I've seen plenty of car analogies on slashdot. This is the first watercraft analogy I've ever seen. I applaud your willingness to experiment with new forms of analogy.
That being said - I have to say that if you want readers to have any idea what you're trying to say, you would be better off sticking to cars.
We've got a vice president in my company who somewhere along the line learned to put together basic CRUD-style web UI's in PHP. A while back his department had a special requirement for a bare-bones tracking system - and since our overbooked engineering department was not able to provide him anything in the timeframe he wanted, he hacked something together himself with MySQL and PHP to get the job done.
More recently, when a partner asks for a special report or view into our data that isn't supported in our website, he'll throw together a quick page to query our production database and display the results in a tabular format, and share that with the partner. He's got his own webapp running somewhere on our network with its own authentication and access control scheme which is completely separate from our main site and the control of our engineering and IT departments (I actually have no idea how he managed to get that hosted and accessible from outside our vpn to begin with).
As one of the slow-moving engineers that his web app was created to circumvent, I won't even go into all of the concerns that I have with this setup. What I will say is that - all things considered - his apps actually aren't too shabby and the people who use them LOVE them for the utility they provide. And while this guy is really someone who I would consider a special case, I've also noticed a broader trend in my company on the "business" side: people who can write a SQL query and crunch some numbers tend to get promoted faster. As for this specific VP - he absolutely destroys his budgeted numbers year after year and I can't even imagine how large his bonuses must be.
To the original poster I would say "yes, learn some 'programming' skills". As for how to do that, or what specific skills he should learn, that really depends a lot on the work you are doing. Every technical skill that I've ever really learned has been because I had some specific need for that skill. I've never had to ask what or how to learn something because almost always the answer was standing right there in front of me (usually the "what" in the form of a challenging problem and the "how" in the form of a good book or google).
With that being said, here is the best advice I can give: the next time you need to ask a professional "techie" for help, ask yourself (or the techie) what exactly it is that the techie is doing. (Note: if the question turns out to be "build and entire web application", you probably need to think smaller scope). Then, figure out how to do that thing for yourself. Do that enough times and you, too, will have earned the title of "techie".
I really couldn't disagree more. After having nearly all of the life sucked out of me in high school (quite literally), college is where I got my "spark" back.
Math, Physics, Computer Science, Literature, Music... any one of these subjects has enough depth to keep you engaged for the rest of your life. In college they sit you down with a bunch of books (and friends, and professors) and just sort of let you go crazy... see what sticks. I discovered that I was interested in a number of different things.
I was perpetually bored with life prior to my first semester at college. I don't think I've once been bored since.
Click on the RSS button in my profile. Then you can watch in real-time as I make it rain +5 insightfuls all over this biyatch. No charge, because information just wants to be free.
My point wasn't that there are no quiet places in Tokyo, but rather that the advertising is louder there. This is true not just for Tokyo, in my opinion, but all across Japan.
Some examples:
Video billboards with loud audio components outside at train stations even in relatively small cities
Every supermarket plays its own catchy theme song on infinite loop
IRASSHAIMASE!
Pretty girls in bright yellow company-themed overcoats handing out free tissues everywhere you go
Pachinko (and everything about it)
Nudie magazines displayed in the window of every neighborhood 7/11
Cars with loudspeakers campaigning for local politicians
Vending machines with embedded audio and video that make fun noises when you insert coins
And it's not just confined to advertising. Everywhere you go you are subjected to escalators that beep when you approach the end, traffic lights that play Japanese folk music when you cross the street, trains with their own theme songs that play at every stop, garbage trucks with their own theme songs. Japan is a very stimulating place to be.
And I think that as a result, Japanese people have a higher threshold for stimulus than other cultures in less densely populated countries. What I may find loud or tasteless because it overloads my senses, Tokyo residents seem to have no trouble processing. What I find to be tasteful (Facebook, if you can call it tasteful), a Japanese person would find very boring (compared to Mixi, which is MUCH more colorful and packed to the brim with emoticons).
Ever been to Tokyo? If ain't flashing and neon, no one is going to notice it. For a population conditioned to such an environment, it would make sense that LOUD websites draw more customers.
If the company that you work for is demanding that you work outrageous hours, then you're going to get burnt out no matter how interesting the work may be. It sounds like the competition for jobs in the videogame industry is just too fierce, the hours are too long, and burnout is commonplace. These folks might find that their talents are better appreciated in other industries.
I work for a company that sells used cars online. Not exactly the glamorous position in A.I. or Computational Linguistics that I dreamed of I was studying computer science in university, and yet - I love my current job. There are so many interesting aspects to software engineering that the work itself - the thrill of trying to engineer something to be faster, more robust, or more user friendly, and the successful completion of those goals - is enough to keep me interested no matter what it is I'm working on.
Is it a "prestigious" job? Maybe not - but then again, to the folks I work with I am a "rock star" and they really appreciate the work I do. And having a little time left at the end of the day to enjoy my wife is, in my opinion, infinitely more rewarding than any benefit I could derive from a job that did not allow me that privilege.
Actually - it was a joke. Not a good one, apparently, but a joke none the less.
When I came across the word "niggardly", the first time I've ever heard it I must admit, I first did a complete double-take, followed up with, as you suggested, a trip to dictionary.com. After that, and ignoring my better instincts, I posted the comment that you see above. I'll accept my -1 flamebait/off topic moderation and learn my lesson for the next time around.
In regards to who exactly is taking a non-existent moral high ground - I hope that I have answered that question definitively.
has anybody else ever wondered what would happen if one were to crop-dust a heavily populated area with a suitably light-stabilized LSD solution? Or distributed a genetically engineered virus through the ventilation system of the DEA headquarters that spliced in the necessary DNA sequences to make those exposed capable of synthesizing endogenous THC?
You, sir, have just posted your way in a very exclusive database somewhere deep in the basement of the Department of Homeland security.
Haha I went back to actually read the f-ing article and discovered that I was way off in my interpretation of the quote. Actually he was just pointing out that he chose to write about games with deep story lines because those are the games that he likes... and because they are easier to write about.
That being said, I still think that someone should go and write the book that I imagined having been written in my previous post.
This book is intended for an audience of gamers. And I don't think that he's saying that we should be trying to preach to non-gamers about the virtues of clever gameplay mechanics, nor is he trying to belittle non-gamers for not getting it. He is using the perspective of a non-gamer to shed light on a very complex aspect of gaming this is often not fully understood (consciously, at least) even by those who do enjoy playing games. I've often seen the same line of reasoning used to explain why somebody enjoys a particular piece of music, or a sport for example, that others may find boring.
I'm only a casual gamer, but I can definitely sense a certain level of genius in the gameplay mechanics of games like Tetris or Starcraft, for example. If I were a bigger fan of videogames, I would probably want to read this book.
That makes the people who accepted her friend invites a little less shameful in my opinion.
I was able to discover this tidbit of information by clicking on the racy profile picture in attempt to see more. Given that I already knew at that point that she was a security researcher posing as a Russian spy posing as a Defense Dept. employee - I am inclined to judge myself much more harshly than the folks named in the parent article.
Bing's "Travel" section is pretty good for finding flights. It's quick, clean, and the results are trustworthy in my experience. They've even got a "price predictor" feature that can save you a couple bucks if you're prepared to check prices every day and pounce when a good deal comes along. In fact - the only time that I'll use Bing over Google is when I'm buying plane tickets.
I know it's not a fashionable thing to say in these parts - but I love Google products. I was happy to hear about this acquisition, and look forward to seeing what Google is able to accomplish in this area of search.
I dropped $120 on an S-20 only to discover a really annoying echo problem when dialing certain numbers. A number of other users have reported similar problems if you read through the reviews on amazon.com. The later firmware updates were supposed to have fixed the issue, but I still have the problem. For me it has been a total dealbreaker and I no longer use the phone.
I would stay away from the S-20 and investigate other solutions instead. Especially since the question came from someone looking to use the phone on a college network, which often requires a browser-based log in.
Even if it could save you money and reduce your C02 footprint?
Granted - implementation would play a huge part in determining whether or not I would actually want to use such a thing. But declaring a priori that networked air conditioners are a bad thing??
I was actually starting to worry that maybe I'm not keeping up with the times by not participating in Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and the like...
What it really comes down to I think is that most engineers have moved onto much more interesting uses for computers than sending around 160 character text messages to all of our "friends" (something that we were able to do a long time ago).
That being said, I would very much like to capitalize on the market for these apps - but it's not easy to think up ideas for products that I would never personally want to use...
There are companies that exist now whose sole purpose in life is to pull together peoples' personal information from disparate sources, combine that information into astonishingly detailed profiles of just about anyone in the United States, and sell that information to interested parties (collection agencies/repo men for example).
This is despite the fact that data mining as a discipline is still relatively young. Since data mining is such a profitable discipline, it is almost guaranteed to develop at a much faster pace than our ability to obfuscate our personal identity.
I wouldn't worry about it all that much though... it's not like I've got anything to hide!
If Japan were to stop whaling then it may save a few whales - but we will lose out on an even scarcer and in my opinion more important resource: television programs featuring Sea Shepherds risking their lives in vain.
I love that show...
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen plenty of car analogies on slashdot. This is the first watercraft analogy I've ever seen. I applaud your willingness to experiment with new forms of analogy.
That being said - I have to say that if you want readers to have any idea what you're trying to say, you would be better off sticking to cars.
We've got a vice president in my company who somewhere along the line learned to put together basic CRUD-style web UI's in PHP. A while back his department had a special requirement for a bare-bones tracking system - and since our overbooked engineering department was not able to provide him anything in the timeframe he wanted, he hacked something together himself with MySQL and PHP to get the job done.
More recently, when a partner asks for a special report or view into our data that isn't supported in our website, he'll throw together a quick page to query our production database and display the results in a tabular format, and share that with the partner. He's got his own webapp running somewhere on our network with its own authentication and access control scheme which is completely separate from our main site and the control of our engineering and IT departments (I actually have no idea how he managed to get that hosted and accessible from outside our vpn to begin with).
As one of the slow-moving engineers that his web app was created to circumvent, I won't even go into all of the concerns that I have with this setup. What I will say is that - all things considered - his apps actually aren't too shabby and the people who use them LOVE them for the utility they provide. And while this guy is really someone who I would consider a special case, I've also noticed a broader trend in my company on the "business" side: people who can write a SQL query and crunch some numbers tend to get promoted faster. As for this specific VP - he absolutely destroys his budgeted numbers year after year and I can't even imagine how large his bonuses must be.
To the original poster I would say "yes, learn some 'programming' skills". As for how to do that, or what specific skills he should learn, that really depends a lot on the work you are doing. Every technical skill that I've ever really learned has been because I had some specific need for that skill. I've never had to ask what or how to learn something because almost always the answer was standing right there in front of me (usually the "what" in the form of a challenging problem and the "how" in the form of a good book or google).
With that being said, here is the best advice I can give: the next time you need to ask a professional "techie" for help, ask yourself (or the techie) what exactly it is that the techie is doing. (Note: if the question turns out to be "build and entire web application", you probably need to think smaller scope). Then, figure out how to do that thing for yourself. Do that enough times and you, too, will have earned the title of "techie".
They play a pretty mean game of rugby... or so I've heard.
I really couldn't disagree more. After having nearly all of the life sucked out of me in high school (quite literally), college is where I got my "spark" back.
Math, Physics, Computer Science, Literature, Music... any one of these subjects has enough depth to keep you engaged for the rest of your life. In college they sit you down with a bunch of books (and friends, and professors) and just sort of let you go crazy... see what sticks. I discovered that I was interested in a number of different things.
I was perpetually bored with life prior to my first semester at college. I don't think I've once been bored since.
Click on the RSS button in my profile. Then you can watch in real-time as I make it rain +5 insightfuls all over this biyatch. No charge, because information just wants to be free.
Some examples:
And it's not just confined to advertising. Everywhere you go you are subjected to escalators that beep when you approach the end, traffic lights that play Japanese folk music when you cross the street, trains with their own theme songs that play at every stop, garbage trucks with their own theme songs. Japan is a very stimulating place to be.
And I think that as a result, Japanese people have a higher threshold for stimulus than other cultures in less densely populated countries. What I may find loud or tasteless because it overloads my senses, Tokyo residents seem to have no trouble processing. What I find to be tasteful (Facebook, if you can call it tasteful), a Japanese person would find very boring (compared to Mixi, which is MUCH more colorful and packed to the brim with emoticons).
PNAS... PEE-NAS... PENAS...
I don't get it.
Sincerely,
Mike Oxlong
Ever been to Tokyo? If ain't flashing and neon, no one is going to notice it. For a population conditioned to such an environment, it would make sense that LOUD websites draw more customers.
Arggh... meant to say "having a little time at the end of the day to enjoy with my wife...".
Right on.
If the company that you work for is demanding that you work outrageous hours, then you're going to get burnt out no matter how interesting the work may be. It sounds like the competition for jobs in the videogame industry is just too fierce, the hours are too long, and burnout is commonplace. These folks might find that their talents are better appreciated in other industries.
I work for a company that sells used cars online. Not exactly the glamorous position in A.I. or Computational Linguistics that I dreamed of I was studying computer science in university, and yet - I love my current job. There are so many interesting aspects to software engineering that the work itself - the thrill of trying to engineer something to be faster, more robust, or more user friendly, and the successful completion of those goals - is enough to keep me interested no matter what it is I'm working on.
Is it a "prestigious" job? Maybe not - but then again, to the folks I work with I am a "rock star" and they really appreciate the work I do. And having a little time left at the end of the day to enjoy my wife is, in my opinion, infinitely more rewarding than any benefit I could derive from a job that did not allow me that privilege.
Actually - it was a joke. Not a good one, apparently, but a joke none the less.
When I came across the word "niggardly", the first time I've ever heard it I must admit, I first did a complete double-take, followed up with, as you suggested, a trip to dictionary.com. After that, and ignoring my better instincts, I posted the comment that you see above. I'll accept my -1 flamebait/off topic moderation and learn my lesson for the next time around.
In regards to who exactly is taking a non-existent moral high ground - I hope that I have answered that question definitively.
Even I was wtf'ing at that one... :)
Apparently I have friends that I never knew I had!
however niggardly
I was right there with you until you started busting out the racial slurs...
has anybody else ever wondered what would happen if one were to crop-dust a heavily populated area with a suitably light-stabilized LSD solution? Or distributed a genetically engineered virus through the ventilation system of the DEA headquarters that spliced in the necessary DNA sequences to make those exposed capable of synthesizing endogenous THC?
You, sir, have just posted your way in a very exclusive database somewhere deep in the basement of the Department of Homeland security.
Haha I went back to actually read the f-ing article and discovered that I was way off in my interpretation of the quote. Actually he was just pointing out that he chose to write about games with deep story lines because those are the games that he likes... and because they are easier to write about.
That being said, I still think that someone should go and write the book that I imagined having been written in my previous post.
This book is intended for an audience of gamers. And I don't think that he's saying that we should be trying to preach to non-gamers about the virtues of clever gameplay mechanics, nor is he trying to belittle non-gamers for not getting it. He is using the perspective of a non-gamer to shed light on a very complex aspect of gaming this is often not fully understood (consciously, at least) even by those who do enjoy playing games. I've often seen the same line of reasoning used to explain why somebody enjoys a particular piece of music, or a sport for example, that others may find boring.
I'm only a casual gamer, but I can definitely sense a certain level of genius in the gameplay mechanics of games like Tetris or Starcraft, for example. If I were a bigger fan of videogames, I would probably want to read this book.
All skepticism aside, this is f-ing great news.
Seriously.
It appears that her profile pic up until June 27th was much less provocative.
That makes the people who accepted her friend invites a little less shameful in my opinion.
I was able to discover this tidbit of information by clicking on the racy profile picture in attempt to see more. Given that I already knew at that point that she was a security researcher posing as a Russian spy posing as a Defense Dept. employee - I am inclined to judge myself much more harshly than the folks named in the parent article.
Bing's "Travel" section is pretty good for finding flights. It's quick, clean, and the results are trustworthy in my experience. They've even got a "price predictor" feature that can save you a couple bucks if you're prepared to check prices every day and pounce when a good deal comes along. In fact - the only time that I'll use Bing over Google is when I'm buying plane tickets.
I know it's not a fashionable thing to say in these parts - but I love Google products. I was happy to hear about this acquisition, and look forward to seeing what Google is able to accomplish in this area of search.
I dropped $120 on an S-20 only to discover a really annoying echo problem when dialing certain numbers. A number of other users have reported similar problems if you read through the reviews on amazon.com. The later firmware updates were supposed to have fixed the issue, but I still have the problem. For me it has been a total dealbreaker and I no longer use the phone.
I would stay away from the S-20 and investigate other solutions instead. Especially since the question came from someone looking to use the phone on a college network, which often requires a browser-based log in.
Very interesting read. I'm trying out a iphone/sipgate/sipsorcery/google voice combo now. Thanks!
Even if it could save you money and reduce your C02 footprint?
Granted - implementation would play a huge part in determining whether or not I would actually want to use such a thing. But declaring a priori that networked air conditioners are a bad thing??
Give me a fricken break!
I was actually starting to worry that maybe I'm not keeping up with the times by not participating in Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and the like...
What it really comes down to I think is that most engineers have moved onto much more interesting uses for computers than sending around 160 character text messages to all of our "friends" (something that we were able to do a long time ago).
That being said, I would very much like to capitalize on the market for these apps - but it's not easy to think up ideas for products that I would never personally want to use...
There are companies that exist now whose sole purpose in life is to pull together peoples' personal information from disparate sources, combine that information into astonishingly detailed profiles of just about anyone in the United States, and sell that information to interested parties (collection agencies/repo men for example).
This is despite the fact that data mining as a discipline is still relatively young. Since data mining is such a profitable discipline, it is almost guaranteed to develop at a much faster pace than our ability to obfuscate our personal identity.
I wouldn't worry about it all that much though... it's not like I've got anything to hide!
If Japan were to stop whaling then it may save a few whales - but we will lose out on an even scarcer and in my opinion more important resource: television programs featuring Sea Shepherds risking their lives in vain. I love that show...