The holy grail of advertising is to be a part of an entire subculture that's attractive and happy and cool, a subculture that people want to be a part of, and to have their product be synonymous with their product. They want to make you feel like you can't be a part of the culture that you belong to without owning that product. They want you to feel like you're not yourself without that product.
Mahatma Gandhi actually said, "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."
The tool custodians of the massively complex relational database warehouse tools are seeing their world turn obsolete as the lighter weight MySQL and the more flexible mapreduce and the BASE worlds evolve beyond them, so yes, they are going to kick up a fight. Don't let the screen door hit you in butt on the way out, guys.
Yep. The business rules are no doubt convoluted. In addition to the above, there are also probably plenty of people on various "outdated" pay cycles, bonuses or other adjustments, that are grandfathered in for employees who've been around long enough. Then there's the classified vs. unclassified split, where some people who don't make an hourly wage would have to be completely re-classified to even make it possible to pay them minimum wage.
At the very least, even if the paycheck-generating system can handle it, it would require a lot of custom programming and data munging to get everyone's benefits and rates updated. And that's IF there were anyone who knew enough right now, without doing a lot of software archeology, to figure out how to do it.
I was talking about the presenter, not the audience. I'm sure an intelligent person could come up with a way to sell people who only understand bullet-point-grade information even without the crutch.
I mean really -- is Edward Tufte fighting a losing battle with his Criticism of PowerPoint, and we're already seeing people incapable of thinking outside of bullet points?
DecNET is a protocol suite. There were several DecNetTCP/IP gateways, back in the day -- late 80s, I guess. They may still exist for all I know. c.f. RFC 1006.
Many startups use a patent as collateral for investors in order to get started. No patents mean that anybody (provided you have the resources - time, or a flock of programmers) can now reverse engineer what you've done and use it and you have no protection against that happening
Given the implosion of startups and the crap patents often used to attract VC funding, how is this a bad thing?
Microsoft, for instance, will be able to not pay any licenses to the 'little guy' in order to use any new IP.
I think you mean "other small competing companies, for instance, will not be forced to liquidate when a patent trolling lawyer comes calling telling them their product infringes on the overly-broad obvious patent that Microsoft bought for a relative song from someone who had no really good ideas, just a business plan to patent something obvious and try to get an IBM/Microsoft/Cisco/Yahoo to buy them out just to have the patent protection."
The whole Microsoft wanting to buy Yahoo is really about the pay-per-click patent that Yahoo picked up when they bought out Overture years ago. It's the big companies with spare cash that can cruise around looking for obvious patents to snap up when they need some legal tire iron to beat over the heads of their competitors. Remember, we had plenty of innovation (in the real sense, not the Microsoft meaning) in computing before software patents, that will still happen.
Uh, what about the one who drove across country to threaten the other lover of her illicit lover who's married to yet a third woman? Supposedly she was wearing (or had purchased) adult diaper garments like the ones used in spacesuits.
Good for Dr. Mitchell trying to conduct well-designed experiments. It's just that his beliefs about aliens are not "new", nor is his interest in things outside the scientific mainstream. I'm not even sure why they suddenly got into the news. Must not be any terrorism alerts about pointy or liquid things on airplanes coming out of the White House, so the media are bored.
Yes, plaudits to Dr. Mitchell for trying to conduct good experiments. I only want to point out that he has been interested in phenomena outside the scientific mainstream for decades, and his beliefs about aliens are not "new". I'm not even sure why they suddenly got into the news. Must not be any terrorism alerts about pointy or liquid things on airplanes coming out of the White House, so the media are bored.
Dr. Mitchell has been saying this about aliens for many years now. He's always had a bit of a pseudo-scientific bent. During his Apollo 14 flight to the moon, he secretly conducted ESP experiments with friends back on Earth.
I'm sure that if this change in patent law really happens, there will be hordes of out-of-work lawyers ready to take your case to the former patent owners.
I had something similar happen to me. The interview test question was worded "write a solution for find the exit path from a maze from any starting point". OK, college algorithms class stuff, I thought. I'm a bit rusty but I remember the general techniques.
As soon as I start throwing up code on the board they start adding conditions. It couldn't be a chunk of simple code that showed the algorithm, it had to also show good modularity and separation of concerns. Oh, I thought, so it's also a test of my design skills, that's good because really, what does knowing how to solve a maze show other than you can pass algorithms 101?
After a couple more rounds like this, with ever more abstract and arbitrary issues imposed, (like: "don't use exceptions that way, it's bad style" when I used them in a way that's common in both the libraries and the literature for that language) it finally struck me that these guys weren't looking for someone who knew how to solve a particular problem, they were looking to find someone who would solve the problem in exactly the same way they'd solve it. At that point I just blew off the rest of the interview and every time they raised an objection, I just responded, "yes, that's one way to do it, but not the only or necessarily the best" while changing my solution to match theirs.
I'm glad they didn't hire me though, I could sort of tell when I was sitting in the waiting area until well past the time they said they interview started in their offices in a soulless corporate office park that it was a soul-draining company.
Oh yep, they do that. Now that I think about it, perhaps the whole point of the story linked to in the original post is to lay some astroturf for another round of lobbying Washington for more H1Bs and other relaxations to the foreign labor laws.
Lobbyist: Congressmen, we have to let in more cheap labor from overseas, here this article from July of 2008 PROVES that we can't find anyone in the US who can keep up with changing technology!
Congressman: Well, dang, OK. Be sure to vote for me in November!
Slashdot Mirror
I still have my ancient Visor Platinum. It has a 'boot' time of 0. Perfect for jotting down a few words.
My least-favorite part of WoW. I guess I won't be spending my money on Warhammer.
The holy grail of advertising is to be a part of an entire subculture that's attractive and happy and cool, a subculture that people want to be a part of, and to have their product be synonymous with their product. They want to make you feel like you can't be a part of the culture that you belong to without owning that product. They want you to feel like you're not yourself without that product.
Just Do It.
Mahatma Gandhi actually said, "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."
The tool custodians of the massively complex relational database warehouse tools are seeing their world turn obsolete as the lighter weight MySQL and the more flexible mapreduce and the BASE worlds evolve beyond them, so yes, they are going to kick up a fight. Don't let the screen door hit you in butt on the way out, guys.
I, for one, welcome our new feathered overlords.
BRICK TO THE JUNK!
I hear there's a network admin in San Fran who is looking for work.
Yep. The business rules are no doubt convoluted. In addition to the above, there are also probably plenty of people on various "outdated" pay cycles, bonuses or other adjustments, that are grandfathered in for employees who've been around long enough. Then there's the classified vs. unclassified split, where some people who don't make an hourly wage would have to be completely re-classified to even make it possible to pay them minimum wage.
At the very least, even if the paycheck-generating system can handle it, it would require a lot of custom programming and data munging to get everyone's benefits and rates updated. And that's IF there were anyone who knew enough right now, without doing a lot of software archeology, to figure out how to do it.
Im in ur OSCONs, stealin ur develpurs! DEVELPURS! DEVELPURS!
I was talking about the presenter, not the audience. I'm sure an intelligent person could come up with a way to sell people who only understand bullet-point-grade information even without the crutch.
Excellent link, that's exactly the issues behind the problem I see.
Chalkboard or Whiteboard?
I mean really -- is Edward Tufte fighting a losing battle with his Criticism of PowerPoint, and we're already seeing people incapable of thinking outside of bullet points?
DecNET is a protocol suite. There were several DecNetTCP/IP gateways, back in the day -- late 80s, I guess. They may still exist for all I know. c.f. RFC 1006.
You can get shoes with a built-in iPod from Nike+. Very geek-friendly.
Many startups use a patent as collateral for investors in order to get started. No patents mean that anybody (provided you have the resources - time, or a flock of programmers) can now reverse engineer what you've done and use it and you have no protection against that happening
Given the implosion of startups and the crap patents often used to attract VC funding, how is this a bad thing?
Microsoft, for instance, will be able to not pay any licenses to the 'little guy' in order to use any new IP.
I think you mean "other small competing companies, for instance, will not be forced to liquidate when a patent trolling lawyer comes calling telling them their product infringes on the overly-broad obvious patent that Microsoft bought for a relative song from someone who had no really good ideas, just a business plan to patent something obvious and try to get an IBM/Microsoft/Cisco/Yahoo to buy them out just to have the patent protection."
The whole Microsoft wanting to buy Yahoo is really about the pay-per-click patent that Yahoo picked up when they bought out Overture years ago. It's the big companies with spare cash that can cruise around looking for obvious patents to snap up when they need some legal tire iron to beat over the heads of their competitors. Remember, we had plenty of innovation (in the real sense, not the Microsoft meaning) in computing before software patents, that will still happen.
Uh, what about the one who drove across country to threaten the other lover of her illicit lover who's married to yet a third woman? Supposedly she was wearing (or had purchased) adult diaper garments like the ones used in spacesuits.
SHE passed the psych evaluation.
Good for Dr. Mitchell trying to conduct well-designed experiments. It's just that his beliefs about aliens are not "new", nor is his interest in things outside the scientific mainstream. I'm not even sure why they suddenly got into the news. Must not be any terrorism alerts about pointy or liquid things on airplanes coming out of the White House, so the media are bored.
Yes, plaudits to Dr. Mitchell for trying to conduct good experiments. I only want to point out that he has been interested in phenomena outside the scientific mainstream for decades, and his beliefs about aliens are not "new". I'm not even sure why they suddenly got into the news. Must not be any terrorism alerts about pointy or liquid things on airplanes coming out of the White House, so the media are bored.
Dr. Mitchell has been saying this about aliens for many years now. He's always had a bit of a pseudo-scientific bent. During his Apollo 14 flight to the moon, he secretly conducted ESP experiments with friends back on Earth.
I'm sure that if this change in patent law really happens, there will be hordes of out-of-work lawyers ready to take your case to the former patent owners.
I once got a look at a C program with a bunch of #defines used to make it look like PASCAL.
#define begin {
#define end. }
Yah, that was a nightmare.
Shoot a beam generated by the LHC, there's bound to be a quantum black hole in there somewhere.
I had something similar happen to me. The interview test question was worded "write a solution for find the exit path from a maze from any starting point". OK, college algorithms class stuff, I thought. I'm a bit rusty but I remember the general techniques.
As soon as I start throwing up code on the board they start adding conditions. It couldn't be a chunk of simple code that showed the algorithm, it had to also show good modularity and separation of concerns. Oh, I thought, so it's also a test of my design skills, that's good because really, what does knowing how to solve a maze show other than you can pass algorithms 101?
After a couple more rounds like this, with ever more abstract and arbitrary issues imposed, (like: "don't use exceptions that way, it's bad style" when I used them in a way that's common in both the libraries and the literature for that language) it finally struck me that these guys weren't looking for someone who knew how to solve a particular problem, they were looking to find someone who would solve the problem in exactly the same way they'd solve it. At that point I just blew off the rest of the interview and every time they raised an objection, I just responded, "yes, that's one way to do it, but not the only or necessarily the best" while changing my solution to match theirs.
I'm glad they didn't hire me though, I could sort of tell when I was sitting in the waiting area until well past the time they said they interview started in their offices in a soulless corporate office park that it was a soul-draining company.
Oh, and it's "shoot holes IN".
CTRL-META-ESC-W board
Oh yep, they do that. Now that I think about it, perhaps the whole point of the story linked to in the original post is to lay some astroturf for another round of lobbying Washington for more H1Bs and other relaxations to the foreign labor laws.
Lobbyist: Congressmen, we have to let in more cheap labor from overseas, here this article from July of 2008 PROVES that we can't find anyone in the US who can keep up with changing technology!
Congressman: Well, dang, OK. Be sure to vote for me in November!