Having people around who are also doing work really helps to motivate me That is true. Maybe the most important of all is the type of workplace you're in.
If I'm working on a really difficult project that requires deep concentration, I know it'll never get done when there are people around me yammering on the phones, conversing about people's personal life, asking me about last night's "American Idol" episode, begging me to buy girl scout cookies, watching youtube videos, laughing about my bad "engineer hair," etc.
Damn. I just convinced myself I need a new job.
Home tends to be where I like to relax more, and that's usually the frame of mind I'm in when I'm there. See, you hit on one of my (and perhaps others') weaknesses: spillover from work into personal life. I usually think about work or work-ish things when I'm home (whether I'm in a telecommuting job or not), and spend most of my evenings and "free time" reading journals, messing around at the computer, etc. Maybe that's why telecommuting seems to be such a no-brainer.
...not the exception, at least for certain positions and personality types.
Telecommuters drive less, so there's less pollution and traffic. With the right people, telecommuting can enhance productivity and job satisfaction.
I feel strongly about this, having been a FT telecommuting programmer for the past 5+ years. I love working with hours of uninterrupted concentration. Whenever I do have to go into the office, I'm surrounded by distractions, especially from coworkers who bullshit incessantly.
YMMV of course. Certain jobs (customer contact, security, etc) may not qualify, and there are obviously people who do *better* in an office setting. For many cases, though, going into the office is more of a control/domination mechanism than having anything to do with actual "work."
They just want dumb asses in seats, which is probably why the feds are slow to adopt telework.
I do like the metaphors--and not all of the surveillance is hidden.
I've already seen a few articles for jobseekers, for example, where they advise people to google themselves and see what shows up (since potential employers may do the same thing).
That might cause some people to (re)consider what they have on their myspace/facebook/blog/criminal record) which does act as a control mechanism.
Apparently this is only for public perception--they do say (perhaps with a subtle irony), that "we conclude that meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones are as safe as food we eat every day..."
Firefox isn't vulnerable? Maybe I missed something. TFA says different:
This may make the attack to fail if you use Firefox, Opera or Safari and the attacked router or UPnP device is picky about CR and CRLF line endings. Earlier flash versions does not have this problem/bug.
It looks like you're safe *if* the router is or UPnP device needs to be picky about CR/CRLF line endings.
It also looks like you're safe UNLESS you're using an "earlier flash version."
I installed it a couple of weeks ago, and really enjoy it. Banner ads have all but disappeared, and I don't even really notice (except for faster page loads and cleaner page layouts). If I want to see a YouTube video, that's easily accomplished--just click on the "F" icon in the blocked section of the page.
As an added bonus, I'm protected from all of these recent security breaches we've seen for Flash...aren't I?
Dude, I hate to say this but I think you've been scammed.
This flying car thing is another one just like it. If you read between the lines, what they really want to send you is the BOX THE FLYING CAR CAME IN, not the car itself.
These comments remind me of some of the things said in another slashdot article on recognizing good programmers.
I hired a dude a couple of years ago who, like you, didn't have a lot of experience.
He did, however, have a very impressive FOSS portfolio, and could show all kinds of code he wrote in support of various projects. This involvement suggested that:
0) He cared enough, as a developer, to get involved and donate his time and effort to a project, and 1) He saw his contribution as one to the "greater good" (and not entirely for personal gain), and 2) He had the stones to put his code out there for others to review and use.
YMMV, of course--this fellow got the job, and has done quite well at it.
As a self-proclaimed community of nerds (who probably spend more time sitting in front of the screen than anywhere else), I think it's natural for us to view the computer as a valid tool for education--and it certainly can be, especially as mentioned above.
If the spotty career of TV in the US is any indication, though, I'd hedge your bets. When TV came out, there was a lot of talk about how "this will help your kids learn through the magic of electronics." The reality, however, has seen a gradual dumbing-down of society and an over-reliance on superficial, visual messages. It's a foregone conclusion among many health professionals that too much TV is a bad thing, and, contrary to the early promises, are expressing grave concern over how it affects mental development
What you can learn by watching TV is, to a large extent, how to watch TV. Video is a poor way to learn how to ski, skydive, sculpt, or sing. The nature of its presentation does not encourage thoughtful dialogue, discourse, or analysis.
When we give poor children a laptop, what are we asking them to learn? What are we asking them NOT to learn?
These guys are TOTALLY slack, they have another website, but I can't find anything other than the myspace shiz. I believe one of them, at least, used to be a computer programmer before he burned out, quit, and joined this band/slack-evangelism outfit:
1) Of all the music being made out there, the standard industry practice guarantees you'll only ever hear an insiginficant fraction of what's available, and most of that is successful because it sounds like something else. What you get is the tiniest sliver of what's possible. Most of the greatest music being made will never make it to your ears.
2) Until recently, music was a social activity (people used to be able to play instruments and entertain family and friends, for example, and they'd also leave the house at times to hear others make music). Take off the headphones.
3) Enroll in a music class. Pony up the bucks, take some lessons, learn some techniques, and -- gasp -- make some of your own music. Music is OK when it's a passive activity (listening), but nothing compares to being able to make your own.
Music is something you make, share, and become a part of. When it becomes something you buy (like cereal or beer), it's *always* going to be fettered by copyright laws, etc.
While it's laudable to be rabidly open-source, the fact is that for larger, enterprise-style work, you're just going to need some heavy-hitting software, provided by a large vendor. I can see a couple of people sitting in a coffee shop debating the merits of postgres vs. DB2, but I can NOT see Deutsche Bank announcing that they're switching over to MySQL because of its suitability for that type of application. Just not going to happen, people. By the time some of the open-source dbs work out their kinks and add features, the major players are already another light year ahead.
This is subject to debate, but experience having worked in a datacenter has shown me that one of the problems is that of all the computing power that occupies a typical datacenter, 90% of it is redundant overhead that never gets used. Still, these servers just sit there, sucking electricity and requiring expensive HVAC to maintain.
I knew a wise man once who said that in theory, if your CPU usage isn't 100% all the time, you're wasting money. This is at least partially true. We have many many servers who are idle most of the time, and even at "peak periods" the load average barely budges. One of the services we support is RAM-heavy, but uses almost *no* CPU whatsoever, still, our clients specify pipe-hitting four-way boxes with large disk arrays--one box per service. Ludicrous!
By combining several services on a single box, you can eliminate the need to host extra/redundant servers, and save a bunch of cash in the process. Sure, it may be less convenient to administer, but let's face it, folks, any move toward consolidating deployments in the datacenter is only going to save space/money.
Now, that being said, most people could care less, thinking "hardware's cheap" and they'll just throw dozens of boxes at the problem and forget about it. Maybe that will change, maybe not...
Ain't that the truth. For me, the defining experience was a game called "Telengard," in my opinion the closest thing to D&D you could find at the time.
Best part, it was written mostly in BASIC, so once the game got boring, anyone could easily soup it up (Level 329 dragon, anyone? Better bring along your +112 sword and +139 armor!) Of course, you'd pry some gems off a throne and your 25 strength would "go up by a point" to 18...
After messing around with Slackware, I just about had enough! A friend of mine tried to get me into Linux. I thought it would be easy (I am a certified Sun Systems Administrator) but I spent the better part of an entire week getting it working!
Thank goodness for Red Hat! The analogy applies to Slashdot as well. I remember Slashdot from the "good" old days, and boy, it was pretty clunky. The new version is a nice commercial representation of geek(tm)dom.
1. The dot-com boom has pretty much evaporated, leaving the realm of "professional computer work" to geeky types with college degrees and bad hair (I'm one of them). The work that is done is now more mundane and laborious(billing, insurance, reporting, etc) than $20K-bonus-scooter-riding-dot-com-hipster-streamin g-multimedia stuff. (I'm not bitter-I'm jealous)
2. Computers are now getting bigger and more mainframe-y (See comment above). More and more enterprises are centralizing mission-critical functions, primarily for ease of management as well as power and security. Proof:. We've already got Linux/390, the Solaris E10K, there's some newbigandexciting Intel box out there I keep hearing about that has 64-way SMP and now this.
Not to start up with the m$-bashing too early on, but frankly, let's be adults and admit it:
Most virus damage is caused by half-baked, slipshod, poorly-thought-out products put out by our friends in Redmond.
Period.
As a unix sysadmin working at a very large enterprise hosting facility, I can tell you this, first hand. The Windows team is constantly chasing after red worms, melissa, various IIS exploits, and every imaginible form of macro virus, while the Solaris team calmly applies regular patches from Sun.
I'd say for every single Solaris 8 box that gets pushed over or otherwise compromised due to a virus, there are *seriously* about 50 Windows boxes that need to be scanned/cleaned/reinstalled.
Again, not trying to start a religious war, but viruses are a microsoft byproduct. Not that Microsoft is a bad thing, mind you, but I think its safe to say that most of the viruses in the world wouldn't exist without a little help from poor quality control at microsoft.
I work in the wireless industry myself, and can say that there is quite a bit of debate over this.
What will probably happen (as seems to happen a lot) is that one major vendor or provider will choose a certain standard, regardless of its value, or without a thought as to whether or not two technologies can be mutually compatible (as the writer above mentions). Then its time to push it down everyone's throats until the other one disappears.
Slashdot Mirror
If I'm working on a really difficult project that requires deep concentration, I know it'll never get done when there are people around me yammering on the phones, conversing about people's personal life, asking me about last night's "American Idol" episode, begging me to buy girl scout cookies, watching youtube videos, laughing about my bad "engineer hair," etc.
Damn. I just convinced myself I need a new job. Home tends to be where I like to relax more, and that's usually the frame of mind I'm in when I'm there. See, you hit on one of my (and perhaps others') weaknesses: spillover from work into personal life. I usually think about work or work-ish things when I'm home (whether I'm in a telecommuting job or not), and spend most of my evenings and "free time" reading journals, messing around at the computer, etc. Maybe that's why telecommuting seems to be such a no-brainer.
...not the exception, at least for certain positions and personality types.
Telecommuters drive less, so there's less pollution and traffic. With the right people, telecommuting can enhance productivity and job satisfaction.
I feel strongly about this, having been a FT telecommuting programmer for the past 5+ years. I love working with hours of uninterrupted concentration. Whenever I do have to go into the office, I'm surrounded by distractions, especially from coworkers who bullshit incessantly.
YMMV of course. Certain jobs (customer contact, security, etc) may not qualify, and there are obviously people who do *better* in an office setting. For many cases, though, going into the office is more of a control/domination mechanism than having anything to do with actual "work."
They just want dumb asses in seats, which is probably why the feds are slow to adopt telework.
I do like the metaphors--and not all of the surveillance is hidden.
I've already seen a few articles for jobseekers, for example, where they advise people to google themselves and see what shows up (since potential employers may do the same thing).
That might cause some people to (re)consider what they have on their myspace/facebook/blog/criminal record) which does act as a control mechanism.
Food and Drug Administration officials today announced that food from cloned animals is safe to eat even as their counterparts in the U.S. Department of Agriculture asked producers to keep their cloned animals off the market indefinitely
Apparently this is only for public perception--they do say (perhaps with a subtle irony), that "we conclude that meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones are as safe as food we eat every day..."
A similar article, with a couple of other--even weirder, IMHO--classics can be found here.
The Orbitouch FTW!
Firefox isn't vulnerable? Maybe I missed something. TFA says different:
This may make the attack to fail if you use Firefox, Opera or Safari and the attacked router or UPnP device is picky about CR and CRLF line endings. Earlier flash versions does not have this problem/bug.
It looks like you're safe *if* the router is or UPnP device needs to be picky about CR/CRLF line endings.
It also looks like you're safe UNLESS you're using an "earlier flash version."
...in this thread anyway, to recommend the flashblock plugin.
I installed it a couple of weeks ago, and really enjoy it. Banner ads have all but disappeared, and I don't even really notice (except for faster page loads and cleaner page layouts). If I want to see a YouTube video, that's easily accomplished--just click on the "F" icon in the blocked section of the page.
As an added bonus, I'm protected from all of these recent security breaches we've seen for Flash...aren't I?
Dude, I hate to say this but I think you've been scammed.
This flying car thing is another one just like it. If you read between the lines, what they really want to send you is the BOX THE FLYING CAR CAME IN, not the car itself.
These comments remind me of some of the things said in another slashdot article on recognizing good programmers.
I hired a dude a couple of years ago who, like you, didn't have a lot of experience.
He did, however, have a very impressive FOSS portfolio, and could show all kinds of code he wrote in support of various projects. This involvement suggested that:
0) He cared enough, as a developer, to get involved and donate his time and effort to a project, and
1) He saw his contribution as one to the "greater good" (and not entirely for personal gain), and
2) He had the stones to put his code out there for others to review and use.
YMMV, of course--this fellow got the job, and has done quite well at it.
As a self-proclaimed community of nerds (who probably spend more time sitting in front of the screen than anywhere else), I think it's natural for us to view the computer as a valid tool for education--and it certainly can be, especially as mentioned above.
If the spotty career of TV in the US is any indication, though, I'd hedge your bets. When TV came out, there was a lot of talk about how "this will help your kids learn through the magic of electronics." The reality, however, has seen a gradual dumbing-down of society and an over-reliance on superficial, visual messages. It's a foregone conclusion among many health professionals that too much TV is a bad thing, and, contrary to the early promises, are expressing grave concern over how it affects mental development
What you can learn by watching TV is, to a large extent, how to watch TV. Video is a poor way to learn how to ski, skydive, sculpt, or sing. The nature of its presentation does not encourage thoughtful dialogue, discourse, or analysis.
When we give poor children a laptop, what are we asking them to learn? What are we asking them NOT to learn?
Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
I guess it's encouraging to see that not all genetic engineers are exclusively focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.
This language needs parenthesis, or some better documentation on precedence. I parsed each item in the clause as:
...when I guess the intent was
(Samba) (the PHP) (Perl) (Tcl dynamic languages) (Amanda)
(Samba) the (PHP, Perl, Tcl dynamic languages) (Amanda)
I stopped reading after they called it "The PHP."
These guys are TOTALLY slack, they have another website, but I can't find anything other than the myspace shiz. I believe one of them, at least, used to be a computer programmer before he burned out, quit, and joined this band/slack-evangelism outfit:
http://www.myspace.com/slackestra
...by woody allen (in Sleeper)
"...and after you've moved into your permanent home, you'll enjoy mechanized servants. Until then, you can have a computerized dog."
[rags the robot dog, in computer voice] Woof. Woof. Woof. Hello, I'm Rags.
[woody allen] Is he housebroken, or will he be leaving little batteries all over the floor?
Some points:
1) Of all the music being made out there, the standard industry practice guarantees you'll only ever hear an insiginficant fraction of what's available, and most of that is successful because it sounds like something else. What you get is the tiniest sliver of what's possible. Most of the greatest music being made will never make it to your ears.
2) Until recently, music was a social activity (people used to be able to play instruments and entertain family and friends, for example, and they'd also leave the house at times to hear others make music). Take off the headphones.
3) Enroll in a music class. Pony up the bucks, take some lessons, learn some techniques, and -- gasp -- make some of your own music. Music is OK when it's a passive activity (listening), but nothing compares to being able to make your own.
Music is something you make, share, and become a part of. When it becomes something you buy (like cereal or beer), it's *always* going to be fettered by copyright laws, etc.
Take it back, make it your own.
I'm calling the "Metaphor and Analogy" police, if there is such a thing.
Why is it that EVERYTHING involving computers and the internets ends up becoming some cutesy-cutesy thing?
What's next?
Employee 1: "You hear about Bob?"
Employee 2: "Yeah, I hear he got spear-phished this weekend. I guess they gutted and scaled him, and supposedly they're going to pan-phry him."
Employee 1: "Well, it beats being served in a tuna salad!"
Employee 2: "What the hell, exactly, are we talking about?"
You know, this is actually a pretty good post.
While it's laudable to be rabidly open-source, the fact is that for larger, enterprise-style work, you're just going to need some heavy-hitting software, provided by a large vendor. I can see a couple of people sitting in a coffee shop debating the merits of postgres vs. DB2, but I can NOT see Deutsche Bank announcing that they're switching over to MySQL because of its suitability for that type of application. Just not going to happen, people. By the time some of the open-source dbs work out their kinks and add features, the major players are already another light year ahead.
Nothing to see here, move along.
This is subject to debate, but experience having worked in a datacenter has shown me that one of the problems is that of all the computing power that occupies a typical datacenter, 90% of it is redundant overhead that never gets used. Still, these servers just sit there, sucking electricity and requiring expensive HVAC to maintain.
I knew a wise man once who said that in theory, if your CPU usage isn't 100% all the time, you're wasting money. This is at least partially true. We have many many servers who are idle most of the time, and even at "peak periods" the load average barely budges. One of the services we support is RAM-heavy, but uses almost *no* CPU whatsoever, still, our clients specify pipe-hitting four-way boxes with large disk arrays--one box per service. Ludicrous!
By combining several services on a single box, you can eliminate the need to host extra/redundant servers, and save a bunch of cash in the process. Sure, it may be less convenient to administer, but let's face it, folks, any move toward consolidating deployments in the datacenter is only going to save space/money.
Now, that being said, most people could care less, thinking "hardware's cheap" and they'll just throw dozens of boxes at the problem and forget about it. Maybe that will change, maybe not...
Ain't that the truth. For me, the defining experience was a game called "Telengard," in my opinion the closest thing to D&D you could find at the time.
Best part, it was written mostly in BASIC, so once the game got boring, anyone could easily soup it up (Level 329 dragon, anyone? Better bring along your +112 sword and +139 armor!) Of course, you'd pry some gems off a throne and your 25 strength would "go up by a point" to 18...
After messing around with Slackware, I just about had enough! A friend of mine tried to get me into Linux. I thought it would be easy (I am a certified Sun Systems Administrator) but I spent the better part of an entire week getting it working!
Thank goodness for Red Hat! The analogy applies to Slashdot as well. I remember Slashdot from the "good" old days, and boy, it was pretty clunky. The new version is a nice commercial representation of geek(tm)dom.
Congrats!
Here's why:
n g-multimedia stuff. (I'm not bitter-I'm jealous)
1. The dot-com boom has pretty much evaporated, leaving the realm of "professional computer work" to geeky types with college degrees and bad hair (I'm one of them). The work that is done is now more mundane and laborious(billing, insurance, reporting, etc) than $20K-bonus-scooter-riding-dot-com-hipster-streami
2. Computers are now getting bigger and more mainframe-y (See comment above). More and more enterprises are centralizing mission-critical functions, primarily for ease of management as well as power and security. Proof:. We've already got Linux/390, the Solaris E10K, there's some newbigandexciting Intel box out there I keep hearing about that has 64-way SMP and now this.
Anyone have the newest Creative Computing?
Not to start up with the m$-bashing too early on, but frankly, let's be adults and admit it:
Most virus damage is caused by half-baked, slipshod, poorly-thought-out products put out by our friends in Redmond.
Period.
As a unix sysadmin working at a very large enterprise hosting facility, I can tell you this, first hand. The Windows team is constantly chasing after red worms, melissa, various IIS exploits, and every imaginible form of macro virus, while the Solaris team calmly applies regular patches from Sun.
I'd say for every single Solaris 8 box that gets pushed over or otherwise compromised due to a virus, there are *seriously* about 50 Windows boxes that need to be scanned/cleaned/reinstalled.
Again, not trying to start a religious war, but viruses are a microsoft byproduct. Not that Microsoft is a bad thing, mind you, but I think its safe to say that most of the viruses in the world wouldn't exist without a little help from poor quality control at microsoft.
I work in the wireless industry myself, and can say that there is quite a bit of debate over this.
What will probably happen (as seems to happen a lot) is that one major vendor or provider will choose a certain standard, regardless of its value, or without a thought as to whether or not two technologies can be mutually compatible (as the writer above mentions). Then its time to push it down everyone's throats until the other one disappears.
Sad, but true.
This is old news. For those with a historical bent, there have been rugged, nasty, heavy portable computers for a long time.
Kaypro comes to mind, and you didn't have to worry about "sad mac" errors, StuffIT files, or all that jibber-jabber.
Plus, it weighed so much, if you dropped it on anything or anyone, it was destroyed, period. Try doing that with your neat little Photoshop laptop!