Gotta love a book about fundamentalist post-nuke canucks.
I remember when I read The Chrysalids in school, it struck a real note with me, and not just because they're Canadian.
List of ingredients: 1 society that is absolutely intolerant of difference. 1 young boy that looks the same as everyone else, but is different inside his head. A handful of young similar people. Mix thoroughly.
I've been meaning to re-read this for a few years now.. I'm going to have to pop out and grab myself a copy of this even sooner:) -blarg.
Managers have figured out how to hack hackers. They know what little perks to offer in the interview to make it sound like the dream job. The reality is you end up being a slave.
I can't even bring myself to work as a programmer anymore. I'll do it on my own, but not for anybody anymore.
A long time ago, a friend and I were planning on doing a big old trip across Canada and the states. Our hope was to buy a VW Shaggin' Wagon, wire up a server or two in the 'Bus to take pics, and then figure out some way to hook up to our email.
These were the issues we thought would be cogent:
Constant connection vs. intermittent connection. This turned out not to be an issue. Find a real map of cellular phone coverage in the states. I've found a whole slew of coverage maps, but it's just marketing material - according to them, you can go in the middle of the ocean, and there'll be one of their cell towers nearby. In truth, it's spottier than Keanu Reave's acting abilities. You'll only be able to get digitally useful connection in urban centres. Small towns need not apply, likewise interurban highways. This is reflected on the marketing cell maps by their fine-printed disclaimer: coverage may vary depending on terrain, weather, AOL stock price, other unexplainable phenomena, etc.
Cost This is a MAJOR issue. We were attempting to budget this trip on an absolute minimum of money. (University students... what do you expect?) Roaming on cellular phones is heinously expensive. Water and oil don't mix.
Our solution ended up being pretty simple: We'd get an ISP with a toll-free dial-up number, and a coupler to use with payphones.
The coupler was easy enough to do, as we'd already built one for another friend's birthday. (Old-school technology. Remember when your modem consisted of putting your phone on a cradle, speaker-to-mike, mike-to-speaker? Same idea, only think duct-tape and velcro! Kinda crappy on batteries though.)
I was actually on an ISP with toll-free dial-up at the time. It's a big canadian ISP you've probably seen spoofed in UF - it's called ICan.
It would've been a great trip, but we just didn't have enough money to buy a vehicle, not to mention personal maintenance along the way. (read: food and BEvERages).
i despise the notion of salary. it gives me no incentive to do anything. i want to get paid for the hours i work, overtime if i put in extra time. i don't want a bonus at the end of the project - i don't really give a care about that.
by the same token, i don't want to get paid for the hours i don't work. my time is my own, and i truly do not appreciate other people who waste my time. if i don't feel like i'm needed at work, i don't want to be there - i have better things to do.
the wage that i'm being paid should be sufficiently high to make me happy to work there. if i'm not happy, i'll screw you around. be generous with my pay, and i'll be generous with my effort. i am NOT the type of person who is grateful to be employed. i'm providing a service, and i expect to be paid for it.
I almost didn't read the article, merely because of their choice of domain name. "Red Herring" doesn't exactly inspire me with glowing confidence. This was rather irritatingly justified. Rumour-mongers!
I have to hand it to them - they're buzzword compliant, and yet completely devoid of content. So all they have to do is find out what keywords get sudden floods of eyeballs, make up a couple of things about it, and presto! Banner spin heaven!
My favourite part was the headline that reads "An insider's look at Linus Torvald's super-secretive company." And then later in the article it says "For the record, Mr. Torvalds yesterday didn't respond to Redherring.com's inquiries."
I realize that it isn't wholly logical, but for some reason I expect programmers not to contribute to projects such as this one.
I have `ln -s hackers programmers` somewhere in my brain, and I just don't expect programmers->hackers to do things that promote concepts of normalcy. It's just a further beef with Windows - it makes application development so rapid and simple that Any Idiot(TM) is able to build a pretty simple app.
I'm seeing another argument in the works here for a professional guild for software developers, a la doctors, lawayers, architects, etc. Members of such orgranizations that act against its best interests are brought to account. It's kind of medieval, but has some interesting/useful side-effects.
Professions that have an internal accountability structure are classically viewed as trust-worthy. In the programming industry, there is increasingly frequently a mistrust on the part of employers for programmers. It's not hard to understand why: certification programs and technical schools are pumping out people whose only interest in computing is because it's HOT.
And they suck. Companies then get cynical - these people who have been certified as professionals don't know their `head` from a hole in the ground. I hear it over and over - people in companies are realizing that there are programmers, then there are programmers. They understand that a good programmer is worth many times more to them than even a halfway decent one. Their gripe is that they have no real way of telling the difference until it's too late.
I think I digress somewhat though - ultimately, I just wish people wouldn't buld kack like this. It might be wishful (or worse yet, vain or even naive) thinking, but I'd like to think that a programmers' guild could preclude Mosaic's development.
Or maybe we could just abolish psychology - I suspect that would cure a lot of society's neuroses;>
FamCircus: Loved it! DillyHole: Hated it! Never put that on/. again please! Thanks! FuturamaTranslation: Loved it, but somebody's got too much time on their hands. MrSnowCrash: Send me a dream,... (Loved it)
let's harness some AC power!
on
Quickielanche
·
· Score: 1
If we had all those Anonymous Cowards/Script Kiddies funnel all their destructive energies into some serious Denial Of Service attacks on those other sites, I'm fairly sure we could get bumped up to third or fourth!
I'm just surprised that MS's servers stay up long enough for them to be getting the traffic to be where they are - their true hits prolly register them at second, but the BSOD can't register incoming traffic.
Incidentally - check out the sites that are below/. on the list! Kinda gives you a warm fuzzy, doesn't it?
the sky is falling! the sky is falling! oh wait, no - that's just the addiction talking. if there's anyone at linuxworld right now, can you go find Illiad and get him to update today's UserFriendly? i haven't got the shakes yet, but i've got a quiz in spanish today, and i need my fix before then!
do any of you know how much it costs to actually get patent approved, let alone simply pending? it's brutally expensive! i'm left wondering a) where sightsound got the money to push this patent through - the second one went through in a year!! b) consider the source - who stands to gain the most by forcibly extracting payments? i would not be at all surprised to see that sightsound was a puppet company set up by the large media players. these patents are so bullsh*t it's not even remotely funny. sure, we can see they're ludicrous, but what happens when a (bribed?) judge upholds the patent? can we say "legal precedent"? if that ever happens, god only knows where it'll go from there. -blarg
will the endless stream of officially cool things never end? is there really so much demand for someone to decide what is cool in the world? when i think of that word, i get flashbacks to high school, and the cool people doing cool things with other cool people. sorta makes ya want to hurl, eh?
Slashdot Mirror
Gotta love a book about fundamentalist post-nuke canucks.
I remember when I read The Chrysalids in school, it struck a real note with me, and not just because they're Canadian.
List of ingredients:
1 society that is absolutely intolerant of difference.
1 young boy that looks the same as everyone else, but is different inside his head.
A handful of young similar people.
Mix thoroughly.
I've been meaning to re-read this for a few years now.. I'm going to have to pop out and grab myself a copy of this even sooner:)
-blarg.
Managers have figured out how to hack hackers. They know what little perks to offer in the interview to make it sound like the dream job. The reality is you end up being a slave.
I can't even bring myself to work as a programmer anymore. I'll do it on my own, but not for anybody anymore.
-blarg
A long time ago, a friend and I were planning on doing a big old trip across Canada and the states. Our hope was to buy a VW Shaggin' Wagon, wire up a server or two in the 'Bus to take pics, and then figure out some way to hook up to our email.
These were the issues we thought would be cogent:
Constant connection vs. intermittent connection.
This turned out not to be an issue. Find a real map of cellular phone coverage in the states. I've found a whole slew of coverage maps, but it's just marketing material - according to them, you can go in the middle of the ocean, and there'll be one of their cell towers nearby. In truth, it's spottier than Keanu Reave's acting abilities. You'll only be able to get digitally useful connection in urban centres. Small towns need not apply, likewise interurban highways. This is reflected on the marketing cell maps by their fine-printed disclaimer: coverage may vary depending on terrain, weather, AOL stock price, other unexplainable phenomena, etc.
Cost
This is a MAJOR issue. We were attempting to budget this trip on an absolute minimum of money. (University students... what do you expect?) Roaming on cellular phones is heinously expensive. Water and oil don't mix.
Our solution ended up being pretty simple:
We'd get an ISP with a toll-free dial-up number, and a coupler to use with payphones.
The coupler was easy enough to do, as we'd already built one for another friend's birthday. (Old-school technology. Remember when your modem consisted of putting your phone on a cradle, speaker-to-mike, mike-to-speaker? Same idea, only think duct-tape and velcro! Kinda crappy on batteries though.)
I was actually on an ISP with toll-free dial-up at the time. It's a big canadian ISP you've probably seen spoofed in UF - it's called ICan.
It would've been a great trip, but we just didn't have enough money to buy a vehicle, not to mention personal maintenance along the way. (read: food and BEvERages).
-blarg
i despise the notion of salary. it gives me no incentive to do anything. i want to get paid for the hours i work, overtime if i put in extra time. i don't want a bonus at the end of the project - i don't really give a care about that.
:)
by the same token, i don't want to get paid for the hours i don't work. my time is my own, and i truly do not appreciate other people who waste my time. if i don't feel like i'm needed at work, i don't want to be there - i have better things to do.
the wage that i'm being paid should be sufficiently high to make me happy to work there. if i'm not happy, i'll screw you around. be generous with my pay, and i'll be generous with my effort. i am NOT the type of person who is grateful to be employed. i'm providing a service, and i expect to be paid for it.
pretty simple, eh?
-blarg
I realize that it isn't wholly logical, but for some reason I expect programmers not to contribute to projects such as this one.
I have `ln -s hackers programmers` somewhere in my brain, and I just don't expect programmers->hackers to do things that promote concepts of normalcy. It's just a further beef with Windows - it makes application development so rapid and simple that Any Idiot(TM) is able to build a pretty simple app.
I'm seeing another argument in the works here for a professional guild for software developers, a la doctors, lawayers, architects, etc. Members of such orgranizations that act against its best interests are brought to account. It's kind of medieval, but has some interesting/useful side-effects.
Professions that have an internal accountability structure are classically viewed as trust-worthy. In the programming industry, there is increasingly frequently a mistrust on the part of employers for programmers. It's not hard to understand why: certification programs and technical schools are pumping out people whose only interest in computing is because it's HOT.
And they suck. Companies then get cynical - these people who have been certified as professionals don't know their `head` from a hole in the ground. I hear it over and over - people in companies are realizing that there are programmers, then there are programmers. They understand that a good programmer is worth many times more to them than even a halfway decent one. Their gripe is that they have no real way of telling the difference until it's too late.
I think I digress somewhat though - ultimately, I just wish people wouldn't buld kack like this. It might be wishful (or worse yet, vain or even naive) thinking, but I'd like to think that a programmers' guild could preclude Mosaic's development.
Or maybe we could just abolish psychology - I suspect that would cure a lot of society's neuroses
-blarg
There's a notetab-esque clone you can check out on freshmeat: gnotepad.
Works wicked nicely for me, and i've had pleasantly few problems with it:)
-blarg
It compiles! -> Ship it! -> You're fired!
FamCircus: Loved it! DillyHole: Hated it! Never put that on /. again please! Thanks! FuturamaTranslation: Loved it, but somebody's got too much time on their hands. MrSnowCrash: Send me a dream, ... (Loved it)
If we had all those Anonymous Cowards/Script Kiddies funnel all their destructive energies into some serious Denial Of Service attacks on those other sites, I'm fairly sure we could get bumped up to third or fourth!
/. on the list! Kinda gives you a warm fuzzy, doesn't it?
I'm just surprised that MS's servers stay up long enough for them to be getting the traffic to be where they are - their true hits prolly register them at second, but the BSOD can't register incoming traffic.
Incidentally - check out the sites that are below
-blarg!
that was funny! don't do it again! :)
he lives in vancouver, BC
the sky is falling!
the sky is falling!
oh wait, no - that's just the addiction talking.
if there's anyone at linuxworld right now, can you go find Illiad and get him to update today's UserFriendly?
i haven't got the shakes yet, but i've got a quiz in spanish today, and i need my fix before then!
i wonder how much RAM those condoms'll have? *grin*
-blarg
do any of you know how much it costs to actually get patent approved, let alone simply pending? it's brutally expensive!
i'm left wondering a) where sightsound got the money to push this patent through - the second one went through in a year!! b) consider the source - who stands to gain the most by forcibly extracting payments?
i would not be at all surprised to see that sightsound was a puppet company set up by the large media players. these patents are so bullsh*t it's not even remotely funny. sure, we can see they're ludicrous, but what happens when a (bribed?) judge upholds the patent?
can we say "legal precedent"? if that ever happens, god only knows where it'll go from there.
-blarg
will the endless stream of officially cool things never end? is there really so much demand for someone to decide what is cool in the world? when i think of that word, i get flashbacks to high school, and the cool people doing cool things with other cool people. sorta makes ya want to hurl, eh?