you can get a GOOD job according to the ads that want people with 8-10years experience with C#
Well, let's see... C# has been around what, a couple of years now. Maybe three. So maybe this is the solution to the job shortage: four of us with 2 years of C# experience could apply for one job that requires 8 years of C# experience claiming that together we have 8 years of combined experience with C#... or even better, 16 of us with six months experience could apply. Wow, this is a real job creator!
Taking Japan by storm, anyway.....too bad not here
Yeah, here in the US I wouldn't exactly say that Ruby is taking the country by storm, but it does seem to be making steady progress. It would be nice if it were going a bit faster...
Has anyone ever been to Oregon? This state is so backwards that it's illegal to pump your own gas at the gas station.
Yes, it would be nice if they'd let us pump our own gas. It's amazing how many seemingly reasonable people here seem to support the no-self-serve-choice thing here yet it's OK to choose to kill yourself here.
This is also the state that has pretty much clear cut most of it's forests
Well, this is more of a Federal issue. Most of the timberland in Oregon is Federally controlled and I suspect that we have about the same percentage of the state in clear-cuts as Washington has.
a governor that wouldn't allow anyone new into the state. He went so far as to refuse to give out driver's license unless you were a residence for so many years.
That would have been Tom McCall back in the '70s. Now that most Oregonians are from somewhere else it would be pretty hard for that attitude to still be prevelant here. But yes, back then McCall used to say something like "Come to Oregon for Vacation, but just don't move here!". I think it was mostly because they looked to the south at California and they didn't want that to happen here - some would argue that that was forward thinking, not backward. I'm not sure about the accuracy of your statement about the driver's licenses, though. I don't recall any requirement like that.
First off, I really doubt this will get anywhere beyond the testing stage and hopefully it won't even get that far as it would be a huge waste of money.
Besides being an idiotic idea technically - costs for the GPS boxen (of course they'll probably want to charge the drivers for the box - why not just have everybody cough up the cost of a GPS box when they register their car and actually apply that money to roads instead of the GPS box, but I digress), tracking all of those cars, trying to make sure people don't disconnect them - it's not politically viable. Remember this is a referendum state. For something this far-reaching the legislature will be afraid to just enact it without a vote of the people - that's pretty much how it works here.
Currently some of the beaurocrats are whining about how they're not getting their gas-tax money from all of those folks driving hybrids (must be about 10 of them in the state by now, so it's a major crisis). Problem is, those hybrids do run on gas, they just do it much more efficiently. One would think that using less gas would be something the state would try to encourage instead of wringing their hands trying to figure out how they can spend $millions in order to make not much more money than they are now.
Hopefully, the bozo beaurocrat that came up with this idiotic idea will be promptly fired.
I know the HR people for the large IT employers (NIKE, Intel) they numbers show IT unemployment at 30-40%.
I like to do informal employment surveys at various geek gatherings I attend in Portland (PLUG, Perl Mongers, etc), I basically ask, "Who's working?" and over the last year it always turns out that around 50% of the folks I ask are not working.
I suggest you write our elect officials and get them to impose some sort of tax or tarif on over seas out-sourced labor.
It sounds like a nice idea, but how would that work? How could it possibly be enforceable? We should be greatly curtailing the number of H1B's we let in to fill engineering jobs too, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that'll just accellerate the move to design offshore.
Yes, Im serious. It is impossible to compete on a monetary level, and most management just see the numbers now, not the numbers for the people to fix the crap they get from overseas.
Aye, but there's the rub! There are lots of design groups overseas in India, China, Russia that are not producing crap, but good code. Coding well is not something that only Americans can do. The fact is that it's quite easy to outsource software engineering & IT jobs overseas to competant workers that will produce for much less $$$$ - thanks to the internet. I suspect that what we need to do is try to encourage the formation of unions among India's software engineers (and I'm only half joking:) so as to raise their wages. In the meantime I think we need to get used to much lower pay here in the US or else go into a field where it's difficult to have your job exported overseas (What was that "I'm a Dentist" song from "Little Shop of Horrors"? )
Software Engineering & IT jobs used to be among the higher paid jobs in the US, but going forward that will no longer be the case - they will be average to low paying professions I suspect. You'll have to be a marketeer or lawyer or some such in order to be paid well. It's sad really, the US used to be known for it's engineering prowess but now all we're becoming known for is our ability to market, advertise and file lawsuits - nothing productive.
Stream, XO, Powell's, Wal-Mart, Plaid Pantry, Fred Meyer....
Hey, I'm actually starting to think that Powell's would be a good gig... benefits and discounts on books. Problem is, it's apparently pretty hard to get in there for those very reasons....
I don't see any mention of Portland in the press release. Is there a Portland office shutting down? Well, if that's the case then join the party... there are plenty of us here not working.
So if they don't come with modems how is the novice, non-geek user supposed to get on the internet with them? Seems rather odd. Somehow I doubt it's novices buying these things.
It would only cost another $40 or so (given the quantities they're working with) to add a modem.
Can't beat Tarkovsky's Solyaris
on
Review: Solaris
·
· Score: 1
First off, I think Lem's book 'Solaris' was pretty good, not great. But Tarkovsky's 1972 adaptation of the book into a movie was indeed great - one of those rare occasions when the movie was better than the book.
After reading various reviews of this new Hollywood 'Solaris' the only reason I'd consider seeing it is to see how badly they messed it up.
Check out Tarkovsky's Solyaris as a good intro into the great Russian director's movies. Granted, to the American moviegoer Tarkovsky's films will seem a bit slow at first and require a bit of patience because there will be long periods of time where nothing is blowing up. But if you can hang in there you'll find them to be quite profound. Nothing in American cinema can quite compare - Kubrick comes closest. In addition to Solyaris definately check out Tarkovsky's 'Stalker'.
I think it's a great letter and I agree with most all of the points made and they are made well...
But, I don't see why it's so earthshaking. It's basically a letter written to government officials from a free software user's group - what do you expect 'em to say? Its analogous to a Linux User's group somewhere drafting a letter to send to their state officials.
So no, I don't think it ranks up there with the letter by the Peruvian representative. If it were written by a group of government officials to other government officials then it would be a big deal.
Actually reading this letter I was disappointed to find out that Gates' visit apparently had some impact on decisions that were being made by the IT@SCHOOL project in this particular Indian state. A few weeks back there were articles on/. and elsewhere touting the fact that Linux was chosen for this and other academic projects, but from reading this letter it seems now to be in doubt. How much impact do you think this letter (however good their arguments are) will have on these government officials compared to Bill Gates spreading $millions all over India to buy off these officials?
So why couldn't these things be applied to wireless networking?
Range is short (but for the higher frequency one it's 30 meters which should be fine for a home network) and bandwidth probably isn't too good... but these things are dirt cheap.
I don't think McNealy was the founder of Sun. He was there pretty early on, sure, but I don't think he was a founder. Bill Joy, if I recall correctly, was one of the founders. I think, if I recollect, that McNealy was originally brought in to head up manufacturing.
This would have been the first testcase that could overturn the DMCA. Don't allow them back in for the trial and there's no risk of the DMCA being overturned.
Other than to potentially overturn the DMCA, I really see no reason why Sklyarov or Elcomsoft would even bother to come over here, they did nothing illegal under Russian Law. Sure, it means they'll never be able to travel to the US again, but as it stands now they apparently can't do that anyway. So what is their incentive to try to get a visa that's been denied? (and have to go through all the hassle of a trial, and money for lawyers).
"I have the wonderful (and rare) job of building a development department from scratch."
So, here's the question I'm sure a lot of us who are currently not working were thinking when we read that opening sentence: When will you have openings for developers? Where are they?
This morning around 10:30AM I couldn't get anywhere on the web. When I logged in again later, this was part of the daily message from my ISP:
"10/3 Issues with our backbone provider were impairing access outside the SpiritOne/Aracnet network from 10:20AM until 10:55AM this morning. The backbone connection is still down but at the moment all traffic has been diverted to our secondary backbone connection."
OS cost for a 1000 node Linux cluster: $30 (max) OS cost for a 1000 node Windoze cluster: (probably $100/ node) $100,000.00 (OK, maybe they'll be oh so generous and give us a 50% volume discount) $50,000
And given the performance advantages, clustering tools (Mosix, MPI,...) available for Linux, ability to customize the kernel, etc... why would anyone consider a Windoze cluster?
Doesn't community imply that each member of the community benefits by participating in the community? But in the Micro$oft 'community' it seems to me that the main beneficiary is Micro$oft. As was pointed out in the article:
"Linux and its community have a symbiotic relationship, Lee said: "You don't have that same thing at Microsoft, but there are people who are passionate and technical who are committed to doing a great job." "
So perhaps that means that Micro$oft and it's community have a parasitic relationship where Micro$oft is the big tapeworm.
What exactly does one get out of participating in the Micro$oft community?
OK, so exactly how is a Tesla coil supposed to make your Athlon run faster?
Tesla coils produce high voltage (1000s of volts) but not much amperage. This kind of voltage would probably zap your Athlon into oblivion... And as someone else pointed out, there's no mention of clock speeds - a processor won't run faster just because you feed it high voltage.
"Ethics are fundamentally different in the presence or absence of a God. In the absence, ethics are based around pragmatism and as such adaptible. In the presence, ethics are given to us. "
Couldn't have said it better myself.
"Look at history. Which case has proven the better approach?"
Yes, let's have a look: In the 20th century ethical pragmatism tended to dominate. Communism was one of the systems that 'evolved' as a logical conclusion. Now let's see, how many people did Stalin have killed - there are estimate in the range of 6 - 20 million and perhaps more if you include the side effects. How about Mao? It is conservatively estimated that he directly or indirectly (through forced famine) killed 60million people. Then there's Pol Pot...
Oh and of course there's Hitler who's ethics seemed to be simply that the strongest must crush the weakest so as to lead to a super-race that would dominate(how much more pragmatic can you get especially if you plan to be the super-race?) and we know that he killed about 12 million souls.
Seems to me that ethical pragmatism and it's children led to the slaughter of a lot of innocent people....
Christianity
on
Ask Larry Wall
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Larry,
As a fellow Christian (I'm sure that revelation won't get me mod points) I must say that I have really appreciated your 'State of the Onion' speeches over the years. Thanks for showing that Christians can think and that we don't all mindlessly follow a 'televangelist' religion.
Now for the question: Why do you think that the geek/tech community is so anti-Christian and what can we do to help change their negative stereotypes of Christians? Why is it that so many in this community feel that being a 'Thinking Christian' is an oxymoron? People like Knuth and yourself show that Christians can think and make contributions in the technical world.
I tend to believe that the anti-Christian bias has some justification - meaning that Christians have often not displayed the grace which the Founder displayed and taught us to live in. What is it that Ghandi said when asked about Christianity? "Christianity I like, but it's those Christians that I'm not sure about". I also suspect that the anti-intellectualism of the pop-televangelists that is unfortunately so visible bears much of the blame (often when I come across one of those so-called Christian TV shows I think I'm looking at some kind of religious mutation and when I realize that these folks claim to believe the same things I do, I wince).
" I fail to see why people feel that Perl and Ruby need to compete. Both can happily live side by side, and are not difficult to learn(at least the basics)."
Sure, but everyone tends to have a favorite language, a language they reach for first when doing something. Often the problem domain dictates which language you will reach for. Perl was my language of choice for several years, with C/C++ being my secondary language of choice if speed was a requirement (though for text processing Perl often can beat out C/C++). Now my language of choice is Ruby and if I need better performance I write a C/C++ extention. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that for my purposes Perl and Ruby overlap quite a lot and I've found that Perl became unneccessary after I started using Ruby because of the advantages that I found in Ruby (I haven't found myself reaching for Perl for a while now).
What if you had made this statement about 8 years ago: " I fail to see why people feel that Awk and Perl need to compete. Both can happily live side by side"
After finding Perl most people found that they never used Awk again - that was my experience anyway.
"I'd also like more control over scoping in Ruby" Can you give more information about what you mean?
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like another part of the Trueman show is coming true...
you can get a GOOD job according to the ads that want people with 8-10years experience with C#
Well, let's see... C# has been around what, a couple of years now. Maybe three. So maybe this is the solution to the job shortage: four of us with 2 years of C# experience could apply for one job that requires 8 years of C# experience claiming that together we have 8 years of combined experience with C#... or even better, 16 of us with six months experience could apply. Wow, this is a real job creator!
Taking Japan by storm, anyway.....too bad not here
Yeah, here in the US I wouldn't exactly say that Ruby is taking the country by storm, but it does seem to be making steady progress. It would be nice if it were going a bit faster...
The best way to help the US Engineer/IT worker would be for the AFL-CIO to go unionize India.
Those Indian programmers deserve more pay, more benefits, more time off! Programmers of India unite!
Has anyone ever been to Oregon? This state is so backwards that it's illegal to pump your own gas at the gas station.
Yes, it would be nice if they'd let us pump our own gas. It's amazing how many seemingly reasonable people here seem to support the no-self-serve-choice thing here yet it's OK to choose to kill yourself here.
This is also the state that has pretty much clear cut most of it's forests
Well, this is more of a Federal issue. Most of the timberland in Oregon is Federally controlled and I suspect that we have about the same percentage of the state in clear-cuts as Washington has.
a governor that wouldn't allow anyone new into the state. He went so far as to refuse to give out driver's license unless you were a residence for so many years.
That would have been Tom McCall back in the '70s. Now that most Oregonians are from somewhere else it would be pretty hard for that attitude to still be prevelant here. But yes, back then McCall used to say something like "Come to Oregon for Vacation, but just don't move here!". I think it was mostly because they looked to the south at California and they didn't want that to happen here - some would argue that that was forward thinking, not backward. I'm not sure about the accuracy of your statement about the driver's licenses, though. I don't recall any requirement like that.
First off, I really doubt this will get anywhere beyond the testing stage and hopefully it won't even get that far as it would be a huge waste of money.
Besides being an idiotic idea technically - costs for the GPS boxen (of course they'll probably want to charge the drivers for the box - why not just have everybody cough up the cost of a GPS box when they register their car and actually apply that money to roads instead of the GPS box, but I digress), tracking all of those cars, trying to make sure people don't disconnect them - it's not politically viable. Remember this is a referendum state. For something this far-reaching the legislature will be afraid to just enact it without a vote of the people - that's pretty much how it works here.
Currently some of the beaurocrats are whining about how they're not getting their gas-tax money from all of those folks driving hybrids (must be about 10 of them in the state by now, so it's a major crisis). Problem is, those hybrids do run on gas, they just do it much more efficiently. One would think that using less gas would be something the state would try to encourage instead of wringing their hands trying to figure out how they can spend $millions in order to make not much more money than they are now.
Hopefully, the bozo beaurocrat that came up with this idiotic idea will be promptly fired.
...have better things to do than going after music pirates?
I know the HR people for the large IT employers (NIKE, Intel) they numbers show IT unemployment at 30-40%.
:) so as to raise their wages. In the meantime I think we need to get used to much lower pay here in the US or else go into a field where it's difficult to have your job exported overseas
I like to do informal employment surveys at various geek gatherings I attend in Portland (PLUG, Perl Mongers, etc), I basically ask, "Who's working?" and over the last year it always turns out that around 50% of the folks I ask are not working.
I suggest you write our elect officials and get them to impose some sort of tax or tarif on over seas out-sourced labor.
It sounds like a nice idea, but how would that work? How could it possibly be enforceable? We should be greatly curtailing the number of H1B's we let in to fill engineering jobs too, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that'll just accellerate the move to design offshore.
Yes, Im serious. It is impossible to compete on a monetary level, and most management just see the numbers now, not the numbers for the people to fix the crap they get from overseas.
Aye, but there's the rub! There are lots of design groups overseas in India, China, Russia that are not producing crap, but good code. Coding well is not something that only Americans can do. The fact is that it's quite easy to outsource software engineering & IT jobs overseas to competant workers that will produce for much less $$$$ - thanks to the internet. I suspect that what we need to do is try to encourage the formation of unions among India's software engineers (and I'm only half joking
(What was that "I'm a Dentist" song from "Little Shop of Horrors"? )
Software Engineering & IT jobs used to be among the higher paid jobs in the US, but going forward that will no longer be the case - they will be average to low paying professions I suspect. You'll have to be a marketeer or lawyer or some such in order to be paid well. It's sad really, the US used to be known for it's engineering prowess but now all we're becoming known for is our ability to market, advertise and file lawsuits - nothing productive.
Stream, XO, Powell's, Wal-Mart, Plaid Pantry, Fred Meyer ....
Hey, I'm actually starting to think that Powell's would be a good gig... benefits and discounts on books. Problem is, it's apparently pretty hard to get in there for those very reasons....
I don't see any mention of Portland in the press release. Is there a Portland office shutting down?
Well, if that's the case then join the party... there are plenty of us here not working.
So if they don't come with modems how is the novice, non-geek user supposed to get on the internet with them? Seems rather odd. Somehow I doubt it's novices buying these things.
It would only cost another $40 or so (given the quantities they're working with) to add a modem.
First off, I think Lem's book 'Solaris' was pretty good, not great. But Tarkovsky's 1972 adaptation of the book into a movie was indeed great - one of those rare occasions when the movie was better than the book.
After reading various reviews of this new Hollywood 'Solaris' the only reason I'd consider seeing it is to see how badly they messed it up.
Check out Tarkovsky's Solyaris as a good intro into the great Russian director's movies. Granted, to the American moviegoer Tarkovsky's films will seem a bit slow at first and require a bit of patience because there will be long periods of time where nothing is blowing up. But if you can hang in there you'll find them to be quite profound. Nothing in American cinema can quite compare - Kubrick comes closest. In addition to Solyaris definately check out Tarkovsky's 'Stalker'.
I think it's a great letter and I agree with most all of the points made and they are made well...
/. and elsewhere touting the fact that Linux was chosen for this and other academic projects, but from reading this letter it seems now to be in doubt.
But, I don't see why it's so earthshaking. It's basically a letter written to government officials from a free software user's group - what do you expect 'em to say? Its analogous to a Linux User's group somewhere drafting a letter to send to their state officials.
So no, I don't think it ranks up there with the letter by the Peruvian representative. If it were written by a group of government officials to other government officials then it would be a big deal.
Actually reading this letter I was disappointed to find out that Gates' visit apparently had some impact on decisions that were being made by the IT@SCHOOL project in this particular Indian state. A few weeks back there were articles on
How much impact do you think this letter (however good their arguments are) will have on these government officials compared to Bill Gates spreading $millions all over India to buy off these officials?
Somebody stop that man!
So why couldn't these things be applied to wireless networking?
Range is short (but for the higher frequency one it's 30 meters which should be fine for a home network) and bandwidth probably isn't too good... but these things are dirt cheap.
I don't think McNealy was the founder of Sun. He was there pretty early on, sure, but I don't think he was a founder. Bill Joy, if I recall correctly, was one of the founders. I think, if I recollect, that McNealy was originally brought in to head up manufacturing.
This would have been the first testcase that could overturn the DMCA. Don't allow them back in for the trial and there's no risk of the DMCA being overturned.
Other than to potentially overturn the DMCA, I really see no reason why Sklyarov or Elcomsoft would even bother to come over here, they did nothing illegal under Russian Law. Sure, it means they'll never be able to travel to the US again, but as it stands now they apparently can't do that anyway. So what is their incentive to try to get a visa that's been denied? (and have to go through all the hassle of a trial, and money for lawyers).
"I have the wonderful (and rare) job of building a development department from scratch."
So, here's the question I'm sure a lot of us who are currently not working were thinking when we read that opening sentence: When will you have openings for developers? Where are they?
--
brother can you spare an internet connection?
This morning around 10:30AM I couldn't get anywhere on the web. When I logged in again later, this was part of the daily message from my ISP:
"10/3 Issues with our backbone provider were impairing access outside the SpiritOne/Aracnet network from 10:20AM until 10:55AM this morning. The backbone connection is still down but at the moment all traffic has been diverted to our secondary backbone connection."
Rather disappointing...
One of them is a lab and the other seems to haved little to do with Computer Science - something about transportation planning.
I would have expected the Comp Sci department to be at the forefront in this experiment in online course materials.
Not to mention the price...
...) available for Linux, ability to customize the kernel, etc... why would anyone consider a Windoze cluster?
OS cost for a 1000 node Linux cluster: $30 (max)
OS cost for a 1000 node Windoze cluster:
(probably $100/ node) $100,000.00
(OK, maybe they'll be oh so generous and give us a 50% volume discount) $50,000
And given the performance advantages, clustering tools (Mosix, MPI,
Doesn't community imply that each member of the community benefits by participating in the community? But in the Micro$oft 'community' it seems to me that the main beneficiary is Micro$oft.
As was pointed out in the article:
"Linux and its community have a symbiotic relationship, Lee said: "You don't have that same thing at Microsoft, but there are people who are passionate and technical who are committed to doing a great job." "
So perhaps that means that Micro$oft and it's community have a parasitic relationship where Micro$oft is the big tapeworm.
What exactly does one get out of participating in the Micro$oft community?
OK, so exactly how is a Tesla coil supposed to make your Athlon run faster?
Tesla coils produce high voltage (1000s of volts) but not much amperage. This kind of voltage would probably zap your Athlon into oblivion...
And as someone else pointed out, there's no mention of clock speeds - a processor won't run faster just because you feed it high voltage.
"Ethics are fundamentally different in the presence or absence of a God. In the absence, ethics are based around pragmatism and as such adaptible. In the presence, ethics are given to us. "
Couldn't have said it better myself.
"Look at history. Which case has proven the better approach?"
Yes, let's have a look: In the 20th century ethical pragmatism tended to dominate. Communism was one of the systems that 'evolved' as a logical conclusion. Now let's see, how many people did Stalin have killed - there are estimate in the range of 6 - 20 million and perhaps more if you include the side effects. How about Mao? It is conservatively estimated that he directly or indirectly (through forced famine) killed 60million people. Then there's Pol Pot...
Oh and of course there's Hitler who's ethics seemed to be simply that the strongest must crush the weakest so as to lead to a super-race that would dominate(how much more pragmatic can you get especially if you plan to be the super-race?) and we know that he killed about 12 million souls.
Seems to me that ethical pragmatism and it's children led to the slaughter of a lot of innocent people....
Larry,
As a fellow Christian (I'm sure that revelation won't get me mod points) I must say that I have really appreciated your 'State of the Onion' speeches over the years. Thanks for showing that Christians can think and that we don't all mindlessly follow a 'televangelist' religion.
Now for the question:
Why do you think that the geek/tech community is so anti-Christian and what can we do to help change their negative stereotypes of Christians? Why is it that so many in this community feel that being a 'Thinking Christian' is an oxymoron? People like Knuth and yourself show that Christians can think and make contributions in the technical world.
I tend to believe that the anti-Christian bias has some justification - meaning that Christians have often not displayed the grace which the Founder displayed and taught us to live in. What is it that Ghandi said when asked about Christianity? "Christianity I like, but it's those Christians that I'm not sure about". I also suspect that the anti-intellectualism of the pop-televangelists that is unfortunately so visible bears much of the blame (often when I come across one of those so-called Christian TV shows I think I'm looking at some kind of religious mutation and when I realize that these folks claim to believe the same things I do, I wince).
" I fail to see why people feel that Perl and Ruby need to compete. Both can happily live side by side, and are not difficult to learn(at least the basics)."
Sure, but everyone tends to have a favorite language, a language they reach for first when doing something. Often the problem domain dictates which language you will reach for. Perl was my language of choice for several years, with C/C++ being my secondary language of choice if speed was a requirement (though for text processing Perl often can beat out C/C++). Now my language of choice is Ruby and if I need better performance I write a C/C++ extention. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that for my purposes Perl and Ruby overlap quite a lot and I've found that Perl became unneccessary after I started using Ruby because of the advantages that I found in Ruby (I haven't found myself reaching for Perl for a while now).
What if you had made this statement about 8 years ago:
" I fail to see why people feel that Awk and Perl need to compete. Both can happily live side by side"
After finding Perl most people found that they never used Awk again - that was my experience anyway.
"I'd also like more control over scoping in Ruby"
Can you give more information about what you mean?