I started the Atkins diet about 6 months ago. During the initial 2 week phase I completely cut out caffiene, sugar, alcohol, and most food additives.
I felt like crap for a week (light headaches, tiredness), but think of it this way: if you feel that bad when getting off that crap, then what's it doing to you when you *are* eating it? The worse it hurts, the better off you'll be in the long run.
Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin says a $1-a-month fee per user on Internet providers alone (it's unclear whether costs would be passed along to subscribers) would generate $2 billion yearly: "We're talking about a modest fee on all the parties who benefit from the availability of this content."
Of course it's unclear, because in this current market of heavy competition among ISP's for clients there's not a single ISP who can afford to pay for this, unless there's a law forcing them to do it.
Basically, this is a music tax, no matter how you spin it, no matter whether it's the music companies or the artists getting the money.
On a slightly different tack, I love music, and I hope artists get paid what they're worth, but let's get real.
I write software for a living. Last year, maybe 100-150K people used my software which is probably like a small time album sale. This coming year, we're doing deals where 2-3 million people will be using our software across the year.
Shouldn't *I* be paid outrageous sums of money just like these artists too?
Doesn't this sound a bit like Windows 3.1 being called an 'Operating System'?
This is a GUI that supposedly will support the API's of multiple platforms. Methinks it won't be all that easy in the end. (think ardi with their executor trying to copy *just* the Mac API...yes, I *did* buy a copy).
I don't see how this could be even remotely possible, unless linux-like numbers of developers jumped in.
Setup a password-protected inbox, and you will have just a few spams in a whole year. Simple filtering will never be able to provide this level of protection.
Clearly, IANAL, but doesn't this qualify as hacking?
Doesn't this mean that the RIAA are now guilty of attempting to hack, thereby violating the DMCA, and therefore the directors of the company should be put into jail just like Dmitry?
In the land of the capitalist, it will never happen, but it seems that what's good for the goose...
In my Finance course, I learn how to balance a corporate stock portfolio, but I have no clue how to start a business or pay my employees.
There is no way 'starting a business' could be taught. This changes for each business. Networking and luck are at least as important as a good idea and hard work. You could study history to find out how other businesses were started, but there is no one formula for how to make it work.
In my System Analysis & Design course, I spend 3 hours constructing data-flow diagrams, entity-relationship diagrams, and Ghantt charts for programs that take around an hour to code!
If the planning phase results in code that I can come along and modify in 6 months or a year, then it's well worth it. If a brand-new engineer comes on board and can understand how the whole thing works because of this documentation then it's worth it. Maintenance and adherence to the code vision for an organization is key.
Coding, and engineering in general must be thought of in a holistic sense. "How does it affect the organization?", "How does it fit into the product?", "Is this efficient relative to the rest of the product".
Too many people seem to write code in a fire and forget way that makes maintenance impossible.
In my Management course, my professor discusses techniques for being an effective CEO, but I don't even know how to manage a few subordinates, much less an entire company.
This is an interesting point. I'm thinking that people might be better employees if they had even an inkling of what their managers faced each day. (yes, I'm a techie that has become a manager, and it's not easy, at least for me).
In my MIS course, we learn about client-server technology, but when I ask if my peers have tested their web pages
The hardest thing for me to learn when I got out of school was that I didn't know the best route my company should take. I thought I did, and I had lots of opinions, but until you start your own company, and are faced with decisions like "do we support Macs?" or "do we support opera" or "do we use Microsoft Office or StarOffice?", you won't appreciate all that goes into such a decision.
Don't most "big picture" lessons come with experience
Rather than be down because your college tried to teach you big picture stuff, accept that no college can teach you everything. To grow to the limit of your capacity, you must keep educating yourself. Go to the library, go to professional meetings (even as a student). Ask questions, *listen* to the answers. Almost everyone can teach you something...you just gotta dig out what it is, and then pay attention.
My question for Slashdot readers is: Is this really what companies want of today's graduates?"
My company wants people who:
Are self-motivated - I hand them a project, and they hand me a completion note.
Are self-expanding - Ask me, ask friends, ask the internet, go buy a book, and explore the problem space on their own time.
Are communicative - Let's talk about the code concepts, let's talk about approaches, etc.
Are team-focused - Willing to do whatever it takes to get a project working. Extra hours, change their code, call extra meetings before the deadline
Are honest - Be willing to say "Hey, I don't know this", or "Hey, I got a problem" before the deadline passes and we as an organization are really in trouble.
Will we find these people? I hope so, they're the kind of people I want to base my company on.
What a short-sighted way of thinking. Are you looking for an excuse to turn your brain off?
You may never use methods (calculation of an Integral by hand, calculation of density of a particular solution, etc).
But you *will* use knowlege of culture, because it seeps into you and becomes part of how you see the world! It's inifinitely better if you can go to other places, tour the US even, and try to see as much of this history for which you hold such disdain.
The world is a much bigger place than the Mall, the Burger King, and the job. It'd be a shame to miss it simply because you "won't use it".
It makes complete sense to explore the problem space using software, and only when you know what you're talkign about implement the solution in hardware.
When designing and trialing a trouble tracking system from teh ground up, do you immediately start programming to get a web interface to handle it?
No! You start with a paper-based system that is amazingly flexible, get the process right, and *then* you can automate it
My earlier impressions of scheme being amazingly complex, opaque and hard to learn were formed as a result of the book "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs".
I still have this book from Uni. After reading your post, I pulled it down from the shelf to take a look at it.
I'm sure the authors are really nice, but my earlier impresion still holds: it's too complex, and makes what should be a really simple language very hard to understand. I was always scared off within the first 50 pages. (And barely made it through that class...certainly not having learned anything useful.)
The authors got so excited about mathematical research they forgot they were trying to teach a programming language.
It wasn't until I tried to program a regular program in TCL that I understood how flexible and desirable scripting languages can be (and why that's a good thing).
This is hardly the book to offer to newbies interested in tasting the language.
It was a real bear because I was very quickly out of the loop as far as office goings on, and the hours were so strange. About 4pm my time they'd just be getting to work, so they'd send email, expecting that the emails would be answered during their business day.
So, I ended up shifting the work day around so that I started around 2, and finished around 10pm which didn't set well with the wife.
On top of that, there was a huge envy among co-workers, so we got into email wars. We'd copy 7/8 of the company to tell someone else off. Absolutely completely non-productive, in addition to being just stupid.
Though flexible work hours only makes sense in this day of long commutes, I'm a big believer in face time. At my current company I allow my employees to work from home as appropriate (1 day a week on average), but Mondays are sacrosanct, we talk a lot during the week, and have a open-plan desk layout where we can see each other when we are in the office. This leads to even more interaction when in the office.
Making telecommuting work well is very hard and only seems to make sense when you're working on project type work.
This solution only works if you have a unix computer delivering to your mailbox. However, if you do, it virtually eliminates spam.
The solution is to put a password system on your mailbox.
You set up filters on your email so that for the people you know and mailing lists, they can email you as before. The rest of the world will get a canned response saying that they have to send the email again with the password of 'xxxxx' in the subject.
Since spammers almost never send a valid email address, they never see this email, and so the spam disappears back into the ether, and I didn't have to use potentially expensive modem time to download the spam to check to see if I wanted it. (And I didn't have to participate in a global spam checking service that doesn't really work 100% anyway).
Once in a while (2 times in the last 6 months) you'll get a spammer stupid enough to actually resend the spam but with the password. However, since they are sending it by hand the return headers are valid! *yay* Instant retribution!
For those of us with access to unix procmail processing on their mail accounts, Professor Timo Salvi has come up with an amazingly effective tool to stop spam: a password-protected mailbox.
I was getting around 20+ spams a day. (Oh! If only I could have found time to use all that Porn or viagra or money.) I'd had enough. Regular mail filters didn't work, and complaining through spamcop was useless. After implementing this password, I've seen 3 spams in 5 months on the same account. The rest were trashed.
I stumbled across Dr. Salvi's page here:
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/info/proctips.html.
Basically, the way it works is that when I receive email that I haven't explicitly approved, the procmail filter sees that the password is not in the subject, and sends it back to its sender with the password stuffed into the subject. They are asked to resend the email. This time, the filter accepts the email for me to read. Since most spam comes from faked email addresses the spammers never see this. Of those that do, only 1 was stupid enough to actually modify the subject by hand and forward it on to me. funnily enough, I then had *her* email address, which I promptly submitted to any email list I could find for a day or two...*evil grin*
For people I *want* to communicate with, I add them to my email filter. I've got around 60 exemptions or so including mailing lists.
It won't work for everyone as it's fairly tricky to set up, and if you get it wrong you will annoy the hell out of any mailing list you post to, but if you can I strongly recommend you do use this approach.
Don't get me wrong...I fully see Linux's appeal as a free operating system.
I *don't* see how these other arguments really apply though...
"easily be tweaked"...
Custom hardware means custom programming. Not impossible, but not a walk in the park, surely.
"Windows bloat"...
To have a full-blown operating system, you'll have bloat. Doesn't really matter whether it's Microsoft or Linux, does it?
"All most users really need"...
Then why do they need the multiple processes, cron, etc running on a linux handheld would bring?
"Microsoft's chains of oppression"...
Don't get me wrong...Microsoft *is* inherently evil. But I have to laugh...they own like 5% of the PDA market. You mean Palm's chains of oppression (which are quite comfortable to me...as they aren't forgetting the minimalistic basics.)
Slashdot Mirror
Now all we gotta do is figure out how to hook ourselves up to recharge this battery, and we're ready for the machines to take over the world.
Is to bloody well stop drinking caffiene.
I started the Atkins diet about 6 months ago. During the initial 2 week phase I completely cut out caffiene, sugar, alcohol, and most food additives.
I felt like crap for a week (light headaches, tiredness), but think of it this way: if you feel that bad when getting off that crap, then what's it doing to you when you *are* eating it? The worse it hurts, the better off you'll be in the long run.
If the RIAA was dark-hearted enough to go after broke college radio stations and really small internet radio stations, they'll flip about this.
Couldn't happen to nicer folks.
Since when does this surprise anyone?
Get a hotmail account, and their super-efficient software engines have you on spam lists within hours.
Before, they just spammed you.
Now they've now given you a checkbox that they will ignore, and *then* spam you.
Nothing to see here...move along.
Of course it's unclear, because in this current market of heavy competition among ISP's for clients there's not a single ISP who can afford to pay for this, unless there's a law forcing them to do it.
Basically, this is a music tax, no matter how you spin it, no matter whether it's the music companies or the artists getting the money.
On a slightly different tack, I love music, and I hope artists get paid what they're worth, but let's get real.
I write software for a living. Last year, maybe 100-150K people used my software which is probably like a small time album sale. This coming year, we're doing deals where 2-3 million people will be using our software across the year.
Shouldn't *I* be paid outrageous sums of money just like these artists too?
Doesn't this sound a bit like Windows 3.1 being called an 'Operating System'?
This is a GUI that supposedly will support the API's of multiple platforms. Methinks it won't be all that easy in the end. (think ardi with their executor trying to copy *just* the Mac API...yes, I *did* buy a copy).
I don't see how this could be even remotely possible, unless linux-like numbers of developers jumped in.
Running two 15" LCD displays, it'll have a battery life of about 15 minutes.
Can't you see a demo of it?
salesman: Here's the new computer, pretty soon everyone will have one.
customer: Wow!
salesman: Oh, let me show you this new...uh... excuse me, gotta put it in the charger now.
Why deal with this whole issue?
Setup a password-protected inbox, and you will have just a few spams in a whole year. Simple filtering will never be able to provide this level of protection.
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/info/spamfoil.html
It works *really* well!
Clearly, IANAL, but doesn't this qualify as hacking?
Doesn't this mean that the RIAA are now guilty of attempting to hack, thereby violating the DMCA, and therefore the directors of the company should be put into jail just like Dmitry?
In the land of the capitalist, it will never happen, but it seems that what's good for the goose...
There is no way 'starting a business' could be taught. This changes for each business. Networking and luck are at least as important as a good idea and hard work. You could study history to find out how other businesses were started, but there is no one formula for how to make it work.
In my System Analysis & Design course, I spend 3 hours constructing data-flow diagrams, entity-relationship diagrams, and Ghantt charts for programs that take around an hour to code!
If the planning phase results in code that I can come along and modify in 6 months or a year, then it's well worth it. If a brand-new engineer comes on board and can understand how the whole thing works because of this documentation then it's worth it. Maintenance and adherence to the code vision for an organization is key.
Coding, and engineering in general must be thought of in a holistic sense. "How does it affect the organization?", "How does it fit into the product?", "Is this efficient relative to the rest of the product".
Too many people seem to write code in a fire and forget way that makes maintenance impossible.
In my Management course, my professor discusses techniques for being an effective CEO, but I don't even know how to manage a few subordinates, much less an entire company.
This is an interesting point. I'm thinking that people might be better employees if they had even an inkling of what their managers faced each day. (yes, I'm a techie that has become a manager, and it's not easy, at least for me).
In my MIS course, we learn about client-server technology, but when I ask if my peers have tested their web pages
The hardest thing for me to learn when I got out of school was that I didn't know the best route my company should take. I thought I did, and I had lots of opinions, but until you start your own company, and are faced with decisions like "do we support Macs?" or "do we support opera" or "do we use Microsoft Office or StarOffice?", you won't appreciate all that goes into such a decision.
Don't most "big picture" lessons come with experience
Rather than be down because your college tried to teach you big picture stuff, accept that no college can teach you everything. To grow to the limit of your capacity, you must keep educating yourself. Go to the library, go to professional meetings (even as a student). Ask questions, *listen* to the answers. Almost everyone can teach you something...you just gotta dig out what it is, and then pay attention.
My question for Slashdot readers is: Is this really what companies want of today's graduates?"
My company wants people who:
Will we find these people? I hope so, they're the kind of people I want to base my company on.
Never going to use again?
What a short-sighted way of thinking. Are you looking for an excuse to turn your brain off?
You may never use methods (calculation of an Integral by hand, calculation of density of a particular solution, etc).
But you *will* use knowlege of culture, because it seeps into you and becomes part of how you see the world! It's inifinitely better if you can go to other places, tour the US even, and try to see as much of this history for which you hold such disdain.
The world is a much bigger place than the Mall, the Burger King, and the job. It'd be a shame to miss it simply because you "won't use it".
It makes complete sense to explore the problem space using software, and only when you know what you're talkign about implement the solution in hardware.
When designing and trialing a trouble tracking system from teh ground up, do you immediately start programming to get a web interface to handle it?
No! You start with a paper-based system that is amazingly flexible, get the process right, and *then* you can automate it
My earlier impressions of scheme being amazingly complex, opaque and hard to learn were formed as a result of the book "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs".
I still have this book from Uni. After reading your post, I pulled it down from the shelf to take a look at it.
I'm sure the authors are really nice, but my earlier impresion still holds: it's too complex, and makes what should be a really simple language very hard to understand. I was always scared off within the first 50 pages. (And barely made it through that class...certainly not having learned anything useful.)
The authors got so excited about mathematical research they forgot they were trying to teach a programming language.
It wasn't until I tried to program a regular program in TCL that I understood how flexible and desirable scripting languages can be (and why that's a good thing).
This is hardly the book to offer to newbies interested in tasting the language.
I telecommuted from London to San Francisco.
It was a real bear because I was very quickly out of the loop as far as office goings on, and the hours were so strange. About 4pm my time they'd just be getting to work, so they'd send email, expecting that the emails would be answered during their business day.
So, I ended up shifting the work day around so that I started around 2, and finished around 10pm which didn't set well with the wife.
On top of that, there was a huge envy among co-workers, so we got into email wars. We'd copy 7/8 of the company to tell someone else off. Absolutely completely non-productive, in addition to being just stupid.
Though flexible work hours only makes sense in this day of long commutes, I'm a big believer in face time. At my current company I allow my employees to work from home as appropriate (1 day a week on average), but Mondays are sacrosanct, we talk a lot during the week, and have a open-plan desk layout where we can see each other when we are in the office. This leads to even more interaction when in the office.
Making telecommuting work well is very hard and only seems to make sense when you're working on project type work.
This solution only works if you have a unix computer delivering to your mailbox. However, if you do, it virtually eliminates spam.
The solution is to put a password system on your mailbox.
You set up filters on your email so that for the people you know and mailing lists, they can email you as before. The rest of the world will get a canned response saying that they have to send the email again with the password of 'xxxxx' in the subject.
Since spammers almost never send a valid email address, they never see this email, and so the spam disappears back into the ether, and I didn't have to use potentially expensive modem time to download the spam to check to see if I wanted it. (And I didn't have to participate in a global spam checking service that doesn't really work 100% anyway).
Once in a while (2 times in the last 6 months) you'll get a spammer stupid enough to actually resend the spam but with the password. However, since they are sending it by hand the return headers are valid! *yay* Instant retribution!
Here's the link:
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/info/spamfoil.html
My spam rate was 10-20 spams a day. After putting this into place, I get maybe 1 a month sneaking through on top of some other filter match.
I can't recommend this enough!
-Fred
I was getting around 20+ spams a day. (Oh! If only I could have found time to use all that Porn or viagra or money.) I'd had enough. Regular mail filters didn't work, and complaining through spamcop was useless. After implementing this password, I've seen 3 spams in 5 months on the same account. The rest were trashed.
I stumbled across Dr. Salvi's page here: http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/info/proctips.html.
Basically, the way it works is that when I receive email that I haven't explicitly approved, the procmail filter sees that the password is not in the subject, and sends it back to its sender with the password stuffed into the subject. They are asked to resend the email. This time, the filter accepts the email for me to read. Since most spam comes from faked email addresses the spammers never see this. Of those that do, only 1 was stupid enough to actually modify the subject by hand and forward it on to me. funnily enough, I then had *her* email address, which I promptly submitted to any email list I could find for a day or two...*evil grin*
For people I *want* to communicate with, I add them to my email filter. I've got around 60 exemptions or so including mailing lists.
It won't work for everyone as it's fairly tricky to set up, and if you get it wrong you will annoy the hell out of any mailing list you post to, but if you can I strongly recommend you do use this approach.
*LOL*
Don't get me wrong...I fully see Linux's appeal as a free operating system.
I *don't* see how these other arguments really apply though...
"easily be tweaked"... Custom hardware means custom programming. Not impossible, but not a walk in the park, surely.
"Windows bloat"... To have a full-blown operating system, you'll have bloat. Doesn't really matter whether it's Microsoft or Linux, does it?
"All most users really need"... Then why do they need the multiple processes, cron, etc running on a linux handheld would bring?
"Microsoft's chains of oppression"... Don't get me wrong...Microsoft *is* inherently evil. But I have to laugh...they own like 5% of the PDA market. You mean Palm's chains of oppression (which are quite comfortable to me...as they aren't forgetting the minimalistic basics.)