Recently, I spent 3 months as a maintainer of about a dozen production Drupal websites.
That job was, by far, the worst job I've ever had in 11 years as a PHP programmer.
Drupal is a horrible, terribly programmed piece of shit that makes life extraordinarily difficult for everything from install to administration to development to deployment. It is BEYOND bloated, dogged slow, kludgy, broken, insecure, half-baked, lacking in good community support, and generally awful through and through. It is an ugly bitch to code in on multiple levels--massive byzantine array structures to do anything, slow variable functions, the object orientation it has is pointless, obnoxious database schema and proprietary SQL (yes, really), the Javascript Drupal object...
I could go into further detail...I came up with 39 reasons as part of my regular venting in that job why I will NEVER touch it again or so much as own up to having used it in the past.
Trust me, do NOT deal with that crap. Even worse than using it would be to throw that white elephant on a third party (the municipality) that has no concept of how to deal with it, and would very likely have to pay out the ass for the rare PHP programmer that specializes in Drupal to deal with it when you've moved on.
Having just gone through an exhausting whirlwind of a job hunt in the bay area, I would say, yes, absolutely, a degree in CS is worthwhile. I was eliminated from consideration for a good number of positions because I did not have a CS degree and I was asked about having one in many phone screens and interviews. The act of being able to do pen-and-paper/whiteboard programming tests (something you'll get a lot of in CS classes) and talk about what I'm doing with some level of competence was key to my successful prospects. That, and working with people in paired programming sessions/being a nice guy helped too, something you'll probably get experience with in CS classes as well.
In the very-much-non-tech-town I am from, Phoenix, I was asked about having a degree once. This may be one of those things that varies on your area, but for areas that matter (here, probably a few select cities elsewhere) it would be advantageous to have one.
And if you think there aren't companies that feel the need to train you, that's ridiculous. I took what is all intents and purposes an entry level Ruby on Rails job after over a decade in PHP and some past (mostly 3 or 4 years ago) RoR experience. There are good companies that will hire good programmers regardless of what languages they know--I know this because I am working for one now. You do have to find them tho.
I'll agree with the parent's general premise--in my place, we had just about every console made except for Sony and most of sega's later offerings and Sonic took most of my time out of all of them. I barely remember the TurboGrafx's 16's, but I always remember the Genesis controller as the best in the lineup. The NES controller was generally too small and took sime time getting used to wherein its elegant simplicity would shine somewhat dim. I always found the shoulder buttons on the SNES awkward, and it was still too small. I wish my dreamcast and the concept behind it lasted long enough. I fondly remember the N64's in the later years--it was too just too cool with Goldeneye.
But the Genesis's controller wins hands down. The C button was nifty, the ergonomics and weight were perfect, and there was nothing to get in the way. The 8-way D-pad was too cool.
But the best way to play Sonic the Hedgehog was the PC version of I think it was Sonic CD. Seriously. I could beat the Time Trial in the end hands down every time with a regular PC keyboard whereas I might get it every so often on the Genesis.
Any controller, however, that relies on the dexterity of the thumb is just stupid--that's when it becomes less and less about skill and more how good just one stupid appendage is at doing things it's not made to do. Too bad the PowerGlove was too ahead of its time--from what i've seen, the Wii's just half-way there on the same concept. I mean, they could have the PowerGlove and the PowerShoe (and the PowerBrassKnuckles) and people would finally get points for virtually or quite literally beating each other.
5 replies (and i'm sure there will be more) about a stupid typo, and none about the simple typo tag that you can use to notify the editors of the problem...
Gates in space? Yikes. If he decides to move his fortune and monopoly power from Windows to space travel, I'll never get there in my lifetime!:(
A flood exists in the annals of so many cultures I can't help but wonder the congruency. This page is a good read. From my ancestors, the Celtic side has parallels and indeed creative licenses compared with rehashed Noah's Ark/Xtian theories...
Heaven and Earth were great giants, and Heaven lay upon the Earth so that their children were crowded between them, and the children and their mother were unhappy in the darkness. The boldest of the sons led his brothers in cutting up Heaven into many pieces. From his skull they made the firmament. His spilling blood caused a great flood which killed all humans except a single pair, who were saved in a ship made by a beneficent Titan. The waters settled in hollows to become the oceans. The son who led in the mutilation of Heaven was a Titan and became their king, but the Titans and gods hated each other, and the king titan was driven from his throne by his son, who was born a god. That Titan at last went to the land of the departed. The Titan who built the ship, whom some consider to be the same as the king Titan, went there also. [Sproul, pp. 172-173]
There are issues aside from Merck doing this and that--it's all the usual influence peddling which would be expected in the insipidly broken system that is US health care. Merck is not the target here. One target is the FDA that is utterly incompetent and immorally charged to make life or death decisions with approvals and expensive bureaucracies. Once the FDA required proof for efficacy (instead of just safety as they had been doing for 60 years prior) is probably the single most important milestone on the downward spiral.
Given the cost of drug development, I'm surprised it's only $400. Vaccines are a one-time profit for Merck until their patent runs out. Given the alternative costs of therapies (guaranteed revenue), there's a good chance Merck just might not be as evil as they are made to be. $400 doesn't get you much in the medical world these days--not even an hour with a specialist at my doctor's office. Again, this is symptomatic of a broken system where someone else always ends up paying the cost of medical treatment or you never knowing until the bill bites you. We should be so lucky that the established price is at the forefront of the discussion.
Besides, it works against a virus, a communicable disease that can be conceivably arrested and perhaps eradicated, for far less than the cost of the effective treatment for the cancer it causes. Treat it forever or squash it now. Shouldn't something this simple be prioritized? How is this different from everything else we get shots for if people who don't have health insurance can get it, and those that don't want it won't have it forced down their throat?
I could spend a lot of time beriding your ignorance, but instead, you can google three words--linux extended attributes--and you will understand for yourself.
The elderly today dred having to pass a kidney stone... when I'm that old, I'll get to look forward to passing gearboxes cause some terribly underpaid medical tech made a wrong left turn near my spleen.
from the article:
But several experimenters evidently left out the crucial step of wetting the sponge. This was not mentioned at all in the original Reuter's article to begin with, but all other details (how long, power setting) were included. The bureau made the mistake, but instead of apologising, they chastise their readers.
People read the original article and played dumb for a bit, temporarily throwing out conventional wisdom regarding non-food objects in the microwave as they followed Reuter's authoritative instructions.
But, hey, this is slashdot and people don't play, rather, they are dumb, and we all have a good laugh at their misfortune while we're glad it was somebody else who ruined their microwave and not us.
And yes, I did make a whole bunch of toxic smoke years ago by forgetting to put the bowl of water while nuking a CD.:P
Those 500 GB drives will only get cheaper and if one blows, just pop another in.
No, it doesn't work like that. One 700 MB movie might take me a half hour to find and a day to download. 700 movies? You've got to be kidding me. I'd be mortified if I lost a 500 GB drive loaded with data.
Yes, I know about RAID. The point is to never be callous and take advantage of the cost of media. Cost and time of replacing the data on the drive should be the focus--even "free downloads" aren't free if you're used to making $95/hour.
Yes, we'll have wireless broadband everywhere, but only so you may legitimately download Approved Content(tm) from Vericingusprint, and they'll continue charging outrageous prices for even sending a kilobyte of data. Lord help you if you want unproxied HTTP or TCP with enough ports open to do any real work.
That is, there might be broadband everywhere in a few years, just don't count on using it.
Ask the people that make Pocket DivX, my former boss, just about anybody who would care to watch a movie on a 3 x 2.5" 320x240 screen. They're out there.
If you were stuck at the airport all night and all you had were a few movies on compact flash and a decent pair of headphones, you'd understand this more.
Never underestimate the processing power bored people need with their PDA's.
A screen protector vastly helps with the plastic on slick surface issue. It makes writingly substantially easier.
Nobody says you have to use the stylus that comes with. They sell multifunction pen/stylus devices the size of a regular ballpoint pen for about US$10 - $20.
Your accuracy goes way down if you fire a weapon using "gangsta grip" and you're also more likely to have spent cartridges expelled out in the direction of your face. Cops are even trained to dodge a certain way if they're being fired at gangsta style.
I guess it can look kind of intimidating, but once you realise the logistics of it all, gangsta grip is really, really stupid.
One of the safeties on the Springfield Arms XD's is on the back of the grip right beneath the, uh, barrel...the part that's made of metal on a polycarbonate weapon.
Anyway, you press it in with the crease between your thumb and forefinger, meaning that it doesn't go off unless you hold it like you mean it. This is in combination with the trigger safety and a firing pin safety.
It's truly ingenious, and it felt like a good, safe weapon. If I didn't have so many lunatics in my life I'd probably have one at home.
Should Google just throw away their many years of research, and start from scratch?
I'm not entirely opposed to that given the blatant abuse of PageRank that warranted creation of TrustRank to begin with. The web was a different place when PageRank was developed and people didn't create sites for the sheer purpose of spamming search engine results. Indeed, back in The Day, search engine results were a lot better because human nature didn't entirely make it to the web yet.
TrustRank is simply a progression of an established concept, the actual implementation of which doesn't matter.
is revolting. If you're naturally lazy or stupid and you use the computer, play video games, email obsessively, or smoke pot to excess, yes, you're going to get caught in it and probably get stupider over time.
But if you're naturally smart or motivated, the opposite is true. I've known people that smoked pot all through college and graduated early with amazing grades. I'm sure amongst the people you know, you can think of the video game addict that gets all A's and the video game addict that flunked out years ago.
These things are just enablers. That's why, especially with pot, you should be of sound mind and body before you turn the machine on or pack the pipe. It makes the difference between expanding your mind and escaping from it.
He's lambasting the fact that Government has gotten into arenas in which he believes it has no absolutely no business in--originally the DMCA and now this.
If you noted the spirit of the grandparent, market forces and corporate innovation should make both Acts completely unncessary.
Looking at the map of London compared to my home neighborhood in Phoenix, AZ, it looks like London was laid out by a four year old with a giant piece of paper and a big crayon. Nothing but scribbles for as far as the eye can see.
Why is it that a simple street grid is almost unheard of except in cities that primarily developed until after the automobile's invention?
Slashdot Mirror
Recently, I spent 3 months as a maintainer of about a dozen production Drupal websites.
That job was, by far, the worst job I've ever had in 11 years as a PHP programmer.
Drupal is a horrible, terribly programmed piece of shit that makes life extraordinarily difficult for everything from install to administration to development to deployment. It is BEYOND bloated, dogged slow, kludgy, broken, insecure, half-baked, lacking in good community support, and generally awful through and through. It is an ugly bitch to code in on multiple levels--massive byzantine array structures to do anything, slow variable functions, the object orientation it has is pointless, obnoxious database schema and proprietary SQL (yes, really), the Javascript Drupal object...
I could go into further detail...I came up with 39 reasons as part of my regular venting in that job why I will NEVER touch it again or so much as own up to having used it in the past.
Trust me, do NOT deal with that crap. Even worse than using it would be to throw that white elephant on a third party (the municipality) that has no concept of how to deal with it, and would very likely have to pay out the ass for the rare PHP programmer that specializes in Drupal to deal with it when you've moved on.
The first page of this new york times article basically answers your question.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html
Having just gone through an exhausting whirlwind of a job hunt in the bay area, I would say, yes, absolutely, a degree in CS is worthwhile. I was eliminated from consideration for a good number of positions because I did not have a CS degree and I was asked about having one in many phone screens and interviews. The act of being able to do pen-and-paper/whiteboard programming tests (something you'll get a lot of in CS classes) and talk about what I'm doing with some level of competence was key to my successful prospects. That, and working with people in paired programming sessions/being a nice guy helped too, something you'll probably get experience with in CS classes as well.
In the very-much-non-tech-town I am from, Phoenix, I was asked about having a degree once. This may be one of those things that varies on your area, but for areas that matter (here, probably a few select cities elsewhere) it would be advantageous to have one.
And if you think there aren't companies that feel the need to train you, that's ridiculous. I took what is all intents and purposes an entry level Ruby on Rails job after over a decade in PHP and some past (mostly 3 or 4 years ago) RoR experience. There are good companies that will hire good programmers regardless of what languages they know--I know this because I am working for one now. You do have to find them tho.
I'll agree with the parent's general premise--in my place, we had just about every console made except for Sony and most of sega's later offerings and Sonic took most of my time out of all of them. I barely remember the TurboGrafx's 16's, but I always remember the Genesis controller as the best in the lineup. The NES controller was generally too small and took sime time getting used to wherein its elegant simplicity would shine somewhat dim. I always found the shoulder buttons on the SNES awkward, and it was still too small. I wish my dreamcast and the concept behind it lasted long enough. I fondly remember the N64's in the later years--it was too just too cool with Goldeneye.
But the Genesis's controller wins hands down. The C button was nifty, the ergonomics and weight were perfect, and there was nothing to get in the way. The 8-way D-pad was too cool.
But the best way to play Sonic the Hedgehog was the PC version of I think it was Sonic CD. Seriously. I could beat the Time Trial in the end hands down every time with a regular PC keyboard whereas I might get it every so often on the Genesis.
Any controller, however, that relies on the dexterity of the thumb is just stupid--that's when it becomes less and less about skill and more how good just one stupid appendage is at doing things it's not made to do. Too bad the PowerGlove was too ahead of its time--from what i've seen, the Wii's just half-way there on the same concept. I mean, they could have the PowerGlove and the PowerShoe (and the PowerBrassKnuckles) and people would finally get points for virtually or quite literally beating each other.
How cool would that be to watch?
5 replies (and i'm sure there will be more) about a stupid typo, and none about the simple typo tag that you can use to notify the editors of the problem...
:(
Gates in space? Yikes. If he decides to move his fortune and monopoly power from Windows to space travel, I'll never get there in my lifetime!
There are issues aside from Merck doing this and that--it's all the usual influence peddling which would be expected in the insipidly broken system that is US health care. Merck is not the target here. One target is the FDA that is utterly incompetent and immorally charged to make life or death decisions with approvals and expensive bureaucracies. Once the FDA required proof for efficacy (instead of just safety as they had been doing for 60 years prior) is probably the single most important milestone on the downward spiral.
Given the cost of drug development, I'm surprised it's only $400. Vaccines are a one-time profit for Merck until their patent runs out. Given the alternative costs of therapies (guaranteed revenue), there's a good chance Merck just might not be as evil as they are made to be. $400 doesn't get you much in the medical world these days--not even an hour with a specialist at my doctor's office. Again, this is symptomatic of a broken system where someone else always ends up paying the cost of medical treatment or you never knowing until the bill bites you. We should be so lucky that the established price is at the forefront of the discussion.
Besides, it works against a virus, a communicable disease that can be conceivably arrested and perhaps eradicated, for far less than the cost of the effective treatment for the cancer it causes. Treat it forever or squash it now. Shouldn't something this simple be prioritized? How is this different from everything else we get shots for if people who don't have health insurance can get it, and those that don't want it won't have it forced down their throat?
I could spend a lot of time beriding your ignorance, but instead, you can google three words--linux extended attributes--and you will understand for yourself.
The elderly today dred having to pass a kidney stone ... when I'm that old, I'll get to look forward to passing gearboxes cause some terribly underpaid medical tech made a wrong left turn near my spleen.
People read the original article and played dumb for a bit, temporarily throwing out conventional wisdom regarding non-food objects in the microwave as they followed Reuter's authoritative instructions.
But, hey, this is slashdot and people don't play, rather, they are dumb, and we all have a good laugh at their misfortune while we're glad it was somebody else who ruined their microwave and not us.
And yes, I did make a whole bunch of toxic smoke years ago by forgetting to put the bowl of water while nuking a CD.
So around 9 billion, right?
Nevermind the absolute rarity of "access denied" in real computers, versus the plethora of the term in movies.
I think I've seen it all of twice in 20 years...both times dealing with floppies on MS-DOS machines.
Those 500 GB drives will only get cheaper and if one blows, just pop another in.
No, it doesn't work like that. One 700 MB movie might take me a half hour to find and a day to download. 700 movies? You've got to be kidding me. I'd be mortified if I lost a 500 GB drive loaded with data.
Yes, I know about RAID. The point is to never be callous and take advantage of the cost of media. Cost and time of replacing the data on the drive should be the focus--even "free downloads" aren't free if you're used to making $95/hour.
Anyone want to wager a guess as to what the GIANT SPRAWLING FACTORY on the lot to the direct northwest of the google marker is?
I'll give you a hint.
Only if the map projection is equal area/equivalent.
The projection maps.google.com is using is not.
Yes, we'll have wireless broadband everywhere, but only so you may legitimately download Approved Content(tm) from Vericingusprint, and they'll continue charging outrageous prices for even sending a kilobyte of data. Lord help you if you want unproxied HTTP or TCP with enough ports open to do any real work.
That is, there might be broadband everywhere in a few years, just don't count on using it.
Ask the people that make Pocket DivX, my former boss, just about anybody who would care to watch a movie on a 3 x 2.5" 320x240 screen. They're out there.
If you were stuck at the airport all night and all you had were a few movies on compact flash and a decent pair of headphones, you'd understand this more.
Never underestimate the processing power bored people need with their PDA's.
A screen protector vastly helps with the plastic on slick surface issue. It makes writingly substantially easier.
Nobody says you have to use the stylus that comes with. They sell multifunction pen/stylus devices the size of a regular ballpoint pen for about US$10 - $20.
Your accuracy goes way down if you fire a weapon using "gangsta grip" and you're also more likely to have spent cartridges expelled out in the direction of your face. Cops are even trained to dodge a certain way if they're being fired at gangsta style.
I guess it can look kind of intimidating, but once you realise the logistics of it all, gangsta grip is really, really stupid.
One of the safeties on the Springfield Arms XD's is on the back of the grip right beneath the, uh, barrel...the part that's made of metal on a polycarbonate weapon.
Anyway, you press it in with the crease between your thumb and forefinger, meaning that it doesn't go off unless you hold it like you mean it. This is in combination with the trigger safety and a firing pin safety.
It's truly ingenious, and it felt like a good, safe weapon. If I didn't have so many lunatics in my life I'd probably have one at home.
Should Google just throw away their many years of research, and start from scratch?
I'm not entirely opposed to that given the blatant abuse of PageRank that warranted creation of TrustRank to begin with. The web was a different place when PageRank was developed and people didn't create sites for the sheer purpose of spamming search engine results. Indeed, back in The Day, search engine results were a lot better because human nature didn't entirely make it to the web yet.
TrustRank is simply a progression of an established concept, the actual implementation of which doesn't matter.
If you here a loud beeping sound, that was my Engrish translator crashing and rebooting itself.
Huh?
is revolting. If you're naturally lazy or stupid and you use the computer, play video games, email obsessively, or smoke pot to excess, yes, you're going to get caught in it and probably get stupider over time.
But if you're naturally smart or motivated, the opposite is true. I've known people that smoked pot all through college and graduated early with amazing grades. I'm sure amongst the people you know, you can think of the video game addict that gets all A's and the video game addict that flunked out years ago.
These things are just enablers. That's why, especially with pot, you should be of sound mind and body before you turn the machine on or pack the pipe. It makes the difference between expanding your mind and escaping from it.
(-1 Circular logic)
He's lambasting the fact that Government has gotten into arenas in which he believes it has no absolutely no business in--originally the DMCA and now this.
If you noted the spirit of the grandparent, market forces and corporate innovation should make both Acts completely unncessary.
Looking at the map of London compared to my home neighborhood in Phoenix, AZ, it looks like London was laid out by a four year old with a giant piece of paper and a big crayon. Nothing but scribbles for as far as the eye can see.
Why is it that a simple street grid is almost unheard of except in cities that primarily developed until after the automobile's invention?