I wish they'd stick these things in envelopes so I could track my mail to confirm that yes, my landlord has in fact received the check, and he should look in his wife's purse before calling me.
Realistically, probably almost all software these days infringes on some kind of patent. The patent office seems willing to hand out anything, letting the courts sort it all out. That's fine for big companies, but it means smaller companies (who can't defend themselves) get the short end of the stick.
From this perspective, open-source seems like a liability. It's harder for companies to snoop in closed-source applications looking for violations of their patents, but open-source is... well, wide open.
At my current company, which is small to medium sized, we hire our techincal folks almost exclusively through a recruiter who we have a relationship with (after the typical rounds of asking the current employees if they know anyone who would be a good fit). This is partly because everytime we post an ad, we get flooded with literally thousands of resumes from people who are completely unqualified. It simply isn't worth our time to sort through them all and widdle them down to a few seemingly decent ones only to call the candidates and find out that they've completely lied about their skillsets. It's worth letting someone else deal with that!
It wouldn't surprise me overly much if many smaller companies who don't have a dedicated staff of resume sorters do something similar.
For those who want to combine genetic algorithms with neural networks, there's also a project that combines joone with JGAP (a Java genetic algorithms framework).
I know you probably prefer dead-tree books, as do many people. But O'Reilly's Safari service supposedly offers a relatively inexpensive way to gain exposure to a lot of technical titles. I haven't used it myself, so I can't really comment beyond that, but I'm sure others can share their experiences.
Unless I'm missing something, while I believe that the simulation of multiple CPUS could certainly help find certain kinds of bugs (like those provided as examples in the article), a lot of the nastier issues will only manifest themselves when you really have multiple CPUs that are really doing work at the same time. Folks that work with threads see this a lot: where a multi-threaded application works great on a single-cpu box; but on a multi-cpu box where those threads are really running at the same time, problems occur. So while this is a nice tool, I can't see releasing code for production that has never been tested on a machine that actually has multiple CPUs.
In truth, if I were convinced that the markup on the product were due to the extra cost of creating an environmentally friendly product, I probably would pay the extra. Unfortunately, as we all know, these giant corporations will do anything to make an extra buck, including jacking up the prices of environmentally-friendly products well beyond their additional costs just because they know that people like me will pay extra for them. As evidence of this, all you need to do is look at how much crappy organic produce is flooding the marketplace now that farmers have realized that people will pay extra for anything labeled "organic" regardless of the quality. Back a few years ago, it used to be that organic produce was excellent because it was necessary to compete on quality. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be true any longer.
And, of course, as soon as a few of these environmentally-friendly products fail because of the sleazy business tactics of the companies that push them, people like you suddenly conclude that there's no marketplace for environmentally-friendly products and all those tree-hugger whackos are really just a bunch of hipocrites who aren't willing to put their money where their mouths are. In the end, it's a vicious downward cycle.
I'm a software engineer and I got picked for a jury a few weeks ago in southern California. There was also one other programmer on the jury. As it happened, the two of us hung the jury. We were the only ones that, despite believing the guy did what he was accused of, felt that there wasn't enough evidence to convince us beyond a reasonable doubt. Most of the other jurors wanted to convict the guy and would look at the evidence from perspectives that would allow them to do that. In other words, for them if it was possible that he did it given the evidence, then he was guilty.
In California, at least, this is further confused by the jury instructions we were given. In california, circumstantial evidence is allowed, and the jury instructions state something like "if there are two explanations, and one is reasonable and one is not, you must accept the reasonable explanation." But what it doesn't say is that the evidence must convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that the reasonable scenario actually happened. The other jurors took this to mean that if they felt the prosection's story was more reasonable than the defendent's story, then they could convict him. We finally got an opportunity to get the judge to clarify these instructions and explain that any decision must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt by the evidence, but by then the others had already made up their mind.
All in all, it was a very disturbing experience. All I can say is that if I'm ever accused of a crime, I pray that there is a programmer on my jury!
It seems that most open source projects rely heavily on word-of-mouth and perhaps a few announcement sites, like Freshmeat, that have geek-appeal. But with open source trying to break into the mainstream, what do you think open source projects should do to effectively market themselves to non-geeks?
So many sites are using flash now instead of normal images that the image blocking, while very nice, is becoming less useful. It'd be nice to be able to enforce the same controls on flash content (and other forms of content delivery) as normal images.
This may be a bit off topic, but it'd be great to have a news service where I could rank each article on a scale of 1-10 in terms of how interested I was in it and whether I'd like to be sent similar news in the future. After a few weeks/months of doing this, my hope is that I would mostly get stuff that interests me. It could throw some occasional new stuff at me over time to see if my preferences have changed.
Right now I don't subscribe to a newspaper or typically read common news sites because I don't want to wade through tons of stuff that doesn't interest me to find the stuff that does interest me. Slashdot is a partial solution whereby some other group is determining what's interesting whose tastes happen to be somewhat similar to my own, but a news service that adapts to my own personal preferences would be nice. Maybe something like this already exists.
It's nice to see that our country has its priorities so straight. If you're a hacker who embarrasses a large company, you get life in prison. But if you're the CEO of a large company who cooks the books and devastates the retirement of hundreds of thousands of people, well, that'll get you 10 years.
Whew, it's a good thing those giant corporations have the public's best interests in mind! Imagine where we'd be if they got greedy and abused their power! Oh, wait...
Hell, I'd take a job for $80 an hour, and I think most other developers would too. And believe me, it's not difficult to find people with a great work ethic.
In my experience, people who don't work hard aren't given any reason to work hard. In other words, their companies treat them like dirt and make it well known that they are expendable. Who wants to bust their ass for a company like that? The secret to hard work is loyalty. Create a strong sense of loyalty amongst your employees, to both you and to each other, and they will bust their asses for you and for the team. I've personally seen people go from worthless slackers to amazingly hard and efficient workers and then back to worthless slackers as their managers changed. Great managers and great companies breed great workers. Never forget it.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an OReilly book, if that helps.
I wish they'd stick these things in envelopes so I could track my mail to confirm that yes, my landlord has in fact received the check, and he should look in his wife's purse before calling me.
Realistically, probably almost all software these days infringes on some kind of patent. The patent office seems willing to hand out anything, letting the courts sort it all out. That's fine for big companies, but it means smaller companies (who can't defend themselves) get the short end of the stick.
From this perspective, open-source seems like a liability. It's harder for companies to snoop in closed-source applications looking for violations of their patents, but open-source is... well, wide open.
Good thing I have AT&T! I get so little coverage I bet they have no idea where I'm at.
At my current company, which is small to medium sized, we hire our techincal folks almost exclusively through a recruiter who we have a relationship with (after the typical rounds of asking the current employees if they know anyone who would be a good fit). This is partly because everytime we post an ad, we get flooded with literally thousands of resumes from people who are completely unqualified. It simply isn't worth our time to sort through them all and widdle them down to a few seemingly decent ones only to call the candidates and find out that they've completely lied about their skillsets. It's worth letting someone else deal with that!
It wouldn't surprise me overly much if many smaller companies who don't have a dedicated staff of resume sorters do something similar.
For those who want to combine genetic algorithms with neural networks, there's also a project that combines joone with JGAP (a Java genetic algorithms framework).
I know you probably prefer dead-tree books, as do many people. But O'Reilly's Safari service supposedly offers a relatively inexpensive way to gain exposure to a lot of technical titles. I haven't used it myself, so I can't really comment beyond that, but I'm sure others can share their experiences.
Unless I'm missing something, while I believe that the simulation of multiple CPUS could certainly help find certain kinds of bugs (like those provided as examples in the article), a lot of the nastier issues will only manifest themselves when you really have multiple CPUs that are really doing work at the same time. Folks that work with threads see this a lot: where a multi-threaded application works great on a single-cpu box; but on a multi-cpu box where those threads are really running at the same time, problems occur. So while this is a nice tool, I can't see releasing code for production that has never been tested on a machine that actually has multiple CPUs.
In truth, if I were convinced that the markup on the product were due to the extra cost of creating an environmentally friendly product, I probably would pay the extra. Unfortunately, as we all know, these giant corporations will do anything to make an extra buck, including jacking up the prices of environmentally-friendly products well beyond their additional costs just because they know that people like me will pay extra for them. As evidence of this, all you need to do is look at how much crappy organic produce is flooding the marketplace now that farmers have realized that people will pay extra for anything labeled "organic" regardless of the quality. Back a few years ago, it used to be that organic produce was excellent because it was necessary to compete on quality. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be true any longer.
And, of course, as soon as a few of these environmentally-friendly products fail because of the sleazy business tactics of the companies that push them, people like you suddenly conclude that there's no marketplace for environmentally-friendly products and all those tree-hugger whackos are really just a bunch of hipocrites who aren't willing to put their money where their mouths are. In the end, it's a vicious downward cycle.
I'm a software engineer and I got picked for a jury a few weeks ago in southern California. There was also one other programmer on the jury. As it happened, the two of us hung the jury. We were the only ones that, despite believing the guy did what he was accused of, felt that there wasn't enough evidence to convince us beyond a reasonable doubt. Most of the other jurors wanted to convict the guy and would look at the evidence from perspectives that would allow them to do that. In other words, for them if it was possible that he did it given the evidence, then he was guilty.
In California, at least, this is further confused by the jury instructions we were given. In california, circumstantial evidence is allowed, and the jury instructions state something like "if there are two explanations, and one is reasonable and one is not, you must accept the reasonable explanation." But what it doesn't say is that the evidence must convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that the reasonable scenario actually happened. The other jurors took this to mean that if they felt the prosection's story was more reasonable than the defendent's story, then they could convict him. We finally got an opportunity to get the judge to clarify these instructions and explain that any decision must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt by the evidence, but by then the others had already made up their mind.
All in all, it was a very disturbing experience. All I can say is that if I'm ever accused of a crime, I pray that there is a programmer on my jury!
It seems that most open source projects rely heavily on word-of-mouth and perhaps a few announcement sites, like Freshmeat, that have geek-appeal. But with open source trying to break into the mainstream, what do you think open source projects should do to effectively market themselves to non-geeks?
So many sites are using flash now instead of normal images that the image blocking, while very nice, is becoming less useful. It'd be nice to be able to enforce the same controls on flash content (and other forms of content delivery) as normal images.
This may be a bit off topic, but it'd be great to have a news service where I could rank each article on a scale of 1-10 in terms of how interested I was in it and whether I'd like to be sent similar news in the future. After a few weeks/months of doing this, my hope is that I would mostly get stuff that interests me. It could throw some occasional new stuff at me over time to see if my preferences have changed.
Right now I don't subscribe to a newspaper or typically read common news sites because I don't want to wade through tons of stuff that doesn't interest me to find the stuff that does interest me. Slashdot is a partial solution whereby some other group is determining what's interesting whose tastes happen to be somewhat similar to my own, but a news service that adapts to my own personal preferences would be nice. Maybe something like this already exists.
It's nice to see that our country has its priorities so straight. If you're a hacker who embarrasses a large company, you get life in prison. But if you're the CEO of a large company who cooks the books and devastates the retirement of hundreds of thousands of people, well, that'll get you 10 years.
Whew, it's a good thing those giant corporations have the public's best interests in mind! Imagine where we'd be if they got greedy and abused their power! Oh, wait...
Hell, I'd take a job for $80 an hour, and I think most other developers would too. And believe me, it's not difficult to find people with a great work ethic.
In my experience, people who don't work hard aren't given any reason to work hard. In other words, their companies treat them like dirt and make it well known that they are expendable. Who wants to bust their ass for a company like that? The secret to hard work is loyalty. Create a strong sense of loyalty amongst your employees, to both you and to each other, and they will bust their asses for you and for the team. I've personally seen people go from worthless slackers to amazingly hard and efficient workers and then back to worthless slackers as their managers changed. Great managers and great companies breed great workers. Never forget it.
Neil