This is probably verging on "off-topic", but I'll take the hit...
You're right. HR people and recruiters, in my experience, don't always get it. Some do though. But there's just not a lot of high-paying professions that naturally spring out of a childhood hobby, so I can see the logic behind their skepticism. Hell, maybe they're envious. Just act sincere and don't be a dink. Those people can make or break your first few placements or contracts. After that, your reputation will speak for itself. Some industries within software seem more or less respectful of the hacker-grown-up concept. Games has traditionally been a receptive place to start (and end!), though even that is changing. There are others. Be persistent. Talk to employees. Talk to employees. Talk to employees. That will give you a good read of their employers. It looks like you're already doing short-term contract work, and that's probably a really good idea for a while. Maybe forever.
Re/ the CS degree thing... I personally did one not to increase my job prospects, but because I was interested in it anyways and wanted to get some structure under my belt. I think a degree can accelerate otherwise pretty esoteric or non-intuitive stuff to a hacker (examples for me were compiler design, OS design, non-imperative/procedural languages, and yes, "software engineering" with all its life-cycles, estimations, metrics, paradigms, etc.) I think a degree in CS is a good thing, all else equal. Unfortunately, all else is not always equal.
Here's the opinion of an employer and a passionate software developer...
You're giving really lousy advice to a software person. When I interview developers, one of the best filtering criteria I've found for getting hard-working, passionate, motivated developers is to ask them what kind of projects they've got going in their spare time. I'm not looking for conflicts. I want to hear about something. I'd rather not hire the person that says "software is my 9-5 job; I don't dabble at home". I enjoy seeing someone's eyes light up and get all excited telling me details of some mad-scientist project they're brewing up (that will probably never be completed), etc. Hell, tell me about side projects that failed. What did you learn? That's the kind of employee I want. He's into tech. He loves it. He lives it. He'd be doing it anyways, even if it wasn't his profession. If the work I give him is boring from time to time, he doesn't feel like his job is the only outlet he's allowed for tech challenges or expression.
The most significant risk I've come across: People will work on their own projects on my time. Very possible. And yes, I've received legal and management advice that I complicate the employment relationship by hiring this type of person. That advice should be respected. In the end, it's a calculated risk. What's my upside as an employer? I get a hard-core developer that (hopefully) respects his employer for not stifling him. I've increased the chance that he's happy on the job. He may go so far as to refer his colleagues and friends. Gimme.
In the end, software development has a lot to do with growing, changing, techniques, lateral thinking, staying sharp. I can't offer challenges to everyone I hire on all those fronts. So I'm not going to stand in their way if they do it on the side. Issues can and have come up. But it's a net positive, so far.
I, L. Ron Hubbard, swear to pay the holder of this contract twenty dollars if I cannot start a religion with a completely ficticious basis within ten years. Signed, L. Ron Hubbard
All bets should be specified that way... with a duration but no starting date!
Legal advice is, of course, always a good idea. But I think it's pretty clear... You may interpret it from the horse's mouth, if you like: Goverment of Canada Copyright Board backgrounder
(see point 2, specifically) and allowance for private-use copying.
In fact if this were true I suspect record companies here in the states (I knwo how canadians hate it when refer to the sates as "america") will immediately stop shipping releases to Canada.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? Well, it's true and it's been true for a few years now. Sure, manufacturers and citizens here complain about the small taxes now applied to blank CD-Rs, MiniDiscs, etc. But no US record companies have stopped shipping to Canada.
does this mean that in 18 months we'll have scientists promising half-atom transistors?
If we can get a single atom acting like 1 transistor, perhaps the next step is to get a single atom acting like 2 transistors in some configuration. Then I think we could say we have half-atom transistors.
I'm a developer in Canada. Let's say I wanted to create a fantastic new P2P client that used the Gnutella protocol. Naturally, I'm concerned about liability. So is there a way I can construct my app that aligns itself with Canadian copyright law so that I'm relatively protected and Canadians using it would be within their rights also?
Here's some background on why Canada may be a better place to do create and use P2P apps than the USA...
In Canada, March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act came into force. Until then, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright. Part VIII legalizes one such activity: copying of sound recordings of musical works onto recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy.
Specifically, the Copyright Board says their ruling "does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else."
Now the way I read this, I could potentially create an app that allowed users to place their own music files that they've ripped and own themself into an "Owned" directory. This directory could be shared and downloaded from by others for personals use, as I interpret our law. If I downloaded something from someone else that I did not own myself, it would have to go into a "NotOwned" directory. These files would be legally usable by me for my own personal use, but could not be shared by me. If I created an app that functioned this way, would I seem to be protected in Canada? Naturally, I should take reasonable steps to warn or block non-Canadians.
Aren't they making a HUGE assumption here, that all the moths already in the wild are going to want to do it with a bunch of freaky glow-in-the-dark moths??
Ah, to be a moth...
Show of hands... How many male/.ers would do it with freaky glow-in-the-dark chicks? Ever been to a rave? Mmmmm.... freaky.
That's ironic, because I find portable game platforms more and more appealing as I get older. I just can't be bothered to go home and play a tethered console or PC game when the urge hits. But I can take my portables (Palm, Game Boy, phone, etc.) with me to the office, on business trips, etc.
I have less leisure time at home for games now than I did when I was a kid, but I love games almost as much. Bring on the portables!
I'm sure that you could even run the PalmOS on it if you wanted (I know for a fact that there are emulators for the PalmOS that run within CE but haven't heard about anyone re-flashing an I-paq with the PalmOS)...
LOL. Good luck finding a PalmOS image to flash into an iPaq!
Heheh. You could be right. Furthermore, if the court order is to "block any copyright songs" as the article says, Napster is in even better shape, since they don't have to block "copyrighted songs" -- only "copyright songs". I guess that means songs about copyright. You know... as in love songs, war songs, and copyright songs.
Aren't they already done? Since Napster doesn't store anything on it's servers...
Nope. You were the 5th post. Nice work, but maybe you should have waited to read the article...
"A federal judge gave the recording industry another victory Tuesday in its bid to control digital music, saying Napster Inc. has just 72 hours to block any copyright songs."
Deep desks are a crutch to avoid buying a real display (ie, flat panel).;-)
"Yes son, I remember the days when people needed desks deeper than 20 inches to fit a keyboard and display."
Back on topic... One thing I don't like about deep desks where the entire surface is a single height (like a sheet of plywood) is that the level my keyboard, hands, and forearms should be at is not generally the ideal height for a monitor or flat panel to sit on. If a desktop is height-adjustable, I find that if I lower it to allow my shoulders to relax (drop), leaving my forearms fairly parallel to the floor (good ergonomics in my opinion), then I prefer to place the monitor or flat panel on a somewhat raised platform. No big deal, but it's best if the monitor is big and light... (oh, there's that flat panel plug again!)
It doesn't make it illegal to make a copy of the CD's, but it at the same time doesn't say that the producer has to make it easy for you to make a copy.
Very true, but if I crack their protection scheme in the name of making a copy of a friend's CD for personal use, which the law here allows, does that mean I can tell the rest of the country how they can do the same thing? Source code? T-shirts? Songs and poetry? Hmmm. Shades of DeCSS?
There's an aspect of Canadian law that really:
1) makes me happy we have this law currently
2) will piss me off if technology like this takes off
In Canada, March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act came into force. Until then, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright. Part VIII legalizes one such activity: copying of sound recordings of musical works onto recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy.
Specifically, the Copyright Board says their ruling "does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else."
So to fufill the spirit of Canadian copyright law, I assume Macrovision's technology will continue to allow me to make copies of all my friends CDs for my own personal use (which the law allows).
Mother of god, a trillion electron volts thru a pair of sport sandals? That can't be good for my feet!
While I'm sure it kicks the ass of the tree-hugging Birkatron, I have to believe that something like the Nikatron will eventually replace it due to reduced, off-shore labour costs.
I'm going to post this here, not too off-topic I hope, since I see people speculating in this thread about the legality of a smaller "circle-of-friends" style sharing network. There's an aspect of Canadian law that might help Aimster survive in this (admittedly small) market up north here.
Here's the legal scoop in Canada.... On March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act came into force. Until then, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright. Part VIII legalizes one such activity: copying of sound recordings of musical works onto recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy.
Specifically, the Copyright Board says their ruling "does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else."
So call me naive, but with or without their "shield", does this ruling from three years ago not help Aimster (or even Napster-like entitites) a whole lot in Canada?
Thinking out loud here... If a CPU or board design can be expressed in a printer markup language under this scheme, then I believe it would be possible to translate that description into plain english. Or a suitably different reverse-engineered piece of hardware could be described this way. It could be expressed out loud on street corners in songs or poetry or t-shirts. (Just like what happened with DeCSS.) Only free speech would be used to distribute hardware. Great for spreading not only the word but the means of useful hardware to the masses.
Now, granted, these would be pretty screwed up songs. And pretty long! And I guess haiku is out of the question. But in theory, this could lead to free-speech-like implications that the hardware industry may not have had to deal with yet.
For those people (myself included) who are too lazy to interpret the specification and enter the code in yourself, you can find a C & C++ implementation here.
Don't listen to this guy! It's a trick! The NSA has planted this guy and the code. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Write your own implementation from the spec and you'll see the back-door, clear as day. Tricky buggers...
Okay, you make a reasonable argument that Mars is barren, but let's acknowledge that this can be consistent with what the NASA scientists are saying. They're saying that life was present on Mars in the distant past. Barren now? Possibly.
"That a small meteorite from Mars presumably contained large numbers of bacteria suggests that such bacteria were widespread on the surface of Mars"
"The team says these chains could have been formed only by living organisms, though those organisms are long since dead"
"The finding indicates that photosynthetic organisms, the source of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, must have been present and active on Mars 3.9 billion years ago."
So if life was widespread on Mars and now it's barren, that's pretty interesting in itself, right? How long was it around for? Was it doomed from the beginning?
Okay, so Napster's own servers will now be involved in each file transfer. Sound like a bottleneck? Not really. Remember, since they're proposing charging us for files we can't fully use, there's going to be like, what, 85 subscribers using the entire network? Their servers should be able to handle that, no problem!
This isn't a black-and-white issue, but here's how I see the relationship: It's just easier to create a fun game without worrying about graphics. I can make a lame game with good OR bad graphics by simply ignoring gameplay. It will have nothing going for it. But if I create some compelling gameplay, I'm guaranteed a fun game even if the graphics suck. Now, if I care to wrap it all up in apppropriate swirling, glowing, texture-mapped, alpha-blended, 120fps graphics, then it might very well be a really fun game. It might. But remember where we need to start.
So everybody just stop triple-buffering and mipmapping for a second ask yourselves some questions like:
I can't imagine being in a fight with somebody where we stand facing each other taking turns throwing punches and not being free to do something so simple as blocking.
I know what you mean, but consider that this is basically how a debate works. Similar to a court trial also. And those are classic, universal methods of "civilized" competition.
Slashdot Mirror
This is probably verging on "off-topic", but I'll take the hit...
You're right. HR people and recruiters, in my experience, don't always get it. Some do though. But there's just not a lot of high-paying professions that naturally spring out of a childhood hobby, so I can see the logic behind their skepticism. Hell, maybe they're envious. Just act sincere and don't be a dink. Those people can make or break your first few placements or contracts. After that, your reputation will speak for itself. Some industries within software seem more or less respectful of the hacker-grown-up concept. Games has traditionally been a receptive place to start (and end!), though even that is changing. There are others. Be persistent. Talk to employees. Talk to employees. Talk to employees. That will give you a good read of their employers. It looks like you're already doing short-term contract work, and that's probably a really good idea for a while. Maybe forever.
Re/ the CS degree thing... I personally did one not to increase my job prospects, but because I was interested in it anyways and wanted to get some structure under my belt. I think a degree can accelerate otherwise pretty esoteric or non-intuitive stuff to a hacker (examples for me were compiler design, OS design, non-imperative/procedural languages, and yes, "software engineering" with all its life-cycles, estimations, metrics, paradigms, etc.) I think a degree in CS is a good thing, all else equal. Unfortunately, all else is not always equal.
Here's the opinion of an employer and a passionate software developer...
You're giving really lousy advice to a software person. When I interview developers, one of the best filtering criteria I've found for getting hard-working, passionate, motivated developers is to ask them what kind of projects they've got going in their spare time. I'm not looking for conflicts. I want to hear about something. I'd rather not hire the person that says "software is my 9-5 job; I don't dabble at home". I enjoy seeing someone's eyes light up and get all excited telling me details of some mad-scientist project they're brewing up (that will probably never be completed), etc. Hell, tell me about side projects that failed. What did you learn? That's the kind of employee I want. He's into tech. He loves it. He lives it. He'd be doing it anyways, even if it wasn't his profession. If the work I give him is boring from time to time, he doesn't feel like his job is the only outlet he's allowed for tech challenges or expression.
The most significant risk I've come across: People will work on their own projects on my time. Very possible. And yes, I've received legal and management advice that I complicate the employment relationship by hiring this type of person. That advice should be respected. In the end, it's a calculated risk. What's my upside as an employer? I get a hard-core developer that (hopefully) respects his employer for not stifling him. I've increased the chance that he's happy on the job. He may go so far as to refer his colleagues and friends. Gimme.
In the end, software development has a lot to do with growing, changing, techniques, lateral thinking, staying sharp. I can't offer challenges to everyone I hire on all those fronts. So I'm not going to stand in their way if they do it on the side. Issues can and have come up. But it's a net positive, so far.
I, L. Ron Hubbard, swear to pay the holder of this contract twenty dollars if I cannot start a religion with a completely ficticious basis within ten years. Signed, L. Ron Hubbard
All bets should be specified that way... with a duration but no starting date!
I have a feeling youa re misinterpretiung this.
Legal advice is, of course, always a good idea. But I think it's pretty clear... You may interpret it from the horse's mouth, if you like:
Goverment of Canada Copyright Board backgrounder (see point 2, specifically) and allowance for private-use copying.
In fact if this were true I suspect record companies here in the states (I knwo how canadians hate it when refer to the sates as "america") will immediately stop shipping releases to Canada.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? Well, it's true and it's been true for a few years now. Sure, manufacturers and citizens here complain about the small taxes now applied to blank CD-Rs, MiniDiscs, etc. But no US record companies have stopped shipping to Canada.
does this mean that in 18 months we'll have scientists promising half-atom transistors?
If we can get a single atom acting like 1 transistor, perhaps the next step is to get a single atom acting like 2 transistors in some configuration. Then I think we could say we have half-atom transistors.
So where will we be next Monday?
Still without dates, most of us.
I'm a developer in Canada. Let's say I wanted to create a fantastic new P2P client that used the Gnutella protocol. Naturally, I'm concerned about liability. So is there a way I can construct my app that aligns itself with Canadian copyright law so that I'm relatively protected and Canadians using it would be within their rights also?
Here's some background on why Canada may be a better place to do create and use P2P apps than the USA...
In Canada, March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act came into force. Until then, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright. Part VIII legalizes one such activity: copying of sound recordings of musical works onto recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy.
Specifically, the Copyright Board says their ruling "does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else."
Now the way I read this, I could potentially create an app that allowed users to place their own music files that they've ripped and own themself into an "Owned" directory. This directory could be shared and downloaded from by others for personals use, as I interpret our law. If I downloaded something from someone else that I did not own myself, it would have to go into a "NotOwned" directory. These files would be legally usable by me for my own personal use, but could not be shared by me. If I created an app that functioned this way, would I seem to be protected in Canada? Naturally, I should take reasonable steps to warn or block non-Canadians.
Aren't they making a HUGE assumption here, that all the moths already in the wild are going to want to do it with a bunch of freaky glow-in-the-dark moths??
/.ers would do it with freaky glow-in-the-dark chicks? Ever been to a rave? Mmmmm.... freaky.
Ah, to be a moth...
Show of hands... How many male
I think I've outgrown the Gameboy
That's ironic, because I find portable game platforms more and more appealing as I get older. I just can't be bothered to go home and play a tethered console or PC game when the urge hits. But I can take my portables (Palm, Game Boy, phone, etc.) with me to the office, on business trips, etc.
I have less leisure time at home for games now than I did when I was a kid, but I love games almost as much. Bring on the portables!
I'm sure that you could even run the PalmOS on it if you wanted (I know for a fact that there are emulators for the PalmOS that run within CE but haven't heard about anyone re-flashing an I-paq with the PalmOS)...
LOL. Good luck finding a PalmOS image to flash into an iPaq!
Heheh. You could be right. Furthermore, if the court order is to "block any copyright songs" as the article says, Napster is in even better shape, since they don't have to block "copyrighted songs" -- only "copyright songs". I guess that means songs about copyright. You know... as in love songs, war songs, and copyright songs.
Aren't they already done? Since Napster doesn't store anything on it's servers...
Nope. You were the 5th post. Nice work, but maybe you should have waited to read the article...
"A federal judge gave the recording industry another victory Tuesday in its bid to control digital music, saying Napster Inc. has just 72 hours to block any copyright songs."
usicmay iesflay
ikelay indway -- awyerslay
irrelevantway
Deep desks are a crutch to avoid buying a real display (ie, flat panel). ;-)
"Yes son, I remember the days when people needed desks deeper than 20 inches to fit a keyboard and display."
Back on topic... One thing I don't like about deep desks where the entire surface is a single height (like a sheet of plywood) is that the level my keyboard, hands, and forearms should be at is not generally the ideal height for a monitor or flat panel to sit on. If a desktop is height-adjustable, I find that if I lower it to allow my shoulders to relax (drop), leaving my forearms fairly parallel to the floor (good ergonomics in my opinion), then I prefer to place the monitor or flat panel on a somewhat raised platform. No big deal, but it's best if the monitor is big and light... (oh, there's that flat panel plug again!)
It doesn't make it illegal to make a copy of the CD's, but it at the same time doesn't say that the producer has to make it easy for you to make a copy.
Very true, but if I crack their protection scheme in the name of making a copy of a friend's CD for personal use, which the law here allows, does that mean I can tell the rest of the country how they can do the same thing? Source code? T-shirts? Songs and poetry? Hmmm. Shades of DeCSS?
There's an aspect of Canadian law that really:
1) makes me happy we have this law currently
2) will piss me off if technology like this takes off
In Canada, March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act came into force. Until then, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright. Part VIII legalizes one such activity: copying of sound recordings of musical works onto recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy.
Specifically, the Copyright Board says their ruling "does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else." So to fufill the spirit of Canadian copyright law, I assume Macrovision's technology will continue to allow me to make copies of all my friends CDs for my own personal use (which the law allows).
Mother of god, a trillion electron volts thru a pair of sport sandals? That can't be good for my feet!
While I'm sure it kicks the ass of the tree-hugging Birkatron, I have to believe that something like the Nikatron will eventually replace it due to reduced, off-shore labour costs.
I'm going to post this here, not too off-topic I hope, since I see people speculating in this thread about the legality of a smaller "circle-of-friends" style sharing network. There's an aspect of Canadian law that might help Aimster survive in this (admittedly small) market up north here.
Here's the legal scoop in Canada.... On March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act came into force. Until then, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright. Part VIII legalizes one such activity: copying of sound recordings of musical works onto recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy.
Specifically, the Copyright Board says their ruling "does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else."
So call me naive, but with or without their "shield", does this ruling from three years ago not help Aimster (or even Napster-like entitites) a whole lot in Canada?
Thinking out loud here... If a CPU or board design can be expressed in a printer markup language under this scheme, then I believe it would be possible to translate that description into plain english. Or a suitably different reverse-engineered piece of hardware could be described this way. It could be expressed out loud on street corners in songs or poetry or t-shirts. (Just like what happened with DeCSS.) Only free speech would be used to distribute hardware. Great for spreading not only the word but the means of useful hardware to the masses.
Now, granted, these would be pretty screwed up songs. And pretty long! And I guess haiku is out of the question. But in theory, this could lead to free-speech-like implications that the hardware industry may not have had to deal with yet.
Sing me a song, you're the VLSI man...
For those people (myself included) who are too lazy to interpret the specification and enter the code in yourself, you can find a C & C++ implementation here.
Don't listen to this guy! It's a trick! The NSA has planted this guy and the code. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Write your own implementation from the spec and you'll see the back-door, clear as day. Tricky buggers...
Okay, you make a reasonable argument that Mars is barren, but let's acknowledge that this can be consistent with what the NASA scientists are saying. They're saying that life was present on Mars in the distant past. Barren now? Possibly.
"That a small meteorite from Mars presumably contained large numbers of bacteria suggests that such bacteria were widespread on the surface of Mars"
"The team says these chains could have been formed only by living organisms, though those organisms are long since dead"
"The finding indicates that photosynthetic organisms, the source of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, must have been present and active on Mars 3.9 billion years ago."
So if life was widespread on Mars and now it's barren, that's pretty interesting in itself, right? How long was it around for? Was it doomed from the beginning?
Okay, so Napster's own servers will now be involved in each file transfer. Sound like a bottleneck? Not really. Remember, since they're proposing charging us for files we can't fully use, there's going to be like, what, 85 subscribers using the entire network? Their servers should be able to handle that, no problem!
This isn't a black-and-white issue, but here's how I see the relationship: It's just easier to create a fun game without worrying about graphics. I can make a lame game with good OR bad graphics by simply ignoring gameplay. It will have nothing going for it. But if I create some compelling gameplay, I'm guaranteed a fun game even if the graphics suck. Now, if I care to wrap it all up in apppropriate swirling, glowing, texture-mapped, alpha-blended, 120fps graphics, then it might very well be a really fun game. It might. But remember where we need to start.
So everybody just stop triple-buffering and mipmapping for a second ask yourselves some questions like:
What is a game?
Why do people play games?
And maybe read an (old) book like Chris Crawford's The Art of Computer Game Design . It can't hurt.
I can't imagine being in a fight with somebody where we stand facing each other taking turns throwing punches and not being free to do something so simple as blocking.
I know what you mean, but consider that this is basically how a debate works. Similar to a court trial also. And those are classic, universal methods of "civilized" competition.
I have yet to hear a single one wax nostalgic about an English or creative writing class.
And be nailed as an English Nerd?
Oh, for goodness sake! Everybody knows that a Science Nerd can beat the crap out of an English Nerd.