Bing is annoying as hell, and I will never use it on purpose. There are way too many websites that seem to create hover points for every other word in an article, so Bing pops up all the time. Which could also account for their 'increased search results'.. people accidentally getting bing results because of hover points in web pages.
And we all know how unbiased Greenpeace is.. striving for years to shut down all possible cost-effective means of power (i.e. hydro electric, coal, nuclear) while offering absolutely no viable alternatives other than 'we need to explore more of these technologies that are very inefficient and will probably never be a viable substitute for decades'.
My wife and I had to walk for four blocks one cold night because we couldn't get a parking garage close to where a concert was. And yes.. my foot still hurts. Would have been really nice to have a handicapped sticker. But I take responsibility for my life instead of looking for handouts.
Someone's desire to not have to deal with a situation should not be a reason for them to extort money out of my pocket via taxes or increases in business costs. Maybe if more people took responsibility responsibility for their own life instead of thinking the government owes them something, our tax rates or food bills would go down a little bit and no one would have to spend effort to keep people from abusing something.
I disagree. Simply put a sign on the plane and all ticketing agencies that nuts are served on board the flight. Just like they do at many restaurants.
Someone that allergic to nuts deals with it on a regular basis. I'm really getting tired of a very small minority forcing the much larger majority to adapt.
This is just the first step. If this gets implemented every special interest will get in line. Know all of those handicapped spots in the US?? The original intent was to provide a place so that wheelchair vans had ample room to discharge and load passengers. There were many complaints about drivers getting back to their van, only to find some inconsiderate asshole had parked so close they couldn't get in. Now, almost anyone with any type of mobility problem can get one. A few months ago, when I got a broken foot in a motorcycle crash, I was told I was eligible for a handicap sign because I had to use a wheelchair for a couple of months, and then crutches (I refused, I needed the physical exertion, I was going nuts not being able to walk.) Someone who is morbidly obese and has trouble walking can get a handicapped plate. My father, who had emphysema, got one because he had trouble walking long distances.
I have no problem with laws requiring government and government sponsored services be made available to all. But when businesses have to start spending extra money to cater to customers that do not provide a revenue offset, it has gotten out of control.
If there were enough people allergic to nuts to justify this, the airlines would be clamoring for their business.
Or you get enough karma and decide that you would rather display and ignore them so/. gets revenue for them. Every ad that is blocked is an ad/. doesn't get paid for. I hope all are contributing that are also blocking the ads. Otherwise, they would be freeloaders.
Hmmm... let me check. How many academic, apolitical non-commercial internet sites do I visit a day....
Going through all my bookmarks....
Zero
None
Nada
Even/. displays ads. So without corporate/commercial interests getting involved, it will be missing features they need, and those entities will find dozens of work-arounds that won't work the same in every browser and cause it to need to be done it all over again in another couple of decades or so.
People also use Jello to describe all gelatin products, Kleenex to describe any tissue, and Xerox to describe copying. You have a point other than people can't for some reason say 'gelatin' or 'tissue' or 'copy' or 'search'???
The ability to form an unbiased opinion requires being able to determine what data is relevant, and what data is accurate. If someone can't figure out the bias of a newspaper or search engine pretty quickly, then they probably can't reach logical conclusions by evaluating information anyway so what does it matter. They will continue to listen to their small circle of biased friends and not pay any attention to any information that is contrary to their already biased opinion.
First.. the person writing the op-ed had been penalized by Google and is biased. They don't mention why, but probably from breaking some of the search engine rules regarding gateway pages or meta tags or something else. Anyone with any web skills could have contacted Google, found out why, and corrected the problem.
Secondly.. Google got where they are because the majority of people probably like they way their search engine works, and how it is integrated with other tools. Just like Microsoft.. it didn't get to be the largest software by having the best software, just the one that most people used. If google was biased politically, I doubt that would have been the case. This guy is upset because his business was impacted because he didn't follow Google's rules and didn't bother to contact them.
Lastly, there is NOTHING wrong with a biased search engine as long as the people using it understand the bias. Business, environmental, left wing, right wing, socialist, communist, capitalist and what-ever-ists might like to have a search engine that gives them results according to their political views. WHY does a search engine have to be non-biased?? Because this guy didn't follow the rules, was too lazy to fix it, and got hurt??? That's one of the reasons I think the Fairness doctrine is.. well.. unfair. Why can't I find a media source that has the same bias as I do so I don't have to read all the tripe from those that disagree with me. Free speech doesn't mean I have to listen to it. Free choice in search engines means I don't have to use those that don't return the results I want to see.
Foundem is a SEARCH ENGINE. So I typed in 'price search engine'. Interestingly enough, Google was fourth on the list.....I couldn't find Foundem in the first 4 pages. Here are the meta tags on Foundem's home page ---
vertical search, price comparison, compare prices, flight search, hotel search, shop, buy, online, compare, best deals, best buy, prices, electronics, reviews, computers, job search, property search.
Wow... no wonder they don't show up. They don't do anything UNIQUE. There are hundreds of companies doing the same thing. I guess they still haven't figured out how to get placement on a search engine.
Personally, I will discount this op-ed piece as little more than whining by some company too lazy to figure out what their market is, create a unique product, and spend the time and effort to get it to show up on Goggle's search engine. Lots of other companies do that just fine.....they must have skilled web staff working for them.
Or they figured if Google can't drive traffic to their web site, maybe the Times will. Seems the only advertising they want is 'free'.
Great advice! I also tried to teach my son to program, but he wasn't interested. I think the 'key' is to find something he is interested in that he has to learn to program to do it. Robotics comes to mind. My first language was also basic. My first program was a simple program go plot quadratic equations on graph paper for extra credit in calculus class. My second program was a program to hack passwords because I didn't have high enough priority to run things on the computer. I had a 'reason' to code beyond learning. I learned to code to solve a problem.
Use the project to select the language, not the other way around. I too tried C++, but because my first program was a Windows GUI, it was hopeless. I then took an online class that focused on more batch-oriented homework, and it was a breeze. Use something that can have lots of small successes instead of one huge result. It's easier to cope with a small setback than a large one, and he will be less likely to get discouraged once he can start growing his skill set and see that growth.
Start with the simple stuff... basic syntax and if/then/else type logic. Then add some methods or functions. Toss in some for/while loops. Build a solid base that can be used going forward before you get into heavy stuff like operator overloading or inheritance. Syntax first, learn how to compile or run, learn how to debug simple errors. Then move on to more advanced concepts.
And for gods sake, find something that he doesn't need to worry about libraries or a debugger to figure it out. Show him how to use printf statements to trace and debug programs FIRST before introducing him to debuggers.
And I could say the same thing about WoW and many other games that people spend hours AND money playing.
I used to spend hours playing games, some online. But then I realized how much of my life I felt I was using on the game and not on other things, so I've cut way back. Now I only play for maybe 30 mins. a day in my spare time for no purpose, I don't spend hours locked into online conflict for no purpose. That's one reason I like Farmville, 10 or 15 minutes and I can just turn it off instead of some mission in Diablo that I want to complete.
Your comment about money shows how little you really know about the game. But I do agree.. the game is retarded. It is simple and mindless. Bejeweled Blitz is also retarded.. moving little gems around for no purpose other than to get to the next level. Oh wait.. I bought that for my phone so I can play it while on the crapper.
Sometimes, mindless and retarded games are just what I need to take a break.
Yep.. it's viral. But many games are to some extent since they depend on us getting our friends hooked to buy more. How is getting all your friends together to play Counterstrike on a 'free' server (requiring them all to purchase the game) any different??? <sarcasm>Oh.. Steam isn't a greedy company that takes advantage of it's customers.</sarcasm> I guess it's OK when geeks like a game and overlook the hypocrisy of playing their favorite game v/s whining about how stupid Farmville is, when the games are much closer in nature. Ok.. Counterstrike is a crap load more fun and actually takes skill, but I don't have little 13 year old kids running around knifing me in Farmville.
And while Farmville encourages one to add friends, it isn't necessary. For one, the other account doesn't have to 'do' anything, so setting up 20 Yahoo email/Facebook accounts is all that is needed to get 20 friends. Secondly, it only takes slightly longer in Farmville if one doesn't get neighbors. I created a second account just so I could have enough neighbors to expand once, and decided to play the second account with only two neighbors. I am progressing along quite nicely. In fact, it's a bit easier since I don't have all the gifts to accept or neighbors to visit in it.
So yes.. one just has to be smart enough to figure out the basic concepts. And then take RESPONSIBILITY for deciding whether or not to sign up for Netflicks, spend real money, or invite all of their friends in order to progress faster through the game.
So those that get 'taken in' aren't just that smart, the ones that get taken in are also greedy. They want to play something for nothing, and don't want to take responsibility for their own greedy actions. I remember visiting the Farmville forum a few weeks ago when they were having problems and couldn't believe the number of people that were incensed they couldn't get to their farms.
You obviously have spent any time playing Farmville, or just don't understand how to select crops. Sure, a crop that takes 1 day has much XP as one that takes 4 hours. But.. a crop that takes 1 day only earns 2 xp/day/square (one to plow, one to plant). A crop that takes 4 hours gets 12 xp/day/square because you can plant it 6 times. So it takes a lot of effort to level up at first. Spending effort at first to gain rapid xp gets one into higher return crops. Everytime you make 100,000 coins, you can buy windmills to get 1,000xp and then turn around and sell them for 5,000. In other words, you can then BUY xp. The ribbons also are helpful at first, and realizing that one hay bail is a decoration, or one tent is a building makes it easy to get all the ribbons in a category spending minimum amounts of coins (not money). Yep.. a lot of clicking. Maybe someone who doesn't like all that clicking or taking the time to understand how to exploit the game just isn't very detail oriented.
Once you get high enough, you can get crops that you get 4 xp/day/square for. Not as good as the 12, but a lot less clicking. So the game becomes a matter of what one is willing to expend to rise in levels.. you want to rise fast, pick corps with short durations and plan on doing a LOT of clicking. Once you get high enough, pick groups that have high daily returns and buy xp.
I play 30 minutes/day now in 10 minute intervals.. once when I get up, once a lunch, and once at night. I use the farm equipment and only plant 150 plots/cycle so I don't run out of gas. It has slowed my advance, but I find it still enjoyable.
Yes.. I have probably played the game too much. But I haven't spent one cent on it, and I find some pleasure in balancing the increases in level with the least amount of effort. I'm sure I'll tire of it someday, but as long as my cousin is ahead of me, I'll keep playing until I pass him!
Zynga making money because people are too stupid to not give their email addresses or cell phone numbers to companies that misuse them is a new form of evolution. The strong (i.e. those that don't fall for these scams) survive, the weak fail. Zynga doesn't give a rats ass about the boycotts because unless they actually stop spending money, having 11% less on their servers is doing them a favor.
In other words.. since I don't spend a dime on Zynga products but use their service to play games, and they are not getting any ad revenue for it, then if I joined in the boycott it would have a POSITIVE impact on their system because it lets those that spend money use resources that I'm not tying up.
No one makes anyone play Farmville. I do because it's entertaining to me.. I can play for 10 minutes and walk away until my next round of crops come due. The entertainment in it for me was how to get the most out of the game for the least effort and NO money. I'm at level 33, have bypassed all my friends but one that started before me, and haven't spent one red cent.
If people aren't smart enough to figure out how to enjoy something that is free without spending money on it.. then who gives a fuck why they get pissed off. If someone gets so wrapped up in a FREE game that they get upset when the engine goes down and they lose some crops, stop playing it and go spend money on a real video game that requires skill. Unless they are too inept to handle real video games. But then again, there is always solitaire or Plants Vs Zombies (I love PVZ).
As to the whiners whining about 'social contracts' and 'being exploited', what a bunch of feel-good liberal BS. Do you make sure the person buying your used car buys it for a fair price, or do you get as much out of them as you can. And when you buy a used car, do you pay extra for it, or do you try to pay as little as possible. We ALL take advantage of other people, it's just a question of to what degree.
I was in a motorcycle crash several months ago. The person driving the car that hit me had the minimum coverage that Arizona state law requires. So MY insurance company had to pay for what hers couldn't. Anyone whining about this poor college student exploiting the system, or me being taken advantage of because I was smart enough to pay for a decent insurance policy??? But I'll bet if it was the other way around, there would be all kinds of law suits flying around.
So go ahead and whine about the mean old company taking advantage of the stupid people without doing anything illegal if it makes you feel good and all puffed up about how moral and upstanding you are. Just make sure the next time you sell your car, you take as little for it as possible so you aren't a hypocrite.
The article got it completely wrong!!! Cutting the pizza into squares is the best way! My brother-in-law and I like the crust, my wife and sister-in-law like the middle. This way all four of us get the parts of the pizza we like the most. The ladies don't eat as much, so he and I do have to suffer through some of the inside pieces, but they are small and don't fall apart like the long wedges. And since there is usually a few pieces left over, it isn't important what was fair, only that we got enough to eat. The smaller pieces also mean that no one has to cut a slice in half just because they only want a little bit more.
Sadly, very few pizza places will do this. Our favorite that still does this is Marion's pizza in Dayton, Ohio.
Republicans always love to repeat like sheep that "government bad, companies not as bad and at least provide something of value".
There.. fixed that for you.
The major problem of your argument is that for the last 8 years the Bush government only wanted to hear that global warming did not take place, and the same government has shown no hesistance to lie and cheat to get it their way. So, not only can you not believe the global warmer deniers and other flat earthers from Exxon, but you cannot even believe the global warming deniers in the same periode with government grant (if you can find any of those?).
Which is now completely balanced by Obama administration who accepts human caused global warming as their undeniable truth and bludgeons anyone that thinks differently.
Seems like Obama is more like a mix of Bush and Carter than the lefties will admit.
I was asked to move from a webmaster/developer role to an Oracle DBA role around 1998 when one of the DBAs left. At first, I said no because I felt it restricted my career path.. there are a lot fewer DBAs than Webmasters, and at the time the field was new enough that experience in any single environment wasn't as critical as it is now. They countered with 'what would it take', so I requested a 20% raise.
And got it....
Less than a year later I left the company and went to a job where I was an HPUX admin/Sybase DBA and commanded an even higher salary.
Change can be good....
A couple of years ago I applied for a management job in a 4,000 employee company and took it without a raise in pay. I hated it.. it was babysitting mostly. The icing on the cake was when one lady came in and told me 'Pam doesn't like me'. I wanted to tell her to shut the fuck up and get back to work, but you can't do that today.
After a year of that I took a job with a local company as a developer, and accepted a 10% cut in pay to work for a 50 person, family run business. I love my job now and am good enough I rarely put in more than 40 hours/week.
I learned from experience that I am willing to do a job I don't want as long as I'm paid well for my misery. And I'm willing to take a dream job for less money as long as I enjoy going to work each day.
But taking a job I don't like for pay that doesn't make it worthwhile when there are other options... sucks.
Dude.. that is ALL that I do and have done for most of my 30 year career. I now specialize in coming in after some new-degree guy who wants to write in some 'cool' tech the he also has no experience in, then proceeds to write it so poorly that no one else wants to touch it. All I often have is the original spec to depend on, and sometimes I find that isn't right either, the developer made changes BECAUSE it wasn't right.
Code is never 'wrong', it always does what it is programmed to do. My point is that one CANNOT depend on the spec or the documentation to tell them what a program does. Read the spec and documentation to understand what it is supposed to do, then read the code to make sure it does it. And if someone can't figure the code out, then they aren't as good as they think they are at maintenance programming.
If the code, documentation, and specs disagree, all you know for certain is that for the last 10 years, the code has been running in production this way because that was the last time it was compiled. That doesn't make it right, but you had better find someone to explain it.
Ok.. to be fair, sometimes I don't even know if I have the right source code either. Sometimes you just have to start over....
While I agree the 'why' is important, coders don't always know 'why', they code to something because somebody told them to. For instance, I work for a company that does financial analysis for portfolio managers. I don't have the slightest idea why specific algorithms are used, guys with PhDs have done their own analysis to determine the algorithms. They suck at coding like I suck at financial analysis, so they give them to me to implement into production. (Any monkey can write code that works at their desktop, it's my job to make it work every day within performance parameters and with appropriate error checking and restart capabilities). While I know what 12 month rolling averages, closing price, stock volumes, and standard deviations are, I don't know why they are being used they way they are.
Any company of a decent size should be hiring less programmers and replacing them with technical writers if they haven't done so. Having coders writing documentation doesn't work, they won't be able to do it well and it only annoys them. Coders can document inline where necessary and leave the real documentation to people that actually have an aptitude and desire to write. Then the the coders can review their work for accuracy since they love to find mistakes in other people's work. The technical writers should be able to pull all the necessary information together so the 'why' and 'how' questions are all answered in a manner that is useful.
This has the added advantage of not pulling a programmer off of documentation work that he will never get back to for an important project.
And the only correct documentation is the code itself. Anything else is a opinion and should be viewed accordingly.
In other words, when it comes to reading documentation... trust.. but verify!
I don't know how many times over my 30 year career that I've read documentation and started work only to find out later that it hadn't been updated. The first standard in your documentation rules should be that all relevant documentation is created and updated before code goes into production. No excuses.
If it doesn't have that.. then the documentation is unreliable at best, and dangerous at worst.
First off... he is an independent contractor. If he doesn't like being on call for his clients, he needs to negotiate his rates accordingly.
If he can't change his rates because someone else is willing to do it, then tough. That's what the world of contracting is all about. Sorry your company laid you off and then re-hired you this way. Get off your ass and get another job, and deal with it until you can. If you can't get another job, maybe you just aren't that good. Deal with that also, it means you have to take the shit jobs to earn a living.
And why is a webmaster being called at all hours of the day and night?? Is it because the site keeps going down?? Then it's your own fucking fault.. fix it and learn how to build sites that don't crash. If it's because you are installing on the weekends, I guess that means you don't have to work on Monday, do you.
Get some cajones and learn to stand up and take responsibility for your own life. You let people take advantage of you, this happens.
Tell me how to cheaply get all that solar power from the Sahara to my home in Phoenix. This tech has been available since the 60s (I seem to recall an issue of Popular Science back in my childhood), yet where are they?? Who is building them?? Perhaps getting the power from the Sahara to Europe is too inefficient? Perhaps these countries are too unstable for any business to try to build there?? Perhaps it's just another energy dependancy we don't need??
I live in Phoenix Arizona. We have over 300 days of sunshine every year. It gets freakin' hot here in the summer. Yet I don't see solar thermal conversion facilities dotting the landscape. Maybe it's because everytime someone wants to put a shovel in the middle of the desert to build something, some eco-freak shouts 'oh -- the rare desert lizard/owl/snake/wombat lives there.. you can't do that' and companies would have spend millions of dollars to provide legal proof that yes.. in fact.. nothing of importance lives there and we could build that plant there. But now it's too expensive to so why bother.
The eco-nuts want it all. They want nature in it's pristine condition, and they don't want any of us touching it. They have all the right answers, but won't let anyone put any of them in place because it would disturb nature.
Well -- eco-loonies --- come up with a solution, find a place build it, get all the appropriate permits, and find some funding to build it. If you can't do that.. then get out of our fucking way. The other 99% of us have shit to do, and we need electricity and gas to do it.
Until the eco-nuts come up with a solution that actually works and is economically feasible, it's all just a pipe dream. Solar and wind have been used to generate power for DECADES, yet there are very few of them. Why?? The land required is huge, no one wants a noisy wind farm in their back yard, solar cells are expensive, and there are very few places that have the space for a solar/thermal conversion plant.
America requires cars, and there are no means to switch to electric because it is IMPOSSIBLE for the local QT to provide a reasonable time frame for a fill up. (Do the math.. unless they have an electrical generation/storage facility on site, the power cables just aren't big enough.) And even if it was possible, where is the new electricity going to come from since over 50% of the power in this country is 'dirty'. Hydrogen, although a great source of portable power, is to inefficient to generate to make it work even if one ignores all the issues with storage and fueling. Public transit is only feasible in large population centers, which is why it is just as expensive to take a train as it is a plane anywhere and I don't want it to take three days to get somewhere I can get in 8 hours. It's great if you live in a country like Germany with 80 million people in an area the size of Arizona, which has 6 million people, so you have almost 14 times the tax base to subsidize things.
I would love to have solar power on my roof, but the initial cost is too high and the risk of being on the cutting edge is too great. That leaves solar hot water heating... cool. I'm all for it.
So until someone shows me a viable alternative to what we are using now that is currently available, we have to keep using what we have now until someone discovers a break through that makes other forms of energy possible. That means finding ways to reduce pollution using coal and oil, and making those nuclear power plants safer.
Or we just sit back with our heads in the sands hoping tomorrow gets here and hope we don't run out of power and our economy collapses. After all, France and Japan didn't let their eco-nuts get in the way, and they have dozens of nuclear power plants and the last I heard they don't glow in the dark yet.
Once again, the crowd that wants us to cut back our carbon emissions comes up with things we can't do rather than some suggestions. And their alternatives aren't viable for 10 years or more when they finally get all the kinks worked out, or electricity becomes so expensive they become economical.
We can't build new nuclear because of the NIMBY crowd. We can't build new coal fired because of the eco-nuts. We can't drill for more oil because of the morons in congress. We don't have to wait for Obama to ruin this country, these groups are doing it for us.
Hey.. mdsolar... go back and stick your head in the sand until you have grow some more FUD.
Why do programs suck?? It's not because of the language, it's because people fail to properly use the features. Allocate memory, then one must deallocate memory. Even in Java, creating objects without any regard for the number or interaction can lead to disaster. I've seen 'experienced' programmers insist on using 'String1+=String2' without any idea what the impact is of doing this one time v/s 10,000,000 times. The right answer comes out in the end, so who cares if the VM hangs up every now and then. I know.. let's just load EVERYTHING into the web session, it's just memory... right???
Then there is adequate data checking and error correction. It's one thing to assume that the first column in a database is an integer, it's another to assume that box 1 from a web form is. We had a program that 'assumed' that the index was unique, so it used the old 'try an insert, if it fails, update' logic. (If you don't understand why that is bad, you need to step away from the keyboard until you do.) Or that data feed your company subscribes to is always as expected. Or that your program will never abort, so who cares about restarting it.
THOSE are some of the things that make crappy programs. And no language in the world will fix that.
Slashdot Mirror
Bing is annoying as hell, and I will never use it on purpose. There are way too many websites that seem to create hover points for every other word in an article, so Bing pops up all the time. Which could also account for their 'increased search results' .. people accidentally getting bing results because of hover points in web pages.
And we all know how unbiased Greenpeace is .. striving for years to shut down all possible cost-effective means of power (i.e. hydro electric, coal, nuclear) while offering absolutely no viable alternatives other than 'we need to explore more of these technologies that are very inefficient and will probably never be a viable substitute for decades'.
Take a situation and making it fit an obvious bias while ignoring any dissenting opinions is also particularly sad.
My wife and I had to walk for four blocks one cold night because we couldn't get a parking garage close to where a concert was. And yes .. my foot still hurts. Would have been really nice to have a handicapped sticker. But I take responsibility for my life instead of looking for handouts.
Someone's desire to not have to deal with a situation should not be a reason for them to extort money out of my pocket via taxes or increases in business costs. Maybe if more people took responsibility responsibility for their own life instead of thinking the government owes them something, our tax rates or food bills would go down a little bit and no one would have to spend effort to keep people from abusing something.
I disagree. Simply put a sign on the plane and all ticketing agencies that nuts are served on board the flight. Just like they do at many restaurants.
Someone that allergic to nuts deals with it on a regular basis. I'm really getting tired of a very small minority forcing the much larger majority to adapt.
This is just the first step. If this gets implemented every special interest will get in line. Know all of those handicapped spots in the US?? The original intent was to provide a place so that wheelchair vans had ample room to discharge and load passengers. There were many complaints about drivers getting back to their van, only to find some inconsiderate asshole had parked so close they couldn't get in. Now, almost anyone with any type of mobility problem can get one. A few months ago, when I got a broken foot in a motorcycle crash, I was told I was eligible for a handicap sign because I had to use a wheelchair for a couple of months, and then crutches (I refused, I needed the physical exertion, I was going nuts not being able to walk.) Someone who is morbidly obese and has trouble walking can get a handicapped plate. My father, who had emphysema, got one because he had trouble walking long distances.
I have no problem with laws requiring government and government sponsored services be made available to all. But when businesses have to start spending extra money to cater to customers that do not provide a revenue offset, it has gotten out of control.
If there were enough people allergic to nuts to justify this, the airlines would be clamoring for their business.
Or you get enough karma and decide that you would rather display and ignore them so /. gets revenue for them. Every ad that is blocked is an ad /. doesn't get paid for. I hope all are contributing that are also blocking the ads. Otherwise, they would be freeloaders.
Hmmm... let me check. How many academic, apolitical non-commercial internet sites do I visit a day ....
....
/. displays ads. So without corporate/commercial interests getting involved, it will be missing features they need, and those entities will find dozens of work-arounds that won't work the same in every browser and cause it to need to be done it all over again in another couple of decades or so.
Going through all my bookmarks
Zero
None
Nada
Even
People also use Jello to describe all gelatin products, Kleenex to describe any tissue, and Xerox to describe copying. You have a point other than people can't for some reason say 'gelatin' or 'tissue' or 'copy' or 'search'???
The ability to form an unbiased opinion requires being able to determine what data is relevant, and what data is accurate. If someone can't figure out the bias of a newspaper or search engine pretty quickly, then they probably can't reach logical conclusions by evaluating information anyway so what does it matter. They will continue to listen to their small circle of biased friends and not pay any attention to any information that is contrary to their already biased opinion.
Secondly
Lastly, there is NOTHING wrong with a biased search engine as long as the people using it understand the bias. Business, environmental, left wing, right wing, socialist, communist, capitalist and what-ever-ists might like to have a search engine that gives them results according to their political views. WHY does a search engine have to be non-biased?? Because this guy didn't follow the rules, was too lazy to fix it, and got hurt??? That's one of the reasons I think the Fairness doctrine is
Foundem is a SEARCH ENGINE. So I typed in 'price search engine'. Interestingly enough, Google was fourth on the list.....I couldn't find Foundem in the first 4 pages. Here are the meta tags on Foundem's home page ---
vertical search, price comparison, compare prices, flight search, hotel search, shop, buy, online, compare, best deals, best buy, prices, electronics, reviews, computers, job search, property search.
Wow ... no wonder they don't show up. They don't do anything UNIQUE. There are hundreds of companies doing the same thing. I guess they still haven't figured out how to get placement on a search engine.
Personally, I will discount this op-ed piece as little more than whining by some company too lazy to figure out what their market is, create a unique product, and spend the time and effort to get it to show up on Goggle's search engine. Lots of other companies do that just fine.....they must have skilled web staff working for them.
Or they figured if Google can't drive traffic to their web site, maybe the Times will. Seems the only advertising they want is 'free'.
Great advice! I also tried to teach my son to program, but he wasn't interested. I think the 'key' is to find something he is interested in that he has to learn to program to do it. Robotics comes to mind. My first language was also basic. My first program was a simple program go plot quadratic equations on graph paper for extra credit in calculus class. My second program was a program to hack passwords because I didn't have high enough priority to run things on the computer. I had a 'reason' to code beyond learning. I learned to code to solve a problem.
... basic syntax and if/then/else type logic. Then add some methods or functions. Toss in some for/while loops. Build a solid base that can be used going forward before you get into heavy stuff like operator overloading or inheritance. Syntax first, learn how to compile or run, learn how to debug simple errors. Then move on to more advanced concepts.
Use the project to select the language, not the other way around. I too tried C++, but because my first program was a Windows GUI, it was hopeless. I then took an online class that focused on more batch-oriented homework, and it was a breeze. Use something that can have lots of small successes instead of one huge result. It's easier to cope with a small setback than a large one, and he will be less likely to get discouraged once he can start growing his skill set and see that growth.
Start with the simple stuff
And for gods sake, find something that he doesn't need to worry about libraries or a debugger to figure it out. Show him how to use printf statements to trace and debug programs FIRST before introducing him to debuggers.
And I could say the same thing about WoW and many other games that people spend hours AND money playing. I used to spend hours playing games, some online. But then I realized how much of my life I felt I was using on the game and not on other things, so I've cut way back. Now I only play for maybe 30 mins. a day in my spare time for no purpose, I don't spend hours locked into online conflict for no purpose. That's one reason I like Farmville, 10 or 15 minutes and I can just turn it off instead of some mission in Diablo that I want to complete. Your comment about money shows how little you really know about the game. But I do agree .. the game is retarded. It is simple and mindless. Bejeweled Blitz is also retarded .. moving little gems around for no purpose other than to get to the next level. Oh wait .. I bought that for my phone so I can play it while on the crapper.
Sometimes, mindless and retarded games are just what I need to take a break.
Yep .. it's viral. But many games are to some extent since they depend on us getting our friends hooked to buy more. How is getting all your friends together to play Counterstrike on a 'free' server (requiring them all to purchase the game) any different??? <sarcasm>Oh .. Steam isn't a greedy company that takes advantage of it's customers.</sarcasm> I guess it's OK when geeks like a game and overlook the hypocrisy of playing their favorite game v/s whining about how stupid Farmville is, when the games are much closer in nature. Ok .. Counterstrike is a crap load more fun and actually takes skill, but I don't have little 13 year old kids running around knifing me in Farmville.
.. one just has to be smart enough to figure out the basic concepts. And then take RESPONSIBILITY for deciding whether or not to sign up for Netflicks, spend real money, or invite all of their friends in order to progress faster through the game.
And while Farmville encourages one to add friends, it isn't necessary. For one, the other account doesn't have to 'do' anything, so setting up 20 Yahoo email/Facebook accounts is all that is needed to get 20 friends. Secondly, it only takes slightly longer in Farmville if one doesn't get neighbors. I created a second account just so I could have enough neighbors to expand once, and decided to play the second account with only two neighbors. I am progressing along quite nicely. In fact, it's a bit easier since I don't have all the gifts to accept or neighbors to visit in it.
So yes
So those that get 'taken in' aren't just that smart, the ones that get taken in are also greedy. They want to play something for nothing, and don't want to take responsibility for their own greedy actions. I remember visiting the Farmville forum a few weeks ago when they were having problems and couldn't believe the number of people that were incensed they couldn't get to their farms.
You obviously have spent any time playing Farmville, or just don't understand how to select crops. Sure, a crop that takes 1 day has much XP as one that takes 4 hours. But .. a crop that takes 1 day only earns 2 xp/day/square (one to plow, one to plant). A crop that takes 4 hours gets 12 xp/day/square because you can plant it 6 times. So it takes a lot of effort to level up at first. Spending effort at first to gain rapid xp gets one into higher return crops. Everytime you make 100,000 coins, you can buy windmills to get 1,000xp and then turn around and sell them for 5,000. In other words, you can then BUY xp. The ribbons also are helpful at first, and realizing that one hay bail is a decoration, or one tent is a building makes it easy to get all the ribbons in a category spending minimum amounts of coins (not money). Yep .. a lot of clicking. Maybe someone who doesn't like all that clicking or taking the time to understand how to exploit the game just isn't very detail oriented.
.. you want to rise fast, pick corps with short durations and plan on doing a LOT of clicking. Once you get high enough, pick groups that have high daily returns and buy xp.
.. once when I get up, once a lunch, and once at night. I use the farm equipment and only plant 150 plots/cycle so I don't run out of gas. It has slowed my advance, but I find it still enjoyable.
.. I have probably played the game too much. But I haven't spent one cent on it, and I find some pleasure in balancing the increases in level with the least amount of effort. I'm sure I'll tire of it someday, but as long as my cousin is ahead of me, I'll keep playing until I pass him!
Once you get high enough, you can get crops that you get 4 xp/day/square for. Not as good as the 12, but a lot less clicking. So the game becomes a matter of what one is willing to expend to rise in levels
I play 30 minutes/day now in 10 minute intervals
Yes
Zynga making money because people are too stupid to not give their email addresses or cell phone numbers to companies that misuse them is a new form of evolution. The strong (i.e. those that don't fall for these scams) survive, the weak fail. Zynga doesn't give a rats ass about the boycotts because unless they actually stop spending money, having 11% less on their servers is doing them a favor.
.. since I don't spend a dime on Zynga products but use their service to play games, and they are not getting any ad revenue for it, then if I joined in the boycott it would have a POSITIVE impact on their system because it lets those that spend money use resources that I'm not tying up.
.. I can play for 10 minutes and walk away until my next round of crops come due. The entertainment in it for me was how to get the most out of the game for the least effort and NO money. I'm at level 33, have bypassed all my friends but one that started before me, and haven't spent one red cent.
.. then who gives a fuck why they get pissed off. If someone gets so wrapped up in a FREE game that they get upset when the engine goes down and they lose some crops, stop playing it and go spend money on a real video game that requires skill. Unless they are too inept to handle real video games. But then again, there is always solitaire or Plants Vs Zombies (I love PVZ).
In other words
No one makes anyone play Farmville. I do because it's entertaining to me
If people aren't smart enough to figure out how to enjoy something that is free without spending money on it
As to the whiners whining about 'social contracts' and 'being exploited', what a bunch of feel-good liberal BS. Do you make sure the person buying your used car buys it for a fair price, or do you get as much out of them as you can. And when you buy a used car, do you pay extra for it, or do you try to pay as little as possible. We ALL take advantage of other people, it's just a question of to what degree.
I was in a motorcycle crash several months ago. The person driving the car that hit me had the minimum coverage that Arizona state law requires. So MY insurance company had to pay for what hers couldn't. Anyone whining about this poor college student exploiting the system, or me being taken advantage of because I was smart enough to pay for a decent insurance policy??? But I'll bet if it was the other way around, there would be all kinds of law suits flying around.
So go ahead and whine about the mean old company taking advantage of the stupid people without doing anything illegal if it makes you feel good and all puffed up about how moral and upstanding you are. Just make sure the next time you sell your car, you take as little for it as possible so you aren't a hypocrite.
The article got it completely wrong!!! Cutting the pizza into squares is the best way! My brother-in-law and I like the crust, my wife and sister-in-law like the middle. This way all four of us get the parts of the pizza we like the most. The ladies don't eat as much, so he and I do have to suffer through some of the inside pieces, but they are small and don't fall apart like the long wedges. And since there is usually a few pieces left over, it isn't important what was fair, only that we got enough to eat. The smaller pieces also mean that no one has to cut a slice in half just because they only want a little bit more.
Sadly, very few pizza places will do this. Our favorite that still does this is Marion's pizza in Dayton, Ohio.
Republicans always love to repeat like sheep that "government bad, companies not as bad and at least provide something of value".
There .. fixed that for you.
The major problem of your argument is that for the last 8 years the Bush government only wanted to hear that global warming did not take place, and the same government has shown no hesistance to lie and cheat to get it their way. So, not only can you not believe the global warmer deniers and other flat earthers from Exxon, but you cannot even believe the global warming deniers in the same periode with government grant (if you can find any of those?).
Which is now completely balanced by Obama administration who accepts human caused global warming as their undeniable truth and bludgeons anyone that thinks differently.
Seems like Obama is more like a mix of Bush and Carter than the lefties will admit.
I was asked to move from a webmaster/developer role to an Oracle DBA role around 1998 when one of the DBAs left. At first, I said no because I felt it restricted my career path .. there are a lot fewer DBAs than Webmasters, and at the time the field was new enough that experience in any single environment wasn't as critical as it is now. They countered with 'what would it take', so I requested a 20% raise.
....
.. it was babysitting mostly. The icing on the cake was when one lady came in and told me 'Pam doesn't like me'. I wanted to tell her to shut the fuck up and get back to work, but you can't do that today.
... sucks.
And got it
Less than a year later I left the company and went to a job where I was an HPUX admin/Sybase DBA and commanded an even higher salary.
Change can be good....
A couple of years ago I applied for a management job in a 4,000 employee company and took it without a raise in pay. I hated it
After a year of that I took a job with a local company as a developer, and accepted a 10% cut in pay to work for a 50 person, family run business. I love my job now and am good enough I rarely put in more than 40 hours/week.
I learned from experience that I am willing to do a job I don't want as long as I'm paid well for my misery. And I'm willing to take a dream job for less money as long as I enjoy going to work each day.
But taking a job I don't like for pay that doesn't make it worthwhile when there are other options
Choose wisely my friend....
Dude .. that is ALL that I do and have done for most of my 30 year career. I now specialize in coming in after some new-degree guy who wants to write in some 'cool' tech the he also has no experience in, then proceeds to write it so poorly that no one else wants to touch it. All I often have is the original spec to depend on, and sometimes I find that isn't right either, the developer made changes BECAUSE it wasn't right.
.. to be fair, sometimes I don't even know if I have the right source code either. Sometimes you just have to start over....
Code is never 'wrong', it always does what it is programmed to do. My point is that one CANNOT depend on the spec or the documentation to tell them what a program does. Read the spec and documentation to understand what it is supposed to do, then read the code to make sure it does it. And if someone can't figure the code out, then they aren't as good as they think they are at maintenance programming.
If the code, documentation, and specs disagree, all you know for certain is that for the last 10 years, the code has been running in production this way because that was the last time it was compiled. That doesn't make it right, but you had better find someone to explain it.
Ok
While I agree the 'why' is important, coders don't always know 'why', they code to something because somebody told them to. For instance, I work for a company that does financial analysis for portfolio managers. I don't have the slightest idea why specific algorithms are used, guys with PhDs have done their own analysis to determine the algorithms. They suck at coding like I suck at financial analysis, so they give them to me to implement into production. (Any monkey can write code that works at their desktop, it's my job to make it work every day within performance parameters and with appropriate error checking and restart capabilities). While I know what 12 month rolling averages, closing price, stock volumes, and standard deviations are, I don't know why they are being used they way they are.
Any company of a decent size should be hiring less programmers and replacing them with technical writers if they haven't done so. Having coders writing documentation doesn't work, they won't be able to do it well and it only annoys them. Coders can document inline where necessary and leave the real documentation to people that actually have an aptitude and desire to write. Then the the coders can review their work for accuracy since they love to find mistakes in other people's work. The technical writers should be able to pull all the necessary information together so the 'why' and 'how' questions are all answered in a manner that is useful.
This has the added advantage of not pulling a programmer off of documentation work that he will never get back to for an important project.
Incorrect documentation.
... trust .. but verify!
.. then the documentation is unreliable at best, and dangerous at worst.
And the only correct documentation is the code itself. Anything else is a opinion and should be viewed accordingly.
In other words, when it comes to reading documentation
I don't know how many times over my 30 year career that I've read documentation and started work only to find out later that it hadn't been updated. The first standard in your documentation rules should be that all relevant documentation is created and updated before code goes into production. No excuses.
If it doesn't have that
First off ... he is an independent contractor. If he doesn't like being on call for his clients, he needs to negotiate his rates accordingly.
.. fix it and learn how to build sites that don't crash. If it's because you are installing on the weekends, I guess that means you don't have to work on Monday, do you.
If he can't change his rates because someone else is willing to do it, then tough. That's what the world of contracting is all about. Sorry your company laid you off and then re-hired you this way. Get off your ass and get another job, and deal with it until you can. If you can't get another job, maybe you just aren't that good. Deal with that also, it means you have to take the shit jobs to earn a living.
And why is a webmaster being called at all hours of the day and night?? Is it because the site keeps going down?? Then it's your own fucking fault
Get some cajones and learn to stand up and take responsibility for your own life. You let people take advantage of you, this happens.
Tell me how to cheaply get all that solar power from the Sahara to my home in Phoenix. This tech has been available since the 60s (I seem to recall an issue of Popular Science back in my childhood), yet where are they?? Who is building them?? Perhaps getting the power from the Sahara to Europe is too inefficient? Perhaps these countries are too unstable for any business to try to build there?? Perhaps it's just another energy dependancy we don't need??
.. you can't do that' and companies would have spend millions of dollars to provide legal proof that yes .. in fact .. nothing of importance lives there and we could build that plant there. But now it's too expensive to so why bother.
.. then get out of our fucking way. The other 99% of us have shit to do, and we need electricity and gas to do it.
I live in Phoenix Arizona. We have over 300 days of sunshine every year. It gets freakin' hot here in the summer. Yet I don't see solar thermal conversion facilities dotting the landscape. Maybe it's because everytime someone wants to put a shovel in the middle of the desert to build something, some eco-freak shouts 'oh -- the rare desert lizard/owl/snake/wombat lives there
The eco-nuts want it all. They want nature in it's pristine condition, and they don't want any of us touching it. They have all the right answers, but won't let anyone put any of them in place because it would disturb nature.
Well -- eco-loonies --- come up with a solution, find a place build it, get all the appropriate permits, and find some funding to build it. If you can't do that
Until the eco-nuts come up with a solution that actually works and is economically feasible, it's all just a pipe dream. Solar and wind have been used to generate power for DECADES, yet there are very few of them. Why?? The land required is huge, no one wants a noisy wind farm in their back yard, solar cells are expensive, and there are very few places that have the space for a solar/thermal conversion plant.
.. unless they have an electrical generation/storage facility on site, the power cables just aren't big enough.) And even if it was possible, where is the new electricity going to come from since over 50% of the power in this country is 'dirty'. Hydrogen, although a great source of portable power, is to inefficient to generate to make it work even if one ignores all the issues with storage and fueling. Public transit is only feasible in large population centers, which is why it is just as expensive to take a train as it is a plane anywhere and I don't want it to take three days to get somewhere I can get in 8 hours. It's great if you live in a country like Germany with 80 million people in an area the size of Arizona, which has 6 million people, so you have almost 14 times the tax base to subsidize things.
... cool. I'm all for it.
America requires cars, and there are no means to switch to electric because it is IMPOSSIBLE for the local QT to provide a reasonable time frame for a fill up. (Do the math
I would love to have solar power on my roof, but the initial cost is too high and the risk of being on the cutting edge is too great. That leaves solar hot water heating
So until someone shows me a viable alternative to what we are using now that is currently available, we have to keep using what we have now until someone discovers a break through that makes other forms of energy possible. That means finding ways to reduce pollution using coal and oil, and making those nuclear power plants safer.
Or we just sit back with our heads in the sands hoping tomorrow gets here and hope we don't run out of power and our economy collapses. After all, France and Japan didn't let their eco-nuts get in the way, and they have dozens of nuclear power plants and the last I heard they don't glow in the dark yet.
Once again, the crowd that wants us to cut back our carbon emissions comes up with things we can't do rather than some suggestions. And their alternatives aren't viable for 10 years or more when they finally get all the kinks worked out, or electricity becomes so expensive they become economical.
.. mdsolar ... go back and stick your head in the sand until you have grow some more FUD.
We can't build new nuclear because of the NIMBY crowd. We can't build new coal fired because of the eco-nuts. We can't drill for more oil because of the morons in congress. We don't have to wait for Obama to ruin this country, these groups are doing it for us.
Hey
Why do programs suck?? It's not because of the language, it's because people fail to properly use the features. Allocate memory, then one must deallocate memory. Even in Java, creating objects without any regard for the number or interaction can lead to disaster. I've seen 'experienced' programmers insist on using 'String1+=String2' without any idea what the impact is of doing this one time v/s 10,000,000 times. The right answer comes out in the end, so who cares if the VM hangs up every now and then. I know .. let's just load EVERYTHING into the web session, it's just memory... right???
Then there is adequate data checking and error correction. It's one thing to assume that the first column in a database is an integer, it's another to assume that box 1 from a web form is. We had a program that 'assumed' that the index was unique, so it used the old 'try an insert, if it fails, update' logic. (If you don't understand why that is bad, you need to step away from the keyboard until you do.) Or that data feed your company subscribes to is always as expected. Or that your program will never abort, so who cares about restarting it.
THOSE are some of the things that make crappy programs. And no language in the world will fix that.