BTW I've got nothing against you personally.
I bought your book on Database Backed WebSites and it has proved invaluable in my work.
In the short term you can work 80 hour weeks, like you say we have all done it but it is not a sustainable working life for most people, unless you thrive on stress, it will damage your health.
Essentially it all comes down to whether you work to live, or live to work...I guess you just must be the latter.
There is nothing wrong with working that way as long as you are aware of the potential health risks and you are not forced into it
But a lot of companies expect that from their workers, not to produce excellance but to wring every last pound of flesh from their drones.
I was never family orientated until I had my own child so I can see where your coming from. Oh well maybe one day you'll have a child and change your mind...we'll see.
I don't think its high on companies priorities for retaining staff, but if they want to retain the older experienced coders it should be.
I'm just finishing the 4th year of a Software Engineering Honours degree and became a dad last year.
When I go back into the big wide world again, working conditions and childcare will take precedance over salary.
I'd love to work at a company that provides a decent creche, but I'd be more impressed if my kid left the creche and actually learnt something creative.
Hi-Tech companies should be trying to inspire the coders of tomorrow. I'd love to see a creche where they make the kids learn creatively using graphics packages like the GIMP to draw their first pictures, or programming robots using lego mindstorms.
Just like WOS, The Underdogs already DO remove abandonware from their site when requested by the original author or puublishing company.
Not all the links on the Underdogs lead to downloads. Sometimes they just provide info on the game and where you can still buy it(if possible). if publishing permission was refused
The problem for sites like theirs is when you get classics like Elite, where one author agrees to the program being uploaded and the other still wants to enforce their copyright and refuses.
I'm not long past thirty with a sixteen month old little toddle, according to Greenspan I should just put myself out to pasture and get my carpet slippers.
Surely if project managers did their job probably and argued the case for realistic project deadlines all this macho culture of working 70 or 80 hours a week would be unecessary.
Remember when you have a family you have responsibilities, and that means avoiding death march projects in companies that require you to work at least 70 hours a week.
Research Assistants in the Design,Engineering and Computing department at my University have a starting salary of a whopping £10,000. (Thats about $14,500)
I bet in the US you would earn more saying 'would you like fires with that' in McDonalds
1)Have you ever thought that Signal 11 may in fact be a Woman?
2)Have you ever considerd that Anne Marie may just be Anne Marie and by chance also has too much time on her hands ?
3)Have you not noticed that Signal 11 has not left for good despite their statements to the contrary and is in fact still posting to slashdot
If Anne Marie is reading I would have said something lewd and suggestive, but I don't think my wife would appreciate it. Lets just say I bet shes a hot babe really....
I often use the free (as in beer) search engine made by Copernic.
Basically they offer web searchs based on categories with each category using some of 80 different search engines to aggregate a result, with categories such as :
- programming
- tech news (searches sites such as slashdot and the register)
- games
- file search
- computer security (searches astalavista for ex)
- humour
- mp3
- e-mail addresses
- shopping
- news
- newgroups
- the Web(America),the Web(UK),the Web(Mongolian Goat Herders etc-well you get the picture)
Best of all it can filter out all the dead links before giving you its search results
It use engines such as Google,The Open Directory Project, Alta Vista, Hot Bot etc as new search engines come along they are available to use when you next update Copernic via the net.
They sell a commercial version but that differs only in the ability to cutomize more and do get rid of the annoying adverts whilst your surfing
If you want the commercial version just download the free one and get a license number from astalavista , register your software via the menu and lo and behold you have now got the Pro version.
Does every fucking moron have to bring up beowulf every 10 seconds? I bet 99% of them have never even tried beowulf
I read Beowulf years ago, and a damn good story it was too!. To quote:-
"Beowulf , written in Old English sometime before the tenth century A.D., describes the adventures of a great Scandinavian warrior of the sixth century.
A rich fabric of fact and fancy, Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic in British literature.
Beowulf exists in only one manuscript. This copy survived both the wholesale destruction of religious artifacts during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII and a disastrous fire which destroyed the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631)."
Ooh you mean THE Beowulf that "is a multi computer architecture which can be used for parallel computations.
It is a system which usually consists of one server node, and one or more client nodes connected together via Ethernet or some other fast network.
It is a system built using commodity hardware components, like any office desktop PC with standard Ethernet adapters, and switches. It does not contain any custom hardware components and is trivially reproducible. "
A vampire (M$) should never suck the blood of a dead thing (Sega) because the thing will drag you down to the depths with it.
I thinks thats commonly called the 'Curse of Amiga',where one faceless corporation(Commodore,Escom etc)sucks the blood of a dead thing (Amiga) then mysteriously dies...
Is it true that shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer he was intending to run for presid ?ent but he became too ill to seriously campaign
Someone must know the full story, and more importantly HAD he run would he be have gained much support from those voters who can see beyond the two party system ?
Offtopic I know but its still politics, so almost fair game;)
Looks like somebody just hit up the UK government for a grant to study something that doesn't really happen, and they just rubber-stamped it
Well you may not be far off the mark...
Well I do remember one University getting a fat grant to study the effects of alcohol on young people...with most of the research involving giving students money to go out and pi**ed whilst being electronically monitored.
Unsurprisingly they had a flood of applicants.
Hey wouldn't you be a guinea pig if someone say we'll pay you to get drunk in the name of science!
Re:More useful books on software development
on
Death March
·
· Score: 1
So why when they can write decent books on project management do they consistently fail to ship anything on time or of sufficient robustness ?
So what do you reckon:-
- Is it just poor management
- Their weird organisational structure
- Marketing induced shifting requirements ?
- Marketing lead unrealistic deadlines
- Poor quality coders
- Project Teams trying to build decent code on top
of someone elses spaghetti nightmare
More useful books on software development
on
Death March
·
· Score: 4
Theres always the "Mythical Man Month" another classic book that all software developers should read. You all probably have but hey someones got to mention it, and it really is still relevant today despite being over 25 years old!
I'll probably get flamed for saying this but I read "The Project Survival Guide" by published by the evil empire and thought it was helpfull in expressing the disasters that can happen. Maybe that was because Micro$oft get more disasters than most;)
Seriously give it a read it may come from Micro$oft but like "Code Complete" its worth a read.
Slashdot HAS a JonKatz filter, if you feel that strongly.
Go to your user page and their should be a section
"Exclude stories from the HomePage", one of the subsections should be "Authors".
Simply select JonKatz and his stories will never appear on your/. homepage again, problem solved
...Personally I wish people would stop insulting Katz and just not read his stories if they don't like his content or writing style but thats just my flame of the day.
Well that works on the basis that people doing the scripting on the linux boxen understand the basics such as enabling taint mode in Perl when coding and the massive potential for allowing security holes in the code.
In context scripting security under Linux is a doddle to nail down compared to the nightmare of Microsoft spawned Active X controls and ASP scripts, but there is still a risk, its justt an order of magnitude lower
My point is most scripting languages have the facility to be insecure under Linux mainly due to people forgetting the golden rule:-
Never trust any data incoming from the user
E-Mail scripting problems are unlikely under Linux only if you code defensively preventing access to the shell, and disallowing users the facility to open a pipe to another process and generally only allowing them to input a predefined
list of characters.
Well taking a deep breath, I READ the question....
If you want to take the poll literally it says Who Will You Vote For NOT who will you vote for in the US election. So if you want to be pedantic the poll is entirely illogical, when I vote I won't be able to vote for those specific candidates.
I thought the point of the poll replies was to facilitate discussion, by your reasoning I did.
Irrespective of the fact that being a non-US citizen I can't vote, the US election has a major important on the rest of us and upon our lives that was my point. In the context of the election I believe it is a valid point that non US citizens care about the result of the elections, hey your mileage may vary, its not like many US citizens will bother to vote anyway.
Think America doesn't influence politics globally ?
Well Clinton did more to try and sort out our problems over Ireland than our politicians could muster (OK Mo Molam excepted) so to me the US does matter in politics.
Is slashdot implying non-US citizens aren't interested in who gets elected over the pond, or is it supposed to me 'Hey tick this because you can't vote' ?.
Because lets face although the policies that will be implemented by Gore Or Bush will not differ much (ignore the rhetoric for a moment), they still have the potential to have a massive impact on world affairs. Yeah in an ideal world Nader would get elected, but we all know it won't happen.
In an ideal world there should have been the option I'm Not A US Citizen, but given the chance I would vote because lets face America still runs the show like it or not...so wouldn't we all like a say ?
Well here in the UK the EEC and the US have more real influence on out affairs than our government.
But our blinkered population doesn't understand.
Just my little rant, for once hopefully being on topic (ish), if not I'm sorry OK...
Slashdot Mirror
BTW I've got nothing against you personally.
I bought your book on Database Backed WebSites and it has proved invaluable in my work.
In the short term you can work 80 hour weeks, like you say we have all done it but it is not a sustainable working life for most people, unless you thrive on stress, it will damage your health.
Essentially it all comes down to whether you work to live, or live to work...I guess you just must be the latter.
There is nothing wrong with working that way as long as you are aware of the potential health risks and you are not forced into it
But a lot of companies expect that from their workers, not to produce excellance but to wring every last pound of flesh from their drones.
I was never family orientated until I had my own child so I can see where your coming from. Oh well maybe one day you'll have a child and change your mind...we'll see.
I don't think its high on companies priorities for retaining staff, but if they want to retain the older experienced coders it should be.
I'm just finishing the 4th year of a Software Engineering Honours degree and became a dad last year.
When I go back into the big wide world again, working conditions and childcare will take precedance over salary.
I'd love to work at a company that provides a decent creche, but I'd be more impressed if my kid left the creche and actually learnt something creative.
Hi-Tech companies should be trying to inspire the coders of tomorrow. I'd love to see a creche where they make the kids learn creatively using graphics packages like the GIMP to draw their first pictures, or programming robots using lego mindstorms.
Just like WOS, The Underdogs already DO remove abandonware from their site when requested by the original author or puublishing company.
Not all the links on the Underdogs lead to downloads. Sometimes they just provide info on the game and where you can still buy it(if possible). if publishing permission was refused
The problem for sites like theirs is when you get classics like Elite, where one author agrees to the program being uploaded and the other still wants to enforce their copyright and refuses.
I'm not long past thirty with a sixteen month old little toddle, according to Greenspan I should just put myself out to pasture and get my carpet slippers.
Surely if project managers did their job probably and argued the case for realistic project deadlines all this macho culture of working 70 or 80 hours a week would be unecessary.
Remember when you have a family you have responsibilities, and that means avoiding death march projects in companies that require you to work at least 70 hours a week.
It a lot worse here in the UK
Research Assistants in the Design,Engineering and Computing department at my University have a starting salary of a whopping £10,000. (Thats about $14,500)
I bet in the US you would earn more saying 'would you like fires with that' in McDonalds
Well RUSH thought it was a pretty good read, and some of their music is inspired by Ayn Rand.
Any chance we could have a "books for kids" section on slashdot ?
/.'ers that have children or grand children that would love to buy them books that really educate them.
/.
I reckon there must be a lot of
Perhaps I'm showing my age but after all the dreamcast/playstation non-stories of the last week
we get some stuff that really matters. Thank you
Thanks Timothy, any ideas for books to ween my kid of the Teletubbies and the Tweenies are greatly appreciated.
In their world only traditional songs are allowed, yet they group together to fight the Status Quo ...
;)
Whats wrong with "Caroline", "Rocking All Over The World" and all the other Quo classics ?
Seriously though my kid Alex should love this, one more for the Christmas list.
A few points
1)Have you ever thought that Signal 11 may in fact be a Woman?
2)Have you ever considerd that Anne Marie may just be Anne Marie and by chance also has too much time on her hands ?
3)Have you not noticed that Signal 11 has not left for good despite their statements to the contrary and is in fact still posting to slashdot
If Anne Marie is reading I would have said something lewd and suggestive, but I don't think my wife would appreciate it. Lets just say I bet shes a hot babe really....
I often use the free (as in beer) search engine made by Copernic.
Basically they offer web searchs based on categories with each category using some of 80 different search engines to aggregate a result, with categories such as :
- programming
- tech news (searches sites such as slashdot and the register)
- games
- file search
- computer security (searches astalavista for ex)
- humour
- mp3
- e-mail addresses
- shopping
- news
- newgroups
- the Web(America),the Web(UK),the Web(Mongolian Goat Herders etc-well you get the picture)
Best of all it can filter out all the dead links before giving you its search results
It use engines such as Google,The Open Directory Project, Alta Vista, Hot Bot etc as new search engines come along they are available to use when you next update Copernic via the net.
They sell a commercial version but that differs only in the ability to cutomize more and do get rid of the annoying adverts whilst your surfing
If you want the commercial version just download the free one and get a license number from astalavista , register your software via the menu and lo and behold you have now got the Pro version.
Does every fucking moron have to bring up beowulf every 10 seconds? I bet 99% of them have never even tried beowulf
I read Beowulf years ago, and a damn good story it was too!. To quote:-
"Beowulf , written in Old English sometime before the tenth century A.D., describes the adventures of a great Scandinavian warrior of the sixth century.
A rich fabric of fact and fancy, Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic in British literature.
Beowulf exists in only one manuscript. This copy survived both the wholesale destruction of religious artifacts during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII and a disastrous fire which destroyed the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631)."
Ooh you mean THE Beowulf that "is a multi computer architecture which can be used for parallel computations.
It is a system which usually consists of one server node, and one or more client nodes connected together via Ethernet or some other fast network.
It is a system built using commodity hardware components, like any office desktop PC with standard Ethernet adapters, and switches. It does not contain any custom hardware components and is trivially reproducible. "
A vampire (M$) should never suck the blood of a dead thing (Sega) because the thing will drag you down to the depths with it.
,where one faceless corporation(Commodore,Escom etc)sucks the blood of a dead thing (Amiga) then mysteriously dies...
I thinks thats commonly called the 'Curse of Amiga'
Is it true that shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer he was intending to run for presid ?ent but he became too ill to seriously campaign
;)
Someone must know the full story, and more importantly HAD he run would he be have gained much support from those voters who can see beyond the two party system ?
Offtopic I know but its still politics, so almost fair game
We're not into cybernetics yet, but once we do get into it, we'll become like the Borg.
The Borg already exist.
Have you not heard of the borg collective known as the Evil Empire
Looks like somebody just hit up the UK government for a grant to study something that doesn't really happen, and they just rubber-stamped it
Well you may not be far off the mark...
Well I do remember one University getting a fat grant to study the effects of alcohol on young people...with most of the research involving giving students money to go out and pi**ed whilst being electronically monitored.
Unsurprisingly they had a flood of applicants. Hey wouldn't you be a guinea pig if someone say we'll pay you to get drunk in the name of science!
So why when they can write decent books on project management do they consistently fail to ship anything on time or of sufficient robustness ?
So what do you reckon:-
- Is it just poor management
- Their weird organisational structure
- Marketing induced shifting requirements ?
- Marketing lead unrealistic deadlines
- Poor quality coders
- Project Teams trying to build decent code on top
of someone elses spaghetti nightmare
Theres always the "Mythical Man Month" another classic book that all software developers should read. You all probably have but hey someones got to mention it, and it really is still relevant today despite being over 25 years old!
;)
I'll probably get flamed for saying this but I read "The Project Survival Guide" by published by the evil empire and thought it was helpfull in expressing the disasters that can happen. Maybe that was because Micro$oft get more disasters than most
Seriously give it a read it may come from Micro$oft but like "Code Complete" its worth a read.
Slashdot HAS a JonKatz filter, if you feel that strongly.
/. homepage again, problem solved
...Personally I wish people would stop insulting Katz and just not read his stories if they don't like his content or writing style but thats just my flame of the day.
Go to your user page and their should be a section "Exclude stories from the HomePage", one of the subsections should be "Authors".
Simply select JonKatz and his stories will never appear on your
./ers do NOT entertain Coward posts under the majority of circumstances...
Not even Noel Coward posts made via a net connected Ouja board ?
Well that works on the basis that people doing the scripting on the linux boxen understand the basics such as enabling taint mode in Perl when coding and the massive potential for allowing security holes in the code.
In context scripting security under Linux is a doddle to nail down compared to the nightmare of Microsoft spawned Active X controls and ASP scripts, but there is still a risk, its justt an order of magnitude lower
My point is most scripting languages have the facility to be insecure under Linux mainly due to people forgetting the golden rule:-
Never trust any data incoming from the user
E-Mail scripting problems are unlikely under Linux only if you code defensively preventing access to the shell, and disallowing users the facility to open a pipe to another process and generally only allowing them to input a predefined list of characters.
Who needs to vote for the Democrats or Republicans anyway, why don't we form a Toga Party.
Toga! Toga! Toga! Toga!
(With apologies to the makers of Animal House)
Hey you were covered in the poll anyway so don't fret.
Remember it says Who will you vote for
NOT who will you vote for in the US elections.
Doh tell me something I don't already know.
Well taking a deep breath, I READ the question....
If you want to take the poll literally it says Who Will You Vote For NOT who will you vote for in the US election. So if you want to be pedantic the poll is entirely illogical, when I vote I won't be able to vote for those specific candidates.
I thought the point of the poll replies was to facilitate discussion, by your reasoning I did.
Irrespective of the fact that being a non-US citizen I can't vote, the US election has a major important on the rest of us and upon our lives that was my point. In the context of the election I believe it is a valid point that non US citizens care about the result of the elections, hey your mileage may vary, its not like many US citizens will bother to vote anyway.
Think America doesn't influence politics globally ?
Well Clinton did more to try and sort out our problems over Ireland than our politicians could muster (OK Mo Molam excepted) so to me the US does matter in politics.
Theres the option I'm Not A US Citizen
Now what is that supposed to mean ?
Is slashdot implying non-US citizens aren't interested in who gets elected over the pond, or is it supposed to me 'Hey tick this because you can't vote' ?.
Because lets face although the policies that will be implemented by Gore Or Bush will not differ much (ignore the rhetoric for a moment), they still have the potential to have a massive impact on world affairs. Yeah in an ideal world Nader would get elected, but we all know it won't happen.
In an ideal world there should have been the option I'm Not A US Citizen, but given the chance I would vote because lets face America still runs the show like it or not...so wouldn't we all like a say ?
Well here in the UK the EEC and the US have more real influence on out affairs than our government. But our blinkered population doesn't understand.
Just my little rant, for once hopefully being on topic (ish), if not I'm sorry OK...
Well you could still register the following domains if you wanted to annoy Guiness, just be prepared to be flamed by their lawyers :-
www.guinness.tv
www.guinness.gs
www.guinness.ms
www.guinness.tc
www.guinness.vg
www.guinness.ac
www.guinness.sh
www.guinness.nu