The notion that you can learn everyhting you need to learn for the rest of your life in one four year stint is quickly becoming ridiculous in any knowledge-based industry.
More realistic is a lifelong cycle of learning and retraining that better serves radically evolving fields.
As for hackers who skip college - lets face it - very little you do in college is going to make you a better programmer as far as industry is concerned (not many of us spend time reimplementing sorting algorithms) - programming is still an art, and mastery of the arts is gained through practice.
And yes, you are feeling it - high wages for programmers, unfilled job posts, cancelled projects, etc.
This malarky about keeping wages low is the most laughable argument I've ever heard - where I work, most H1-B holders make more than the US programmers, and all are paid $70k at a minimum - no one is living on Ramen in this biz folks.
Its pretty simple - if there is no shortage, why are Monster.com and Dice.com filled with unfilled posts? Either the older tech employees aren't interested in taking these jobs, or they aren't qualified. Either way, we need to go outside the US to fill these positions.
Oh, and before you piss all over Indians and other immigrants, remember that these folks are running half the silicon valley comapnies now - they aren't just at the bottom rung. Jobs for Americans (or whoever else is qualified) are being created by these people you are naively pissing all over.
For instance, you do not need to qualify variables in any way ( not event with the pre-pended special characters Perl uses).
There is a reason perl does this - it allows you to have different types of variables in the same namespace.
@t
and
$t
can be placed beside each other in a perl program - one is an array, one is a scalar, although they have the same name. Look up perl's type globs to see why you would want to do this. It is occasionally very useful and powerful.
And you can assign an integer to
the same variable which until then contained a string. This is a bonus for fast prototyping
Perl scalars can do this easily, and perl operators know how to manipulate data automagically, inferred from the type of data you assign to a scalar, without qualification.
Although it is quite old now, there aren't many compilers that fully support the C++ standard. I know of Kai's compiler as the only one that currently support the full standard on linux.
Hence there is still a need for C if you need portability across platforms and compilers. C++ doesn't offer cross-compiler portability on a meaningful scale just yet.
France is a classic example. The government has their hand in numerous large enterprises, which the taxpayers are propping up. Look at the high ranking officials in government and business - they're typically the same people moving back and forth.
Europe's "third way" is a mess - the euro is in the tank...only reinforcing the American model. The Brits were right to stay out of the EU - what a disaster.
California taxes and wages have almost always been among the highest in the nation. Its never been the cheapest place to set up shop - in fact, quite the opposite.
If companies have bothered to move after being taxed at the highest state rates in the nation, they won't move for this.
1. Time savings. To most of us, our time is worth more than the $5 shipping charge.
2. Selection. There isn't any single physical store that can match Aamzon's selection. If you want an exhaustive selection, online is the only way to go.
3. Intelligence. No physical store can offer you smart recommendations, reviews, ratings, etc. Once again, I point to Amazon - as a longtime user of their site, I am amazed at how useful their recommendations are. I have purchased at least ten books just on the basis of their recommendations. Can the high school student down at Jimmy's books be this smart about my personal shopping habits?
4. Bulk shopping. As anyone who shops online a lot will tell you, the only way to avoid getting killed on shipping is to aggregate orders. Order ten books at once instead of ten orders of one book.
Where is the flamebait here? I'm a big a fan of ecommerce as anyone, but the poster makes valid points, all of which have been raised before.
One more shining example of the tyranny of/. group-thought rearing its ugly head - if you disagree with it, fine, but to denigrate as "flamebait" simply illustrates how collective retardation that has become/.
This book provides valuable commentary on why the good things in unix are good, and why you should repeat these practices. Its a quick read - you can probably read the whole thing on one transcontinental flight. Highly recommended. Order it here
If your book serves a worthwhile purpose, it will be bought. If it doesn't sell, well, there's your answer.
Sorry, but my money means as much to me as your does to you - I'm not interested in creating a charitable fund to subsidize the production of a half-decent book. I've read parts of this book and its not one I would recommend or buy again.
I think the market has already passed judgement on this publication.
While the AOL-TW deal looks to create a behemoth which may very well dominate huge swaths of the mediaspace, there is also a huge opportunity for failure, which the market is much better at sorting out than a regulatory group.
First things first - although AOL officially "bought" TW, look to see Gerald Levin soon running the show. AOL has already locked up the ISP business - they really don't need to focus a great deal of attention on that - what they do need to focus on, is the penetration of the TW media properties into the AOL network space to enhance both. Doing this will take a media manager, not a ISP manager. This is where Levin fits in, with Pittman taking over more of the operational issues. Look for Case to become a Jack Welch-like elder stateman of the corporation.
Anyway, AOL shareholders were, in the past, pretty much assured of 15% growth per anum, and of course that is history now given the huge market cap of the combined company. This will turn away investors. Secondly, many of TW's media properties are failing - CNN is sagging, and most of the other properties have never really "gotten" the web. Thirdly, the whole thing is an entangled mess of fiefdoms, regimes, turfs and egos. The practices and attitudes of these two companies are certainly not alike (although AOL will most likely become "Time-Warnarized" soon enough).
What I am trying to point out is that there are many reasons why this can fail - it is by no means a sure thing. A behemoth can either be a steamroller or a dinosaur. Let the market decide.
It would be nice to see a highly respected author take over the series from Mr. Stevens and coninue pumping out new editions - these texts are too important not to be updated.
I'm not sure what the protocol is for creating new editions of a book by a deceased author, but I would really like to see these books stay the definitive texts in their fields.
I see huge amounts of money being invested in linux in 2000, but I can't seem to point at any single thing that has been accomplished. Please someone point at the tangible output of all this money so far, I'd love to be proven wrong.
Napster was just too easy a target. Regardless of the rightness of it all, Napster provided a single convenient target for litigation.
The sooner we get to true distributed file sharing (freenet - just try shutting it down!), the better. Napster will hold an interesting place in the history of media, but I think thats going to be the extent of its legacy.
But you have to remember that a great deal of the world still has to pay a lot of money to get on the internet.
This will change - it has to change. And yes, the European model for charging for online access will certainly be dead and buried within two years - the cracks in this strategy are already obvious.
Bandwith rates wil normalize internationally - the Euro model of nationalized monopolies controlling phone access with metered rates is basically dead already. To maintain will be to drive business away in droves.
but I do think they don't like the idea of typing up highly confedential
material over a WEBplication.
Ever sent your credit card over the web? If its secure enough for this, I'm sure its good enough for your love letters. Frankly, I find that people who cling to these archiac attitudes are the people who know the least about encryption technology (this isn't a personal swipe, just an observed trend).
Truth: VA has millions in the bank. It made this money on the most succesful IPO _ever_
Partially true - they had the largest percentage gain, although it was not the "larget" IPO ever in terms of generating the most cash - I think that distinction belongs to ATT wireless (not sure thought).
CD-ROM software will not die as long as...
- People and businesses want to have ownership of what they buy.
I'm not doubting that CDROMs will still be burned, but the network will be the de facto way to distribute software. How many linux users wait to get a CDROM version of an RPMs they want? Virtually none.
- Wide area network speeds do not justify running some apps from the internet as opposed to your local hard drive.
What hard drive? Seriously - a little flash memory is all you will need. Getting rid of hard dirves is required for devices to be rugged enough for real mobile use. Your palm pilot or cell phone is the model that will be followed - flash memory is going to get huge, fast. Intel knows this.
- People who value security will not let this happen.
If you value your credit card number to the network, what else is there? I think people do trust security products and secure network protocols.
Its amazing how many/.'s can't seem to escape the mindset of the desktop OS and applications based on it.
Desktop OSs and computing platforms are fading into the network - within five years it really won't matter that much what platform you are using as long as it has a good browser and is fairly secure and stable.
Most of the applications you look at today that you can't possibly think of as networked, will be. Oracle will seel database storage as a service. You will use Excel through your browser, and AutoCAD and Seibel and anything else - believe it. This stuff is going to get smart - smart enough to play nice with your desktop, cellphone, and wristwatch.
Its all going to talk to each other and mesh around userids, not platforms - companies that build webs of apps around common userids are going to be in control - think AOL and Yahoo, and not IBM and MS
The companies that get networking and devices are going to reap the profits. CDROM-based software is DEAD!
IBM controlled PC hardware markets for only a few years, until people realized that Wintel was the true controlling party(s), and Compaq started building better hardware faster and cheaper.
Microsoft established control of the PC software market fairly early, and I don't think there was ever a real solid challenge from IBM in this respect.
I would have given your argument more credit if you discussed IBM's dominance in computing before the PC - post PC, IBM's control eroded rapidly.
If anything, he discounted the idea that more Linux users makes Linux more secure than OpenBSD.
Yet no distribution of linux is as secure as OpenBSD. Your entire line of reasoning is specious, and you conclusion is unwarranted.
Theo is correct. Security analysis is difficult - even most experienced programmers have no idea how to properly apply security in their code. "More eyes" in this case are largely irrelevant and maybe even detrimental if they don't know what they are doing.
In any case, it doesn't appear that the linux community has mustered "more eyes" than the OpenBSD team, and your presumption with regards to this is largely naive.
Will we stillbe faced with the current decision - go with the flow and deal with crap (windows), or pioneer into better worlds but live without almost all the useful applications wee want (linux,bsd)??
Operating systems have an incredible half-life. NT is already a decade old or so if I am not mistaken. We will definitely still be kicking around Win2k, linux, and OSX in 2010.
I'd really like to see a huge advance in non-volatile storage, particularly something that is not fragile, very very small, and has much faster data transfer rates than hard disks. Admittedly, market trends make this unlikely by 2010.
Advogato has become popular. Very popular. The chance of a new user getting others to read their posts is fairly slim at this point, unless you want to spend most of your time creating posts in a hope of garnering readers through sheer volume. Even then, what is the motivation for the already-accredited members to read your post? It may be a meritocracy, but it doesn't solve the motivation problem.
Advoagto favors early members - look at the discussions and you'll see the same people doing all the posting. The early folks could handle reading each other's posts and crediting accordingly. Now that there are so many users, what is the motivation for accredited users to read new posts and accredit all the new users?
Advogato simply makes the process of being heard and participating altogether too exhausting. Slashdot may have its weenies (me among them), but most of the good posters here wouldn't have the patience to jump through the advogato hoops.
Slashdot Mirror
More realistic is a lifelong cycle of learning and retraining that better serves radically evolving fields.
As for hackers who skip college - lets face it - very little you do in college is going to make you a better programmer as far as industry is concerned (not many of us spend time reimplementing sorting algorithms) - programming is still an art, and mastery of the arts is gained through practice.
This malarky about keeping wages low is the most laughable argument I've ever heard - where I work, most H1-B holders make more than the US programmers, and all are paid $70k at a minimum - no one is living on Ramen in this biz folks.
Its pretty simple - if there is no shortage, why are Monster.com and Dice.com filled with unfilled posts? Either the older tech employees aren't interested in taking these jobs, or they aren't qualified. Either way, we need to go outside the US to fill these positions.
Oh, and before you piss all over Indians and other immigrants, remember that these folks are running half the silicon valley comapnies now - they aren't just at the bottom rung. Jobs for Americans (or whoever else is qualified) are being created by these people you are naively pissing all over.
There is a reason perl does this - it allows you to have different types of variables in the same namespace.
@t
and
$t
can be placed beside each other in a perl program - one is an array, one is a scalar, although they have the same name. Look up perl's type globs to see why you would want to do this. It is occasionally very useful and powerful.
And you can assign an integer to the same variable which until then contained a string. This is a bonus for fast prototyping
Perl scalars can do this easily, and perl operators know how to manipulate data automagically, inferred from the type of data you assign to a scalar, without qualification.
Hence there is still a need for C if you need portability across platforms and compilers. C++ doesn't offer cross-compiler portability on a meaningful scale just yet.
Its pretty obvious that no one really knows yet what perl6 is going to be.
Some factions are gunning for radical changes, others (notably Tom Christiansen) seem to be holding a conservative stance.
One thig is certain - perl6 is not coming in any form anytime soon. Try 2002.
Europe's "third way" is a mess - the euro is in the tank...only reinforcing the American model. The Brits were right to stay out of the EU - what a disaster.
If companies have bothered to move after being taxed at the highest state rates in the nation, they won't move for this.
California has the highest state taxes in the country, for a long time. It also has the most prosperous enconomy in the world.
1. Time savings. To most of us, our time is worth more than the $5 shipping charge.
2. Selection. There isn't any single physical store that can match Aamzon's selection. If you want an exhaustive selection, online is the only way to go.
3. Intelligence. No physical store can offer you smart recommendations, reviews, ratings, etc. Once again, I point to Amazon - as a longtime user of their site, I am amazed at how useful their recommendations are. I have purchased at least ten books just on the basis of their recommendations. Can the high school student down at Jimmy's books be this smart about my personal shopping habits? 4. Bulk shopping. As anyone who shops online a lot will tell you, the only way to avoid getting killed on shipping is to aggregate orders. Order ten books at once instead of ten orders of one book.
One more shining example of the tyranny of /. group-thought rearing its ugly head - if you disagree with it, fine, but to denigrate as "flamebait" simply illustrates how collective retardation that has become /.
This book provides valuable commentary on why the good things in unix are good, and why you should repeat these practices. Its a quick read - you can probably read the whole thing on one transcontinental flight. Highly recommended. Order it here
Sorry, but my money means as much to me as your does to you - I'm not interested in creating a charitable fund to subsidize the production of a half-decent book. I've read parts of this book and its not one I would recommend or buy again.
I think the market has already passed judgement on this publication.
First things first - although AOL officially "bought" TW, look to see Gerald Levin soon running the show. AOL has already locked up the ISP business - they really don't need to focus a great deal of attention on that - what they do need to focus on, is the penetration of the TW media properties into the AOL network space to enhance both. Doing this will take a media manager, not a ISP manager. This is where Levin fits in, with Pittman taking over more of the operational issues. Look for Case to become a Jack Welch-like elder stateman of the corporation.
Anyway, AOL shareholders were, in the past, pretty much assured of 15% growth per anum, and of course that is history now given the huge market cap of the combined company. This will turn away investors. Secondly, many of TW's media properties are failing - CNN is sagging, and most of the other properties have never really "gotten" the web. Thirdly, the whole thing is an entangled mess of fiefdoms, regimes, turfs and egos. The practices and attitudes of these two companies are certainly not alike (although AOL will most likely become "Time-Warnarized" soon enough).
What I am trying to point out is that there are many reasons why this can fail - it is by no means a sure thing. A behemoth can either be a steamroller or a dinosaur. Let the market decide.
I'm not sure what the protocol is for creating new editions of a book by a deceased author, but I would really like to see these books stay the definitive texts in their fields.
I see huge amounts of money being invested in linux in 2000, but I can't seem to point at any single thing that has been accomplished. Please someone point at the tangible output of all this money so far, I'd love to be proven wrong.
The sooner we get to true distributed file sharing (freenet - just try shutting it down!), the better. Napster will hold an interesting place in the history of media, but I think thats going to be the extent of its legacy.
This will change - it has to change. And yes, the European model for charging for online access will certainly be dead and buried within two years - the cracks in this strategy are already obvious.
Bandwith rates wil normalize internationally - the Euro model of nationalized monopolies controlling phone access with metered rates is basically dead already. To maintain will be to drive business away in droves.
but I do think they don't like the idea of typing up highly confedential material over a WEBplication.
Ever sent your credit card over the web? If its secure enough for this, I'm sure its good enough for your love letters. Frankly, I find that people who cling to these archiac attitudes are the people who know the least about encryption technology (this isn't a personal swipe, just an observed trend).
Partially true - they had the largest percentage gain, although it was not the "larget" IPO ever in terms of generating the most cash - I think that distinction belongs to ATT wireless (not sure thought).
More on LNUX finance's can be seen here.
I'm not doubting that CDROMs will still be burned, but the network will be the de facto way to distribute software. How many linux users wait to get a CDROM version of an RPMs they want? Virtually none.
- Wide area network speeds do not justify running some apps from the internet as opposed to your local hard drive.
What hard drive? Seriously - a little flash memory is all you will need. Getting rid of hard dirves is required for devices to be rugged enough for real mobile use. Your palm pilot or cell phone is the model that will be followed - flash memory is going to get huge, fast. Intel knows this.
- People who value security will not let this happen.
If you value your credit card number to the network, what else is there? I think people do trust security products and secure network protocols.
Desktop OSs and computing platforms are fading into the network - within five years it really won't matter that much what platform you are using as long as it has a good browser and is fairly secure and stable.
Most of the applications you look at today that you can't possibly think of as networked, will be. Oracle will seel database storage as a service. You will use Excel through your browser, and AutoCAD and Seibel and anything else - believe it. This stuff is going to get smart - smart enough to play nice with your desktop, cellphone, and wristwatch.
Its all going to talk to each other and mesh around userids, not platforms - companies that build webs of apps around common userids are going to be in control - think AOL and Yahoo, and not IBM and MS
The companies that get networking and devices are going to reap the profits. CDROM-based software is DEAD!
Microsoft established control of the PC software market fairly early, and I don't think there was ever a real solid challenge from IBM in this respect.
I would have given your argument more credit if you discussed IBM's dominance in computing before the PC - post PC, IBM's control eroded rapidly.
Yet no distribution of linux is as secure as OpenBSD. Your entire line of reasoning is specious, and you conclusion is unwarranted.
Theo is correct. Security analysis is difficult - even most experienced programmers have no idea how to properly apply security in their code. "More eyes" in this case are largely irrelevant and maybe even detrimental if they don't know what they are doing.
In any case, it doesn't appear that the linux community has mustered "more eyes" than the OpenBSD team, and your presumption with regards to this is largely naive.
Operating systems have an incredible half-life. NT is already a decade old or so if I am not mistaken. We will definitely still be kicking around Win2k, linux, and OSX in 2010.
I'd really like to see a huge advance in non-volatile storage, particularly something that is not fragile, very very small, and has much faster data transfer rates than hard disks. Admittedly, market trends make this unlikely by 2010.
Advoagto favors early members - look at the discussions and you'll see the same people doing all the posting. The early folks could handle reading each other's posts and crediting accordingly. Now that there are so many users, what is the motivation for accredited users to read new posts and accredit all the new users?
Advogato simply makes the process of being heard and participating altogether too exhausting. Slashdot may have its weenies (me among them), but most of the good posters here wouldn't have the patience to jump through the advogato hoops.