And if the Libertarians ever became a mainstream party, they too would be co-opted by those who stand to profit through controlling government contracts and regulations. What we need is a constitution capable of preventing any concentration of state power, regardless of how many votes someone gets or what "mandate" they have. The current American experiment is beyond rehabilitation at this point. Here's hoping we do better next time.
Witness Gulf War I and Iraq. Who actually thought that Iraq wasn't going to get pummeled into oblivion militarily? Yet they did it anyway!
He did it, not because he was an idiot, but because he thought he had our approval to invade Kuwait. He was fighting a proxy war against Iran for us. When Kuwait betrayed Iraq, Sadaam made plans to recover some of the wealth he thought was his due. Whether or not we actually gave approval to invade, it was understandable that someone might think he had it based on our actions and what we said. So he may have been evil, but he wasn't irrational. He had all the rationalizations he needed at the time.
Absolutely. Jokes aside, this is why I stopped worrying about outsourcing a while ago. I've never seen an outsourced project that didn't ultimately come back to the states to get finished/fixed/redone. Eastern cultures live for the collective and consider individualism to be selfish and wrong. Programming ain't like building cars. It's different every time and the paint by numbers approach just doesn't work. As long as we perceive individualism as a virtue and the East sees it as a weakness, the west will continue to have an advantage in this area for a long time to come, regardless of any disparities in labor costs.
Same here. I use to be a serious gamer, but Vista has encouraged me to fully switch over to Linux. I'm hardly a zealot and I can't be considered idealistic. In fact, 2000 and XP had turned me from a Microsoft hater into....well, let's just say I stopped complaining about them. But everything I've read about Vista has so thoroughly disgusted me that I'd be surprised if it's not a Win ME style flop. Most non-tech types I know have recently switched to Mac. I'm finally at the point where I'm willing to give up on PC games, rather than deal with Vista.
Thank god for Unreal and their Linux support. Now if they could only release a decent RTS for Linux, I'd be golden. Too bad Rise of Nations is owned by Microsoft. It's probably too much to hope for that gaming companies will realize that they are going to start to take a real hit by not supporting non-Windows platforms.
I'd agree that projects fail (or drag on forever) when non-tech types dictate what tools to use. I'd also say that's the single defining factor in whether I'm happy at my job or not. I've had many great jobs turn to crap because some distant manager decided that we should be using their new pet platform (untested, undocumented alpha platforms), even when we had something mature that was working great. I can't work the miracles everybody wants if they're gonna tie my hands and blindfold me. I can't tell you how tired I am of seeing this pattern play out again and again.
Cream of the crop developers do not go into management. They set up their own consulting firms. I've yet to meet a decent developer who had any aspirations for management. It may pay a little more, but only in exchange for embracing all that you hated as a developer.
May I ask why you switched from KMail? I'm really fed up with Thunderbird and am considering KMail instead. Evolution sounds like something I wouldn't like, if for no other reason then I'm sick of GTK-based mail clients.
No, it's not just you. It sucks. And I would have swore it once let me drag addresses from "Collected Addresses" to one of the lists. I can't believe I use "New Card" each time to build each list. If there's something I'm missing, it's not very intuitive. In fact, a number of things seem worse to me these last few versions. I didn't mind Thunderbird when I first started using it, but now I'm looking to change clients. I really can't understand why it's taking them so long to smooth out the rough edges.
Hell, is it really that hard to determine that mail I write isn't junk? In fact it seems to claim everything except actual junk mail is junk. No big deal, I don't use that feature. It's just, 2.0 isn't really a 2.0 in my mind. I'm tired of products jumping major version numbers for incremental "improvements."
Dimming gives me the option of going full wattage in those rare times where I actually need it. As for the aesthetics, the color of the light is bad enough, but with my recessed fixture, I also don't want to see those ugly bulbs hanging down too. As for the SUV analogy, you save a lot more money by going with something smaller, while people here are talking about saving only $10/month by going CF. I don't think it's really comparable. Also, a car is simply used to get from point A to point B. My home is something I truly spend a lot of time in.
Yeah, but you can't dim compact fluorescent and they look awful. I'd guess that dimmed incandescents use about the same energy as full powered fluorescents. Unless you're reading, you shouldn't need that much light at night anyway. And given that this is Slashdot, all your reading material is likely self-illuminating.
Oh but according to the head of the TSA, they're not stupid. The reason you can't have an ounce of liquid in a four ounce container is that the containers themselves are considered threats. They're worried about the ability of passengers to mix liquids in flight. So those bottles of vodka must just be deceptively large, since the TSA wouldn't overlook such an obvious hole in their own logic.
No, season 2 was when it died. Season 1 was really good and it would have gone down as one of the great sci-fi shows had it been allowed to continue. It was much better than TNG season 1. Season 2 had about 7 or so good episodes and after that, Sorbo took over and it went to crap long before the S2 finale.
He said the show was too complicated (for him) to follow and he wanted to dumb it down. What he ended up accomplishing is that it started becoming too difficult for the fans to follow. Every episode would start with a back story (that had never aired) and you were stuck thinking, "well, did I miss an episode or something, I don't understand any of these references." That's because he wanted more self-contained episodes. But if people were having trouble following it before, they had even more trouble now since it was like getting into a new show every episode.
The same production company ruined Earth: Final Conflict. That was a pretty good show it's first season. The second season was a night and day, shit and wine, difference to the first. I think it even opened with a (drum roll please), time-travel alternate reality arc. Fuckin' shame. That show had a lot of potential too. But at least it taught me to give up on Andromeda as soon as the writing was on the wall. I suffered through several years of EFC before I wised up enough to stop.
This poster has it right. Reading code isn't going to get you far and it isn't much fun. Spend a weekend screwing around on your computer and make note of each time you thought it'd be great if X software did Y. Then write your own. Write something that would be useful to you.
If a piece of code seems like a hack to get something to work, then fix it. Make it elegant. While writing it, you'll probably code yourself into several messy corners where you know it's not right (even if it works) but you're not sure what might be better. These pieces of code will provide your greatest learning experience, provided you do whatever is necessary to make them better. That includes rewriting your project from scratch, if needed. Rewriting something from scratch goes a lot faster than it did writing it the first time, and it usually ends up saving more time in the long run. I find it's the best way to refine your technique.
Yeah, I before I had Virgin auto-debit me, I once forgot to put money on my phone (within the three months necessary). I lost my number, there was nothing they could do about that, but they did recredit me with the money I had previously on my account when they didn't have to. I've been real happy with them.
Yeah, Virgin Mobile is really reaming me a $5/month. Even with employee discounts here at Verizon, I can't get anything close to such a good deal. Unless you're a woman or a salesman, you shouldn't have need for too many minutes a month.
The have-nots will rise up in arms and simply take back what was taken from them (i.e., the release valve is opened). I think history has shown this to be fairly accurate, the French, American, and Russian revolutions being three recent examples.
Revolutions, including the three you listed, have little to do with the have-nots. Revolutions are almost always led by the middle-class, due to their higher levels of education and having just enough money to believe that true wealth is within their grasp. Historically speaking, the way to stave off revolutions has been to decimate the middle class, and those in power are well aware of this.
The gentleman from EA is right to blame consumers for the cost problem. We like to buy expensive-looking games even if they turn out to be not all that fun. Game design has taken a back seat to shelf appeal, and we've done it to ourselves.
Speak for yourself pal. Whenever I or any of my friends hear about some new fancy graphics a game is going to have, that's when we start realizing that the game play is gonna suck. It seems like you're on the verge of learning a lesson that most serious gamers understand implicitly. Good game play and the latest eye-candy almost never go hand in hand and I certainly don't consider myself to blame for it. That blame lies squarely with the marketing types as it does in all areas of software development.
The irony is that I won't even buy a game based on a movie because I know all the money went into the license, instead of the game. I also know that they must be working with artificial schedules in order to sync up with the movie opening date. For every person they bring into the fold by being associated with a "hot" property, I figure they're driving at least one away.
No of course not. But I think the goal here has more to do with the spending of the money, rather than seeing some vision fulfilled. And I do expect to see that happen in some fashion.
I went with the "as little math as possible" route. We go to school to get the degree, but if you're the type who needs to be taught how to program, then you'll likely wash out sooner or later anyway. Or you'll make it into the field and then one day decide that it's not your thing. Liberal arts courses are better for teaching a person how to think (assuming you can see past the teacher's bias). The balance is of greater benefit to techie type than any calculus course. I never understood my classmates taking differential equations, simply because it seemed like a good match for CS. College shouldn't be treated as a vocational school. If you have a choice, you should take courses far removed from your central discipline. After college, you'll have nothing but tech. And believe it or not, philosophy and history do come in handy more often than one would think.
Slashdot Mirror
why we pay taxes on software purchases
Cause if you don't pay up, someone will ultimately put a gun to you head.
And if the Libertarians ever became a mainstream party, they too would be co-opted by those who stand to profit through controlling government contracts and regulations. What we need is a constitution capable of preventing any concentration of state power, regardless of how many votes someone gets or what "mandate" they have. The current American experiment is beyond rehabilitation at this point. Here's hoping we do better next time.
Witness Gulf War I and Iraq. Who actually thought that Iraq wasn't going to get pummeled into oblivion militarily? Yet they did it anyway!
He did it, not because he was an idiot, but because he thought he had our approval to invade Kuwait. He was fighting a proxy war against Iran for us. When Kuwait betrayed Iraq, Sadaam made plans to recover some of the wealth he thought was his due. Whether or not we actually gave approval to invade, it was understandable that someone might think he had it based on our actions and what we said. So he may have been evil, but he wasn't irrational. He had all the rationalizations he needed at the time.
Absolutely. Jokes aside, this is why I stopped worrying about outsourcing a while ago. I've never seen an outsourced project that didn't ultimately come back to the states to get finished/fixed/redone. Eastern cultures live for the collective and consider individualism to be selfish and wrong. Programming ain't like building cars. It's different every time and the paint by numbers approach just doesn't work. As long as we perceive individualism as a virtue and the East sees it as a weakness, the west will continue to have an advantage in this area for a long time to come, regardless of any disparities in labor costs.
Same here. I use to be a serious gamer, but Vista has encouraged me to fully switch over to Linux. I'm hardly a zealot and I can't be considered idealistic. In fact, 2000 and XP had turned me from a Microsoft hater into....well, let's just say I stopped complaining about them. But everything I've read about Vista has so thoroughly disgusted me that I'd be surprised if it's not a Win ME style flop. Most non-tech types I know have recently switched to Mac. I'm finally at the point where I'm willing to give up on PC games, rather than deal with Vista.
Thank god for Unreal and their Linux support. Now if they could only release a decent RTS for Linux, I'd be golden. Too bad Rise of Nations is owned by Microsoft. It's probably too much to hope for that gaming companies will realize that they are going to start to take a real hit by not supporting non-Windows platforms.
Yeah, cough for me when you discover something that isn't illegal these days.
Those mushrooms are called Viagra.
Yes, but you have to resolve several blocks before portage will let you emerge it. ;)
I'd agree that projects fail (or drag on forever) when non-tech types dictate what tools to use. I'd also say that's the single defining factor in whether I'm happy at my job or not. I've had many great jobs turn to crap because some distant manager decided that we should be using their new pet platform (untested, undocumented alpha platforms), even when we had something mature that was working great. I can't work the miracles everybody wants if they're gonna tie my hands and blindfold me. I can't tell you how tired I am of seeing this pattern play out again and again.
Cream of the crop developers do not go into management. They set up their own consulting firms. I've yet to meet a decent developer who had any aspirations for management. It may pay a little more, but only in exchange for embracing all that you hated as a developer.
I mean seriously, why don't they just start offering cash rewards to encourage people to break copy restrictions?
May I ask why you switched from KMail? I'm really fed up with Thunderbird and am considering KMail instead. Evolution sounds like something I wouldn't like, if for no other reason then I'm sick of GTK-based mail clients.
No, it's not just you. It sucks. And I would have swore it once let me drag addresses from "Collected Addresses" to one of the lists. I can't believe I use "New Card" each time to build each list. If there's something I'm missing, it's not very intuitive. In fact, a number of things seem worse to me these last few versions. I didn't mind Thunderbird when I first started using it, but now I'm looking to change clients. I really can't understand why it's taking them so long to smooth out the rough edges.
Hell, is it really that hard to determine that mail I write isn't junk? In fact it seems to claim everything except actual junk mail is junk. No big deal, I don't use that feature. It's just, 2.0 isn't really a 2.0 in my mind. I'm tired of products jumping major version numbers for incremental "improvements."
Dimming gives me the option of going full wattage in those rare times where I actually need it. As for the aesthetics, the color of the light is bad enough, but with my recessed fixture, I also don't want to see those ugly bulbs hanging down too. As for the SUV analogy, you save a lot more money by going with something smaller, while people here are talking about saving only $10/month by going CF. I don't think it's really comparable. Also, a car is simply used to get from point A to point B. My home is something I truly spend a lot of time in.
Yeah, but you can't dim compact fluorescent and they look awful. I'd guess that dimmed incandescents use about the same energy as full powered fluorescents. Unless you're reading, you shouldn't need that much light at night anyway. And given that this is Slashdot, all your reading material is likely self-illuminating.
Oh but according to the head of the TSA, they're not stupid. The reason you can't have an ounce of liquid in a four ounce container is that the containers themselves are considered threats. They're worried about the ability of passengers to mix liquids in flight. So those bottles of vodka must just be deceptively large, since the TSA wouldn't overlook such an obvious hole in their own logic.
No, season 2 was when it died. Season 1 was really good and it would have gone down as one of the great sci-fi shows had it been allowed to continue. It was much better than TNG season 1. Season 2 had about 7 or so good episodes and after that, Sorbo took over and it went to crap long before the S2 finale.
He said the show was too complicated (for him) to follow and he wanted to dumb it down. What he ended up accomplishing is that it started becoming too difficult for the fans to follow. Every episode would start with a back story (that had never aired) and you were stuck thinking, "well, did I miss an episode or something, I don't understand any of these references." That's because he wanted more self-contained episodes. But if people were having trouble following it before, they had even more trouble now since it was like getting into a new show every episode.
The same production company ruined Earth: Final Conflict. That was a pretty good show it's first season. The second season was a night and day, shit and wine, difference to the first. I think it even opened with a (drum roll please), time-travel alternate reality arc. Fuckin' shame. That show had a lot of potential too. But at least it taught me to give up on Andromeda as soon as the writing was on the wall. I suffered through several years of EFC before I wised up enough to stop.
This poster has it right. Reading code isn't going to get you far and it isn't much fun. Spend a weekend screwing around on your computer and make note of each time you thought it'd be great if X software did Y. Then write your own. Write something that would be useful to you.
If a piece of code seems like a hack to get something to work, then fix it. Make it elegant. While writing it, you'll probably code yourself into several messy corners where you know it's not right (even if it works) but you're not sure what might be better. These pieces of code will provide your greatest learning experience, provided you do whatever is necessary to make them better. That includes rewriting your project from scratch, if needed. Rewriting something from scratch goes a lot faster than it did writing it the first time, and it usually ends up saving more time in the long run. I find it's the best way to refine your technique.
Yeah, I before I had Virgin auto-debit me, I once forgot to put money on my phone (within the three months necessary). I lost my number, there was nothing they could do about that, but they did recredit me with the money I had previously on my account when they didn't have to. I've been real happy with them.
Yeah, Virgin Mobile is really reaming me a $5/month. Even with employee discounts here at Verizon, I can't get anything close to such a good deal. Unless you're a woman or a salesman, you shouldn't have need for too many minutes a month.
The have-nots will rise up in arms and simply take back what was taken from them (i.e., the release valve is opened). I think history has shown this to be fairly accurate, the French, American, and Russian revolutions being three recent examples.
Revolutions, including the three you listed, have little to do with the have-nots. Revolutions are almost always led by the middle-class, due to their higher levels of education and having just enough money to believe that true wealth is within their grasp. Historically speaking, the way to stave off revolutions has been to decimate the middle class, and those in power are well aware of this.
The gentleman from EA is right to blame consumers for the cost problem. We like to buy expensive-looking games even if they turn out to be not all that fun. Game design has taken a back seat to shelf appeal, and we've done it to ourselves.
Speak for yourself pal. Whenever I or any of my friends hear about some new fancy graphics a game is going to have, that's when we start realizing that the game play is gonna suck. It seems like you're on the verge of learning a lesson that most serious gamers understand implicitly. Good game play and the latest eye-candy almost never go hand in hand and I certainly don't consider myself to blame for it. That blame lies squarely with the marketing types as it does in all areas of software development.
The irony is that I won't even buy a game based on a movie because I know all the money went into the license, instead of the game. I also know that they must be working with artificial schedules in order to sync up with the movie opening date. For every person they bring into the fold by being associated with a "hot" property, I figure they're driving at least one away.
No of course not. But I think the goal here has more to do with the spending of the money, rather than seeing some vision fulfilled. And I do expect to see that happen in some fashion.
I went with the "as little math as possible" route. We go to school to get the degree, but if you're the type who needs to be taught how to program, then you'll likely wash out sooner or later anyway. Or you'll make it into the field and then one day decide that it's not your thing. Liberal arts courses are better for teaching a person how to think (assuming you can see past the teacher's bias). The balance is of greater benefit to techie type than any calculus course. I never understood my classmates taking differential equations, simply because it seemed like a good match for CS. College shouldn't be treated as a vocational school. If you have a choice, you should take courses far removed from your central discipline. After college, you'll have nothing but tech. And believe it or not, philosophy and history do come in handy more often than one would think.