I think it depends. I had a company lay me off -- the company was essentially failing and while they wanted to keep me, they simply had no money. (The only real issue I had with the whole situation was that I really thought they should have warned me four weeks earlier.) They helped me find another position, and did everything they could for me.
When my former manager called me up and asked for some help I gave it to him. Freely, and with no thought of charging him.
Had it happen in another job too -- they needed a bit of help with some web stuff I had written. It was around 50,000 lines of HTML/Perl/SQL code. I helped them out because it didn't hurt me and there really wasn't any reason not to help them.
On the other hand, if I was unemployeed and had been laid off from a viable company who still needed my skills and proved it by calling me up and asking for help, I think I'd be providing them with my fee before they got any help from me.
Like I said, I think it depends -- very few things are quite that black and white.
I've only been given one written test, and test wasn't about my technical ability, and it was done on the east coast.
Now-a-days I think I'd come close to being offended if a company insisted upon a written test of my technical ability. I've been in technical interviews, and those are fine -- they confirm what I claim on paper. But I'm not a job hopper, I think that my steady employment coupled with my personal software development business should prove that I'm capable of working within a team and working independantly. The real question for the business is whether my technical abilities fit the need the business has and whether the cost of hiring me fits the budget they have for the position.
I guess the bottom line is that I have over twenty years in software development and systems administration in varied enviroments. I don't feel the need to do more than prove I can do a great job in the position. And that probably doesn't, for me, include a written test.
It works for me -- when I was laid off two years ago when the company essentially failed, I had a job five days later. When I took a new job three months later because of poor working conditions, my former manager was essentially willing to pay me anything to get me back -- neither the I nor the company was as willing. But in each case my salary went up quite a bit.
I guess what it boils down to is that while a written test might be okay in more entry level positions, I don't think it's appropriate for upper level positions. If it's a technical job, do a technical interview. Check references and former employers if you're unsure about the person's writing ability or his or her ability to work within a team. But for upper level posistions I do think written tests are inappropriate.
It can be an issue. It's not EMF getting inside the computer, it's the EMF that the computer produces.
As an example, I'm an amateur radio operator and found that one of my computers produced enough EMF to be heard -- and be annoying -- on a radio three feet away. And this computer was in a fully fastened steel case. I finally found I had to turn that computer off to operate.
I can't get from your question exactly what you're trying to accomplish. It *sounds* like what you want to accomplish is redundancy in the case of a server problem not related to the disk.
The problem I have with this scenerio is that server hardware problems are much less likely to occur than a disk problem, and I think you'ld be *much* better served by using RAID and mirroring your disks than worrying about a non-disk problem in your server. Using RAID you come close to solving the problem of the disk being a single point of failure, and given that disk problems are more prevelant, it's generally a better choice than redundant machines.
That's a smaller cost than buying a second server, and I suspect it'll give you better results, if for no other reason than what you're suggesting is a fairly non-standard configuration. (Regardless of whether or not it is supported.)
That doesn't solve the possible problems, but it at least places the most likely single point of failure in the right place. To really solve the problem is to make totally redundant systems, but that gets much more expensive.
It really depends on what data is being stored and how much. For many, many applications a simple flat file using random access methods works just fine. For managing more data there are libraries such as you mention. And for some projects a full fledged RDBMS is the right way to go.
The proper way to go about this is to analyse what needs to be stored and choose the solution that provides the best match based upon needed functionality, system use, and programming time.
Why? Because I can carry most of my CD collection around in the car with me.
I have an Archos unit upgraded to a 30M drive. It stays in the car, and instead of copying my CDs to CDR (so they don't get damaged) and carrying 100 CDs around with me (still not my entire collection by far) like I used to do, I carry my Archos unit. I don't worry about what CDs I want to listen to on a long trip, I don't worry about grabbing the stuff my son likes but I wouldn't carry all the time, I just have a single, small unit.
Battery time? Who cares -- it's plugged into the car.
So, for me it's a matter of better selection -- I really like knowing that if I get an urge to hear a paticular CD, it's ready for me. And if I want to play a CD for friends, again, it's with me. One of the two best gadgets I ever bought. (The other was a ReplayTV unit.)
Oh, and yes, the Archos can be used as a portable hard drive, but I don't have a use for that.
I do not agree with their stance on this issue and I believe I have a right to design, implement, and make available such a service.
It's simple. If the administration says you don't have such rights, you don't. It doesn't matter what the AUP says, it doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't matter what *anyone* thinks except those who control and administer the network and systems. If those people say you don't have the right, then you don't.
You don't own the network or the systems you're accessing. You don't have *any* "rights" on the network or systems except those that are explicitly given to you. And what rights you have can be taken away.
If it's a useful and legal tool, then make your case -- prove that it *is* both legal and useful. Prove that it doesn't use significant amounts of bandwidth, and that it is unlikely to ever use significant amounts of bandwidth. If you can't make a convincing argument that your tool is worth allowing, maybe it's really not all that useful anyway.
Better for what? Given that I'm a Unix developer, it certainly isn't better as a development system, I prefer a command line interface and mutt for reading email, and I can (and do) run sendmail and have email send directly to my machine under Linux. XP isn't better for me for any of those things.
Is it better for for few games I play? Don't know. I doubt it -- Win98 works just fine for everything I do under windows -- music and games, mostly, and it would be an additional $300 cost to upgrade my Win98 machines to XP. (Yes, I have three Win98 only machines in addition to my Linux/Unix boxes.) What does that $300 buy me? Well, the one thing I *know* it buys me is an invasive and intrusive anti-piracy system.
I know what I need to do with my systems, I've been forced on occasion to use various Windows systems, and I'm more productive using Unix. It's that simple. I could give you specific examples, but that's more off-topic than I want to go. The real point is that "better" is more a matter of opinion than anything else, and I can guarentee that XP is *not* better for at least 95% of the real work I do.
Sean.
Re:With the unix penchant for 2 letter abbrevs
on
Vi IMproved -- Vim
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· Score: 1
No -- vile was, if I remember correctly, emacs with a vi keystroke interface. I used it for a while because it had one thing vi didn't: the ability to set the cursor using the mouse. After a while it got to be too time consuming to bring it up everytime I wanted to edit a file, so I quit using it.
Heck, I used to program using ed. You get real good at doing things like:
-17,.p
to see the current page.
Guess I'm a Unix "old-timer", though I'm not sure I like the designation. The first Unix I worked on didn't come with vi. When Berkeley 2.9 (for PDPs) came along a year later and had vi, it was great -- as long as there were only one or two people on the system. Any more than that and it got really slow...
And I've got a friend who *refused* to learn vi. Said he was as quick with ed as others were with vi. He was probably right, but the guys at Bell Labs held him down and forced him to learn vi eventually.
I never said ANYTHING was wrong with learning the concepts I said memorizing the formulas was wrong
No, what you said was: Its pointless to teach people to calculate. Teach them how to enter it into their calculator and push enter.
And that's where I started arguing that it was not pointless to teach people how to do simple arithmetic. And I stand by that. Teaching people how to calculate isn't teaching them some random fact, it's teaching them a *process*.
I later said that knowing how to extract roots by hand wasn't a skill many people needed. And I'll generalize that to say that I don't see the need for people to permanently memorize a bunch of formulas they won't need very often.
If what you're arguing is that most people don't need to memorize a bunch of trig formulas, I agree. But that's different from not teaching them arithmetic.
I carry a PDA. I write programs for PDAs. My profession is keeping computer systems running. I've been a programmer for a long time. I like the new fun tech toys as much as anyone else. I completely believe in the use of technology.
And believe me the computer wasn't invented so you could pull one out and figure a 15% tip.
If you're not willing to put forth the effort to be able to get by without a calculator in your day to day life, if you can't do simple arithmetic in your head and can't do complex problems using pen and paper, then you don't understand arithmetic and you are verging on illiterate.
Calculators should be used to assist, not to replace necessary skills.
Look, I don't care if you can extract roots in your head -- that's a skill few people (if any) need. But any reasonably intellegent adult should be able to add $5.86 and $3.27 in their head. That same adult should be able to calculate a 15% tip. That same adult should be able to calculate what 20% off $37 is. Or approximate state tax on $43.25. Or know how much four movie tickets at $7.50 apiece is. These are all basic arithmetic skills and no adult should need to pull out a calculator to figure out what they are.
I hope this is a joke. Anyone should be able to figure a 15% tip in their head, quickly and simply. Anyone should be able to do simple addition, multiplication, and division problems accurately in their head, and should be able to come up with a reasonably accurate estimate of most real life problems. All without the calculator.
It is *not* pointless to teach people to calculate. Almost everyday everyone in industrialized societies come across situations that require arithmetic and calculation. In shopping, it happens probably dozens of times in any large store.
Sean
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable sub-human who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make a mess in the house.
How can anyone who claims to have such an extensive knowledge of computers not understand that if you load a different operating system, you're probably not going to get to keep your old data?
Just because you don't know how to use the tool doesn't make it a bad tool.
Last I looked you could still buy a basic tub of Lego pieces. Can't buy them in a box, you have to buy the tub. If not Lego, try Megablocks, which are interchangable with Lego -- less expensive, and quality control is certainly not as good, but you can get a nice assortment for not much money.
Lego has had to change to stay alive, as I understand it -- part of that is licensing and creating things like Bionicles which boys 8-12 seem to love.
My son is nine, and when he gets a new lego set, the first thing he does is put it together via the directions. But it doesn't stay that way.
It doesn't really matter that there are all these themed packages if the child eventually uses them to build using his or her own imagination. And if my son and his friends are any indication, then kids who are playing with Lego are taking apart those fancy models for the interesting parts the contain.
I would say (as others have) that you haven't really played the game.
The siege tank example was just that, an example. Siege tanks are vulnerable to any air unit and to any close up ground unit (such as zerglings and zealots).
No one unit has a single unit that it is esspecially vulnerable to.
Siege tanks *are* powerful. Siege tanks backed up by marines or golieths are even more powerful. But there are ways to destroy them as any other race.
SC *is* well balanced throughout the races. If it were not, then everyone would want to play the strongest race. Personally, I believe terran is the weakest race, but I know people who can wipe me easily when they play terran and I play something else.
I'm a programmer. My computer cost thousands. I've written software that took months of development time. None of this means that I'm automatically entitled to some amount of money. It's entirely possible that my work will not be sufficiently valued by the public to pay me money for my investment and time.
I agree. What I should have said was that I have the right to expect compensation if someone else chooses to keep and use my product, whether that product is music or software. If a person doesn't value the product enough to pay the price I'm asking, they aren't forced to use it.
Well, which is it? Do you play music because you love to do it, or because you're looking for money?
Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Same as with programming. I have some freeware, I have some commercial software.
I don't owe you anything, either, if I'm just listening to audio waves you've recorded.
Shall I take the application you spent months upon and use it without compensating you? I mean, it's just a series of magnetic ones and zeros, surely no more tangible than the audio waves I recorded. It's really a rather close analogy, something I'm sure of because I've done both.
I disagree. Most of the musicians I know have never made a cent off their music, and yet produce.
If you're saying N'Sync and Britney Spears will go away, you have a point. And I don't really care.
I'm saying that no one will be able to be a fulltime musician if they aren't supported by payments of some sort. And I completely disagree that recorded music shouldn't be compensated. That takes cost, effort, and creativity as well, and you seem to want it for free.
That's BS. You have no such right. Is that in the Constitution? "The right to be compensated." Nope.
The free market makes no guarantees about compensation. You are free to spend time on something you think will be profitable with the hope of earning money. The free market has the right to slap you in the face and say, "I'm not paying for that!"
Sure. But we're not talking about the same things. I expect compensation only from people who choose to use my product. What you were originally arguing was that 'music is free', and that I shouldn't expect compensation even from those who choose to use my product.
If people use the software I release without compensating me, I'll quit creating software, or at the very least produce much less software.
As I said before, it should be my choice, not the consumer's, to choose whether I get compensation from those who choose to use my product.
I don't completely agree. I think the best programmers understand language paradigms -- OO, procedural, etc, and once those paradigms are understood, then all that's left is syntax.
You shouldn't write Java the same way you write C, shouldn't write C the same way you write Perl, but if you understand "best practices" in any OO language, you understand most of what you need to know about another OO language.
Except, of course, syntax.
A good programmer is going to understand the different styles required by different languages, is going to be able to understand which style is needed simply by the language definition, and is going to need to learn little more than syntax and what built in classes/functions are available.
For me? I'll hire the programmer that *wants* to jump in. He or she will probably need some kind of reference, but I'd much rather have the person who starts coding immediately than the one who insists that s/he needs to be trained in the language.
Music isn't free, and I wish people would realize this.
I'm a musician. None of the instruments I own were free. Some cost thousands of dollars. I've recorded music, and, not in one case, was doing the recording free. At the cheapest it cost me inexpensive recording equipment and tapes, and the most expensive it cost me the price of a recording engineer, equipment rental, and time.
I've made a CD. That was far from free.
And you're telling me that I shouldn't want to charge for you to listen to the music that cost me time, effort, and money?
Look, I've done a *lot* of free concerts, and that's fine with me. I play music because I love to play music, not because it makes me a profit. Nonetheless, I also don't believe I *owe* you anything, and that seems to be what you believe, at least in a general form. Musicians should give you their music for free, because you're not willing to pay. Ain't gonna happen. If they can't be profitable as musicians (and I'm not saying rich, I'm saying profitable), then they won't make music for you.
I'm also a programmer, and I've had this argument before with people who think I *should* give my programs away for free. I have freeware out there -- I also have commercial software. I don't owe my time just because someone thinks they should get something for free. I have a right to be compensated. And I have that right whether it be for music or software. I can also provide it freely -- but it's my choice, not yours.
Now, before someone thinks I support the RIAA, I don't. But I do believe artists should be compensated for their work.
You know, I'm really tired of people telling me 'The iPod already does that'.
It probably does. I don't know. But when I bought my Archos, there *was* no iPod. Further, while the Archos plays MP3s, it's also a general use portable disk drive. Add to that the fact that I can upgrade the internal drive to whatever the current laptop drive technology will hold and I've got a unit equal to the iPod. At least.
I only miss two things on my Archos: resume from a playlist and whole device shuffle mode.
Maybe the iPod is better. I really don't care. I own the Archos and while I'd like those two features, I'm not going to buy a new device for them.
So, the big deal is this: An open source OS has been created for a relatively inexpensive hard disk based MP3 player.
While that OS may not, as yet, be fully functional, given the history of like projects, I believe that this OS has the potential to be the *best* MP3 player on the market. If you aren't interested, that's fine. If you love your iPod, that's fine. But the Archos, at about $160 for a five gig player, is still an impressive product, and with a great OS, it'd be even better.
> You can access your mail (and other apps) via a standard web browser.
Yes and no. It has to be allowed by the Notes admins, and you don't get anywhere near the same functionality as you do with a true client. We have vacation databases set up which can't be accessed except with a notes client.
> You can access your mail with your favourite POP3 or IMAP client.
Again, only if set up to do so by the notes admins. They won't allow it here.
And none of these emails mention that when you send an attachment to multiple users in Notes, the attachment gets recreated for each user and takes up space for each user on the Notes server.
Never thought I'd like an email client less than I liked Exchange, but Notes wins that prize.
> College level CS degrees are not a good investment if you have aptitude.
On the contrary, the CS degree -- or almost any degree -- is an excellent investment. The degree alone opens doors you'ld never even see if you didn't have it, and it provides for a starting salary it's unlikely you'ld get even after four year of experience with an entry level position.
While the coursework may not be challenging, the opportunities to work in real life settings on campus can be invaluable.
There's no question that a lot of people come out of college with a CS degree and know almost nothing about programming or computers in general. (I had one guy who didn't know the difference between memory and disk space, and he was supposed to be a senior level programmer.)
But what some people come out with is immaterial. You *can* come out with a working understanding of computer architecture, systems design, complex programming task, and inerface design. You won't be an expert, but you're not supposed to be coming out of college.
Go to college. A degree won't be a waste of time, and it's unlikely classes will be a waste of time.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it depends. I had a company lay me off -- the company was essentially failing and while they wanted to keep me, they simply had no money. (The only real issue I had with the whole situation was that I really thought they should have warned me four weeks earlier.) They helped me find another position, and did everything they could for me.
When my former manager called me up and asked for some help I gave it to him. Freely, and with no thought of charging him.
Had it happen in another job too -- they needed a bit of help with some web stuff I had written. It was around 50,000 lines of HTML/Perl/SQL code. I helped them out because it didn't hurt me and there really wasn't any reason not to help them.
On the other hand, if I was unemployeed and had been laid off from a viable company who still needed my skills and proved it by calling me up and asking for help, I think I'd be providing them with my fee before they got any help from me.
Like I said, I think it depends -- very few things are quite that black and white.
Sean.
I've only been given one written test, and test wasn't about my technical ability, and it was done on the east coast.
Now-a-days I think I'd come close to being offended if a company insisted upon a written test of my technical ability. I've been in technical interviews, and those are fine -- they confirm what I claim on paper. But I'm not a job hopper, I think that my steady employment coupled with my personal software development business should prove that I'm capable of working within a team and working independantly. The real question for the business is whether my technical abilities fit the need the business has and whether the cost of hiring me fits the budget they have for the position.
I guess the bottom line is that I have over twenty years in software development and systems administration in varied enviroments. I don't feel the need to do more than prove I can do a great job in the position. And that probably doesn't, for me, include a written test.
It works for me -- when I was laid off two years ago when the company essentially failed, I had a job five days later. When I took a new job three months later because of poor working conditions, my former manager was essentially willing to pay me anything to get me back -- neither the I nor the company was as willing. But in each case my salary went up quite a bit.
I guess what it boils down to is that while a written test might be okay in more entry level positions, I don't think it's appropriate for upper level positions. If it's a technical job, do a technical interview. Check references and former employers if you're unsure about the person's writing ability or his or her ability to work within a team. But for upper level posistions I do think written tests are inappropriate.
Sean.
It can be an issue. It's not EMF getting inside the computer, it's the EMF that the computer produces.
As an example, I'm an amateur radio operator and found that one of my computers produced enough EMF to be heard -- and be annoying -- on a radio three feet away. And this computer was in a fully fastened steel case. I finally found I had to turn that computer off to operate.
Sean.
I can't get from your question exactly what you're trying to accomplish. It *sounds* like what you want to accomplish is redundancy in the case of a server problem not related to the disk.
The problem I have with this scenerio is that server hardware problems are much less likely to occur than a disk problem, and I think you'ld be *much* better served by using RAID and mirroring your disks than worrying about a non-disk problem in your server. Using RAID you come close to solving the problem of the disk being a single point of failure, and given that disk problems are more prevelant, it's generally a better choice than redundant machines.
That's a smaller cost than buying a second server, and I suspect it'll give you better results, if for no other reason than what you're suggesting is a fairly non-standard configuration. (Regardless of whether or not it is supported.)
That doesn't solve the possible problems, but it at least places the most likely single point of failure in the right place. To really solve the problem is to make totally redundant systems, but that gets much more expensive.
Sean.
It really depends on what data is being stored and how much. For many, many applications a simple flat file using random access methods works just fine. For managing more data there are libraries such as you mention. And for some projects a full fledged RDBMS is the right way to go.
The proper way to go about this is to analyse what needs to be stored and choose the solution that provides the best match based upon needed functionality, system use, and programming time.
Sean.
Why? Because I can carry most of my CD collection around in the car with me.
I have an Archos unit upgraded to a 30M drive. It stays in the car, and instead of copying my CDs to CDR (so they don't get damaged) and carrying 100 CDs around with me (still not my entire collection by far) like I used to do, I carry my Archos unit. I don't worry about what CDs I want to listen to on a long trip, I don't worry about grabbing the stuff my son likes but I wouldn't carry all the time, I just have a single, small unit.
Battery time? Who cares -- it's plugged into the car.
So, for me it's a matter of better selection -- I really like knowing that if I get an urge to hear a paticular CD, it's ready for me. And if I want to play a CD for friends, again, it's with me. One of the two best gadgets I ever bought. (The other was a ReplayTV unit.)
Oh, and yes, the Archos can be used as a portable hard drive, but I don't have a use for that.
Sean.
I do not agree with their stance on this issue and I believe I have a right to design, implement, and make available such a service.
It's simple. If the administration says you don't have such rights, you don't. It doesn't matter what the AUP says, it doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't matter what *anyone* thinks except those who control and administer the network and systems. If those people say you don't have the right, then you don't.
You don't own the network or the systems you're accessing. You don't have *any* "rights" on the network or systems except those that are explicitly given to you. And what rights you have can be taken away.
If it's a useful and legal tool, then make your case -- prove that it *is* both legal and useful. Prove that it doesn't use significant amounts of bandwidth, and that it is unlikely to ever use significant amounts of bandwidth. If you can't make a convincing argument that your tool is worth allowing, maybe it's really not all that useful anyway.
Sean.
Better for what? Given that I'm a Unix developer, it certainly isn't better as a development system, I prefer a command line interface and mutt for reading email, and I can (and do) run sendmail and have email send directly to my machine under Linux. XP isn't better for me for any of those things.
Is it better for for few games I play? Don't know. I doubt it -- Win98 works just fine for everything I do under windows -- music and games, mostly, and it would be an additional $300 cost to upgrade my Win98 machines to XP. (Yes, I have three Win98 only machines in addition to my Linux/Unix boxes.) What does that $300 buy me? Well, the one thing I *know* it buys me is an invasive and intrusive anti-piracy system.
I know what I need to do with my systems, I've been forced on occasion to use various Windows systems, and I'm more productive using Unix. It's that simple. I could give you specific examples, but that's more off-topic than I want to go. The real point is that "better" is more a matter of opinion than anything else, and I can guarentee that XP is *not* better for at least 95% of the real work I do.
Sean.
No -- vile was, if I remember correctly, emacs with a vi keystroke interface. I used it for a while because it had one thing vi didn't: the ability to set the cursor using the mouse. After a while it got to be too time consuming to bring it up everytime I wanted to edit a file, so I quit using it.
Sean.
This is supposed to be hard?
Heck, I used to program using ed. You get real good at doing things like:
-17,.p
to see the current page.
Guess I'm a Unix "old-timer", though I'm not sure I like the designation. The first Unix I worked on didn't come with vi. When Berkeley 2.9 (for PDPs) came along a year later and had vi, it was great -- as long as there were only one or two people on the system. Any more than that and it got really slow...
And I've got a friend who *refused* to learn vi. Said he was as quick with ed as others were with vi. He was probably right, but the guys at Bell Labs held him down and forced him to learn vi eventually.
Sean.
Uh huh. Try doing *anything* in a new Solaris install with emacs...
Sean.
I never said ANYTHING was wrong with learning the concepts I said memorizing the formulas was wrong
No, what you said was:
Its pointless to teach people to calculate. Teach them how to enter it into their calculator and push enter.
And that's where I started arguing that it was not pointless to teach people how to do simple arithmetic. And I stand by that. Teaching people how to calculate isn't teaching them some random fact, it's teaching them a *process*.
I later said that knowing how to extract roots by hand wasn't a skill many people needed. And I'll generalize that to say that I don't see the need for people to permanently memorize a bunch of formulas they won't need very often.
If what you're arguing is that most people don't need to memorize a bunch of trig formulas, I agree. But that's different from not teaching them arithmetic.
Sean.
That's laziness, not progress.
I carry a PDA. I write programs for PDAs. My profession is keeping computer systems running. I've been a programmer for a long time. I like the new fun tech toys as much as anyone else. I completely believe in the use of technology.
And believe me the computer wasn't invented so you could pull one out and figure a 15% tip.
If you're not willing to put forth the effort to be able to get by without a calculator in your day to day life, if you can't do simple arithmetic in your head and can't do complex problems using pen and paper, then you don't understand arithmetic and you are verging on illiterate.
Calculators should be used to assist, not to replace necessary skills.
Look, I don't care if you can extract roots in your head -- that's a skill few people (if any) need. But any reasonably intellegent adult should be able to add $5.86 and $3.27 in their head. That same adult should be able to calculate a 15% tip. That same adult should be able to calculate what 20% off $37 is. Or approximate state tax on $43.25. Or know how much four movie tickets at $7.50 apiece is. These are all basic arithmetic skills and no adult should need to pull out a calculator to figure out what they are.
Sean.
I hope this is a joke. Anyone should be able to figure a 15% tip in their head, quickly and simply. Anyone should be able to do simple addition, multiplication, and division problems accurately in their head, and should be able to come up with a reasonably accurate estimate of most real life problems. All without the calculator.
It is *not* pointless to teach people to calculate. Almost everyday everyone in industrialized societies come across situations that require arithmetic and calculation. In shopping, it happens probably dozens of times in any large store.
Sean
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable sub-human who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make a mess in the house.
Lazarus Long (aka, Robert Heinlein)
How can anyone who claims to have such an extensive knowledge of computers not understand that if you load a different operating system, you're probably not going to get to keep your old data?
Just because you don't know how to use the tool doesn't make it a bad tool.
Sean.
Last I looked you could still buy a basic tub of Lego pieces. Can't buy them in a box, you have to buy the tub. If not Lego, try Megablocks, which are interchangable with Lego -- less expensive, and quality control is certainly not as good, but you can get a nice assortment for not much money.
Sean.
Lego has had to change to stay alive, as I understand it -- part of that is licensing and creating things like Bionicles which boys 8-12 seem to love.
My son is nine, and when he gets a new lego set, the first thing he does is put it together via the directions. But it doesn't stay that way.
It doesn't really matter that there are all these themed packages if the child eventually uses them to build using his or her own imagination. And if my son and his friends are any indication, then kids who are playing with Lego are taking apart those fancy models for the interesting parts the contain.
Sean.
I'd like to ask you some questions. Email
uem2 at mycroft dot cmhnet dot org.
I would say (as others have) that you haven't really played the game.
The siege tank example was just that, an example. Siege tanks are vulnerable to any air unit and to any close up ground unit (such as zerglings and zealots).
No one unit has a single unit that it is esspecially vulnerable to.
Siege tanks *are* powerful. Siege tanks backed up by marines or golieths are even more powerful. But there are ways to destroy them as any other race.
SC *is* well balanced throughout the races. If it were not, then everyone would want to play the strongest race. Personally, I believe terran is the weakest race, but I know people who can wipe me easily when they play terran and I play something else.
Sean.
I agree. What I should have said was that I have the right to expect compensation if someone else chooses to keep and use my product, whether that product is music or software. If a person doesn't value the product enough to pay the price I'm asking, they aren't forced to use it.
Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Same as with programming. I have some freeware, I have some commercial software.
Shall I take the application you spent months upon and use it without compensating you? I mean, it's just a series of magnetic ones and zeros, surely no more tangible than the audio waves I recorded. It's really a rather close analogy, something I'm sure of because I've done both.
I'm saying that no one will be able to be a fulltime musician if they aren't supported by payments of some sort. And I completely disagree that recorded music shouldn't be compensated. That takes cost, effort, and creativity as well, and you seem to want it for free.
Sure. But we're not talking about the same things. I expect compensation only from people who choose to use my product. What you were originally arguing was that 'music is free', and that I shouldn't expect compensation even from those who choose to use my product.
If people use the software I release without compensating me, I'll quit creating software, or at the very least produce much less software. As I said before, it should be my choice, not the consumer's, to choose whether I get compensation from those who choose to use my product.
Sean.
I don't completely agree. I think the best programmers understand language paradigms -- OO, procedural, etc, and once those paradigms are understood, then all that's left is syntax.
You shouldn't write Java the same way you write C, shouldn't write C the same way you write Perl, but if you understand "best practices" in any OO language, you understand most of what you need to know about another OO language.
Except, of course, syntax.
A good programmer is going to understand the different styles required by different languages, is going to be able to understand which style is needed simply by the language definition, and is going to need to learn little more than syntax and what built in classes/functions are available.
For me? I'll hire the programmer that *wants* to jump in. He or she will probably need some kind of reference, but I'd much rather have the person who starts coding immediately than the one who insists that s/he needs to be trained in the language.
> I will no longer pay for music, period.
Music isn't free, and I wish people would realize this.
I'm a musician. None of the instruments I own were free. Some cost thousands of dollars. I've recorded music, and, not in one case, was doing the recording free. At the cheapest it cost me inexpensive recording equipment and tapes, and the most expensive it cost me the price of a recording engineer, equipment rental, and time.
I've made a CD. That was far from free.
And you're telling me that I shouldn't want to charge for you to listen to the music that cost me time, effort, and money?
Look, I've done a *lot* of free concerts, and that's fine with me. I play music because I love to play music, not because it makes me a profit. Nonetheless, I also don't believe I *owe* you anything, and that seems to be what you believe, at least in a general form. Musicians should give you their music for free, because you're not willing to pay. Ain't gonna happen. If they can't be profitable as musicians (and I'm not saying rich, I'm saying profitable), then they won't make music for you.
I'm also a programmer, and I've had this argument before with people who think I *should* give my programs away for free. I have freeware out there -- I also have commercial software. I don't owe my time just because someone thinks they should get something for free. I have a right to be compensated. And I have that right whether it be for music or software. I can also provide it freely -- but it's my choice, not yours.
Now, before someone thinks I support the RIAA, I don't. But I do believe artists should be compensated for their work.
Sean.
You know, I'm really tired of people telling me 'The iPod already does that'.
It probably does. I don't know. But when I bought my Archos, there *was* no iPod. Further, while the Archos plays MP3s, it's also a general use portable disk drive. Add to that the fact that I can upgrade the internal drive to whatever the current laptop drive technology will hold and I've got a unit equal to the iPod. At least.
I only miss two things on my Archos: resume from a playlist and whole device shuffle mode.
Maybe the iPod is better. I really don't care. I own the Archos and while I'd like those two features, I'm not going to buy a new device for them.
So, the big deal is this: An open source OS has been created for a relatively inexpensive hard disk based MP3 player.
While that OS may not, as yet, be fully functional, given the history of like projects, I believe that this OS has the potential to be the *best* MP3 player on the market. If you aren't interested, that's fine. If you love your iPod, that's fine. But the Archos, at about $160 for a five gig player, is still an impressive product, and with a great OS, it'd be even better.
Sean.
> You can access your mail (and other apps) via a standard web browser.
Yes and no. It has to be allowed by the Notes admins, and you don't get anywhere near the same functionality as you do with a true client. We have vacation databases set up which can't be accessed except with a notes client.
> You can access your mail with your favourite POP3 or IMAP client.
Again, only if set up to do so by the notes admins. They won't allow it here.
And none of these emails mention that when you send an attachment to multiple users in Notes, the attachment gets recreated for each user and takes up space for each user on the Notes server.
Never thought I'd like an email client less than I liked Exchange, but Notes wins that prize.
Sean.
> College level CS degrees are not a good investment if you have aptitude.
On the contrary, the CS degree -- or almost any degree -- is an excellent investment. The degree alone opens doors you'ld never even see if you didn't have it, and it provides for a starting salary it's unlikely you'ld get even after four year of experience with an entry level position.
While the coursework may not be challenging, the opportunities to work in real life settings on campus can be invaluable.
There's no question that a lot of people come out of college with a CS degree and know almost nothing about programming or computers in general. (I had one guy who didn't know the difference between memory and disk space, and he was supposed to be a senior level programmer.)
But what some people come out with is immaterial. You *can* come out with a working understanding of computer architecture, systems design, complex programming task, and inerface design. You won't be an expert, but you're not supposed to be coming out of college.
Go to college. A degree won't be a waste of time, and it's unlikely classes will be a waste of time.
Sean.