It's like if your car wasn't acting right, and you took it to a mechanic, and he told you, "just read the fucking manual you idiot." Of course, that doesn't happen, because most-if-not-all mechanics aren't so arrogant they think everyone should know how to fix their own car.
You forgot the clause "for free" in there.
I forgot nothing. As a mechanic, I work on my friends and families cars for free all the time, but I don't see that as an excuse to be an arrogant prick nor half-ass my work.
Could you imagine if, say, aerospace engineers didn't document their work?
I think it's a poor simile. Software developers for most projects are asked to make revisions at a pace far faster than those for airplanes. This leads to various shortcuts. If documentation and testing were really that important for software, then the pace of new development would go way down and/or the # of person-hours involved in each change would go way up.
Perhaps a better simile would be what happens with mission-critical software. I suspect (but don't know) that the documentation is a lot better.
Sounds like an excuse for laziness to me. If you've got time to revise the code, you've got time to revise the documentation.
Now, am I saying that this is 100% the developer's fault? Not always, I accept that secondary and tertiary factors (such as dealing with a PHB who doesn't understand that good work takes time) can affect workflow.
But we're not talking about hard-deadline work for your boss, we're talking about FOSS. So I dunno.
Your scenario only seems ridiculous because car companies don't share all their mechanical drawings. It would not be unreasonable to be expected to look up the torque in the mechanical schematics if that information was readily available to you.
Which is my point - the info for torque specs exists because the engineers who designed the car properly documented their work (and BTW, yes, the torque specs for pretty much every non-exotic car is readily available with either a Google search or purchase of a vehicle-specific repair manual).
You don't expect the manual for a computer motherboard to list the resistor values of every resistor on the motherboard, do you?
No, but I expect the guy who designed it to have the values written down somewhere accessible to other people working on building the same piece of hardware.
In essence, what I'm saying boils down to, "Coders aren't engineers, because they don't document their work."
It's like if your car wasn't acting right, and you took it to a mechanic, and he told you, "just read the fucking manual you idiot." Of course, that doesn't happen, because most-if-not-all mechanics aren't so arrogant they think everyone should know how to fix their own car.
Take it to the next step: Mechanics have realized that the benefit of others not knowing how to fix cars is that Mechanics have a skill for which they can ask to be paid. They can be as arrogant as they want about their superior car knowledge, as long as they don't tick off the paying customers. The programmer who has thrown his incomplete hack on a server and called it FOSS is not getting paid, and sees no reason to put in any "extra" effort.
That's like saying if you have a friend who's a mechanic, and he, say, changes your spark plugs for free, he "sees no reason" to put the plug wires back on, since that would be "extra effort."
Funny you put it that way, since there seem to be a lot of people who "work" on a FOSS project as resume fluff. Ignoring the documentation because it's "extra effort" would, to me, tell a potential employer that you're lazy and tend to half-ass your projects.
The fact of the matter is the majority of programmers are assholes that have no business operating in normal society.
Well OK, I'll add the caveat of, "the majority of programmers I've asked for help are assholes..."
It's like if your car wasn't acting right, and you took it to a mechanic, and he told you, "just read the fucking manual you idiot." Of course, that doesn't happen, because most-if-not-all mechanics aren't so arrogant they think everyone should know how to fix their own car.
So, in light of this, I figured out an easy, sure-fire way to screw pretty much anyone with a Gmail account over: using a library computer, copy of Tails, and throwaway email, send some known CP to anyone you don't like's Gmail account, then call Google and tell them you suspect the person has it. Done deal.
Let me guess your next question: How do you get the CP without getting caught yourself? Well, therein lies my point - what social group is expected to and known to have access to tons of that garbage?
If you guessed "Law Enforcement," you win a cookie.
'Fruit of the poisoned tree' is an appropriate reference here, I think.
How is this any different from you going to the police right now and saying you watched your neighbour murder someone?
Really? You don't see how it's different?
C'mon, really? It's pretty obvious.
A tip off isn't singly admissible court evidence, it only spurs an investigation.
So, if I was your landlord, you pissed me off, and I "tipped off" your local police - claiming that you have CP on your hard drive, drugs hidden in your walls, and stolen movies hidden inside your bed - you'd think it perfectly reasonable for the cops to show up to your house, steal all your computers, tear out your drywall, and shred your mattress? Or would you expect there to be a bit more reliable evidence than the word of some guy you have a less-than-amicable relationship with?
I'm sure you'll say, "Oh, but I don't have anything like that in my house, so I don't need to worry," right? Well, as your landlord, I've got access to your home anytime, and I already mentioned that you pissed me off enough to file a false police report, right? So what's to stop me from stashing some "evidence" in your home while you're away?
Someone with access to information forwarded information to police, police investigated using all the correct legal channels and found hard incriminating evidence and busted the guy.
You assume they went through the proper channels, but you don't know for sure, do you?
This is exactly how a civilised society should work. You don't like it, don't send information unencrypted through the internet passing through the hands of others.
No, that's how a police state should work. A "civilized society" is a false premise, as it's a subjective term reliant on the subject using it's personal opinion. See, to me, a "civilized society" is one where people are free, not under the ever-watchful eye of the state, and are only treated like criminals after they've been caught, tried, and convicted of a crime. FYI, that's not a new concept, it's the basis of the foundation of the American government, FWIW.
I know exactly NOBODY who can in this economy get fresh out of college and expect more than a temp job, payment optional.
Are any of them accountants with an additional Bachelor's in Economics, who graduated from a globally-respected university business program in the top 2% of their class?
as soon as you say bomb, you hit "public safety" exceptions to a lot of stuff, which means your analogy is less parallel than you may think.
Well, considering how many computers involved in "public safety" run some variant of Windows... perhaps it's more parallel than you realize.
Mind you I'm playing Devil's Advocate at this point, as I've already conceded that it's better to err on the side of less government power rather than more.
I'm only getting into my 30's myself, but working at that plant was the kind of back-breaking nastiness (combined with all the chemicals involved in the process) that destroys your body in a hurry. Back then I loved it, thought of it as getting paid to work out 16 hours a day, but the "lifers," who would be there until retirement, all discouraged me from pursuing a career there, namely because they knew what that place does to a person's health.
Still, there's a part of me that looks back on those days, stuffing 80 lb iron and brass molds into a 1200 degree blast furnace by hand, with a nostalgic fondness. Probably the dumb part.
I don't get what the article's author is thinking, exactly. There have been dozens upon dozens of articles written about how millennials aren't doing things - they aren't buying cars (except cheap used ones), they aren't buying houses, they aren't getting married. As someone who is under 30 and technically a millennial, I can attest to this. I know exactly zero people under the age of thirty who have jobs that pay $20 or more an hour - the highest I've seen is $17.50, for a girl who works one cube over from me.
From 18 to 21, I had a job starting out at $18/hr base, which was $23.75/hr base when I left. All the overtime you could eat, and triple pay for the first 8 hours on holidays.
Where, you may ask? Why, in an industrial manufacturing facility (specifically, a glass factory making bottles for one of the largest booze corporations in the world) of course! In fact, I'd still be there if I hadn't fallen for the "you won't make good money if you don't go to college" myth.
Post-college education, I've been lucky to break $15/hr. Too bad my body can no longer handle that kind of work, or I'd be back at "the plant" in a heartbeat.
Sure it takes the customer a longer time, but that's just more time for them to look at impulse buy and sell their children more candy at the checkout.
Are self-service checkouts surrounded by impulse-buying items in the US?
Dude, pretty much every checkout has a crapload of impulse-buy crap in the US, self-service or otherwise.
For me, there isn't really such a thing as a self-checkout, since my trips to the store are either A) major grocery runs, where I have way too much crap to even go to the self-serve machine, or B) buying booze and/or tobacco, which means I've got to talk to the attendant and show my ID anyway.
But I do like not having to worry about some teenaged idiot putting my bread, eggs, and cleaning chemicals in the same bag.
Good thing you're not solving real problems. What. A. Fucking. Waste.
It just proves that a carbon tax cannot come soon enough.
Too bad it's a total scam (which we knew about way back in 2009, BTW):
The new carbon credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.
Here's how it works: If [Cap and Trade] passes, there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy "allocations" or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billion worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.
The feature of this plan that has special appeal to speculators is that the "cap" on carbon will be continually lowered by the government, which means that carbon credits will become more and more scarce with each passing year. Which means that this is a brand new commodities market where the main commodity to be traded is guaranteed to rise in price over time. The volume of this new market will be upwards of a trillion dollars annually; for comparison's sake, the annual combined revenues of all electricity suppliers in the U.S. total $320 billion.
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No, no. I qualified my statements, read again. Namely the first and last sentences in the post.
I've always dug metal fabrication myself. My welds usually look like warty crap.
It's like if your car wasn't acting right, and you took it to a mechanic, and he told you, "just read the fucking manual you idiot." Of course, that doesn't happen, because most-if-not-all mechanics aren't so arrogant they think everyone should know how to fix their own car.
You forgot the clause "for free" in there.
I forgot nothing. As a mechanic, I work on my friends and families cars for free all the time, but I don't see that as an excuse to be an arrogant prick nor half-ass my work.
I think it's a poor simile. Software developers for most projects are asked to make revisions at a pace far faster than those for airplanes. This leads to various shortcuts. If documentation and testing were really that important for software, then the pace of new development would go way down and/or the # of person-hours involved in each change would go way up.
Perhaps a better simile would be what happens with mission-critical software. I suspect (but don't know) that the documentation is a lot better.
Sounds like an excuse for laziness to me. If you've got time to revise the code, you've got time to revise the documentation.
Now, am I saying that this is 100% the developer's fault? Not always, I accept that secondary and tertiary factors (such as dealing with a PHB who doesn't understand that good work takes time) can affect workflow.
But we're not talking about hard-deadline work for your boss, we're talking about FOSS. So I dunno.
In case you were wondering:
Torque specs for 2009 Mazda 3 head bolts:
Install new cylinder head bolts and torque in 2–3 steps, in sequence as follows:
Step 1: Tighten the bolts in sequence to 27–97 inch lbs. (3–11 Nm).
Step 2: Tighten the bolts in sequence to 9.5–12.5 ft. lbs. (13–17 Nm).
Step 3: Tighten the bolts in sequence to 32–34.5 ft. lbs. (43–47 Nm).
Step 4: Paint a mark on the edge of each cylinder head bolt to use as a reference. Turn each bolt, in sequence, 85–92 degrees.
Step 5: Turn each bolt, in sequence, 85–92 degrees.
Straight out of the Chilton's manual (available at any auto parts dealer), but I found it on a forum. The info is there.
Your scenario only seems ridiculous because car companies don't share all their mechanical drawings. It would not be unreasonable to be expected to look up the torque in the mechanical schematics if that information was readily available to you.
Which is my point - the info for torque specs exists because the engineers who designed the car properly documented their work (and BTW, yes, the torque specs for pretty much every non-exotic car is readily available with either a Google search or purchase of a vehicle-specific repair manual).
You don't expect the manual for a computer motherboard to list the resistor values of every resistor on the motherboard, do you?
No, but I expect the guy who designed it to have the values written down somewhere accessible to other people working on building the same piece of hardware.
In essence, what I'm saying boils down to, "Coders aren't engineers, because they don't document their work."
And I stand by that.
It's like if your car wasn't acting right, and you took it to a mechanic, and he told you, "just read the fucking manual you idiot." Of course, that doesn't happen, because most-if-not-all mechanics aren't so arrogant they think everyone should know how to fix their own car.
Take it to the next step: Mechanics have realized that the benefit of others not knowing how to fix cars is that Mechanics have a skill for which they can ask to be paid. They can be as arrogant as they want about their superior car knowledge, as long as they don't tick off the paying customers. The programmer who has thrown his incomplete hack on a server and called it FOSS is not getting paid, and sees no reason to put in any "extra" effort.
That's like saying if you have a friend who's a mechanic, and he, say, changes your spark plugs for free, he "sees no reason" to put the plug wires back on, since that would be "extra effort."
Funny you put it that way, since there seem to be a lot of people who "work" on a FOSS project as resume fluff. Ignoring the documentation because it's "extra effort" would, to me, tell a potential employer that you're lazy and tend to half-ass your projects.
... and this is why the term "software engineer" is a bit of a misnomer.
Could you imagine if, say, aerospace engineers didn't document their work? Automotive engineers? I can hear the shop talk now:
"Hey, Jim, what's the recommended torque for head bolts on an '09 Madza 3?"
"What's the manual say?"
"Nothing, they didn't document that part."
Ergo, coders who fail to document are anything but engineers, cocky attitudes aside.
Yes, this, especially:
The fact of the matter is the majority of programmers are assholes that have no business operating in normal society.
Well OK, I'll add the caveat of, "the majority of programmers I've asked for help are assholes..."
It's like if your car wasn't acting right, and you took it to a mechanic, and he told you, "just read the fucking manual you idiot." Of course, that doesn't happen, because most-if-not-all mechanics aren't so arrogant they think everyone should know how to fix their own car.
Europe has very strict laws which everyone ignores requiring recycling of electronic waste.
Ah, so just like battery recycling in the US. Brilliant.
No idea why, since they don't produce anything useful
Who does anymore? Coders?
Yea, because 50,000 Flappy Bird/Clash of Clans/[insert this weeks fad software here] apps are totally advancing society.
So, in light of this, I figured out an easy, sure-fire way to screw pretty much anyone with a Gmail account over: using a library computer, copy of Tails, and throwaway email, send some known CP to anyone you don't like's Gmail account, then call Google and tell them you suspect the person has it. Done deal.
Let me guess your next question: How do you get the CP without getting caught yourself? Well, therein lies my point - what social group is expected to and known to have access to tons of that garbage?
If you guessed "Law Enforcement," you win a cookie.
'Fruit of the poisoned tree' is an appropriate reference here, I think.
How is this any different from you going to the police right now and saying you watched your neighbour murder someone?
Really? You don't see how it's different?
C'mon, really? It's pretty obvious.
A tip off isn't singly admissible court evidence, it only spurs an investigation.
So, if I was your landlord, you pissed me off, and I "tipped off" your local police - claiming that you have CP on your hard drive, drugs hidden in your walls, and stolen movies hidden inside your bed - you'd think it perfectly reasonable for the cops to show up to your house, steal all your computers, tear out your drywall, and shred your mattress? Or would you expect there to be a bit more reliable evidence than the word of some guy you have a less-than-amicable relationship with?
I'm sure you'll say, "Oh, but I don't have anything like that in my house, so I don't need to worry," right? Well, as your landlord, I've got access to your home anytime, and I already mentioned that you pissed me off enough to file a false police report, right? So what's to stop me from stashing some "evidence" in your home while you're away?
Someone with access to information forwarded information to police, police investigated using all the correct legal channels and found hard incriminating evidence and busted the guy.
You assume they went through the proper channels, but you don't know for sure, do you?
This is exactly how a civilised society should work. You don't like it, don't send information unencrypted through the internet passing through the hands of others.
No, that's how a police state should work. A "civilized society" is a false premise, as it's a subjective term reliant on the subject using it's personal opinion. See, to me, a "civilized society" is one where people are free, not under the ever-watchful eye of the state, and are only treated like criminals after they've been caught, tried, and convicted of a crime. FYI, that's not a new concept, it's the basis of the foundation of the American government, FWIW.
What is this? A well thought out comment that takes into consideration the relationships between different nations?
Get that crap out of here, this is Slashdot! If you can't respond with a knee-jerk reaction or sci-fi based reference, you're doing it wrong!
When was that?
5 years ago.
I know exactly NOBODY who can in this economy get fresh out of college and expect more than a temp job, payment optional.
Are any of them accountants with an additional Bachelor's in Economics, who graduated from a globally-respected university business program in the top 2% of their class?
'Cuz that's how she did it.
as soon as you say bomb, you hit "public safety" exceptions to a lot of stuff, which means your analogy is less parallel than you may think.
Well, considering how many computers involved in "public safety" run some variant of Windows... perhaps it's more parallel than you realize.
Mind you I'm playing Devil's Advocate at this point, as I've already conceded that it's better to err on the side of less government power rather than more.
Which get recycled at such a high rate we've stopped mining them?
C'mon, man.
I'm only getting into my 30's myself, but working at that plant was the kind of back-breaking nastiness (combined with all the chemicals involved in the process) that destroys your body in a hurry. Back then I loved it, thought of it as getting paid to work out 16 hours a day, but the "lifers," who would be there until retirement, all discouraged me from pursuing a career there, namely because they knew what that place does to a person's health.
Still, there's a part of me that looks back on those days, stuffing 80 lb iron and brass molds into a 1200 degree blast furnace by hand, with a nostalgic fondness. Probably the dumb part.
The actual article says "soda bottle" rather than can... perhaps it was Dom rather than Tab...
>I know exactly zero people under the age of thirty who have jobs that pay $20 or more an hour
That is exactly how it has always been and it is likely to continue to be the case for those under 30.
Bullshit.
As I told OP, I was making over $20/hr when I was 20, and my wife has been making over $20/hr since she graduated college at the age of 25.
Maybe you and everyone you know just got the wrong education/jobs.
I don't get what the article's author is thinking, exactly. There have been dozens upon dozens of articles written about how millennials aren't doing things - they aren't buying cars (except cheap used ones), they aren't buying houses, they aren't getting married. As someone who is under 30 and technically a millennial, I can attest to this. I know exactly zero people under the age of thirty who have jobs that pay $20 or more an hour - the highest I've seen is $17.50, for a girl who works one cube over from me.
From 18 to 21, I had a job starting out at $18/hr base, which was $23.75/hr base when I left. All the overtime you could eat, and triple pay for the first 8 hours on holidays.
Where, you may ask? Why, in an industrial manufacturing facility (specifically, a glass factory making bottles for one of the largest booze corporations in the world) of course! In fact, I'd still be there if I hadn't fallen for the "you won't make good money if you don't go to college" myth.
Post-college education, I've been lucky to break $15/hr. Too bad my body can no longer handle that kind of work, or I'd be back at "the plant" in a heartbeat.
Are self-service checkouts surrounded by impulse-buying items in the US?
Dude, pretty much every checkout has a crapload of impulse-buy crap in the US, self-service or otherwise.
For me, there isn't really such a thing as a self-checkout, since my trips to the store are either A) major grocery runs, where I have way too much crap to even go to the self-serve machine, or B) buying booze and/or tobacco, which means I've got to talk to the attendant and show my ID anyway.
But I do like not having to worry about some teenaged idiot putting my bread, eggs, and cleaning chemicals in the same bag.
Except you can't really power most precious metal mines with solar or wind
Nor can you build a datacenter without a couple metric shit-tonnes of rare earth minerals.
i personally think that the ones that don't are just unwilling to gamble on an unstable 'currency'
Or they know it's yet another doomed-to-fail commodities market that favors the big players over everyone else.
Good thing you're not solving real problems. What. A. Fucking. Waste.
It just proves that a carbon tax cannot come soon enough.
Too bad it's a total scam (which we knew about way back in 2009, BTW):
Read the whole piece here