Or that so many people reading Time online were from Turkey... look at all the votes for Mustafa Kemal: arguably the most influential and important Turk of modern times, but probably _not_ one of the most influential people in the world.
The problem is, it's _really_ hard to imagine what life was like long ago and far away... which makes it hard to determine who was the most influential person, or what was the most influential event.
If you can't imagine the world without [X]. it's probably also hard to imagine how important the discovery of [X] must have been.
The skills problem is a side effect of the rapid turnover of employees in our industry. If you could reasonably expect that an employee would stick around for four or five years, you could afford to hire your MFC programmer and train him in the embedded networking technology you need people to work on --- most computer people, at least the ones I know, are adept at learning new technologies quickly.
But if there's a 4-5 month learning curve and you can't expect most people to stick around for more than two years, there's a problem.
I suspect that your experience differs from that of a log of people because of where you live. Here in (sub)urban California, a two-bedroom condo can easily sell for $280,000... a 4 bedroom house with 2.5 baths on a 1 acre lot would either have to be an hour commute or more away from work or would cost an easy half a million. *sigh*
In general, I value freedom more... but I think there are limits. I've long been willing to argue the point with my pro-drug-legalization friends that maintaining controls on antibiotics is a reasonable thing to do (your misuse of the antibiotic can, in fact, hurt me).
Similarly, although it's less clear-cut, I'm concerned that advertisements of drugs which tend to be (a) short of technical information and (b) targeted at people who likely couldn't understand technical information if there was any
has a negative effect on overall health and the medical profession: it encourages people who don't understand what the drugs do to demand them because some television ad told them it was good for them.
*shrug* maybe that's their problem. but i value their health more than the fiscal health of the drug manufacturers.
PMFJI, but it really pains me to see you describe Vaclav Havel as 'Clinton's lackey'.
Havel is probably the most respectable leader of _any_ country in Europe. This is a man who went to jail for protesting the government (late 1970s) but still had the presence of mind, once the regime fell and he was the head of government, to acknowledge that _everyone_ was guilty: that it was a system that everyone was complicit, not just the evil-leaders-of-the-past.
A lot of his ideas about politics and economics are silly... but he's got an uncommon amount of integrity, and he's the only leader of a former communist country i've seen who has the courage to admit the truth.
> Katz somewhere has picked up the notion that people have an absolute right to not only expose themselves to whatever they wish but that no one else may interfere in the slightest.
This is one of the few political things that I think truly is a black & white issue: either you believe that people have the right to interfere in what other people expose themselves to, or you don't.
You worry about the lack of a limit on what other people can do; I worry about the lack of a limit on what other people can prevent me from doing...
"South Park" is a satire about attempts to censor material as being inappropriate for children --- that's why it becomes a rallying call for rebellious children; it's a perfectly logical extension.
For what it's worth, South Park is one of the funniest satires on television at the moment --- once you get beyond the language and listen to what the language is being used to say, that is.
Isn't the real problem that we are using age as a proxy for maturity?
This is the identical issue as sexual consent laws, drinking age laws, driving age laws, and what have you: some politicians have picked a magic number out of thin air and equated achievement of a particular number of years with a particular level of maturity --- mostly because it's not possible to have a predictable system which is based on a nebulous concept.
This might be considered flamebait, but your message brings up a point that I think is worth considering:
Maybe the problem is lame management, at least to a certain extent.
As an example of the type of thing I'm talking about: a former co-worker of mine, with two to three years of Windows programming experience, recently interviewed for a job at an (unnamed) e-commerce business that wanted to use a windows database backend to run their site. One of the few technical questions he was asked was: "how comfortable do you feel with windows programming?"... and this by the 'senior architect' on the project.
As soon as I heard the story of his interview, I was convinced that the company he was interviewing with was more or less doomed to have this project fail: if the architect can't ask intelligent technical questions, how can he architect?
If there are a lot of companies out there like this --- as you said, the companies which don't want to hire you because you are overqualified usually have lame business plans --- then it makes sense: companies managed by people who just rushed into the industry to cash in on the big cash cow and don't actually understand it are operating entirely upon the public image of programmers: if you aren't a young hacker, you obviously aren't right for us...
One of the biggest problems i've noticed with programmers in general is a tendency to decide, when faced with complex code that they don't completely understand, that the existing code is broken in some fashion and needs to be replaced/rewritten --- which of course wastes a lot of time and energy, and leads to a new code base which solved (maybe) problems in the original code while introducing (always) problems which weren't there before.
We're a (relatively) young industry, which seems to encourage impatience --- rather than spending enough time coming to understand why things work the way they do, it's preferred to slash and replace...
> The problem with America is a majority of it's become fashionable to trash your own country in public forums...
To say that things could be better, to imagine a more perfect world, is not to say that things aren't worse elsewhere.
> that you can't squeal 'I have rights!' when someone looks at you wrong...
I would allege that the biggest problem with Americans is that we, as a group, lack a sense of perspective... and so tend to show a higher-than-usual propensity to whine; in essence, we've become a nation of spoiled brats.
> I voted Republican in the last presidential election...
I've come to the conclusion recently that most anti-republican groups, and most anti-democratic groups, are arguing different things.
Rabid anti-republicans tend to view the GOP as the party of governmentally-enforced morality; bible-thumping activists come to tell us who we can sleep with and what we can do with our free time.
Rabid anti-democrats tend to view the Demos as the party of governmentally-enforced economics: university professors come to impose an idealistic worldview on everyone else, with lots of regulations that make it impossible for businesses to react quickly to changing conditions.
Both stereotypes have large kernels of truth, unfortunately --- but almost nobody on either side will admit it.
> The problem I have with the Motor-Voter law is that it usurps states' rights because the state has to pay (the DMVs are run by the states) for federal registration.
'Federal registration'? It's actually _state_ registration... because all elections are conducted by the states. Some of the elections are for federal offices, and what rules the states an impose on those elections are limited ... but the elections are entirely state-funded, and state--run.
(I've worked as an inspector in every election since 1992 except one, where I was out of the country).
Arguably the voters of a country which is in the process of collapsing need real choices more than the voters of the most prosperous country in the world.
How would more frequent elections help in a situation where politicians are already constantly running for office, raising money, and selling their souls to the people who will pay for their campaigns?
I think the real solution, ironically enough, is to have more politicians. If the number of normal people represented by a politician were on the order of 10,000 instead of 200,000 (for Congress), wouldn't they have a tendency to be more responsive?
> Let's just say that someone's grand father is in a wheelchair and never leaves the house (a rather common occurance)or just plain senile. They could be forced to ramain still during a retinal scan (we're assuming that this is done at home) and the care taken still gets to vote for them.
If you'er going to be that paranoid.... this, or something like it, can already happen with absentee ballots.
I find I often have to do a 12-14 hour day, depending on where in a release cycle I am, and how much devotion I currently have to the cause.
That's fine: I can work for 14 hours, spend an hour commuting, and still have 3-4 hours for a social life --- sleep is for the weak --- and then, later, when the pulse of the cycle drops off, I can slack a little.:)
I'm pretty sure the thing that makes this work is the fact that almost all of my friends do it, too --- so it seems more like there isn't any other way to live, somehow.
Slashdot Mirror
Or that so many people reading Time online ... look at all the votes
were from Turkey
for Mustafa Kemal: arguably the most influential
and important Turk of modern times, but
probably _not_ one of the most influential
people in the world.
The problem is, it's _really_ hard to imagine ...
what life was like long ago and far away
which makes it hard to determine who was
the most influential person, or what was the
most influential event.
If you can't imagine the world without [X].
it's probably also hard to imagine how important
the discovery of [X] must have been.
The skills problem is a side effect of the rapid
turnover of employees in our industry. If you
could reasonably expect that an employee would
stick around for four or five years, you could
afford to hire your MFC programmer and train him
in the embedded networking technology you need
people to work on --- most computer people,
at least the ones I know, are adept at learning new technologies quickly.
But if there's a 4-5 month learning curve and
you can't expect most people to stick around
for more than two years, there's a problem.
I suspect that your experience differs ... a 4 bedroom house with 2.5
from that of a log of people because of
where you live. Here in (sub)urban California,
a two-bedroom condo can easily sell for
$280,000
baths on a 1 acre lot would either have
to be an hour commute or more away from work
or would cost an easy half a million. *sigh*
In general, I value freedom more ... but I think
there are limits. I've long been willing to argue
the point with my pro-drug-legalization friends
that maintaining controls on antibiotics is a
reasonable thing to do (your misuse of the
antibiotic can, in fact, hurt me).
Similarly, although it's less clear-cut, I'm concerned that advertisements of drugs which tend to be
(a) short of technical information and
(b) targeted at people who likely couldn't understand technical information if there was any
has a negative effect on overall health and
the medical profession: it encourages people
who don't understand what the drugs do to demand
them because some television ad told them it
was good for them.
*shrug* maybe that's their problem. but i value
their health more than the fiscal health of the
drug manufacturers.
I'm not sure about that --- I have major
problems with the way that first amendment
rights have been applied to 'corporate speech'.
I'm _not_ convinced, for example, that it's
a good thing that the makers of various
drugs are now able to advertise them on
television.
PMFJI, but it really pains me to see you
... but he's got an uncommon amount
describe Vaclav Havel as 'Clinton's lackey'.
Havel is probably the most respectable
leader of _any_ country in Europe. This is
a man who went to jail for protesting the
government (late 1970s) but still had the
presence of mind, once the regime fell
and he was the head of government, to
acknowledge that _everyone_ was guilty: that
it was a system that everyone was complicit,
not just the evil-leaders-of-the-past.
A lot of his ideas about politics and economics
are silly
of integrity, and he's the only leader of a
former communist country i've seen who has the
courage to admit the truth.
It's time to start encrypting e-mail on ...
a routine basis? I've always thought the
guys advocating that were kinda nuts
but i'm suddenly not so sure.
> let's let the "responsible 16 year olds" have free access to booze!
... almost every other industrialized
Funny
country allows this, and it works just fine
for them.
> you guys have proven to the world that you cant behave in a civilized manner to begin with let alone make any decision
blaming the group for the actions of individuals
is a little bit unfair, don't you think?
> Katz somewhere has picked up the notion that people have an absolute right to not only expose themselves to whatever they wish but that no one else may interfere in the slightest.
...
This is one of the few political things that I think truly is a black & white issue: either you believe that people have the right to interfere in
what other people expose themselves to, or you
don't.
You worry about the lack of a limit on what other
people can do; I worry about the lack of a limit
on what other people can prevent me from doing
"South Park" is a satire about attempts
to censor material as being inappropriate
for children --- that's why it becomes a
rallying call for rebellious children;
it's a perfectly logical extension.
For what it's worth, South Park is one of
the funniest satires on television at the
moment --- once you get beyond the language
and listen to what the language is being
used to say, that is.
Isn't the real problem that we are using age as a proxy for maturity?
This is the identical issue as sexual consent
laws, drinking age laws, driving age laws, and
what have you: some politicians have picked a magic number out of thin air and equated
achievement of a particular number of years with
a particular level of maturity --- mostly because
it's not possible to have a predictable system
which is based on a nebulous concept.
This might be considered flamebait, but
... and this by the
...
your message brings up a point that I think
is worth considering:
Maybe the problem is lame management,
at least to a certain extent.
As an example of the type of thing I'm talking
about: a former co-worker of mine, with
two to three years of Windows programming
experience, recently interviewed for a job
at an (unnamed) e-commerce business that wanted
to use a windows database backend to run their
site. One of the few technical questions he
was asked was: "how comfortable do you feel
with windows programming?"
'senior architect' on the project.
As soon as I heard the story of his interview,
I was convinced that the company he was
interviewing with was more or less doomed
to have this project fail: if the architect
can't ask intelligent technical questions,
how can he architect?
If there are a lot of companies out there
like this --- as you said, the companies which
don't want to hire you because you are
overqualified usually have lame business plans ---
then it makes sense: companies managed by
people who just rushed into the industry to
cash in on the big cash cow and don't actually
understand it are operating entirely upon
the public image of programmers: if you
aren't a young hacker, you obviously aren't
right for us
One of the biggest problems i've noticed with
...
programmers in general is a tendency to decide,
when faced with complex code that they don't
completely understand, that the existing code
is broken in some fashion and needs to be
replaced/rewritten --- which of course wastes
a lot of time and energy, and leads to a new
code base which solved (maybe) problems in the
original code while introducing (always) problems
which weren't there before.
We're a (relatively) young industry, which
seems to encourage impatience --- rather than
spending enough time coming to understand why
things work the way they do, it's preferred to
slash and replace
I wonder if they can reproduce the problem? /. ....
I run netscape 4.5 under win98 and haven't had
any problems with
Hollywood is able, once in a rare while,
to turn out decent science-fiction movies.
Witness 'Blade Runner', or 'Twelve Monkeys'
maybe.
The thing is: it's unusual. And all the more
to be savored for it.
> The problem with America is a majority of it's become fashionable to trash your own country in public forums ...
...
... and so tend to
...
To say that things could be better, to imagine a
more perfect world, is not to say that things
aren't worse elsewhere.
> that you can't squeal 'I have rights!' when someone looks at you wrong
I would allege that the biggest problem with
Americans is that we, as a group, lack a
sense of perspective
show a higher-than-usual propensity to whine;
in essence, we've become a nation of spoiled
brats.
> I voted Republican in the last presidential election
I've come to the conclusion recently that
most anti-republican groups, and most
anti-democratic groups, are arguing different
things.
Rabid anti-republicans tend to view the GOP
as the party of governmentally-enforced morality;
bible-thumping activists come to tell us who
we can sleep with and what we can do with our
free time.
Rabid anti-democrats tend to view the Demos as
the party of governmentally-enforced economics:
university professors come to impose an idealistic
worldview on everyone else, with lots of
regulations that make it impossible for businesses
to react quickly to changing conditions.
Both stereotypes have large kernels of truth,
unfortunately --- but almost nobody on either side
will admit it.
> The problem I have with the Motor-Voter law is that it usurps states' rights because the state has to pay (the DMVs are run by the states) for federal registration.
... because all elections are
'Federal registration'? It's actually _state_
registration
conducted by the states. Some of the elections
are for federal offices, and what rules the
states an impose on those elections are limited
... but the elections are entirely state-funded,
and state--run.
(I've worked as an inspector in every election
since 1992 except one, where I was out of the
country).
Arguably the voters of a country which is
in the process of collapsing need real choices
more than the voters of the most prosperous
country in the world.
How would more frequent elections help in a
situation where politicians are already constantly
running for office, raising money, and selling
their souls to the people who will pay for
their campaigns?
I think the real solution, ironically enough, is to have more politicians. If the number of normal people represented by a politician were on the order of 10,000 instead of 200,000 (for Congress), wouldn't they have a tendency to be more responsive?
> Let's just say that someone's grand father is in a wheelchair and never leaves the house (a rather common occurance)or just plain senile. They could be forced to ramain still during a retinal scan (we're assuming that this is done at home) and the care taken still gets to vote for them.
.... this,
If you'er going to be that paranoid
or something like it, can already happen with
absentee ballots.
Somehow it's an improvement for the GOP to buy
the votes instead of the Greens? *puzzled look*
Either way it sucks: once you start allowing the
buying and selling of votes, you end up with
an aristocracy. Is that the road we want to
walk?
dBase is being actively developed by dBASE, inc.
www.dbase2000.com is their website.
Yes, it's been slashdotted. ...
Not too surprising, tho
I find I often have to do a 12-14 hour day,
:)
depending on where in a release cycle I am,
and how much devotion I currently have to the
cause.
That's fine: I can work for 14 hours, spend an hour commuting, and still have 3-4 hours for a social life --- sleep is for the weak --- and then, later, when the pulse of the cycle drops off, I can slack a little.
I'm pretty sure the thing that makes this work is the fact that almost all of my friends do it, too --- so it seems more like there isn't any other way to live, somehow.