and solicitations out of their daily lives.
If someone was actually surprised by this, they haven't been paying attention.
Although Nvidia has been providing a non-free binary blob driver for Linux, I've always gotten the impression that it was mostly an afterthought. It took them forever to produce a 64 bit version of their binary blob, long after Linux on x86_64 became commonplace. And, of course, they never, AFAIK, built anything for non-x86 Linux platforms.
This is just Nvidia's death spiral. Their future looks rather bleak. Both Intel and AMD have their own GPUs, now. Pretty much every motherboard now has onboard video which, for nearly everyone is perfectly adequate. The market for add-on video cards has no future.
Intel offers excellent free drivers, which are already bundled in most distros. I no longer buy new hardware as often as I used to, but when I do, for desktop use I always look for Intel chipsets. I know that accelerated 3D video will work out of the box, on my distro.
AMD -- eh, not that much, but they're working on it, from where I'm sitting.
So, Nvidia is odd man's out. They always had a 'tude towards Linux. I won't miss them.
Of course, the following will never happen, but it's a nice dream to have: Google responding to this kind of nonsense by blocking all German IP address ranges, and returning a static page to all requests to youtube.com (or all Google properties) with a static page carrying a simple message: a criminal investigation was started alleging that we are violating German copyright law, so, regretfully, you can no longer access this site; if you want to have the law changed so that you can access this site again, contact your elected officials.
This of course will never happen. The reason it won't happen is because this makes too much sense to do.
Both Intel and AMD own their own respective graphics chipset. Intel, AFAIK, developed their own integrated graphics chipset, mostly, and AMD purchased ATI.
Both Intel and AMD support the free software community far better than Nvidia. Both Intel and AMD are racing to integrate video graphics into their respective CPUs. With the graphics chip integrated into the CPU, Nvidia gets locked out.
Nvidia's only remaining market niche, as I see, is extremely high end graphics. Intel's and AMD's graphic offering, at the moment, lag Nvidia's, somewhat. Someone who needs all the rendering power they could get would not have Linux support as a major bullet point, as I see. They'll be quite content to using Nvidia's drivers on either Windows or Linux, depending on their software, with Nvidia's nature as a binary blob under Linux being of little concern. That's the only market niche I see remaining for Nvidia. Both AMD's and Intel's product lines, although not as powerful as Nvidia's, are perfectly fine for the average user and/or gamer. With out of the box support in current Linux distros for Intel's hardware (mostly already the case today), or AMD's hardware (eh, maybe tomorrow), Nvidia's outlook there is not too bright.
I get regular beer money from Google Adsense whenever I break their minimum for a payout (which is even lower than Apple's). Google pays me by ordinary ACH credits to my bank account, which are completely free. Sheesh, Apple is really boning you.
Sounds like an old wife's tale. Never heard of anything like this.
I just remembered that over ten years ago I worked for a company that supplied software for state lotteries. That was many jobs ago, and I don't recall that ever becoming any kind of an issue. And, on my resumes I described that job just like all others on my resume. And, as far as my "career" as a software developer, I am making a few orders of magnitude now, then back then. No complaints about my career -- and in the financial industry to boot, where any sniff of something bad in one's background gets you permanently blackballed.
When I'm actively looking for a new gig (I'm a contract programmer too), I do not sit and wait for some headhunter I already talked to, to call me again. I continue aggressively pursuing all leads that open up to me.
So, if a headhunter screws something up for me, I just make a mental note, and continue looking. The next time he calls me, I just explain why what he did was counterproductive, and didn't accomplish anything for him, or for me. No need to get emotional about it. It's business. Because X happened, next time, I'm going to do Y, and you'll need to do Z.
Never, ever take any "per diem". End of story. I don't actually have any horror stories to share myself, on this topic. But that's for the simple reason that I always refuse to take any contract where they want to pay me a daily rate. Hourly rate for me, no exceptions.
If I get a call from some persistent headhunter who keeps demanding to know what my daily rate is, I just tell him to take my hourly rate, multiply it by 24, and he'll get my daily rate. I found that to be the quickest way to close the conversation on this subject.
In what I consider my best career move, more than fifteen years ago I resigned as an employee, and I've worked as a contract IT consultant ever since. Really, made not much of a difference in the kind of work I do, except that I now get paid hourly, rather than on a salary.
Funny how once you start getting paid by the hour, all the demands to work 40+ hours a week disappear all by themselves. When I was an employee, and worked together with consultants, the difference in how we were treated, even though, for all practical matters, we did the same kind of a job -- the difference was quite an eye opener.
But rather than bitch and whine about the raw deal I was supposedly getting, I figured, well, if that's where the wind is blowing, I'll just come along for a ride. So I became a consultant. I do not remember the last time I had to work +40 hours a week. Must've been well over ten years ago. Although I still get the same calls that wake me up in the middle of the night, I now keep track of my time, and make sure that, at the end of the week, I put in, more or less, the same 40 hours.
Well, the Government is taking 6.2% of my money for social "security", which will be bankrupt by the time I reach retirement age
Actually it's 12.4%. You have 6.2% withheld from your paycheck for Social Security (up to the Social Security wage base limit, which gets increased every year and most people's salaries never reach it, it's well over $100,000 now), but your employer also pays another 6.2% on top of it. Although the employer's so-called "contribution" does not count towards your "official" salary, this is what it costs your employer to keep you on the payroll. It's really your money, except that you never see it.
In addition, you pay 1.45% of your salary as Medicare tax, and your employer also pays another 1.45% on top of it. In the end, over 15% of your real salary gets confiscated by the government, before you even get to regular income taxes, on the promise of you supposedly getting it back later down the road, in some form or other, when you retire. So, don't you worry your little head over the money still being there when you retire.
It proves nothing. You can call a rose,a rose; and a pig, a pig; without being one your self. The history of Fox news is documented even in court cases...
The only thing that's really documented is your mindless parroting of the left-wing talking points that "Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States".
The real story is not exactly that. Jane Akre and Steve Wilson sued under Florida's whistleblower law, which provides protection only for employees who report misconduct which is against an "adopted law, rule, or regulation". Unfortunately, what Akre & Wilson site wasn't a law, but an FCC policy, so the appellate court ruled that the state whistleblower law did not apply. Which is a far cry from the left-wing kook fringe's mischaracterization of Fox News' position that "there are no written rules against distoring news in the media.
You should really stop mindlessly parroting what you read on your left-wing kook sites, and think for yourself.
What a complete coincidence that this happened right after The Pirate Bay trial concluded, and not before. Because, after all, that was exactly what the defense position's was: go after the actual infringers.
Were this raid to happen a week ago, it would've been the highlight reel of TPB's testimony -- evidence that aptly demonstrates who exactly is committing copyright infringement.
A couple of weeks ago I helped a blind guy, with a service dog, board a commuter train. I watched as, later, he whipped out a phone and called his party to let them know that he's on the way.
I don't remember what model it was, but it looked like a fairly recent phone, with all the usual bells and whistles on it. So, even though I don't know the model, there are definitely some out there which blind people can easily use.
Blind people often have a heightened sense of touch. I'd say you're probably looking for a phone that's on the larger side, not a tiny crumb with teeny keys; but rather something substantial, with individual dial keys that are slightly raised, and can be easily felt, by touch.
The blind person might need some initial help to set up speed dial keys, but once that's done 99% of the time he'll need to press only a couple of keys to do the desired function.
If he didn't like any phones in one AT&T store, he should go to another. Different stores have different phones. Or, if living in a large city, try independent stores that sell unlocked GSM phones (that can be used with AT&T or T-Mobile, here in the US). That's going to be a slightly larger hit in the pocket, but you'll have a larger selection of phones to try out.
... yes. Hari Seldon disappears for a while, then reappears in the "prequel" Foundation books (that were the last ones written by the good Dr.).
... and no. The first Foundation book is really a collection of shorter stories that Asimov serialized in the monthly pulp magazines, of that time. The later books were complete, overarching stories that were published a book at a time.
Also, Hari Seldon is just a minor player, that was a bit in the focus in the first book. There's plenty of
"Foundation" is not "too dry". The best thing you can do for your kids is to give them reading material -- sci-fi or any other genre -- that challenges their mind, and makes them think.
Before Foundation, though, get them started on three Robot novels, then the seven Foundation books. After they're done with Asimov, give them the three Lord Of The Rings books. I read all three LOTR in my early teens, in high school. They weren't "too dry", in the least. I loved them. I had no problems with it, and English isn't even my native language.
Don't be afraid to challenge your kids. Challenging reading material is very good brain food. Other suggestions:
* The first three Mars books, by Edgar Rice Burrows. Some of that (mostly the first book) is a bit dated, and a bit bizarre (everyone on Mars walks around naked, and Martian women lay eggs). But, once you get passed the weird stuff, it's great pulp.
* War of the Worlds, by HG Wells
* A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court, by Mark Twain. Yes, it's sci-fi/fantasy.
That should be enough to last until next year. Come back then for more stuff to suggest.
Not that you'd really want to do such a thing, *wink* *wink *nudge* *nudge*, but you might just get your wish if there was an anonymous phone call to BSA's piracy hotline, supposedly from a disgruntled ex-employee, who does not want to give his name, claiming that you've pirated everything from XP, to Office, to Photoshop.
I have a trick I use every time I buy a limited-term subscription, or a service, if I suspect the company will try to stick me with an unwanted renewal. I just pay with whichever card I have that expires before the subscription term. I find that to be the path of least resistance. Usually I have one or two cards whose expiration dates are coming up.
Many US credit card companies also offer a service where they give you a separate credit card number that goes to your account, but that automatically deactivates as you as you put one charge through, after which it is no longer valid. That's also one way to beat this racket.
Then there are always a small number of obnoxious companies that supposedly renew you, bill you, and then go after you with dunning letters. I suspect that once a lot of people are on to the trick of giving them single-use charge numbers, that'll be the next popular tactic. Still, it's easier to handle that, then once your card is already dinged.
Slashdot Mirror
Shit. Piss. Fuck. Cunt. Cocksucker. Motherfucker. Tits.
C'mon. I'm waiting for you.
Gee, what do these have in common: "Java, Pascal/Delphi, Python 2.6, Python 3.1, Visual Basic 6, and VB.Net 2008".
That's right, managed code. Or a comparable facsimile thereof.
That's right, boys and girls. Forget about wasting time learning such useless concepts as proper memory management, or such useless fundamental concepts as the heap, the stack, etc... Just slap together a bunch of code, and it'll run just fine. No sweat. Dumb things down, so that everyone can now be a soooper hacker!
If I was living in UK right now, I'll be celebrating right now. It's clear as day this will result in the schools will now start churning out masses of wide-eyed ignoramuses who will go forth and start churning out volumes of code which they won't really understand themselves. Perpetual job security for me, AFAIK.
The ceremony must've went down something like this.
Geoffrey Miller is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at University of New Mexico.
I'm sure the guy is looking for a government grant, to study this intriguing possibility. Great job, if you can get it: spend government money to study if aliens are busy playing videogames
Somebody's tracking me on the Intertubes! Oh-noes.
Privoxy FTW. I wish the marketdroids the best of luck in trying to cherry-pick whatever obnoxious ad they wish to throw in front of my eyes. I find blatant advertising as obnoxious as the next person, but I find it somewhat difficult to get excited over something that I'll never see.
So what if some database somewhere says that I enjoy midget w... uh, whatever. If someone's bothered by the existence of some database entry which besides its actual existence carries no other impact, then here's what they should do: now that summer is here and the weather is nicer (in my hemisphere, at least), is to go outside, fire up the grill, and enjoy a good barbecue. Life's too short.
With a Tivo for the boob tube, and privoxy for the Intertubes, I enjoy a generally ad-free existence. I've come to the conclusion that the best way to fight obnoxious and invasive advertising is via technical means. You can't legislate it away, any more than you can legislate away rudeness. These privacy groups may have good intentions, but I think it's a waste of time. I am skeptical that the legal route will accomplish anything. What they should be doing, instead, is educating people and promoting ways for them to filter out obnoxious advertising and solicitations out of their daily lives.
If someone was actually surprised by this, they haven't been paying attention. Although Nvidia has been providing a non-free binary blob driver for Linux, I've always gotten the impression that it was mostly an afterthought. It took them forever to produce a 64 bit version of their binary blob, long after Linux on x86_64 became commonplace. And, of course, they never, AFAIK, built anything for non-x86 Linux platforms. This is just Nvidia's death spiral. Their future looks rather bleak. Both Intel and AMD have their own GPUs, now. Pretty much every motherboard now has onboard video which, for nearly everyone is perfectly adequate. The market for add-on video cards has no future. Intel offers excellent free drivers, which are already bundled in most distros. I no longer buy new hardware as often as I used to, but when I do, for desktop use I always look for Intel chipsets. I know that accelerated 3D video will work out of the box, on my distro. AMD -- eh, not that much, but they're working on it, from where I'm sitting. So, Nvidia is odd man's out. They always had a 'tude towards Linux. I won't miss them.
Of course, the following will never happen, but it's a nice dream to have: Google responding to this kind of nonsense by blocking all German IP address ranges, and returning a static page to all requests to youtube.com (or all Google properties) with a static page carrying a simple message: a criminal investigation was started alleging that we are violating German copyright law, so, regretfully, you can no longer access this site; if you want to have the law changed so that you can access this site again, contact your elected officials.
This of course will never happen. The reason it won't happen is because this makes too much sense to do.
Both Intel and AMD own their own respective graphics chipset. Intel, AFAIK, developed their own integrated graphics chipset, mostly, and AMD purchased ATI.
Both Intel and AMD support the free software community far better than Nvidia. Both Intel and AMD are racing to integrate video graphics into their respective CPUs. With the graphics chip integrated into the CPU, Nvidia gets locked out.
Nvidia's only remaining market niche, as I see, is extremely high end graphics. Intel's and AMD's graphic offering, at the moment, lag Nvidia's, somewhat. Someone who needs all the rendering power they could get would not have Linux support as a major bullet point, as I see. They'll be quite content to using Nvidia's drivers on either Windows or Linux, depending on their software, with Nvidia's nature as a binary blob under Linux being of little concern. That's the only market niche I see remaining for Nvidia. Both AMD's and Intel's product lines, although not as powerful as Nvidia's, are perfectly fine for the average user and/or gamer. With out of the box support in current Linux distros for Intel's hardware (mostly already the case today), or AMD's hardware (eh, maybe tomorrow), Nvidia's outlook there is not too bright.
Wire transfer fees?
I get regular beer money from Google Adsense whenever I break their minimum for a payout (which is even lower than Apple's). Google pays me by ordinary ACH credits to my bank account, which are completely free. Sheesh, Apple is really boning you.
Sounds like an old wife's tale. Never heard of anything like this.
I just remembered that over ten years ago I worked for a company that supplied software for state lotteries. That was many jobs ago, and I don't recall that ever becoming any kind of an issue. And, on my resumes I described that job just like all others on my resume. And, as far as my "career" as a software developer, I am making a few orders of magnitude now, then back then. No complaints about my career -- and in the financial industry to boot, where any sniff of something bad in one's background gets you permanently blackballed.
When I'm actively looking for a new gig (I'm a contract programmer too), I do not sit and wait for some headhunter I already talked to, to call me again. I continue aggressively pursuing all leads that open up to me.
So, if a headhunter screws something up for me, I just make a mental note, and continue looking. The next time he calls me, I just explain why what he did was counterproductive, and didn't accomplish anything for him, or for me. No need to get emotional about it. It's business. Because X happened, next time, I'm going to do Y, and you'll need to do Z.
Thanks for calling. Bye.
Never, ever take less than US 1k per diem.
Never, ever take any "per diem". End of story. I don't actually have any horror stories to share myself, on this topic. But that's for the simple reason that I always refuse to take any contract where they want to pay me a daily rate. Hourly rate for me, no exceptions.
If I get a call from some persistent headhunter who keeps demanding to know what my daily rate is, I just tell him to take my hourly rate, multiply it by 24, and he'll get my daily rate. I found that to be the quickest way to close the conversation on this subject.
In what I consider my best career move, more than fifteen years ago I resigned as an employee, and I've worked as a contract IT consultant ever since. Really, made not much of a difference in the kind of work I do, except that I now get paid hourly, rather than on a salary.
Funny how once you start getting paid by the hour, all the demands to work 40+ hours a week disappear all by themselves. When I was an employee, and worked together with consultants, the difference in how we were treated, even though, for all practical matters, we did the same kind of a job -- the difference was quite an eye opener.
But rather than bitch and whine about the raw deal I was supposedly getting, I figured, well, if that's where the wind is blowing, I'll just come along for a ride. So I became a consultant. I do not remember the last time I had to work +40 hours a week. Must've been well over ten years ago. Although I still get the same calls that wake me up in the middle of the night, I now keep track of my time, and make sure that, at the end of the week, I put in, more or less, the same 40 hours.
It's nice having my life back.
Well, the Government is taking 6.2% of my money for social "security", which will be bankrupt by the time I reach retirement age
Actually it's 12.4%. You have 6.2% withheld from your paycheck for Social Security (up to the Social Security wage base limit, which gets increased every year and most people's salaries never reach it, it's well over $100,000 now), but your employer also pays another 6.2% on top of it. Although the employer's so-called "contribution" does not count towards your "official" salary, this is what it costs your employer to keep you on the payroll. It's really your money, except that you never see it.
In addition, you pay 1.45% of your salary as Medicare tax, and your employer also pays another 1.45% on top of it. In the end, over 15% of your real salary gets confiscated by the government, before you even get to regular income taxes, on the promise of you supposedly getting it back later down the road, in some form or other, when you retire. So, don't you worry your little head over the money still being there when you retire.
It proves nothing. You can call a rose,a rose; and a pig, a pig; without being one your self. The history of Fox news is documented even in court cases...
The only thing that's really documented is your mindless parroting of the left-wing talking points that "Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States".
The real story is not exactly that. Jane Akre and Steve Wilson sued under Florida's whistleblower law, which provides protection only for employees who report misconduct which is against an "adopted law, rule, or regulation". Unfortunately, what Akre & Wilson site wasn't a law, but an FCC policy, so the appellate court ruled that the state whistleblower law did not apply. Which is a far cry from the left-wing kook fringe's mischaracterization of Fox News' position that "there are no written rules against distoring news in the media.
You should really stop mindlessly parroting what you read on your left-wing kook sites, and think for yourself.
As if I needed one . . .
... as if you ever did.
What a complete coincidence that this happened right after The Pirate Bay trial concluded, and not before. Because, after all, that was exactly what the defense position's was: go after the actual infringers.
Were this raid to happen a week ago, it would've been the highlight reel of TPB's testimony -- evidence that aptly demonstrates who exactly is committing copyright infringement.
A couple of weeks ago I helped a blind guy, with a service dog, board a commuter train. I watched as, later, he whipped out a phone and called his party to let them know that he's on the way.
I don't remember what model it was, but it looked like a fairly recent phone, with all the usual bells and whistles on it. So, even though I don't know the model, there are definitely some out there which blind people can easily use.
Blind people often have a heightened sense of touch. I'd say you're probably looking for a phone that's on the larger side, not a tiny crumb with teeny keys; but rather something substantial, with individual dial keys that are slightly raised, and can be easily felt, by touch.
The blind person might need some initial help to set up speed dial keys, but once that's done 99% of the time he'll need to press only a couple of keys to do the desired function.
If he didn't like any phones in one AT&T store, he should go to another. Different stores have different phones. Or, if living in a large city, try independent stores that sell unlocked GSM phones (that can be used with AT&T or T-Mobile, here in the US). That's going to be a slightly larger hit in the pocket, but you'll have a larger selection of phones to try out.
Also, Hari Seldon is just a minor player, that was a bit in the focus in the first book. There's plenty of
"Foundation" is not "too dry". The best thing you can do for your kids is to give them reading material -- sci-fi or any other genre -- that challenges their mind, and makes them think.
Before Foundation, though, get them started on three Robot novels, then the seven Foundation books. After they're done with Asimov, give them the three Lord Of The Rings books. I read all three LOTR in my early teens, in high school. They weren't "too dry", in the least. I loved them. I had no problems with it, and English isn't even my native language.
Don't be afraid to challenge your kids. Challenging reading material is very good brain food. Other suggestions:
* The first three Mars books, by Edgar Rice Burrows. Some of that (mostly the first book) is a bit dated, and a bit bizarre (everyone on Mars walks around naked, and Martian women lay eggs). But, once you get passed the weird stuff, it's great pulp.
* War of the Worlds, by HG Wells
* A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court, by Mark Twain. Yes, it's sci-fi/fantasy.
That should be enough to last until next year. Come back then for more stuff to suggest.
No, Dish can (and if you RTFAed, they will) appeal to the Supremes.
But, true, Dish has a tough hill to climb. The Supremes only accept a small percentage of all appeals. Dish's goose is mostly cooked.
Does Han shoot first in this one?
(...sorry)
... file-sharing attorney...
Yo, Ray! Stop sharing those files, you rascal!
Not that you'd really want to do such a thing, *wink* *wink *nudge* *nudge*, but you might just get your wish if there was an anonymous phone call to BSA's piracy hotline, supposedly from a disgruntled ex-employee, who does not want to give his name, claiming that you've pirated everything from XP, to Office, to Photoshop.
I have a trick I use every time I buy a limited-term subscription, or a service, if I suspect the company will try to stick me with an unwanted renewal. I just pay with whichever card I have that expires before the subscription term. I find that to be the path of least resistance. Usually I have one or two cards whose expiration dates are coming up.
Many US credit card companies also offer a service where they give you a separate credit card number that goes to your account, but that automatically deactivates as you as you put one charge through, after which it is no longer valid. That's also one way to beat this racket.
Then there are always a small number of obnoxious companies that supposedly renew you, bill you, and then go after you with dunning letters. I suspect that once a lot of people are on to the trick of giving them single-use charge numbers, that'll be the next popular tactic. Still, it's easier to handle that, then once your card is already dinged.