First off, InfoWorld are presenting the article in a way where ads are optional. Some people take the option. There is no contract involved in visiting a web site, just as there's no contract that keeps you from turning off your TV or changing channels during commercials, or do you consider that theft, too? Do you sit down and read every single ad when you read a newspaper? If not, how dare you?! You scoundrel! You thief!
No one is entitled to get paid for their work. People are only entitled to try to get paid for their work. The former is socialism. The latter is capitalism.
It's no one's fault but Infoworld's if their business model is broken.
I don't think anyone who programs, and loves it, would look at you odd.
And I can't imagine that there aren't a lot of really good programmers that don't "love" what they do because it is an art. Sure, there are thousands, maybe millions of grunts churning out brain-dead Java code to paste different libraries together, and while some of them might rise to more ambitious levels, the people who will truly excel at programming are the ones who have it in their blood. The best programmers are almost always the ones who were doing it for fun before they did it for a job.
I'm talking about the same kinds of people who took apart their alarm clocks when they were kids, or set up a BBS (back in the day), or wrote their own games. The people who use their computers to create and not just play Quake N. These are the same kinds of people who grow up to become great scientists, engineers, doctors, physicists, etc.
And I don't think any of them would consider your description as anything other than the obvious truth.
Either your Professor is an idiot, or he has no idea what programming is. I can guarantee a lot of programmers are not doing "engineering" and most aren't doing "science", but as a whole programming software has a lot in common with those fields.
A better comparison is that programmers are like bridge builders (or any other large engineering project). Bridge building is definitely engineering because you need to know a vast quanitity of information to properly design, build and test your project, and be able to apply it to new situations because every bridge is unique and every project has a new combination of problems to overcome.
Not all programming tasks are like major engineering projects, but you can't tell me that the people who work on Windows or the Linux kernel or Firefox or any other major piece of software aren't doing work at least as sophisticated as building dams, electrical grids or spaceships. And you can't tell me the software boffins designing new algorithms and systems aren't every bit as much scientists as the folks trying to find the Higgs boson.
Maybe you can build simple web pages in a couple days, and I'm sure there are a lot of "programmers" that don't rise much above that level, but that doesn't describe the whole industry. In a modern business, almost every employee is a computer operator, running the machine. That it is the equivalent of being a "driver". Some of those tasks are certainly simple, which is a good thing. Computers are supposed to be easy to use.
And on top of it all, driving safely and effectively does require a lot of experience. Someone might understand how to operate a car in a few minutes, and be able to use it to get around in a couple of hours, but I wouldn't put that person in, e.g., Boston traffic until he's had years behind the wheel.
Not to mention the exorbitant prices they'll be able to gouge us for in order to fix them when they break.
It's unfortunate that people get backed over, but this is the typical Washington response... throw money at it, and the money is always ours.
The third brake light was a similar situation except for one significant difference: A brake light is a simple and inexpensive component.
Oh, wait, there's another difference. The third brake light improves safety in all driving situations, any time brakes are used, their visibility is increased. The backup camera is something that only comes into play about 1% of the time you're in the car, if that.
And of course, the other concern mentioned here is that just like with GPS and other electronic goodies, too many people use those, consciously or not, to do their thinking for them. We've all heard many stories of people blindly following GPS instructions onto railroad tracks, the wrong way on highways or off cliffs. I can see similar, if less drastic problems when someone hits something they couldn't see in the rear-view camera, but which was plainly visible in the mirrors, or even out the window.
Congress: If it weren't for unintended consequences, they'd be of no consequence at all.
Somehow I doubt companies would make the connection between obnoxious ads and sales.
Director of Sales: Sir, people aren't buying our new and improved Electrowidget with sliding flange grommet and replaceable channel moistener as much as we'd projected. CEO: Well, we know it's better than last year's model that only had a partially-grooved dovetail manifold. Sales should be increasing by 15% instead of only 4%. Director of Advertising: We are flooding the prime time airwaves with the commercial featuring that nasal-voiced comedian whose voice is at the perfect resonance frequency of the average human brainpan. Test audiences that survived showed a 13% imrovement in brand-name recognition. Director of Sales: But the message clearly isn't getting through. CEO: It's obvious: The commercials aren't loud enough.
Commercial music works on the same principle.
Marketing Employee: Gag Reflex will be touring next month, but stations aren't getting many requests for the new single. Marketing Exec: You mean that song that causes diarrhea? Marketing Employee: No, sir. That's the new one from Ke$ha. I'm talking about "Love Sputum". It hasn't budged "Hatemobile", "Love Me Like a TSA Agent" or "I Found Out She Dumped Me From Wikileaks" out of the top spots. Marketing Exec: Well, it's obvious that people can't hear it over those louder songs by Crunkzilla, Spewmetal, and the Vice-Presidents' Hairplugs. Can we do anything about that? Recording Engineer: The only way we could make it louder is using more compression, but it's already close to white noise as it is. Marketing Exec: We need more compression! People will love Gag Reflex but they need to hear them first. Recording Engineering: If you insist that will work... here's a copy to send to radio stations. Marketing Exec: Oh, it will work, and if not, well throw in a pound of heroin with each copy. Director of Advertising (from previous skit): Compression, eh?
In fact, the Democrat Party is currently working on the same principle too.
President: We took a shellacking in the mid-terms. I don't get it. I thought people loved what we were doing. Advisor: Sir, they should, but polls indicate the majority clearly don't like the legislation you've signed and the direction you are taking the country. President: I don't get it. I gave 143 speeches about how great I am. Advisor: I'm with you, sir. They must not have gotten the message. President: Well, then we'll have C-SPAN run a 24-hour looped message explaining our accomplishments. And get those TV commercial experts to jack up the volume. Advisor: I think adding organ music in the background will help. And a flashing chyron that says, "He's right, you know." President: Good idea. And Greek columns.... that will give it an air of authority and gravitas. Advisor: Let's not go overboard, sir. President: By the way, have you seen my sliding flange grommet?
So you're saying that if copyright were extended to the "heat death of the universe minus one day", which is, by the letter of the Constitution, a limited time, that you would be cool with that?
How do you know people hate Obama because he is black? Do you have telepathy? Have you interviewed hundreds or thousands of people? Or are you just buying into the liberal strategy of playing the race card as fast and often as possible?
"Making government bigger" is a contrived complaint?
Have you seen the numbers? Between the Democrats winning Congress and Obama winning the Presidency the budget deficit increased by a factor of 7. But yeah, it's all about skin color.
The sad thing is that for people like you, there is _no_ possible criticism of Obama that wouldn't be called racist.
I never said Bush didn't do those kinds of things, but Obama has only sped the process up doing it faster and harder.
We'll spend our way out of debt! Sure, why not?
They kept unemployment under 8% just like they said they would if we let them dump the better part of a trillion into "shovel-ready" jobs the President now admits that never existed.
Oh, wait.
TSA, DHS, the Border Patrol and defense spending are a small fraction of the entitlements time bomb which at its present rate of growth will exceed the entire size of the budget in a few years, but that's OK when you have _good intentions_.
Right, because everyone in Iraq was just happily flying kites and minding their own business.
I won't argue the post-major-combat process was totally messed up, but it's funny how every major Democrat was on board with the idea of WMD in the years preceding and up to the point the war started: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, the list goes on and on.
Sorry, man, AC is reading from the talking points. You won't get any response.
I suppose the person will claim Bush "stole" the 2000 election too, which is still claimed early and often, but which is to me an even bigger sign the person is a moron.
Too bad the Democrats didn't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Just think of what they could have done with that! Oh, wait...
And if Nancy Pelosi is so wonderful why is half of her own party asking for her to step down as minority leader while the Republicans are cheering her on?
It couldn't be because she's the best advertisement in the House for Republicans in decades, could it?
But around here it's impossible to criticize Democrats without being ad hominem'ed into next year, while treating President Bush, Sarah Palin, etc, like nothing short of the anti-Christ is perfectly reasonable.
My first rule of American politics is this: But anyone who talks or acts like they implicitly trust one party (of the Big Two) and finds the other absolutely "evil", and these folks talk about "Republicans" or "Democrats" the same way Robert Byrd used to talk about blacks, or Obama's "spiritual mentor" of a fifth of a century talks about whites, well, those people are idiots.
More concisely: If you prefer one party over another fine. If you think one party is inherently good and the other inherently evil, you're a moron.
No, I say she's a dingbat because she says things that are stupid. There's a difference. If you like, I can make citations, but I doubt it will matter.
There are plenty of people with whom I disagree that aren't dingbats. Please don't project on me.
Which GP would that be? The "Buckley conservative" or the one that made comments about "tea bags" and other silly insults.
I think it's reasonable to assume that you don't think I was referring to the "Buckley conservative".
In case you haven't noticed, the Tea Partiers are strongly libertarian, which is one of the reasons the Republicans, who are just another flavor of "big government" types were vert leery of them.
I think it's reasonable to assume the GP _is_ a liberal because he's bashing TP'ers while presenting no argument or facts, which is the usual liberal response.
I'd make a list, but it would take hours and surely go beyond the limits of a/. comment length.
Your infrastructure is crumbling because no one has the political will to use tax dollars to fix it, but you're Taxed Enough Already? We all think you're nuts.
Maybe because they are using those tax dollars to do pointless things that waste the money and fail to do any good. If the U.S. government and the States can't keep things going with close to half the GDP of the richest nation in the world, isn't it time to think the people in charge are incompetent?
Well, I guess not if you're a statist. Blind faith in government is what's nuts.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, InfoWorld are presenting the article in a way where ads are optional. Some people take the option. There is no contract involved in visiting a web site, just as there's no contract that keeps you from turning off your TV or changing channels during commercials, or do you consider that theft, too? Do you sit down and read every single ad when you read a newspaper? If not, how dare you?! You scoundrel! You thief!
No one is entitled to get paid for their work. People are only entitled to try to get paid for their work. The former is socialism. The latter is capitalism.
It's no one's fault but Infoworld's if their business model is broken.
I don't think anyone who programs, and loves it, would look at you odd.
And I can't imagine that there aren't a lot of really good programmers that don't "love" what they do because it is an art. Sure, there are thousands, maybe millions of grunts churning out brain-dead Java code to paste different libraries together, and while some of them might rise to more ambitious levels, the people who will truly excel at programming are the ones who have it in their blood. The best programmers are almost always the ones who were doing it for fun before they did it for a job.
I'm talking about the same kinds of people who took apart their alarm clocks when they were kids, or set up a BBS (back in the day), or wrote their own games. The people who use their computers to create and not just play Quake N. These are the same kinds of people who grow up to become great scientists, engineers, doctors, physicists, etc.
And I don't think any of them would consider your description as anything other than the obvious truth.
Either your Professor is an idiot, or he has no idea what programming is. I can guarantee a lot of programmers are not doing "engineering" and most aren't doing "science", but as a whole programming software has a lot in common with those fields.
A better comparison is that programmers are like bridge builders (or any other large engineering project). Bridge building is definitely engineering because you need to know a vast quanitity of information to properly design, build and test your project, and be able to apply it to new situations because every bridge is unique and every project has a new combination of problems to overcome.
Not all programming tasks are like major engineering projects, but you can't tell me that the people who work on Windows or the Linux kernel or Firefox or any other major piece of software aren't doing work at least as sophisticated as building dams, electrical grids or spaceships. And you can't tell me the software boffins designing new algorithms and systems aren't every bit as much scientists as the folks trying to find the Higgs boson.
Maybe you can build simple web pages in a couple days, and I'm sure there are a lot of "programmers" that don't rise much above that level, but that doesn't describe the whole industry. In a modern business, almost every employee is a computer operator, running the machine. That it is the equivalent of being a "driver". Some of those tasks are certainly simple, which is a good thing. Computers are supposed to be easy to use.
And on top of it all, driving safely and effectively does require a lot of experience. Someone might understand how to operate a car in a few minutes, and be able to use it to get around in a couple of hours, but I wouldn't put that person in, e.g., Boston traffic until he's had years behind the wheel.
Zynga currently dwarfs EA in revenue and almost half of that is just Farmville. If the goal is to make money, they're doing something right.
Not to mention the exorbitant prices they'll be able to gouge us for in order to fix them when they break.
It's unfortunate that people get backed over, but this is the typical Washington response... throw money at it, and the money is always ours.
The third brake light was a similar situation except for one significant difference: A brake light is a simple and inexpensive component.
Oh, wait, there's another difference. The third brake light improves safety in all driving situations, any time brakes are used, their visibility is increased. The backup camera is something that only comes into play about 1% of the time you're in the car, if that.
And of course, the other concern mentioned here is that just like with GPS and other electronic goodies, too many people use those, consciously or not, to do their thinking for them. We've all heard many stories of people blindly following GPS instructions onto railroad tracks, the wrong way on highways or off cliffs. I can see similar, if less drastic problems when someone hits something they couldn't see in the rear-view camera, but which was plainly visible in the mirrors, or even out the window.
Congress: If it weren't for unintended consequences, they'd be of no consequence at all.
Cost to add a $10 Camera and a $50 display to a $10,000 vehicle.
Have you ever bought a car?! It may _cost_ that much, but I bet they will charge $500 minimum.
The markup on add-ons like these is in the thousands of percent.
If we trimmed the fat, most lawmakers' and regulators' heads would collapse.
Somehow I doubt companies would make the connection between obnoxious ads and sales.
Director of Sales: Sir, people aren't buying our new and improved Electrowidget with sliding flange grommet and replaceable channel moistener as much as we'd projected.
CEO: Well, we know it's better than last year's model that only had a partially-grooved dovetail manifold. Sales should be increasing by 15% instead of only 4%.
Director of Advertising: We are flooding the prime time airwaves with the commercial featuring that nasal-voiced comedian whose voice is at the perfect resonance frequency of the average human brainpan. Test audiences that survived showed a 13% imrovement in brand-name recognition.
Director of Sales: But the message clearly isn't getting through.
CEO: It's obvious: The commercials aren't loud enough.
Commercial music works on the same principle.
Marketing Employee: Gag Reflex will be touring next month, but stations aren't getting many requests for the new single.
Marketing Exec: You mean that song that causes diarrhea?
Marketing Employee: No, sir. That's the new one from Ke$ha. I'm talking about "Love Sputum". It hasn't budged "Hatemobile", "Love Me Like a TSA Agent" or "I Found Out She Dumped Me From Wikileaks" out of the top spots.
Marketing Exec: Well, it's obvious that people can't hear it over those louder songs by Crunkzilla, Spewmetal, and the Vice-Presidents' Hairplugs. Can we do anything about that?
Recording Engineer: The only way we could make it louder is using more compression, but it's already close to white noise as it is.
Marketing Exec: We need more compression! People will love Gag Reflex but they need to hear them first.
Recording Engineering: If you insist that will work... here's a copy to send to radio stations.
Marketing Exec: Oh, it will work, and if not, well throw in a pound of heroin with each copy.
Director of Advertising (from previous skit): Compression, eh?
In fact, the Democrat Party is currently working on the same principle too.
President: We took a shellacking in the mid-terms. I don't get it. I thought people loved what we were doing.
Advisor: Sir, they should, but polls indicate the majority clearly don't like the legislation you've signed and the direction you are taking the country.
President: I don't get it. I gave 143 speeches about how great I am.
Advisor: I'm with you, sir. They must not have gotten the message.
President: Well, then we'll have C-SPAN run a 24-hour looped message explaining our accomplishments. And get those TV commercial experts to jack up the volume.
Advisor: I think adding organ music in the background will help. And a flashing chyron that says, "He's right, you know."
President: Good idea. And Greek columns.... that will give it an air of authority and gravitas.
Advisor: Let's not go overboard, sir.
President: By the way, have you seen my sliding flange grommet?
True, but Clarke worked the strange surface characteristic of Iapetus into "2001".
Well, there's Kurt Cobain. Wait, what was the question again?
So you're saying that if copyright were extended to the "heat death of the universe minus one day", which is, by the letter of the Constitution, a limited time, that you would be cool with that?
How do you know people hate Obama because he is black? Do you have telepathy? Have you interviewed hundreds or thousands of people? Or are you just buying into the liberal strategy of playing the race card as fast and often as possible?
"Making government bigger" is a contrived complaint?
Have you seen the numbers? Between the Democrats winning Congress and Obama winning the Presidency the budget deficit increased by a factor of 7. But yeah, it's all about skin color.
The sad thing is that for people like you, there is _no_ possible criticism of Obama that wouldn't be called racist.
Who's the real racist here?
You're right. I can't argue with ad hominem.
I guess there _is_ a place in the world for spittle-spraying mouth-foaming hatred. How could I have been so foolish?
I never said Bush didn't do those kinds of things, but Obama has only sped the process up doing it faster and harder.
We'll spend our way out of debt! Sure, why not?
They kept unemployment under 8% just like they said they would if we let them dump the better part of a trillion into "shovel-ready" jobs the President now admits that never existed.
Oh, wait.
TSA, DHS, the Border Patrol and defense spending are a small fraction of the entitlements time bomb which at its present rate of growth will exceed the entire size of the budget in a few years, but that's OK when you have _good intentions_.
Right, because everyone in Iraq was just happily flying kites and minding their own business.
I won't argue the post-major-combat process was totally messed up, but it's funny how every major Democrat was on board with the idea of WMD in the years preceding and up to the point the war started: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, the list goes on and on.
But "Bush lied", yeah, whatever.
Sorry, man, AC is reading from the talking points. You won't get any response.
I suppose the person will claim Bush "stole" the 2000 election too, which is still claimed early and often, but which is to me an even bigger sign the person is a moron.
Too bad the Democrats didn't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Just think of what they could have done with that! Oh, wait...
And if Nancy Pelosi is so wonderful why is half of her own party asking for her to step down as minority leader while the Republicans are cheering her on?
It couldn't be because she's the best advertisement in the House for Republicans in decades, could it?
But around here it's impossible to criticize Democrats without being ad hominem'ed into next year, while treating President Bush, Sarah Palin, etc, like nothing short of the anti-Christ is perfectly reasonable.
My first rule of American politics is this: But anyone who talks or acts like they implicitly trust one party (of the Big Two) and finds the other absolutely "evil", and these folks talk about "Republicans" or "Democrats" the same way Robert Byrd used to talk about blacks, or Obama's "spiritual mentor" of a fifth of a century talks about whites, well, those people are idiots.
More concisely: If you prefer one party over another fine. If you think one party is inherently good and the other inherently evil, you're a moron.
No, I say she's a dingbat because she says things that are stupid. There's a difference. If you like, I can make citations, but I doubt it will matter.
There are plenty of people with whom I disagree that aren't dingbats. Please don't project on me.
Your circular argument goes in circles.
Which GP would that be? The "Buckley conservative" or the one that made comments about "tea bags" and other silly insults.
I think it's reasonable to assume that you don't think I was referring to the "Buckley conservative".
In case you haven't noticed, the Tea Partiers are strongly libertarian, which is one of the reasons the Republicans, who are just another flavor of "big government" types were vert leery of them.
I think it's reasonable to assume the GP _is_ a liberal because he's bashing TP'ers while presenting no argument or facts, which is the usual liberal response.
At some point there's a threshold when you start to wonder why the person chooses and/or attracts so many of them.
And liberals never associate with open racists?
I'd make a list, but it would take hours and surely go beyond the limits of a /. comment length.
Your infrastructure is crumbling because no one has the political will to use tax dollars to fix it, but you're Taxed Enough Already? We all think you're nuts.
Maybe because they are using those tax dollars to do pointless things that waste the money and fail to do any good. If the U.S. government and the States can't keep things going with close to half the GDP of the richest nation in the world, isn't it time to think the people in charge are incompetent?
Well, I guess not if you're a statist. Blind faith in government is what's nuts.
D'Oh! You're right.
Now I feel stupid... er...
You don't have good reading comprehension, do you?
... now who will I watch gladiator movies with?
R.I.P., Mr. Nielsen.