I'm glad someone else said this... I was wondering if I'm just slow, since I thought it was completely void of any content, save some resume-talk from author's part.
and your morals so low that you'd go to work for a pornographer,
That's only if pornography is wrong by your moral standards (which is true for significant portion of US population, granted)... that is, it certainly is a risk, but not a death sentence to one's career; I would still think that:
From technical standpoint, if you can present actual duties as related to your new job, and
Hiring person is not a total tool, and understands that developers in on-line porn industry are much like developers of other on-line content (ie. they are generally not porn actors, nor photographers, nor sleazy pimps etc).
it should be possible to get experience working for a porn site seem attractive in many cases.
Problems you present are not even really unique to porn industry; same issues would surface if one had worked for any of more controversial organizations; being a web-master of, say, anti/pro-abortion groups, green peace, republican/democratic senator, sierra club, NRAA, ACLU, even boy scouts; there are always people who would think you are immoral low-life bastard for working for such a despicable group of half-criminals (whatever group it is).
It is curious, though, that pornography is one thing that both ends of political spectrum seem to despise. Progressive liberals claim it's against women's rights somehow; conservatives claim it to be sin somehow. Only libertarians and real liberals (not what is called "liberal" in US) are reasonably neutral in the issue.
Let's get real, 'adding programing that the customer doesn't want' has been around since cable and got worse with the dish.
Well, practice has been around, but it's silly to claim this is ok just because same has already been done by cable co's. I mean, from now on, not only CAN cable guys do that; they WILL BE FORCED to do that by content providers. So any chance customers might have to do some selection may be gone for good. No low-end packages separately; you just have to pay for everything from boring sports to brain-dead "music" channels; and all TV shopping monstrosities in between.
It's sort of like cable channels getting their equivalent of labor unions, that "negotiate" protection they need from publishers like Dish; customers once again ultimately getting shafted worst.
However, since "social skills" appear to involve mocking people that are different to you, you're better off without them.
You sound fairly bitter, and I guess that was a rant... but "social skills" do not equate being a bully. And social skills are based on both talent and exercise, just like most other skills, including math and science skills. Different people have different starting points, due to different talent, environment that either nurtures or inhibits learning and so on. But it certainly isn't a zero-sum game, linear product of time allocations. Just like amount of time spent on studying maths results in wildly varying skills; some people will never learn past basics, while others learn things effortlessly.
Your advice learning to first respect others is a good starting point, though. It's too easy to compensate for one's feelings of inadequacy by looking down on others as dimwits... but that's one sure way to lose any respect others would otherwise have for your actual mental skills.
The other stuff shows your lack of knowledge of other disciplines by the fact that you think these are computationally expensive tasks.
Hardly so; all three are definitely computationally expensive tasks, unless your definition of expensive means "runs for days on work station level machines".
Compiling big projects written in languages like C or heaven forbid, C++ IS still a computationally heavy task. Perhaps not HEAVY heavy as in days of churning, but still minutes on current work station machines. That is, you can do it without multi-CPU/clustering, but it'd be nice bonus to scale... and can fairly easily be parallelized.
As to compression; that too is computationally intensive, but unfortunately for most commonly used algorithms, doesn't scale well. Compressing multiple files can be made to work, though.
As with compilation, nothing like simulating nuclear reactions, timewise, but still utilizing CPUs nicely.
Because I can't just run an IPSec application on my mouse...
Come on, that's biy silly. I wasn't suggesting anything like that. There are fairly obvious ways to solve the problem; specify additional protocol(s) on top
of basic WUSB (or whatever it's called) protocol,
that mouse device(s) etc. may/should use, for example.
I do think parallel to TCP/IP and ssh (or IpSec, for IPv4) is valid one here. While there are
benefits in pushing features to lowest level,
there are also drawbacks: devices that do not
need such features are unnecessarily complicated
(chipsets to implement full protocol being
more complex than ones for more limited one);
software may also be complicated to deal with
issues not handled in hardware, and so on.
FWIW I'd personally want to choose
keyboard that does do encryption; I'm definitely
not claiming security is a non-issue.
There are of course other analogies to consider: most SCSI-controllers do not have any security features built in. And yet
there are a few encrypting file systems; none of
which need user to specifically invoke security
applications. And even there it might actually
make sense for some specialized chipsets to
implement encryption at hardware level. Few
people would argue adding encryption as mandate
to SCSI specs, though.
with encryption at the lower level you dont have to care if your keyboard supports encryption or not as everything does! its mandatory in the specs...
My point was more along the lines that not
everything absolutely HAS to be included in
lowest level protocol, in order to get some
functionality. So, yes, mandating things like
encryption and authentication would guarantee
things for anything certified as compliant. It
just isn't the only way to do it.
As to Ipv6 yeah, sure, it has all kinds of things
included. And it's not exactly widely used, end-to-end, at this point. I wasn't meaning
"no one does it", rather, "some useful currently used protocols don't do it, but security features have been implemented on top of them".
Seven years is plenty of time for money to be made off a film, book or idea... if you can't make enough money in seven years then it can't have been that good anyway...
Further, copyright protection expiring does not automatically mean you can not sell your stuff any more. You just can't force others not to do the same; they are free to try to sell it too, if they can get copies to sell. Pharmaceutical companies have to live with similar situation (although instead of 7 years it's 20).
I mean, it should be just as it is with drugs; brand names have limited amount of time to sell for monopoly premiums, after which brands have to compete with generics. Although with books/movies you don't create brands for individual products, it's not too difficult to envision publishers (book, movie, whatever) to maintain their brands as company. I mean; if you want to watch a Disney movie, would you (generic you, as in clueless parents, kids etc) rather buy it from Joes-movie-shack, or from, say, Disney corp, Disney store or such? And you can still label things as "original" (Bayer Aspirin)... it's just that unless big media corps HAVE to compete, they will always find excuses not to.
This seems bit obvious, but what's so wrong about actual end-points (devices) handling security (encryption, authentication) ABOVE transport layer, end to end, using a standard protocol.
Why is everyone assuming there can be no security if the low-level protocol itself doesn't bolt-in everything needed?
I mean, TCP/IP doesn't do encryption either. That's why (non-stupid/ignorant) people use ssh instead of classic telnet, and can get decent
security against loggers, sniffers, men-in-middle etc.
Of course if so, protocol designers should just define that at lowest protocol level such features are out of scope.. that is, to indicate they had done conscious decision, not that they were ignorant of obvious needs for actual appliances.
Point taken. Should have worded that one bit differently.:-)
I wasn't quoting original article though, and was hoping some highlights from there... as I think scientists in question did word their complaints much better than I did my question. It's too easy to just label groups of people, instead of arguing their points; in this case there's not much point in arguing signer's political biases if any (but if so, then why did I even bother asking... dunno.:-) ).
So called "Conclusive" proof such as Lucy, the Piltdown Man and others have been thouroughly repudiated, are there others that I'm missing?
Bear in mind that you are only talking about evolution of Homo sapiens; there are plenty of fossiles for other species. Although there is certainly interest in our species, from "proving" evolution perspective any other species should do just as well as a showcase. And I was under impression there were enough compelling examples there to give plenty of credit to evolution as mechanism.
With its liberal bias, the group could be composed entirely of Democrats.
Care to point examples of "liberal bias"? That someone thinks creationism is utter rubbish (being not backed by a single scientifically sound argument)? That vast majority of studies consider global warming to be a potentially serious problem? That current understanding of toxicity of lead levels should be used on defining legal limits for lead levels in various substances?
That current policies regarding sexuality (preaching abstinence as the main solution to teen-age pregnany and other rubbish) are idiotic?
However, there are enough PHB's out there who have no clue about this little fact. And to make matters harder, it may not be the person who's trying to hire you that can veto you and is the PHB. So judging the interviewer isn't a guarantee.
Unfortunately this is very true. I think part of the problem is also that people in general recognise (or think they recognise at least) skills in their own area much better than in other areas. That's to be expected. But PHBs then are unaware of the fact that they can not really spot technical, non-buzzword-oriented talent... nor do they understand how much skills and overall effectiveness of tech people varies like you said.
It still amazes me that corporations seem to believe that good highest level (CEOs etc) employees
are worth anything they ask for (up to millions of dollars in some cases)... yet for people who actually get things done -- CEOs in general are figureheads, for better or worse -- there is this fake egalitarianism, and people are still more or less considered as just warm bodies.:-(
One, for example, is that if you were given the right to work with your own projects outside of work, then others may want the same privilege as well.
Oh the nerve some people have! Such a privilege!
Seriously, though, to me it doesn't really sound like much of a privilege; my own time is my own time, and if I choose to be a dull boy programmer (business analyst, tester, whatever) and have hobby similar to work, then so be it. I'm not an indentured servant or slave; full work with dedication should be enough for monetary compensation I get. If employer chose to pay for 24x7 I might re-consider my position; until then I just feel there's separation between work and life outside work.
As to others pointing to person as precedent... I don't think that's much of a concern. New hires generally do not talk to current employees that much (except to friends they know), plus, knowledge of "custom" work contract often is not shared outside of employer's representative and employee.
In many ways I just see US contracts as sort of unilateral arms race. Default settings are just ridiculous (esp. coming from another industrialized country), and only getting worse. So, asking for reasonable corrections seems like, well, reasonable.
There are currently many more people who want jobs then there are jobs to be had. Especially the non-crappy high-paying kinds of jobs.
...
with a company of any size, you will simply be skipped, and the job will go to someone who doesn't care or doesn't read as carefully.
I guess you haven't been participating in hiring
people for such nice jobs, then. Fact is that I could care less about next 20 applicants that are willing to sign anything my company demands, if they are not good enough. The guy who is good enough is still worth the hassle of negotiating contract over again. Last time we hired someone we got 13 candidates (had to do it via contracting agencies, which sucks... not contractors but agencies), and chose the best one. I wouldn't have bothered to hire most of other 12 in the first place, and definitely wouldn't have chosen any of few remaining ok candidates over some petty
contract dispute. So, we worked things through
(nothing fancy; in this case no rewording of
contracts... although he should have been
more careful with his deal with contracting bloodsuckers), and were happy to get the
best candidate. Later on when he moved on (due
to problems with his contracting scumbags),
contracting co. tried to bring in a warm body to replace him; my company just cancelled the contract (and req went to another dept for budget reasons). So much for theory of "just bring in next humble servant".
Really, although job market is not as good for applicants in general as it used to be, there is HUGE difference between "just ok" and "very good" applicants. This is especially since difference in overall productivity is up to factor of 10, between rock stars and barely ok code peons.
And in latter category, overhead of helping and instructing them means their input on overall productivity of team may become negative.
So, there are jobs and then there are jobs; ones where employer just needs warm bodies are ones being shipped overseas, and there there's probably not much room for any negotiation. But in many other jobs you can indeed negotiate terms; not dictate your own terms, but negotiate and find working compromise. Just ASSUMING there's nothing you can do guarantees you'll be eating dog food with terms.
I'm serious exactly because they're not "enforcing a different option", they're enforcing nothing -- they're taking stuff out, not replacing it with something else.
As long as they do provide multiple versions (at least "full" and "light"), they are giving bit more options, but if they are/were only providing new "light" (aka crippled) version, they would indeed be forcing the choice. I think that's what poster you answered to was trying to suggest (ie. if MS just decided that in, say, Thailand, one can only by that diet Windows).
FWIW, I think it'd be good to have more choice with regards to Windows OE; starting with different configuration levels. For example, the only thing I currently need (or would need) Windows for would be to play games, ie. mostly use their DirectX libs. And thus chances are whatever is their most stripped down version of Windows would be very likely to work ok for me.
Hmmh. Interesting reading... and while I understand it's reasonable to argue that there should be methodology of comparing if copyrightable material is copied (even if modified superficially), it's pretty scary all in all, since while there was mention that not everything in code is copyrightable (in fact, big parts are not, as I read it... ideas, algorithms, essential functional components needed to implement algorithms), it may be hard to
find difference between patterns of expression (copyrightable) and non-expression (ideas, functional components).:-/
It just sounds that might be used as sort of back door around the fact that copyright can not be used instead of patent, when protecting more conceptual things. But I guess it all really just boils down to how it's used in real life court cases.
To make matters worse, he's a McBride and not a McGroom.
That'll be nice name to have in the prison after getting convicted for pump'n dumping. It won't be him doing that any more; but I'm sure there'll be plenty many volunteers to pump'n dump "mr" Bride...
which, while perhaps not poetic, seems like
fitting justice for our big-mouthed friend (yeah, that big mouth will get some use in prison as well).
True. And in the end, there's no real sound legal requirement for implementation to be done in "clean room" way, to avoid infringing on copyrights. As long as code is not COPIED verbatim (or perhaps, one could argue, by doing trivial changing of naming, as obfuscation?), it's fine to re-implement thing, even using exact same ideas, algoritms, tricks; copyrights only restrict making exact copies of things. Patents and trade secrets can be used to protect more generic things.
Still, there's no (legal) harm in using clean room approach, and it might help in arguing
that certain piece of code could not have been copied verbatim.
Hmmh, wouldn't that be ambiguous? Do you pronounce it like "Sue X" (sue anyone or everyone), or "Sucks" (as in "SCO sucks")? I guess we'd need to ask Darl himself, and get the audio file similar to Linus' famous pronunciation sample, to clear this once and for all!
The $45 plus to get it is a big barrier to jump for the average science junkie, let alone 'core geek.
Well... geeks I know wouldn't have a problem. They fork 100$ (or whatever, I'm no Star Wars freak) for an AT-AT walker, or 500$ for home stereo system, and so on. And yet always whine about not having enough money for anything, boss being a prick for not giving a raise, and so on.:-)
Plus, don't computer games nowadays cost about that much ("when I was a kid, games came in tapes, and cost just 6 guids!") as well? I've yet to meet a game junkie that does NOT buy latest sequel to their favourite series, due to price.
So, 45$ wouldn't be much of a problem with any geek with a job; IF they were interested in it. Of course buying a 5$ paperback would be easier purchase, but it really comes down to interests.
I have a friend with the same computer related degree with a 3.92/4.0 gpa who still hasn't found a job yet.
This may have nothing to do with your friend, but
I'm not sure GPA in general is a major factor for most hires. Perhaps it is for some types of companies (big ones that don't have time to do in-person interviews?), consulting co's and so, but not for others. Personally I seldom even consider GPA when considering anyone for hire (I'm not working at HR or anything; but as team lead I do get to participate in process of choosing the best applicant).
And after your first 'real' job, anything related to education (except for perhaps degree itself) is soon forgotten and practically irrelevant in hiring situations (hopefully what you learnt is still useful, of course!)
Further, even besides experience trumping over education, GPA tells little about how person can work with others, what's his/her attitude. It does correlate (albeit fairly weakly) with learning speed/skills (weakly since in school one can compensate mediocre talent and learning skills with hard work; which is not as much case in the Real World)... but still, it's not a major factor.
FWIW my equivalent of GPA was quite high, and university I graduated from was/is rather prestigious, so I have no misgivings about numbers such as GPA. But I doubt any of my jobs was really based at all on my education (ok, in first company there were lots of people who had graduated from same place, as they were located near campus, so maybe it helped a bit).
Hmmh. Need to find the GDP charts again, then... I was thinking of Brunei, some of smaller gulf countries as well as Norway, although shouldn't have missed Luxembourg (didn't think it was _that_ high, although know they have banking and industry... and immaculate location in heart of Europe).
[I'd still be curious to see how dollar's current weakness will reflect rankings for this year. I still remember time when my home country was nominally on par with US, due to grossly overpriced currency (decade before euro)]
But back to India; my main point was just that comparing hard currency exchanged salaries won't give the whole picture. Since labour is cheap, some things are so much cheaper that one can afford things there not possible here; having your own gardener, babysitter, cardriver etc. etc.
Same thing as what happens in many african countries.
But I certainly agree that infrastructure problems are big, and that from most POVs IT salaries are not match for US ones. You just won't be able to buy as many iPods there.
And still I maintain that just comparing "hey, code monkeys only earn 1/5 of what we earn here" is over-simplifying things, to the degree it's just plain wrong. Difference is not really
1-to-5, even if raw comparison would indicate this is the case (or whatever ratio is claimed; 1-to-5 is just one I've heard).
One way to improve comparison is to consider purchasing parity; yet another (related to "live like a king") is relative IT salaries compared to other people's salaries. In US, I earn at most about twice as much as most
blue-collar workers; perhaps 4x as much as burger flippers, and not that much more than other college educated workers. My understanding is that in India ratio is growing much higher. And why should this matter? Since this is what makes service products (and labour-intensive things like construction) much much cheaper; and is not usually well measured by various living cost indexes (AFAIK; services are included but underpresented).
All I'm saying is that perhaps you (assuming you are an american) tend to be more sensitive to news regarding US to objectively know if it's slanted compared to how they report actions of other countries. News organization are generally critical (like, IMO, they should be) to all governments. So if you said they are anti-US, anti-UK, anti-European, as in "critical towards actions of governments", that'd make more sense.
At the same time there is certainly some bias by news organizations against "foreign" countries; this includes BBC... just observe how ABC. NBC, Fox et al cover actions by other countries. I just don't see BBC as being more anti-American than, say, anti-French or anti-China.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad someone else said this... I was wondering if I'm just slow, since I thought it was completely void of any content, save some resume-talk from author's part.
That's only if pornography is wrong by your moral standards (which is true for significant portion of US population, granted)... that is, it certainly is a risk, but not a death sentence to one's career; I would still think that:
- From technical standpoint, if you can present actual duties as related to your new job, and
- Hiring person is not a total tool, and understands that developers in on-line porn industry are much like developers of other on-line content (ie. they are generally not porn actors, nor photographers, nor sleazy pimps etc).
it should be possible to get experience working for a porn site seem attractive in many cases.Problems you present are not even really unique to porn industry; same issues would surface if one had worked for any of more controversial organizations; being a web-master of, say, anti/pro-abortion groups, green peace, republican/democratic senator, sierra club, NRAA, ACLU, even boy scouts; there are always people who would think you are immoral low-life bastard for working for such a despicable group of half-criminals (whatever group it is).
It is curious, though, that pornography is one thing that both ends of political spectrum seem to despise. Progressive liberals claim it's against women's rights somehow; conservatives claim it to be sin somehow. Only libertarians and real liberals (not what is called "liberal" in US) are reasonably neutral in the issue.
Well, practice has been around, but it's silly to claim this is ok just because same has already been done by cable co's. I mean, from now on, not only CAN cable guys do that; they WILL BE FORCED to do that by content providers. So any chance customers might have to do some selection may be gone for good. No low-end packages separately; you just have to pay for everything from boring sports to brain-dead "music" channels; and all TV shopping monstrosities in between.
It's sort of like cable channels getting their equivalent of labor unions, that "negotiate" protection they need from publishers like Dish; customers once again ultimately getting shafted worst.
You sound fairly bitter, and I guess that was a rant... but "social skills" do not equate being a bully. And social skills are based on both talent and exercise, just like most other skills, including math and science skills. Different people have different starting points, due to different talent, environment that either nurtures or inhibits learning and so on. But it certainly isn't a zero-sum game, linear product of time allocations. Just like amount of time spent on studying maths results in wildly varying skills; some people will never learn past basics, while others learn things effortlessly.
Your advice learning to first respect others is a good starting point, though. It's too easy to compensate for one's feelings of inadequacy by looking down on others as dimwits... but that's one sure way to lose any respect others would otherwise have for your actual mental skills.
Hardly so; all three are definitely computationally expensive tasks, unless your definition of expensive means "runs for days on work station level machines". Compiling big projects written in languages like C or heaven forbid, C++ IS still a computationally heavy task. Perhaps not HEAVY heavy as in days of churning, but still minutes on current work station machines. That is, you can do it without multi-CPU/clustering, but it'd be nice bonus to scale... and can fairly easily be parallelized.
As to compression; that too is computationally intensive, but unfortunately for most commonly used algorithms, doesn't scale well. Compressing multiple files can be made to work, though. As with compilation, nothing like simulating nuclear reactions, timewise, but still utilizing CPUs nicely.
After Slashdot flash crowd came, it was all just a big Cluster. :-/
Come on, that's biy silly. I wasn't suggesting anything like that. There are fairly obvious ways to solve the problem; specify additional protocol(s) on top of basic WUSB (or whatever it's called) protocol, that mouse device(s) etc. may/should use, for example. I do think parallel to TCP/IP and ssh (or IpSec, for IPv4) is valid one here. While there are benefits in pushing features to lowest level, there are also drawbacks: devices that do not need such features are unnecessarily complicated (chipsets to implement full protocol being more complex than ones for more limited one); software may also be complicated to deal with issues not handled in hardware, and so on. FWIW I'd personally want to choose keyboard that does do encryption; I'm definitely not claiming security is a non-issue.
There are of course other analogies to consider: most SCSI-controllers do not have any security features built in. And yet there are a few encrypting file systems; none of which need user to specifically invoke security applications. And even there it might actually make sense for some specialized chipsets to implement encryption at hardware level. Few people would argue adding encryption as mandate to SCSI specs, though.
My point was more along the lines that not everything absolutely HAS to be included in lowest level protocol, in order to get some functionality. So, yes, mandating things like encryption and authentication would guarantee things for anything certified as compliant. It just isn't the only way to do it.
As to Ipv6 yeah, sure, it has all kinds of things included. And it's not exactly widely used, end-to-end, at this point. I wasn't meaning "no one does it", rather, "some useful currently used protocols don't do it, but security features have been implemented on top of them".
Further, copyright protection expiring does not automatically mean you can not sell your stuff any more. You just can't force others not to do the same; they are free to try to sell it too, if they can get copies to sell. Pharmaceutical companies have to live with similar situation (although instead of 7 years it's 20).
I mean, it should be just as it is with drugs; brand names have limited amount of time to sell for monopoly premiums, after which brands have to compete with generics. Although with books/movies you don't create brands for individual products, it's not too difficult to envision publishers (book, movie, whatever) to maintain their brands as company. I mean; if you want to watch a Disney movie, would you (generic you, as in clueless parents, kids etc) rather buy it from Joes-movie-shack, or from, say, Disney corp, Disney store or such? And you can still label things as "original" (Bayer Aspirin)... it's just that unless big media corps HAVE to compete, they will always find excuses not to.
Of course if so, protocol designers should just define that at lowest protocol level such features are out of scope.. that is, to indicate they had done conscious decision, not that they were ignorant of obvious needs for actual appliances.
I wasn't quoting original article though, and was hoping some highlights from there... as I think scientists in question did word their complaints much better than I did my question. It's too easy to just label groups of people, instead of arguing their points; in this case there's not much point in arguing signer's political biases if any (but if so, then why did I even bother asking... dunno. :-) ).
Bear in mind that you are only talking about evolution of Homo sapiens; there are plenty of fossiles for other species. Although there is certainly interest in our species, from "proving" evolution perspective any other species should do just as well as a showcase. And I was under impression there were enough compelling examples there to give plenty of credit to evolution as mechanism.
Care to point examples of "liberal bias"? That someone thinks creationism is utter rubbish (being not backed by a single scientifically sound argument)? That vast majority of studies consider global warming to be a potentially serious problem? That current understanding of toxicity of lead levels should be used on defining legal limits for lead levels in various substances? That current policies regarding sexuality (preaching abstinence as the main solution to teen-age pregnany and other rubbish) are idiotic?
Unfortunately this is very true. I think part of the problem is also that people in general recognise (or think they recognise at least) skills in their own area much better than in other areas. That's to be expected. But PHBs then are unaware of the fact that they can not really spot technical, non-buzzword-oriented talent... nor do they understand how much skills and overall effectiveness of tech people varies like you said.
It still amazes me that corporations seem to believe that good highest level (CEOs etc) employees are worth anything they ask for (up to millions of dollars in some cases)... yet for people who actually get things done -- CEOs in general are figureheads, for better or worse -- there is this fake egalitarianism, and people are still more or less considered as just warm bodies. :-(
Oh the nerve some people have! Such a privilege!
Seriously, though, to me it doesn't really sound like much of a privilege; my own time is my own time, and if I choose to be a dull boy programmer (business analyst, tester, whatever) and have hobby similar to work, then so be it. I'm not an indentured servant or slave; full work with dedication should be enough for monetary compensation I get. If employer chose to pay for 24x7 I might re-consider my position; until then I just feel there's separation between work and life outside work.
As to others pointing to person as precedent... I don't think that's much of a concern. New hires generally do not talk to current employees that much (except to friends they know), plus, knowledge of "custom" work contract often is not shared outside of employer's representative and employee.
In many ways I just see US contracts as sort of unilateral arms race. Default settings are just ridiculous (esp. coming from another industrialized country), and only getting worse. So, asking for reasonable corrections seems like, well, reasonable.
with a company of any size, you will simply be skipped, and the job will go to someone who doesn't care or doesn't read as carefully.
I guess you haven't been participating in hiring people for such nice jobs, then. Fact is that I could care less about next 20 applicants that are willing to sign anything my company demands, if they are not good enough. The guy who is good enough is still worth the hassle of negotiating contract over again. Last time we hired someone we got 13 candidates (had to do it via contracting agencies, which sucks... not contractors but agencies), and chose the best one. I wouldn't have bothered to hire most of other 12 in the first place, and definitely wouldn't have chosen any of few remaining ok candidates over some petty contract dispute. So, we worked things through (nothing fancy; in this case no rewording of contracts... although he should have been more careful with his deal with contracting bloodsuckers), and were happy to get the best candidate. Later on when he moved on (due to problems with his contracting scumbags), contracting co. tried to bring in a warm body to replace him; my company just cancelled the contract (and req went to another dept for budget reasons). So much for theory of "just bring in next humble servant".
Really, although job market is not as good for applicants in general as it used to be, there is HUGE difference between "just ok" and "very good" applicants. This is especially since difference in overall productivity is up to factor of 10, between rock stars and barely ok code peons. And in latter category, overhead of helping and instructing them means their input on overall productivity of team may become negative.
So, there are jobs and then there are jobs; ones where employer just needs warm bodies are ones being shipped overseas, and there there's probably not much room for any negotiation. But in many other jobs you can indeed negotiate terms; not dictate your own terms, but negotiate and find working compromise. Just ASSUMING there's nothing you can do guarantees you'll be eating dog food with terms.
As long as they do provide multiple versions (at least "full" and "light"), they are giving bit more options, but if they are/were only providing new "light" (aka crippled) version, they would indeed be forcing the choice. I think that's what poster you answered to was trying to suggest (ie. if MS just decided that in, say, Thailand, one can only by that diet Windows).
FWIW, I think it'd be good to have more choice with regards to Windows OE; starting with different configuration levels. For example, the only thing I currently need (or would need) Windows for would be to play games, ie. mostly use their DirectX libs. And thus chances are whatever is their most stripped down version of Windows would be very likely to work ok for me.
It just sounds that might be used as sort of back door around the fact that copyright can not be used instead of patent, when protecting more conceptual things. But I guess it all really just boils down to how it's used in real life court cases.
That'll be nice name to have in the prison after getting convicted for pump'n dumping. It won't be him doing that any more; but I'm sure there'll be plenty many volunteers to pump'n dump "mr" Bride... which, while perhaps not poetic, seems like fitting justice for our big-mouthed friend (yeah, that big mouth will get some use in prison as well).
Still, there's no (legal) harm in using clean room approach, and it might help in arguing that certain piece of code could not have been copied verbatim.
Hmmh, wouldn't that be ambiguous? Do you pronounce it like "Sue X" (sue anyone or everyone), or "Sucks" (as in "SCO sucks")? I guess we'd need to ask Darl himself, and get the audio file similar to Linus' famous pronunciation sample, to clear this once and for all!
Well... geeks I know wouldn't have a problem. They fork 100$ (or whatever, I'm no Star Wars freak) for an AT-AT walker, or 500$ for home stereo system, and so on. And yet always whine about not having enough money for anything, boss being a prick for not giving a raise, and so on. :-)
Plus, don't computer games nowadays cost about that much ("when I was a kid, games came in tapes, and cost just 6 guids!") as well? I've yet to meet a game junkie that does NOT buy latest sequel to their favourite series, due to price.
So, 45$ wouldn't be much of a problem with any geek with a job; IF they were interested in it. Of course buying a 5$ paperback would be easier purchase, but it really comes down to interests.
This may have nothing to do with your friend, but I'm not sure GPA in general is a major factor for most hires. Perhaps it is for some types of companies (big ones that don't have time to do in-person interviews?), consulting co's and so, but not for others. Personally I seldom even consider GPA when considering anyone for hire (I'm not working at HR or anything; but as team lead I do get to participate in process of choosing the best applicant). And after your first 'real' job, anything related to education (except for perhaps degree itself) is soon forgotten and practically irrelevant in hiring situations (hopefully what you learnt is still useful, of course!)
Further, even besides experience trumping over education, GPA tells little about how person can work with others, what's his/her attitude. It does correlate (albeit fairly weakly) with learning speed/skills (weakly since in school one can compensate mediocre talent and learning skills with hard work; which is not as much case in the Real World)... but still, it's not a major factor.
FWIW my equivalent of GPA was quite high, and university I graduated from was/is rather prestigious, so I have no misgivings about numbers such as GPA. But I doubt any of my jobs was really based at all on my education (ok, in first company there were lots of people who had graduated from same place, as they were located near campus, so maybe it helped a bit).
[I'd still be curious to see how dollar's current weakness will reflect rankings for this year. I still remember time when my home country was nominally on par with US, due to grossly overpriced currency (decade before euro)]
But back to India; my main point was just that comparing hard currency exchanged salaries won't give the whole picture. Since labour is cheap, some things are so much cheaper that one can afford things there not possible here; having your own gardener, babysitter, cardriver etc. etc. Same thing as what happens in many african countries. But I certainly agree that infrastructure problems are big, and that from most POVs IT salaries are not match for US ones. You just won't be able to buy as many iPods there. And still I maintain that just comparing "hey, code monkeys only earn 1/5 of what we earn here" is over-simplifying things, to the degree it's just plain wrong. Difference is not really 1-to-5, even if raw comparison would indicate this is the case (or whatever ratio is claimed; 1-to-5 is just one I've heard).
One way to improve comparison is to consider purchasing parity; yet another (related to "live like a king") is relative IT salaries compared to other people's salaries. In US, I earn at most about twice as much as most blue-collar workers; perhaps 4x as much as burger flippers, and not that much more than other college educated workers. My understanding is that in India ratio is growing much higher. And why should this matter? Since this is what makes service products (and labour-intensive things like construction) much much cheaper; and is not usually well measured by various living cost indexes (AFAIK; services are included but underpresented).
At the same time there is certainly some bias by news organizations against "foreign" countries; this includes BBC... just observe how ABC. NBC, Fox et al cover actions by other countries. I just don't see BBC as being more anti-American than, say, anti-French or anti-China.