Efforts to develop alternative fuel vehicles were spurred on by having an environmentally conscious President and Vice President (Clinton and Gore). When Bush and Cheney took office, they let it be known in no uncertain terms that the country's "energy policy" was being written by big oil companies and automakers. They have fought against CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards, pushed to turn over public lands to oil companies for drilling, and dismissed the notions of improved energy efficiency and practical mass transportation. Their lip service to fuel cell vehicles is a ruse because auto industry experts know that those vehicles have little chance of being commercially viable in the near future.
If they had been successful at giving their buddies in the oil industry free access drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, the oil would have been sold on the world market to the highest bidder. That's how oil prices are set. Exxon doesn't give special discounts when oil is sold in the same country where the drilling took place.
So expect to see lots of efforts at alternative fuel vehicles go by the wayside. Biodiesel, electric vehicles, CNG (compressed natural gas), and hybrids will solely be developed based on consumer demand -- not environmental needs. Low sulfur diesel, which would radically reduce pollution and give U.S. consumers access to high-tech European diesel engine technology, won't be mandated here any time soon. Oil companies can mysteriously refine it in Europe while claiming that it is somehow impossible to produce in the U.S. Go figure.
P.S. I figure that this will be modded down in anger by right-wingers. Silencing people on Slashdot is easier than intelligently debating them.
So shouldn't it be relatively cheap/easy for the boss to increase the programming staff a little at a time over the next year or two?
If you hire two programmers that each work for 40 hours per week rather than one that works 80, you double your administrative costs, health insurance costs, training costs, etc. Many companies that lack ethics simply push their existing employees to consistently work extra hours to avoid such overhead costs.
It's just a friggin' job. Tell your boss that you will work 40 hours a week (or thereabouts.) If he wants more that that, tell him that you are willing to renegotiate your pay rate for longer hours, but you are not going to give up your friends, family, and social life just so he doesn't have to hire enough people to do the job. If you are hourly and renegotiate pay, tell him time-and-a-half for overtime between 40 and 60 hours and double-time for hours above 60. If he won't go for that, then tell him that you want comp-time for all of the overtime: If you work 60 hours in a week and you get 20 hours of comp time to take when you want.
One question that sticks in my mind:
Are they offering to pay you for those hours, and if so, at an overtime rate, or are they expecting hours like that from salaried employees?
If it's the latter, tell me something: Would you quit if your boss announced that he was cutting your pay in half? If you answered "yes", why would you consider doubling your hours for the same pay?
Meaning absolutely no disrespect to either you or your late uncle, AIDS does not "kinda just happen"; nor, for that matter, do many other illnesses.
AIDS/HIV "just happened" to many people who received blood and blood products in medical procedures. Especially hard hit were those with hemophilia. They were stricken at a horrible rate.
Isaac Asimov's 1992 death from heart and kidney failure was a consequence of AIDS contracted from a transfusion of tainted blood during his December 1983 triple-bypass operation.
Babies are born with it, rape victims contract it, and people getting organ transplants are infected by it.
Let us not stigmatize everyone who is suffering with, or has died from, this horrible disease by painting with too wide a brush and categorizing the victims as drug addicts and people who engage in unsafe sex.
Once we are there, we can start inflaming the people that belong there by telling them that creationism is wrong, not a scientific "theory", and that it's just religious superstition. It only seems fair since the vast majority of people on Slashdot believe in science and yet we are hounded by a handful of religious zealots every time there is a story that deals with the science of evolution. My advice to those people: If you want to revel in your blind faith belief in creationism, go to a web site aimed at people that eschew science in favor of the comforting lies of Christianity.
Before replying, consider that a "theory" is not some wild-assed notion that someone pulled out of their *ss. It's not conjecture or wild speculation.
Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term THEORY is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain HOW life evolves... it is important to understand that the current questions about how life evolves in no way implies any disagreement over the fact of evolution.
- Neil A. Campbell, Biology 2nd ed., 1990, Benjamin/Cummings, p.434
Because it is illegal and you will go to jail for stealing CISCO's intellectual property.
More important than the legality are the ethical aspects of any given act. It's illegal to circumvent copy protection (according to the the DMCA) even if it is to make a copy for your own use. But doing so is not unethical.
In this case, we have an act that is both illegal and unethical.
Sure the "licence agreement" might tell me that it's illegal, but I don't accept that. Unless I signed a contract with CISCO, I can copy the software for personal use. IMO.
Word for the day: copyright.
This word, not surprisingly, refers to who has a right to copy the intellectual property in question. If Cisco has a copyright on it (they do), then they decide who can, and cannot, copy it.
By your logic, if I have not agreed to a Microsoft license and have not signed a contract with them, I would have a legal right to pirate their software. Obviously, that is not the case.
Re:Just contributes to that mountain in China
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OK, well apart from not keeping my own hardware up to date, we seem to be in agreement on most other points
Glad to hear it and, again, I apologize for my unpleasant and uncalled for remarks. Going back through the thread, I realized that I had been, in my mind, attributing things to you that had actually been 'said' by other anonymous posters.
As to keeping your PC's hardware up-to-date, look into it. With very high performance CPUs going for under $60 U.S. (e.g. Athlon XP1600+) and motherboards and hard drives at all-time-lows, it's fairly inexpensive to have a very fast system. Then you can not only do your work under EMACS, you can also freely sample everything from 3D rendering to modern video games to CPU-intensive simulations. Never forget that computers can be fun, too.
Peace.
Re:Just contributes to that mountain in China
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Hehehehe, I think it's really funny how you're getting so wound up about this.
This coming from someone who just posted the longest message of the thread...
You seem to be under the mis-impression that there is some magical 'brick-wall' which separates 'still usable' kit from 'non-usable' kit. That makes no sense.
I've been very careful throughout this to differentiate between "state of the art" and "reasonably modern." I'm fully aware that there is no "brick-wall" for system usability when talking about megahertz (vs. architectures). That said, if someone has an ancient system that is rarely updated, there are many applications and development tools that they simply won't be able to experience.
All I can say is that you have probably contributed more to the mountain in China than I have, which was my original point.
Since you continuously harp on this, I'll explain. I use my retired components and peripherals to construct PCs for people who haven't the money for new machines. The last one I built went to a cash-strapped family. The mother is divorced (for very good reasons) and supporting two children and her elderly mother on a single, modest income.
Do you think you could lose the attitude of moral superiority now?
Try re-reading my post - I was mocking people who use fast processors for the end application, not the development system.
Nowhere in my many postings on this subject have I suggested using fast processors for target systems. In fact, I have made it a point to stress that development systems are what need to be fast (within limits) while target machines may be very humble -- depending on the application.
Unlike you, who seems to have no respect for me
I apologize. I have become rude and unpleasant as a result of the flak I've gotten in this thread. I was wrong to allow that to happen.
What are you going to do? Fire somebody, because they have too many wait states in their BIOS?
This is just another example of this being blown all out of proportion and taken to absurd extremes. My point all along has been that a computer professional that does not keep his hardware, software, and, hence, skills, reasonably up-to-date is generally not a good hiring risk. I contend that such a person is less likely to be a computer enthusiast. It's not that way 100% of the time. There are plenty of incompetent people with fast machines and talented people with slow ones.
I would worry about hiring an interior decorator whose home was furnished with bean bag chairs and lava lamps. It's analogous.
Untrue. If they charge a fee for encoders, consumer devices that play MP3s don't incur a cost penalty. Free versions of programs can include MP3 decoding while commercial versions can include the MP3 encoding functionality.
Imagine the poor sods that have to go through the captured data. They'd get to read stuff like this all day:
HotHoney4462: I am a porn star. StudMan217: Send me your picture! HotHoney4462: I don't have one on my computer. StudMan217: Do you have a scanner? HotHoney4462: No. But my friends tell me I look like Pamela Anderson... {...} 133t_dewd: i still cant run the password cracker you sent. Neo4329542: what happens? 133t_dewd: i cant find it. Neo4329542: where did you save it? 133t_dewd: i dont know -- i just hit okay. Neo4329542: click on my computer. 133t_dewd: how? i can't see your computer... {...} Mom, > Here's a picture of your father on > the new tractor. There was no picture attached. could you send it again? > The TV has been broken since you left. I turn > it on and the screen is black except for three > green letters in the upper left that say DVD. > But there is no DVD in the machine. I ejected > it twice and checked. You have to hit the input select button on the remote until you see a picture. It says DVD because I played that one for you when I was there.
The biggest problem that they face is replacing people who commit suicide after about a week of reading that stuff.
I bet that Maxtor, frustrated by low demand for their 160GB ATA133 drives, created this software. By running it, customers would fill up hard drives "at gigabit speeds." Brilliant!
My guess is that the problem is that Hotmail and other mail providers are apparently stupid enough to accept incoming mail with 300,000,000 recipients in the header. I can't think of any other reason why "rezrov" would get buried in spam almost instantly while "aimfiz69105" never gets any.
The problem is that Hotmail is so stupid that that they apparently have no software to block mailers that are guessing addresses. If a mailer is is bouncing BCC'd messages at a rate greater than 90%, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the sender is probably a spammer. Hotmail's software should temporarily block the sending IP and automatically inform the owner of the problem. If the contact info is bad, tough. Let them wait a week/month/etc. until the block expires.
Re:Just contributes to that mountain in China
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fmaxwell, all I can say is that you have demonstrated the lack of ability by the people you hire to develop a solution successfully on anything but the latest development kit.
No, you have shown that you know practically nothing about professional software development. My own computer has an Athlon CPU that now sells for under $75 (an XP1700+). The hard drives are a pair of modest 80GB Maxtor IDE drives. My CD burners are half the speed of the current state of the art. Hardly is that "the latest development kit."
Don't lecture me on this. You have neither the programming experience nor the management experience that I do. I've developed code on front panels ("switches and blinky lights" to you), punch cards, Z80 systems running at 2.5mhz, and on 20 year old Intel MDS development systems.
If you ever run a successful project (which seems highly unlikely), you will learn that there is an appropriate balance between personnel and equipment expenditures. Just because you CAN develop an application on an 80286 running MS-DOS does not mean that you SHOULD develop it on that. The fact that you CAN debug hardware and software on an embedded system without an ICE (In-Circuit Emulator) does not mean that you SHOULD.
If you want to hire some guy that has so little interest in computers that he has not upgraded his own system in four years, feel free to. I'll stick to hiring people who have a genuine enthusiasm for computers and who keep their hardware, software, and skills up-to-date.
This is something that I'd normally say in a private message, but that's not an option in this forum: You are clearly angry, bitter, and frustrated. You need to talk to someone about it and not just rant at strangers on Slashdot. The last thing your family needs is for you to lose it -- either through depression or anger. I suggest that you speak to the people at your state unemployment office to ask if there are counselling services for people having difficulty handling the stress of a long-term job hunt. I am certain that you are not the first, or last, person to go through emotional stress related to a lengthy job hunt.
There is an art to the interview, the resume, and all correspondence related to the hiring process. Maybe you should talk to people who could coach you so that you make the best possible impression. I also hope that you are not restricting yourself to direct, W2 employment. There are options of 1099 contract work and indirect employment through tech temporary agencies.
That's a myth, foisted on job candidates by management to get them to lower their salary requirements and work weekends.
No, it's not a myth. I knew someone with an MCSE and no college degree pulling $80K/year from a now-defunct dot-com. His skills and very limited experience never merited the position or pay rate that he enjoyed.
It's time management started looking at qualifications instead of checklists.
If there are 100 respondents to a help-wanted ad, the company has to get the list down to a manageable number that can be interviewed. Sometimes that means that they have criteria designed to cull out candidates. Often, that means that very good candidates don't get an interview. If this were a seller's market where there were far more jobs than people available to fill them, management would be more than happy to consider a candidate that had less experience than they wanted or that was demanding a higher pay rate than the firm wanted to pay. I'm hoping that those days return soon.
In closing, don't give up hope. All hiring has not stopped. There are people getting jobs in the tech sector. I've recently been approached by someone who would like to hire me as a W2 employee, so there are jobs out there. I'll now return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress, where you can go back to telling me what a stupid prick you think I am.
Re:Just contributes to that mountain in China
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Look at the SNK NeoGeo(tm) system - it's got a fraction of the processing power of my main machine, and yet it is the most successful video arcade game system EVER BUILT, based on the length of time it's had new games released for it.
You are confusing the development system and the target system. I've developed code to run $5 microcontrollers -- but I didn't develop the code on $5 microcontrollers. A developer's workstation should be fast, responsive, and capacious.
The argument that nobody who is dis-interested in the technology can be any good is invalid. On the contrary, I think that anybody who doesn't take a step back and think that using a 1000 MHz CPU as a word processor is stupid.
And the person that does take that step back is probably someone who is intensely interested in technology. I've been advocating a stripped-down, low-power notebook for simple word processing, e-mail, and maybe web browsing for several years. Preferably something with a flash-based storage system rather than a hard drive and, perhaps, an ARM family CPU. The average notebook used for word processing work is insanely overpowered, overpriced, overweight, oversized, and battery-limited. Basically, something more than a PDA but much less than a standard laptop is what I'd like to see. But, if that machine is built, it's going to be designed and programmed by engineers using modern development systems.
Who but an ethusiast would devote the time and effort for such a setup.
Someone who viewed the computer as nothing more than a tool to improve their ability to do astrophotography would. I have a winch on my Jeep, but I don't consider myself a winch enthusiast. It's just a tool I use to get unstuck.
Fortunately, computers can and, believe it or not, are used for other purposes.
Yes, I know. I program and design embedded systems for a living, so I have probably used, and programmed, computers of more types, and for more purposes, than the vast majority of Slashdot readers -- including you.
The "enthusiast" is capable of recognizing the requirements of the task at hand, the resources available to complete the task and then making an informed descion to upgrade or not.
The enthusiast isn't doing a "task." A computer enthusiast is actively looking for new, interesting, and exciting things for which they can use their computer. One week it might be to learn about setting up a firewall. The next it might be 3D rendering. After that, they may want to try their hand at GUI software development under C. Later, they may want to try developing crypto code. I have a modern computer because I am a computer enthusiast and don't want to find myself hamstrung.
If someone told you they were a "car enthusiast", would you expect to find them driving a Yugo because they "made an informed decision" not to buy a better car based on some utilitarian evaluation of minimal needs? Of course not.
BEING OUT OF WORK FOR 19 MONTHS MAKES IT A LITTLE DIFFICULT TO FILL A BASKET AT COMPUSA RIGHT NOW.
I'm sorry if you have been out of work for that long, but don't blast me because you can't find work. I didn't tell you what to major in, what courses to take after college, or what career path you should follow. I didn't write your resume or cover letters. I did not pick out the clothes you wear to interviews and I did not coach you on what to say when you were there. If you are failing to impress people in a hiring position, it's your fault, not mine. I haven't turned you down for a job, so don't yell at me.
And the guy who started this thread was talking about a computer that had a four year old CPU, not one from a year and a half ago.
And people actually wonder why they can't get a job. I'll restate: the job market is SCREWED. Irretrievably, totally, utterly SCREWED.
When the dot-com boom was going full-swing, anyone who could spell "PC" could get a job in the industry -- usually at a high pay rate. Now there are more jobs than applicants. When I have the opportunity to choose between two otherwise equal applicants, hell yes, I'll go for the one that genuinely loves what he/she does for a living. I like employees that come into work enthused because of some new compiler/library/language/etc. that they discovered. I prefer it when team members can bring something to the table other than skills they were required to in school or at some previous job. I don't see why that should come as a great surprise to anyone.
We weren't talking about what an individual could or could not afford, we're talking about what they choose to spend their money on.
Actually, we were. The post to which I replied said:
this attitude would lead to hiring people who simply have more money than they know what to do with
That makes it sound like one must be rolling around naked in piles of money before being able to afford an upgrade.
But even looking at it from the aspect of a spending choice, I am concerned when a professional software engineer does not choose to keep his system reasonably modern -- and by reasonably modern, I'd certainly say your system fits that description.
I do software development 8 hours a day at work. I don't do development at home.
That's your call. I prefer employees who are active in open-source development, private programming projects, on the lookout for new development tools, etc. Those that just put in their 8 hours to get a paycheck have not been stellar performers for me. Maybe you are different and, if so, no offense is intended.
What do I do at home that would warrant spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a new system?
Nothing. But there's a big difference between a 900mhz Athlon and a 392mhz K6-3. You've got a reasonably modern system. You've got plenty of RAM, hard drive, CPU speed, etc. I was not trying to say that everyone needed a P4 at 2.8ghz. Nice sound card, by the way.
I can accomplish plenty with my PII 400 box running FreeBSD. It is no where near the fastest system I have either. Other systems at home include a dual 750 with 10K Ultra 160 drives, a 1Ghz Athlon, hell even my laptop is faster than the FreeBSD box.
Then it sounds like you keep up with modern technology. But if the PII 400 met all of your needs, why did you throw away money buying those other systems you don't like as much?
You truly are a fucking idiot.
Chances are that I am both more intelligent and successful than you are.
Would your hypothetical employees get a bonus if they upgraded their motherboard?
And you say I'm an idiot? Of course not. I hire people that have a genuine enthusiasm for computers. Such people tend to have reasonably modern computers and it's a real warning sign if I learn in an interview that someone has not upgraded their system in the last four years.
Would you hire a an interior decorator whose house was furnished with Lava Lamps and bean bag chairs? If not, then why would you hire a software engineer with a grotesquely outdated computer?
You probably don't want somebody who's solution to just about any problem is "throw more money at it" -- because that attitude probably will cost you money in unnecessary expenditures.
There is a difference between a development system and a target system. I often develop software for embedded systems that cost very little and have low performance, but that does not mean that my development system should be the same as the target systems.
More careful people might want to consider, however, that this attitude would lead to hiring people who simply have more money than they know what to do with, and buy expensive computers like Falcon Northwest customs as prestige objects.
If you don't earn enough money as a computer professional to keep your own computer up-to-date, then you must not be very good at your chosen line of work. Would you hire a lawyer that could not afford to replace a worn-out briefcase or a plumber that arrived by cab because he didn't earn enough to buy a work truck?
My computer is quite modest. It is based on an MSI motherboard with an Athlon XP1700+ CPU. I have a pair of 24x CD writers, and 2 80GB IDE hard drives and 384MB of RAM. It's got a GeForce 3 Ti200 video card and a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz audio card. It's hardly state of the art and I did not list a single item there that costs more than $100 if you shop carefully and it's still a modern, responsive computer. So you don't have to be on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to have a decent computer.
There's a big difference between looking down on anyone who does not have this month's CPU and making the perfectly reasonable observation that an old K6-3 at 300-and-something megahertz is just not reasonable in this day and age for a computer professional's primary system.
I happily use a P75 (16MB and a 1.2GB hd) to control a telescope and digital camera as part of my astronomy hobby. The telescope is positioned by servos controlled by an RS232 conection to the PC. The camera is digital and controlled via USB (add-on card). I consider this system to be far more idicative of my ethusiasm than the 800Mhz PIII or 1.4Ghz Athalon sitting in my den.
I plan to get an appropriate laptop to use with my Celestron C8 (with aftermarket digital setting circles) and my NexStar 5. But, like your use of the P75, that will show my enthusiasm for amateur astronomy rather than computers.
I have a 486-100 laptop now that I use for automobile diagnostics and burning ROM/PROM/EPROM/Flash. But it's not my primary computer.
As an ethusiast, I should know and understand the capabilities of the hardware I have available. Blindly upgrading on a yearly basis as you advocate, implies "band-wagonism" NOT enthusiasm.
I don't "blindly" upgrade. I upgrade when, with a cost-effective purchase, I can make my system more responsive, powerful, and pleasant to use. I do that both because many software engineering and simulation tools assume a reasonably high-powered system as do the enthusiast aspects (gaming, multimedia, etc). My primary system is not exactly state-of-the-art. My CPU is an Athlon XP1700+, a chip that can be bought for $75 now. My hard drives are only 80GB when 160GB drives are now available. The video card is a GeForce 3 Ti200 -- not exactly the fastest thing available. But it's a reasonable system for a software professional.
Look, if you want to attack people, why don't you go after the idiots that do case mods and install neon lights so that they can show off their computers' guts? I'm just a software engineer who understands the need for a responsive, fast computer in my line of work. I don't have pictures of my computer on a web page. I haven't published benchmarks for chest-thumping. I have not cryogenically cooled it so that I could brag about how much it is overclocked. I don't engage in pissing contests over frame rates, hard drive size, SETI benchmarks, amount of RAM, etc.
That said, I recognize that a 300-and-something mhz Socket 7 system is just too slow. Something that slow would definitely impair my ability to work efficiently -- I know because my customer has provided me with a Dell 400mhz PII system and even that is painfully slow for many tasks.
I think there's a lot of difference between the tools you use at home and the tools you use at work.
If there is a monetary reason for it, sure. But computers are simply dirt-cheap. $75 will buy you an Athlon XP1700+ CPU. Fast, large hard drives are under $100. I just got a 24x CD-RW drive for $10 after rebates. I'm not expecting anyone to go out and buy a dual Xeon machine with 3GB of RAM. But at least have something that is not more than two generations removed from current technology.
Just like I don't expect a professional limo driver to own their own limo for personal use, when all they need is a Ford Escort.
Take a look at what professional race drivers drive on the streets. You will find nicely engineered cars, not race cars. If a race driver was not discerning enough to appreciate the difference between a Ford Escort and, say, a BMW, then I would worry.
Slashdot Mirror
Efforts to develop alternative fuel vehicles were spurred on by having an environmentally conscious President and Vice President (Clinton and Gore). When Bush and Cheney took office, they let it be known in no uncertain terms that the country's "energy policy" was being written by big oil companies and automakers. They have fought against CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards, pushed to turn over public lands to oil companies for drilling, and dismissed the notions of improved energy efficiency and practical mass transportation. Their lip service to fuel cell vehicles is a ruse because auto industry experts know that those vehicles have little chance of being commercially viable in the near future.
If they had been successful at giving their buddies in the oil industry free access drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, the oil would have been sold on the world market to the highest bidder. That's how oil prices are set. Exxon doesn't give special discounts when oil is sold in the same country where the drilling took place.
So expect to see lots of efforts at alternative fuel vehicles go by the wayside. Biodiesel, electric vehicles, CNG (compressed natural gas), and hybrids will solely be developed based on consumer demand -- not environmental needs. Low sulfur diesel, which would radically reduce pollution and give U.S. consumers access to high-tech European diesel engine technology, won't be mandated here any time soon. Oil companies can mysteriously refine it in Europe while claiming that it is somehow impossible to produce in the U.S. Go figure.
P.S. I figure that this will be modded down in anger by right-wingers. Silencing people on Slashdot is easier than intelligently debating them.
So shouldn't it be relatively cheap/easy for the boss to increase the programming staff a little at a time over the next year or two?
If you hire two programmers that each work for 40 hours per week rather than one that works 80, you double your administrative costs, health insurance costs, training costs, etc. Many companies that lack ethics simply push their existing employees to consistently work extra hours to avoid such overhead costs.
It's just a friggin' job. Tell your boss that you will work 40 hours a week (or thereabouts.) If he wants more that that, tell him that you are willing to renegotiate your pay rate for longer hours, but you are not going to give up your friends, family, and social life just so he doesn't have to hire enough people to do the job. If you are hourly and renegotiate pay, tell him time-and-a-half for overtime between 40 and 60 hours and double-time for hours above 60. If he won't go for that, then tell him that you want comp-time for all of the overtime: If you work 60 hours in a week and you get 20 hours of comp time to take when you want.
One question that sticks in my mind:
Are they offering to pay you for those hours, and if so, at an overtime rate, or are they expecting hours like that from salaried employees?
If it's the latter, tell me something: Would you quit if your boss announced that he was cutting your pay in half? If you answered "yes", why would you consider doubling your hours for the same pay?
Meaning absolutely no disrespect to either you or your late uncle, AIDS does not "kinda just happen"; nor, for that matter, do many other illnesses.
AIDS/HIV "just happened" to many people who received blood and blood products in medical procedures. Especially hard hit were those with hemophilia. They were stricken at a horrible rate.
Isaac Asimov's 1992 death from heart and kidney failure was a consequence of AIDS contracted from a transfusion of tainted blood during his December 1983 triple-bypass operation.
Babies are born with it, rape victims contract it, and people getting organ transplants are infected by it.
Let us not stigmatize everyone who is suffering with, or has died from, this horrible disease by painting with too wide a brush and categorizing the victims as drug addicts and people who engage in unsafe sex.
Before replying, consider that a "theory" is not some wild-assed notion that someone pulled out of their *ss. It's not conjecture or wild speculation.
Because it is illegal and you will go to jail for stealing CISCO's intellectual property.
More important than the legality are the ethical aspects of any given act. It's illegal to circumvent copy protection (according to the the DMCA) even if it is to make a copy for your own use. But doing so is not unethical.
In this case, we have an act that is both illegal and unethical.
Sure the "licence agreement" might tell me that it's illegal, but I don't accept that. Unless I signed a contract with CISCO, I can copy the software for personal use. IMO.
Word for the day: copyright.
This word, not surprisingly, refers to who has a right to copy the intellectual property in question. If Cisco has a copyright on it (they do), then they decide who can, and cannot, copy it.
By your logic, if I have not agreed to a Microsoft license and have not signed a contract with them, I would have a legal right to pirate their software. Obviously, that is not the case.
OK, well apart from not keeping my own hardware up to date, we seem to be in agreement on most other points
Glad to hear it and, again, I apologize for my unpleasant and uncalled for remarks. Going back through the thread, I realized that I had been, in my mind, attributing things to you that had actually been 'said' by other anonymous posters.
As to keeping your PC's hardware up-to-date, look into it. With very high performance CPUs going for under $60 U.S. (e.g. Athlon XP1600+) and motherboards and hard drives at all-time-lows, it's fairly inexpensive to have a very fast system. Then you can not only do your work under EMACS, you can also freely sample everything from 3D rendering to modern video games to CPU-intensive simulations. Never forget that computers can be fun, too.
Peace.
Hehehehe, I think it's really funny how you're getting so wound up about this.
This coming from someone who just posted the longest message of the thread...
You seem to be under the mis-impression that there is some magical 'brick-wall' which separates 'still usable' kit from 'non-usable' kit. That makes no sense.
I've been very careful throughout this to differentiate between "state of the art" and "reasonably modern." I'm fully aware that there is no "brick-wall" for system usability when talking about megahertz (vs. architectures). That said, if someone has an ancient system that is rarely updated, there are many applications and development tools that they simply won't be able to experience.
All I can say is that you have probably contributed more to the mountain in China than I have, which was my original point.
Since you continuously harp on this, I'll explain. I use my retired components and peripherals to construct PCs for people who haven't the money for new machines. The last one I built went to a cash-strapped family. The mother is divorced (for very good reasons) and supporting two children and her elderly mother on a single, modest income.
Do you think you could lose the attitude of moral superiority now?
Try re-reading my post - I was mocking people who use fast processors for the end application, not the development system.
Nowhere in my many postings on this subject have I suggested using fast processors for target systems. In fact, I have made it a point to stress that development systems are what need to be fast (within limits) while target machines may be very humble -- depending on the application.
Unlike you, who seems to have no respect for me
I apologize. I have become rude and unpleasant as a result of the flak I've gotten in this thread. I was wrong to allow that to happen.
What are you going to do? Fire somebody, because they have too many wait states in their BIOS?
This is just another example of this being blown all out of proportion and taken to absurd extremes. My point all along has been that a computer professional that does not keep his hardware, software, and, hence, skills, reasonably up-to-date is generally not a good hiring risk. I contend that such a person is less likely to be a computer enthusiast. It's not that way 100% of the time. There are plenty of incompetent people with fast machines and talented people with slow ones.
I would worry about hiring an interior decorator whose home was furnished with bean bag chairs and lava lamps. It's analogous.
so are these what you pulled from your c:\my documents\irc.log and your latest thread with mom?
;-)
Yes, and the scary part is that I was HotHoney4462!
If they don't charge they have zero revenue.
Untrue. If they charge a fee for encoders, consumer devices that play MP3s don't incur a cost penalty. Free versions of programs can include MP3 decoding while commercial versions can include the MP3 encoding functionality.
I just got a slow ping. I am now typing this while huddled under my keyboard drawer in order to avoid injury from the netquake.
The biggest problem that they face is replacing people who commit suicide after about a week of reading that stuff.
I bet that Maxtor, frustrated by low demand for their 160GB ATA133 drives, created this software. By running it, customers would fill up hard drives "at gigabit speeds." Brilliant!
My guess is that the problem is that Hotmail and other mail providers are apparently stupid enough to accept incoming mail with 300,000,000 recipients in the header. I can't think of any other reason why "rezrov" would get buried in spam almost instantly while "aimfiz69105" never gets any.
The problem is that Hotmail is so stupid that that they apparently have no software to block mailers that are guessing addresses. If a mailer is is bouncing BCC'd messages at a rate greater than 90%, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the sender is probably a spammer. Hotmail's software should temporarily block the sending IP and automatically inform the owner of the problem. If the contact info is bad, tough. Let them wait a week/month/etc. until the block expires.
fmaxwell, all I can say is that you have demonstrated the lack of ability by the people you hire to develop a solution successfully on anything but the latest development kit.
No, you have shown that you know practically nothing about professional software development. My own computer has an Athlon CPU that now sells for under $75 (an XP1700+). The hard drives are a pair of modest 80GB Maxtor IDE drives. My CD burners are half the speed of the current state of the art. Hardly is that "the latest development kit."
Don't lecture me on this. You have neither the programming experience nor the management experience that I do. I've developed code on front panels ("switches and blinky lights" to you), punch cards, Z80 systems running at 2.5mhz, and on 20 year old Intel MDS development systems.
If you ever run a successful project (which seems highly unlikely), you will learn that there is an appropriate balance between personnel and equipment expenditures. Just because you CAN develop an application on an 80286 running MS-DOS does not mean that you SHOULD develop it on that. The fact that you CAN debug hardware and software on an embedded system without an ICE (In-Circuit Emulator) does not mean that you SHOULD.
If you want to hire some guy that has so little interest in computers that he has not upgraded his own system in four years, feel free to. I'll stick to hiring people who have a genuine enthusiasm for computers and who keep their hardware, software, and skills up-to-date.
This is something that I'd normally say in a private message, but that's not an option in this forum: You are clearly angry, bitter, and frustrated. You need to talk to someone about it and not just rant at strangers on Slashdot. The last thing your family needs is for you to lose it -- either through depression or anger. I suggest that you speak to the people at your state unemployment office to ask if there are counselling services for people having difficulty handling the stress of a long-term job hunt. I am certain that you are not the first, or last, person to go through emotional stress related to a lengthy job hunt.
There is an art to the interview, the resume, and all correspondence related to the hiring process. Maybe you should talk to people who could coach you so that you make the best possible impression. I also hope that you are not restricting yourself to direct, W2 employment. There are options of 1099 contract work and indirect employment through tech temporary agencies.
That's a myth, foisted on job candidates by management to get them to lower their salary requirements and work weekends.
No, it's not a myth. I knew someone with an MCSE and no college degree pulling $80K/year from a now-defunct dot-com. His skills and very limited experience never merited the position or pay rate that he enjoyed.
It's time management started looking at qualifications instead of checklists.
If there are 100 respondents to a help-wanted ad, the company has to get the list down to a manageable number that can be interviewed. Sometimes that means that they have criteria designed to cull out candidates. Often, that means that very good candidates don't get an interview. If this were a seller's market where there were far more jobs than people available to fill them, management would be more than happy to consider a candidate that had less experience than they wanted or that was demanding a higher pay rate than the firm wanted to pay. I'm hoping that those days return soon.
In closing, don't give up hope. All hiring has not stopped. There are people getting jobs in the tech sector. I've recently been approached by someone who would like to hire me as a W2 employee, so there are jobs out there. I'll now return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress, where you can go back to telling me what a stupid prick you think I am.
Look at the SNK NeoGeo(tm) system - it's got a fraction of the processing power of my main machine, and yet it is the most successful video arcade game system EVER BUILT, based on the length of time it's had new games released for it.
You are confusing the development system and the target system. I've developed code to run $5 microcontrollers -- but I didn't develop the code on $5 microcontrollers. A developer's workstation should be fast, responsive, and capacious.
The argument that nobody who is dis-interested in the technology can be any good is invalid. On the contrary, I think that anybody who doesn't take a step back and think that using a 1000 MHz CPU as a word processor is stupid.
And the person that does take that step back is probably someone who is intensely interested in technology. I've been advocating a stripped-down, low-power notebook for simple word processing, e-mail, and maybe web browsing for several years. Preferably something with a flash-based storage system rather than a hard drive and, perhaps, an ARM family CPU. The average notebook used for word processing work is insanely overpowered, overpriced, overweight, oversized, and battery-limited. Basically, something more than a PDA but much less than a standard laptop is what I'd like to see. But, if that machine is built, it's going to be designed and programmed by engineers using modern development systems.
Sorry but you are wrong on this one.
No, it is you that is wrong. Keep reading.
Who but an ethusiast would devote the time and effort for such a setup.
Someone who viewed the computer as nothing more than a tool to improve their ability to do astrophotography would. I have a winch on my Jeep, but I don't consider myself a winch enthusiast. It's just a tool I use to get unstuck.
Fortunately, computers can and, believe it or not, are used for other purposes.
Yes, I know. I program and design embedded systems for a living, so I have probably used, and programmed, computers of more types, and for more purposes, than the vast majority of Slashdot readers -- including you.
The "enthusiast" is capable of recognizing the requirements of the task at hand, the resources available to complete the task and then making an informed descion to upgrade or not.
The enthusiast isn't doing a "task." A computer enthusiast is actively looking for new, interesting, and exciting things for which they can use their computer. One week it might be to learn about setting up a firewall. The next it might be 3D rendering. After that, they may want to try their hand at GUI software development under C. Later, they may want to try developing crypto code. I have a modern computer because I am a computer enthusiast and don't want to find myself hamstrung.
If someone told you they were a "car enthusiast", would you expect to find them driving a Yugo because they "made an informed decision" not to buy a better car based on some utilitarian evaluation of minimal needs? Of course not.
BEING OUT OF WORK FOR 19 MONTHS MAKES IT A LITTLE DIFFICULT TO FILL A BASKET AT COMPUSA RIGHT NOW.
I'm sorry if you have been out of work for that long, but don't blast me because you can't find work. I didn't tell you what to major in, what courses to take after college, or what career path you should follow. I didn't write your resume or cover letters. I did not pick out the clothes you wear to interviews and I did not coach you on what to say when you were there. If you are failing to impress people in a hiring position, it's your fault, not mine. I haven't turned you down for a job, so don't yell at me.
And the guy who started this thread was talking about a computer that had a four year old CPU, not one from a year and a half ago.
And people actually wonder why they can't get a job. I'll restate: the job market is SCREWED. Irretrievably, totally, utterly SCREWED.
When the dot-com boom was going full-swing, anyone who could spell "PC" could get a job in the industry -- usually at a high pay rate. Now there are more jobs than applicants. When I have the opportunity to choose between two otherwise equal applicants, hell yes, I'll go for the one that genuinely loves what he/she does for a living. I like employees that come into work enthused because of some new compiler/library/language/etc. that they discovered. I prefer it when team members can bring something to the table other than skills they were required to in school or at some previous job. I don't see why that should come as a great surprise to anyone.
Actually, we were. The post to which I replied said:
That makes it sound like one must be rolling around naked in piles of money before being able to afford an upgrade.
But even looking at it from the aspect of a spending choice, I am concerned when a professional software engineer does not choose to keep his system reasonably modern -- and by reasonably modern, I'd certainly say your system fits that description.
I do software development 8 hours a day at work. I don't do development at home.
That's your call. I prefer employees who are active in open-source development, private programming projects, on the lookout for new development tools, etc. Those that just put in their 8 hours to get a paycheck have not been stellar performers for me. Maybe you are different and, if so, no offense is intended.
What do I do at home that would warrant spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a new system?
Nothing. But there's a big difference between a 900mhz Athlon and a 392mhz K6-3. You've got a reasonably modern system. You've got plenty of RAM, hard drive, CPU speed, etc. I was not trying to say that everyone needed a P4 at 2.8ghz. Nice sound card, by the way.
Fuck You.
Can we cuddle afterwards?
I can accomplish plenty with my PII 400 box running FreeBSD. It is no where near the fastest system I have either. Other systems at home include a dual 750 with 10K Ultra 160 drives, a 1Ghz Athlon, hell even my laptop is faster than the FreeBSD box.
Then it sounds like you keep up with modern technology. But if the PII 400 met all of your needs, why did you throw away money buying those other systems you don't like as much?
You truly are a fucking idiot.
Chances are that I am both more intelligent and successful than you are.
Would your hypothetical employees get a bonus if they upgraded their motherboard?
And you say I'm an idiot? Of course not. I hire people that have a genuine enthusiasm for computers. Such people tend to have reasonably modern computers and it's a real warning sign if I learn in an interview that someone has not upgraded their system in the last four years.
Would you hire a an interior decorator whose house was furnished with Lava Lamps and bean bag chairs? If not, then why would you hire a software engineer with a grotesquely outdated computer?
You probably don't want somebody who's solution to just about any problem is "throw more money at it" -- because that attitude probably will cost you money in unnecessary expenditures.
There is a difference between a development system and a target system. I often develop software for embedded systems that cost very little and have low performance, but that does not mean that my development system should be the same as the target systems.
More careful people might want to consider, however, that this attitude would lead to hiring people who simply have more money than they know what to do with, and buy expensive computers like Falcon Northwest customs as prestige objects.
If you don't earn enough money as a computer professional to keep your own computer up-to-date, then you must not be very good at your chosen line of work. Would you hire a lawyer that could not afford to replace a worn-out briefcase or a plumber that arrived by cab because he didn't earn enough to buy a work truck?
My computer is quite modest. It is based on an MSI motherboard with an Athlon XP1700+ CPU. I have a pair of 24x CD writers, and 2 80GB IDE hard drives and 384MB of RAM. It's got a GeForce 3 Ti200 video card and a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz audio card. It's hardly state of the art and I did not list a single item there that costs more than $100 if you shop carefully and it's still a modern, responsive computer. So you don't have to be on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to have a decent computer.
There's a big difference between looking down on anyone who does not have this month's CPU and making the perfectly reasonable observation that an old K6-3 at 300-and-something megahertz is just not reasonable in this day and age for a computer professional's primary system.
I happily use a P75 (16MB and a 1.2GB hd) to control a telescope and digital camera as part of my astronomy hobby. The telescope is positioned by servos controlled by an RS232 conection to the PC. The camera is digital and controlled via USB (add-on card). I consider this system to be far more idicative of my ethusiasm than the 800Mhz PIII or 1.4Ghz Athalon sitting in my den.
I plan to get an appropriate laptop to use with my Celestron C8 (with aftermarket digital setting circles) and my NexStar 5. But, like your use of the P75, that will show my enthusiasm for amateur astronomy rather than computers.
I have a 486-100 laptop now that I use for automobile diagnostics and burning ROM/PROM/EPROM/Flash. But it's not my primary computer.
As an ethusiast, I should know and understand the capabilities of the hardware I have available. Blindly upgrading on a yearly basis as you advocate, implies "band-wagonism" NOT enthusiasm.
I don't "blindly" upgrade. I upgrade when, with a cost-effective purchase, I can make my system more responsive, powerful, and pleasant to use. I do that both because many software engineering and simulation tools assume a reasonably high-powered system as do the enthusiast aspects (gaming, multimedia, etc). My primary system is not exactly state-of-the-art. My CPU is an Athlon XP1700+, a chip that can be bought for $75 now. My hard drives are only 80GB when 160GB drives are now available. The video card is a GeForce 3 Ti200 -- not exactly the fastest thing available. But it's a reasonable system for a software professional.
Look, if you want to attack people, why don't you go after the idiots that do case mods and install neon lights so that they can show off their computers' guts? I'm just a software engineer who understands the need for a responsive, fast computer in my line of work. I don't have pictures of my computer on a web page. I haven't published benchmarks for chest-thumping. I have not cryogenically cooled it so that I could brag about how much it is overclocked. I don't engage in pissing contests over frame rates, hard drive size, SETI benchmarks, amount of RAM, etc.
That said, I recognize that a 300-and-something mhz Socket 7 system is just too slow. Something that slow would definitely impair my ability to work efficiently -- I know because my customer has provided me with a Dell 400mhz PII system and even that is painfully slow for many tasks.
I think there's a lot of difference between the tools you use at home and the tools you use at work.
If there is a monetary reason for it, sure. But computers are simply dirt-cheap. $75 will buy you an Athlon XP1700+ CPU. Fast, large hard drives are under $100. I just got a 24x CD-RW drive for $10 after rebates. I'm not expecting anyone to go out and buy a dual Xeon machine with 3GB of RAM. But at least have something that is not more than two generations removed from current technology.
Just like I don't expect a professional limo driver to own their own limo for personal use, when all they need is a Ford Escort.
Take a look at what professional race drivers drive on the streets. You will find nicely engineered cars, not race cars. If a race driver was not discerning enough to appreciate the difference between a Ford Escort and, say, a BMW, then I would worry.