It's so stupid when companies don't just go all OSS. I'd buy a support package if their software was OSS and didn't suck. I'd pay at least as much as I'm paying for my current (sucky) mail server.
I'd actually like to have a rack server with the software and hardware all supported by the vender like my Google Appliance. I'd be more concerned that a mail server be OSS though as an upgrade path is more important for a mail server.
I frequently relearn languages and libraries as needed for specific projects. I recently had to reteach myself Prolog because I ran into a project that was much simpler in Prolog than it would have been in Python or Java. Because I'd previously learned Prolog I recognized the problem as being well suited to Prolog and was able to relearn the language quickly. I don't see a lot of point in requiring constant use of a given language so long as you touch base with it every so often. I use so many languages on a daily basis that I don't see trying to be an expert in just a couple to be a benefit. In the past 24 hours I think I've used C, Java, Python, PHP, Bash shell scripting, SQL, and XHTML at least and mucked around in the deep systems of XP, Vista, OS X, AIX, and Linux. Fun.
I like to keep notes and code examples for myself so when I want to relearn something I can do so quickly.
If you can ask them questions about the code and they know the answers then they either wrote it or could have written it. Besides any code of much worth will be searchable online or obviously a commercial product (stolen from an employer maybe). Pretty simple.
If you see a 100,000 line program with the variables all randomized and the comments stripped then it'll be pretty fishy. If it isn't mucked up then you'll be able to search for a match.
If you can't look at a portfolio and Google to see if it's stolen from somewhere then you shouldn't be an IT manager. If you can't pick a couple questions about the portfolio to make conversation about and judge the canidate then you probably don't understand the topics involved either.
In my experience in IT you don't need employees that can do specific jobs - you need employees that when given improbable tasks can set about them in a logical way and get them done quickly and get them done right. In my experience it's rare to have a day where you're not figuring out things that are undocumented - many different systems and the interaction between those systems. If an employee can't handle that then they aren't much use to me. That isn't something you can test for easily.
Any person of mediocre intelligence can memorize and attack a problem blindly but someone that can take on new and difficult tasks effectively is a rare asset.
Maybe my expectations for IT people are just to high. I sort of expect everyone to be familiar with at least Windows 2000 and newer, MacOS, Linux, basic networking and PC hardware, basic programming, and basic services such as Apache, MySQL, DNS, DHCP, etc.
Usually just asking a couple basic questions about a persons experience will tell you hat you need to know. I guess maybe that is a test too but it's not quite the same thing as sitting down at a computer or with pen and paper and answering questions.
One of my favorite job interviews ever was a guy that just asked a few logic questions. Of course the second interview with that company was just weird as the second guy just kept asking "Why?" to everything you said.:)
Another factor is that having a degree or certification in IT, or ven ten years of job experience, doesn't actually mean that you know anything. There is no easy way to judge an IT job candidate on paper. Tests are a poor method also though - better to look at a portfolio and ask the right questions about the work in the portfolio.
My experience is that the majority of employers and the majority of employees are equally stupid and deserve each other. If you're at an interview and they seem retarded then you probably want to move on.
Anyway, a person can pass the kind of stupid tests given at interviews and still be a retard. I wouldnt't give such stupid tests to people I hire and wouldn't submit to such a test.
The best thing an employer can look for is a portfolio. Look the work over, ask questions about the work, double check that it isn't just stolen from some open source project. If their work is good, even if unrelated to what you're doing, then they'll be good. If not, or if they lack a portfolio, then toss them.
If you're going to claim to know Java then write a program in Java and put it in your portfolio. If you're going to claim to know Linux then write some tools to make managing a Linux server easier and show you know common command-line programs and config files. Do that sort of thing and then employers can know what you know.
I hate when people call me. That is the single most disruptive event that happens to me. It's worse even than people coming into my office to chat. People call and think that they can just keep blabbing on for an hour and they don't feel self conscience about people noticing them being there bugging you.
Email and IM is barely a distraction. I ignore it until I'm at a natural resting point and then check it. People that are distracted by it are probably not using it for work related tasks and are less jaded to it (to many years online).
Heck, sometimes I just ignore my phone, voicemail, email, and IM altogether and actually get some work done. It's amazing how much code you can write when you just ignore everyone. Sometimes I just decide not to answer my phone or voicemail for a couple weeks at a time.
I need a scanner that can scan books in for me. I made one in college (10+ years ago) but then it was easy to come by handheld scanners. Now I can't find any that aren't expensive and highly proprietary.
Anyone know of an affordable book scanner or somewhere that sells old school handheld scanners?
They'll probably copy the telecom industry and sue the government for letting citizens choose to participate in competition to their own offering.
No free community Internet for you! No free textbooks either. You go to hell. You go to hell and you die! Next thing you know people will be caring for their own aged parents instead of sticking them in expensive, frequently abusive, care by strangers.
I find it really amusing that the school bookstore is active in smearing online buying and selling of textbooks. They put up big signs saying that if you buy your books online your really spending more because you can't sell your books back.
Pure lies. This past semester the bookstore didn't buy the books I'd bought from them back. Some minor change in the book had happened so they were on to a new edition. There goes $80 a book - oops except I managed to sell the books online. The bookstore did buy some of the books I bought online - for more than I paid for them. This semester I bought all my books new online for less than half the cost of used books from the bookstore - even including shipping. And there is a good chance I'll sell the books for at least as much as I paid for them.
Now if I could just find all my books as PDFs so that I could use my textbook money to buy a Kindle. I found this semesters books online but none of them were the newest edition.
Or I'm considering trying one of these textbook rental services.
No, it's the people that don't do SEO that are the spawn of Satan. I hate when I'm trying to find something and it's on page 24 of my search results because the morons that run the website never bothered to put actual text on the site or any other basic efforts to get their site to pop-up before the spam.
What I hate is when companies put really loose terms in their contract like 'exceeding normal use' without defining normal use. I now refuse to go with any of the big companies because they all use these vague terms.
Right now I have 15Mb down but I only get around 1.5Mb up which sucks. I pay extra to have the 15Mb down and would pay extra to have higher up speeds. I telecommute a lot and the faster speeds are a huge help. I wouldn't pay extra for higher speeds though if I had to worry about how much data was going up and down. That's why I pay extra. If the companies oversell their capacity then they have no room to moan. It's because the company I currently use for home hasn't tried to rape me for my usage that I decided to go with them for my business connection. We're sort of the boonies here (first fiber connection in our area) so the 7Mb (up and down) fiber they put in is $1000/mo with the usual usage of the line not all that intense. They got that business because they've been fair to me as a normal consumer.
Like any business you can only get so far by playing dirty. Treat your customers right and don't lead them to expect things you can't offer and you'll have more success in the long run.
So don't keep your TTL so high? On the other hand we changed from a T1 to a fiber line the other day and all our IP addresses changed. It's been a nightmare trying to get them changed properly. I had them preemptively set to a low TTL for a few days to give things time to clear from cache but we still are getting weird fluctuations. Some servers are showing the old addresses still more than a week later. Some are alternating between the new and old address. Some have just decided to give addresses that are just plain wrong. I've never had this much trouble before.
I was wondering if bad fixes for this DNS poisoning crap are causing DNS servers to behave badly.
I like XML-RPC for most things. It's not near as heavy as SOAP. If XML-RPC can't do what you need then you probably need to move away from an XML-based protocol.
I am imagining a hybrid remote/local player. Play your own music but tap a remote server every now and then to hear your favorite news source, talk show, or dj. Wouldn't be hard to do - for those that like the radio for not being just music.
You have to create a different queue to change your search options? That seems like a pretty awkward hack to me. I much prefer clicking 'Advanced Search' and clicking on a couple check boxes.
If they could stream everything they have available and get more anime and other stuff I like available then I'd be a lot more interested. If they could take the box onto my account for an extra $10/mo for the next 10 months I'd probably grab it just for the heck of it and stay a member just because.
It'd seem like that is overkill. All they need to do is make it easier to search and refine searches. With all their customer data and recommendations system it shouldn't be to hard to make something pretty nice.
I just run a small eCom site but we're gradually improving our recommendations system (statistics based w/ neural net refinements) and tying it to our search system (Google appliance based) to refine and enhance searches. I'm sure NetFlix has a lot more useful data about their customers and products and many more programmers to throw at the project.
Actually search and recommendations are some of the most interesting things I get to work on in my job. I try to push users to create as much data as possible. Getting rid of profiles would create less useful data which would seem to be counterproductive.
I could. I'm sure whatever the DRM they're using that it can be cracked. If it goes over my network it can be grabbed and stored to disk.
I was actually wondering how hard it'd be to create a fake NetFlix server to serve my own content. I wonder if the traffic to the device is completely encrypted or not.
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It's so stupid when companies don't just go all OSS. I'd buy a support package if their software was OSS and didn't suck. I'd pay at least as much as I'm paying for my current (sucky) mail server.
I'd actually like to have a rack server with the software and hardware all supported by the vender like my Google Appliance. I'd be more concerned that a mail server be OSS though as an upgrade path is more important for a mail server.
I frequently relearn languages and libraries as needed for specific projects. I recently had to reteach myself Prolog because I ran into a project that was much simpler in Prolog than it would have been in Python or Java. Because I'd previously learned Prolog I recognized the problem as being well suited to Prolog and was able to relearn the language quickly. I don't see a lot of point in requiring constant use of a given language so long as you touch base with it every so often. I use so many languages on a daily basis that I don't see trying to be an expert in just a couple to be a benefit. In the past 24 hours I think I've used C, Java, Python, PHP, Bash shell scripting, SQL, and XHTML at least and mucked around in the deep systems of XP, Vista, OS X, AIX, and Linux. Fun.
I like to keep notes and code examples for myself so when I want to relearn something I can do so quickly.
If you can ask them questions about the code and they know the answers then they either wrote it or could have written it. Besides any code of much worth will be searchable online or obviously a commercial product (stolen from an employer maybe). Pretty simple.
If you see a 100,000 line program with the variables all randomized and the comments stripped then it'll be pretty fishy. If it isn't mucked up then you'll be able to search for a match.
If you can't look at a portfolio and Google to see if it's stolen from somewhere then you shouldn't be an IT manager. If you can't pick a couple questions about the portfolio to make conversation about and judge the canidate then you probably don't understand the topics involved either.
In my experience in IT you don't need employees that can do specific jobs - you need employees that when given improbable tasks can set about them in a logical way and get them done quickly and get them done right. In my experience it's rare to have a day where you're not figuring out things that are undocumented - many different systems and the interaction between those systems. If an employee can't handle that then they aren't much use to me. That isn't something you can test for easily.
Any person of mediocre intelligence can memorize and attack a problem blindly but someone that can take on new and difficult tasks effectively is a rare asset.
Maybe my expectations for IT people are just to high. I sort of expect everyone to be familiar with at least Windows 2000 and newer, MacOS, Linux, basic networking and PC hardware, basic programming, and basic services such as Apache, MySQL, DNS, DHCP, etc.
Usually just asking a couple basic questions about a persons experience will tell you hat you need to know. I guess maybe that is a test too but it's not quite the same thing as sitting down at a computer or with pen and paper and answering questions.
One of my favorite job interviews ever was a guy that just asked a few logic questions. Of course the second interview with that company was just weird as the second guy just kept asking "Why?" to everything you said. :)
Another factor is that having a degree or certification in IT, or ven ten years of job experience, doesn't actually mean that you know anything. There is no easy way to judge an IT job candidate on paper. Tests are a poor method also though - better to look at a portfolio and ask the right questions about the work in the portfolio.
My experience is that the majority of employers and the majority of employees are equally stupid and deserve each other. If you're at an interview and they seem retarded then you probably want to move on.
Anyway, a person can pass the kind of stupid tests given at interviews and still be a retard. I wouldnt't give such stupid tests to people I hire and wouldn't submit to such a test.
The best thing an employer can look for is a portfolio. Look the work over, ask questions about the work, double check that it isn't just stolen from some open source project. If their work is good, even if unrelated to what you're doing, then they'll be good. If not, or if they lack a portfolio, then toss them.
If you're going to claim to know Java then write a program in Java and put it in your portfolio. If you're going to claim to know Linux then write some tools to make managing a Linux server easier and show you know common command-line programs and config files. Do that sort of thing and then employers can know what you know.
I hate when people call me. That is the single most disruptive event that happens to me. It's worse even than people coming into my office to chat. People call and think that they can just keep blabbing on for an hour and they don't feel self conscience about people noticing them being there bugging you.
Email and IM is barely a distraction. I ignore it until I'm at a natural resting point and then check it. People that are distracted by it are probably not using it for work related tasks and are less jaded to it (to many years online).
Heck, sometimes I just ignore my phone, voicemail, email, and IM altogether and actually get some work done. It's amazing how much code you can write when you just ignore everyone. Sometimes I just decide not to answer my phone or voicemail for a couple weeks at a time.
I need a scanner that can scan books in for me. I made one in college (10+ years ago) but then it was easy to come by handheld scanners. Now I can't find any that aren't expensive and highly proprietary.
Anyone know of an affordable book scanner or somewhere that sells old school handheld scanners?
They'll probably copy the telecom industry and sue the government for letting citizens choose to participate in competition to their own offering.
No free community Internet for you! No free textbooks either. You go to hell. You go to hell and you die! Next thing you know people will be caring for their own aged parents instead of sticking them in expensive, frequently abusive, care by strangers.
I find it really amusing that the school bookstore is active in smearing online buying and selling of textbooks. They put up big signs saying that if you buy your books online your really spending more because you can't sell your books back.
Pure lies. This past semester the bookstore didn't buy the books I'd bought from them back. Some minor change in the book had happened so they were on to a new edition. There goes $80 a book - oops except I managed to sell the books online. The bookstore did buy some of the books I bought online - for more than I paid for them. This semester I bought all my books new online for less than half the cost of used books from the bookstore - even including shipping. And there is a good chance I'll sell the books for at least as much as I paid for them.
Now if I could just find all my books as PDFs so that I could use my textbook money to buy a Kindle. I found this semesters books online but none of them were the newest edition.
Or I'm considering trying one of these textbook rental services.
No, it's the people that don't do SEO that are the spawn of Satan. I hate when I'm trying to find something and it's on page 24 of my search results because the morons that run the website never bothered to put actual text on the site or any other basic efforts to get their site to pop-up before the spam.
So you're saying that they should build a custom device that can look at online porn for 24 hours on one charge?
I thought it was a secret plot by Google to launch their new Google Air at a fraction of the price they were looking at yesterday.
Just goes to show the fun that can happen when automated programs respond to automated programs. One wrong switch and Pandora is unleashed.
What I hate is when companies put really loose terms in their contract like 'exceeding normal use' without defining normal use. I now refuse to go with any of the big companies because they all use these vague terms.
Right now I have 15Mb down but I only get around 1.5Mb up which sucks. I pay extra to have the 15Mb down and would pay extra to have higher up speeds. I telecommute a lot and the faster speeds are a huge help. I wouldn't pay extra for higher speeds though if I had to worry about how much data was going up and down. That's why I pay extra. If the companies oversell their capacity then they have no room to moan. It's because the company I currently use for home hasn't tried to rape me for my usage that I decided to go with them for my business connection. We're sort of the boonies here (first fiber connection in our area) so the 7Mb (up and down) fiber they put in is $1000/mo with the usual usage of the line not all that intense. They got that business because they've been fair to me as a normal consumer.
Like any business you can only get so far by playing dirty. Treat your customers right and don't lead them to expect things you can't offer and you'll have more success in the long run.
So don't keep your TTL so high? On the other hand we changed from a T1 to a fiber line the other day and all our IP addresses changed. It's been a nightmare trying to get them changed properly. I had them preemptively set to a low TTL for a few days to give things time to clear from cache but we still are getting weird fluctuations. Some servers are showing the old addresses still more than a week later. Some are alternating between the new and old address. Some have just decided to give addresses that are just plain wrong. I've never had this much trouble before.
I was wondering if bad fixes for this DNS poisoning crap are causing DNS servers to behave badly.
I like XML-RPC for most things. It's not near as heavy as SOAP. If XML-RPC can't do what you need then you probably need to move away from an XML-based protocol.
I am imagining a hybrid remote/local player. Play your own music but tap a remote server every now and then to hear your favorite news source, talk show, or dj. Wouldn't be hard to do - for those that like the radio for not being just music.
Meanwhile I download thousands of songs using bit torrent.
You have to create a different queue to change your search options? That seems like a pretty awkward hack to me. I much prefer clicking 'Advanced Search' and clicking on a couple check boxes.
If they could stream everything they have available and get more anime and other stuff I like available then I'd be a lot more interested. If they could take the box onto my account for an extra $10/mo for the next 10 months I'd probably grab it just for the heck of it and stay a member just because.
It'd seem like that is overkill. All they need to do is make it easier to search and refine searches. With all their customer data and recommendations system it shouldn't be to hard to make something pretty nice.
I just run a small eCom site but we're gradually improving our recommendations system (statistics based w/ neural net refinements) and tying it to our search system (Google appliance based) to refine and enhance searches. I'm sure NetFlix has a lot more useful data about their customers and products and many more programmers to throw at the project.
Actually search and recommendations are some of the most interesting things I get to work on in my job. I try to push users to create as much data as possible. Getting rid of profiles would create less useful data which would seem to be counterproductive.
Of course RedBox and NetFlix need to team up so I can get new releases from the local RedBox and get old or rare movies from NetFlix.
Of course criticism and suggestions make me a whiner.
A good hack but sort of awkward. I still can't belief NetFlix doesn't let you filter your search results by rating.
I could. I'm sure whatever the DRM they're using that it can be cracked. If it goes over my network it can be grabbed and stored to disk.
I was actually wondering how hard it'd be to create a fake NetFlix server to serve my own content. I wonder if the traffic to the device is completely encrypted or not.