Personally, I'm one of those old school geeks that still believes in "programming" (and by that I basically mean 'having hacker nature') as an art, and something that is strongly linked to cognitive style. You've either got "it" or you don't. If you've got it, then you will find your path (it'll just take longer if you insist on doing it yourself). If you don't got it, no amount of schooling is gonna give it to you. Sure, you can get a degree, and get a job, but you'll always be among the ranks of the masses, not the "elite" (and I use that term strictly in a good, uber-hacker sort of way).
I know superhackers that got degrees of varying levels, and those that never went to college. Similarly I know jackasses that got degrees of varying levels, and those that never went to college. Their quality as programmers varies over the spectrum. There is no pattern. It's a religious war to argue the merits of educational approaches.
I work with "programmers" who I have to explain things to many times a day, for many days, and weeks later they still tell me "I'm changing random things and hoping it works", in other words, "I still don't fully understand what you told me." Then recently there was a new guy who had spent about 2 days getting up to speed on our app server software, and he asked me a questin. I explained it. He looked confused. I said "Go home and sleep on it." The next morning he met me at my cube, a "Eureka!" gleem in his eye, and said "I get it!" Haven't heard a question from him since.
This looks to be the ultimate catering to the "I only want to learn what I think I need when I'm a kid" mentality, which is about as useful as "I don't like carrots therefore they're not good for me." We tend to forget that many kids are stupid, and can't make decisions for themselves. Many make it most of the way through college before deciding "Hey, I don't want to do this." Matter of fact, lots of them get all the way through and then out into the world before realizing they made the wrong choice. Giving them the candy of "Want a degree in game programming?" is a stupid, stupid idea. I used to hang out on rec.games.programmer, and every time a new language came into vogue, two questions would become frequently asked: "I'm writing a 3D shooter in language xxx, who wants to help!" and "I'm in school and I want to be a programmer. Does anybody know schools where I can get a degree in language xxx?" You can lead a kid to college, but you can't make him learn.
My undergrad thesis was on computers in education, my first two jobs were in writing software for medical devices, and my last 3 have been eCommerce web sites. Why in the world would I have wanted to deliberately limit my choices by only learning about one of those things?
Are our brains getting smaller?
I agree completely that there is too much information to be expert at everything. I don't claim to be. But I think that I could learn to be pretty darned good at just about anything you hand me. That's what education is supposed to be about, as far as I'm concerned -- not specific knowledge, but rather training your brain to learn how to learn. I have more confidence that I'd be able to pick up game programming, then in one of these newly trained game kiddies being able to write some embedded medical software.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm as pro-choice as the next guy when it comes to putting an OS on your machine (running RH5.1 at home, m'self). But a question - who exactly is the audience for this thing? No external drive, so you can't buy software off the shelf. And this thing comes with a 56k modem....meaning I have to tell my dad that if he wants WordPerfect, he needs to download it, please come back in 6 hours? And how clearly does their advertising explain that there's no monitor on the thing? Not to mention it's a sealed box. I mean, my dad might not be the biggest computer user in the world, but he knows enough to ask me how to help him upgrade his memory and his disk capacity. If I told him he can get a machine for $199 that he can't ever upgrade, he'd tell me to forget it. Just trying to figure out the point of this machine, and I hope it's not to dupe a whole bunch of paranoid customers into offering the cheapest machine they can get away with. This seems to be the antithesis to the Gateway leasing argument of "If you're afraid the machine will become obsolete, you can join this program and we'll upgrade it for you." The Microworkz spin seems to be "The machine will get obsolete fast, but you didn't pay much for it, so just throw it away and get a new one." Duane P.S. - I love that "I don't care what Microsoft thinks" line. Where was this guy 3 years ago when MS was buildings its monopoly in the first place?
Re:Putting a resume on your web page
on
Feature:Geek Jobs
·
· Score: 4
Another one....don't ever let the conversation go like this:
"So, are you looking?" "No, thank you, I'm quite happy here." "Oh, well, do you know anybody that's looking?" "Nope, as a matter of fact if I did, I'd hire them, we've got openings." "Oh, really??? What kind of openings do you have?
Instantly they go from wanting to place you somewhere else, to wanting to place someone else where you are. They've all got two faces.
Favorite recruiter story : After telling her no thank you and goodbye on the phone three times and her ignoring me, I hung up on her. I then got an email from her (turns out someone really *had* referred me) saying "I've never been hung up on before!" I told her she must not have been in the business long. Ironically, 3 months later I was looking, so I told my colleagues "Watch this. I could go over to her house and kick her dog, and she'd still love me and want to place me." Sure enough I called her and told her I was looking, and all bad feelings were forgotten.
Here's something that I've seen work. Got webspace? Put your resume up. Then submit it to some of the search engines. Make sure it's got the right buzzwords (I find that Java CORBA does it nicely). Within days you'll be getting calls. Mostly from recruiters, sure, and most of them suck. But isn't getting called at all better than no calls? I've had lousy recruiters and mediocre ones (haven't used them enough to have found a really good one).
I've had my resume online since I had web space (about 3-4 years). Only recently I had to take it offline because I was getting too damned many calls (about 2 a day). However, when a friend of mine exhausted her real-world resources, I put her resume on my page, and within 2 days Microsoft called her (she didn't go, of course:)).
Recent experience attempting to hire someone...
on
Feature:Geek Jobs
·
· Score: 3
Hopefully this is on topic and informative. You're a geek looking for a job. I'm a job looking for geeks.
Ok, my team just lost one of its senior guys to a startup opportunity. Despite the fact that we expect him to return in 3 months:), we need a new body. Hey, JavaONE was last week, and we need a java programmer!
There was no job posting board at the conference. We have immediate need for a fairly senior Java programmer (all Solaris, server-side stuff, no clients, guis, or swing, at least not immediately) in the Boston area, yet we couldn't find an efficient way to tell anybody this.
Nobody wanted to hear from a big corporation (I work for a mutual fund company). Despite the fact that the e-commerce team is tiny (about 12 people) inside this big corporation, and at times feels like a startup, there were toooo many people with dreams of gold who only wanted to talk to you if you knew when your IPO was coming. If I hear one more person tell me that he's got the idea for the next eBay....:)
So the problem exists from both sides. Yes, we use recruiters, but we much prefer to hear from individuals. The few times we get good old fashioned cover letters, they get shown around the team - "Hey, look! A cover letter! Let's get this person in here!" We run ads in the local paper -- yes, it's the old fashioned way, but it still works strangely enough.
I'm torn over whether I should do this...oh, what the heck, I'll just use hotmail. If you're a fairly senior geek (5+ years experience in the biz preferably), and have some project experience with server-side Java, preferably with an e-commerce slant, and are in the Boston area and looking for a job (and don't mind working with people who speak in run on sentences:)), let me know. duane_morin@hotmail.com. A degree is not required, but it certainly helps. My boss actually prefers people who've got a degree in something other than CS (he likes em well rounded). We don't pay relocation (that I know of), so please don't write me from Florida if you don't plan on moving anyway. We do lots of Sybase here, so if you've got some of that, tell us. None of the above is written in stone (is it ever?) so if you're close, it can't hurt to write. But I'll tell ya, if you think you're good, but have got absolutely nothing to prove it, you can't really expect us to hire you.
Disclaimer:This ain't no startup, and I ain't even close to CTO, so I don't do the hiring. I just bring in the bodies.
mpg123 would give him the clicks and underwater sounds. Sorry for the offtopic, but what the hell is this? I've tried ripping my own MP3s at home and I always end up with this. I tried several different players, several different cds, on Linux, Windows and my Rio. The only reason I could come up with is that the speed of my machine had something to do with it? It's a P166. Somebody want to suggest the combination of software I can use to rip MP3s on my Redhat5.1 box?
First off, I implied nothing about vaporware. If I didn't make it clear that I was referring to the retail availability of the game, I apologize. But I intended to imply nothing about vaporware. I know the game is available. I read slashdot, linuxgames and all the others just like the rest of us.
Second, if I can't be bothered to order it online? How dare thee, sir. I don't know about everybody else, but I'm tired of Linux being a geeks OS. I'm tired of explaining to people "Oh, the best stuff is 'out there', but you have to go find it, you can't buy it on the shelf." For months now we've said that one of the inroads to making Linux a desktop OS is the availability of games. To me, that doesn't imply games that you can order online, it implies games that you can go to the store and buy. If we all go off and be geeks and order our game online, CompUSA will have that many fewer sales of the retail game, and how will that look to them? Will they bother to carry the next one that comes out? I would love to be playing Civ:CTP right now. Hell, I already had Quake and QuakeII, but I went out and bought them when they hit the shelf. I am attempting to wait patiently for Civ to hit the shelves, so that I can "vote with my dollars" and do my part to let the retail world know that there is a market for Linux games.
I'm highly disappointed in Loki that I still can't get Civ:CTP on the shelf. I don't want to hear the excuses. Quake for Linux is on the shelf right now. Loki is getting into the bad habit of announcing things way too early so that they get the press, and then when they end up having problems releasing, we're expected to say "Oh, hey, we understand, you were rushed." You rushed it yourselves, Loki. Don't, next time.
If somebody presented me the exact same two jobs, the difference being that one paid more, and I am definitely going to take one or the other, then of course I'm going to take the higher paying one. But that's not what this is about.
It's not business, it's philosophy. I'm happy where I'm at, so why should I go around asking, "Can I be happier? Will someone give me even more money?" Because if I do that, and then I find out that somebody will, then I won't be as happy as I was. I'll spend my life in that loop. No thanks.
I know people who change jobs every 6 months just for the salary bump. They don't seem to count the stress of a different work commute, change of social life, paperwork to be filled out, blah blah blah...they're only chasing the almighty buck. They never have a chance to decide if they even like their work, because they're just there to pick up a paycheck. Want to retire early, they say. Want to drop dead early, more like it.
My former boss called me just today and asked what it would take to get me to come to his new place. I'm sure many people here would have quoted a number. I said no thank you. Maybe my bliss is just ignorance, but all my debts are paid, and I'm not going hungry.
Personally I'd count this under "cool stuff to do", but it's not a dealbreaker for me. I'm lucky here, the boss is a hacker, so we all get Solaris boxes (Linux is a bad word, the boss's boss's boss still calls it "shareware"). But my other gigs gave me Winboxen. I just put as many unix tools on them as I could.:)
By almost any measure, if you really mean that statement you're probably not a true hacker. A true hacker couldn't even fake that line. Yes, I know that Linus said he'd work for Microsoft if they paid him billions to sit on the beach playing Quake. But you didn't say that, you just said "pay us more". How much more? How much are you worth?
It's not uncommon for the true geeks and hackers to turn down mega-paying jobs in their quest for something more interesting. I've had my calls from Microsoft and IBM, and I'm sure many of the people here have, too. I consulted at a place for what was basically double what I'd been making as a fulltimer - and dropped it after 6 months.
The premise of this movie was good. The special effects and fight scenes were good. But it was a bad movie - bad plot, bad ending, bad acting. In all your talk about "geek profiling", dear Mr. Katz, have you possibly forgotten that geeks can have interests and opinions on things other than technology? Shame on you. How much different is "all geeks will love a movie with virtual reality in it" from "all geeks in trenchcoats are anti-social psychopaths"?
I've been using the following system for the last three jobs:
Give me cool stuff to work on.
Recognize and appreciate the work I do for you.
Stay the hell out of my way.
(1) Doesn't mean that I want to write videogames for a living. It just means I want something that I find challenging. Job#1 I was doing digital certificates, Job#2 was XML/Swing, Job#3 is natural language. Fun fun!
(2) Could mean money, but not at the expense of #1. More often it means ego strokes. I recently got a magazine article published, and my boss sent copies to all the higher-ups in the company, something I didn't expect. Back at company#1 I was surprised when the president mentioned me by name in his yearly state-of-the-company address. Stuff like that, combined with cool stuff to work on, will keep me alot happier than paying me double and telling me to work on boring shit.
(3) means I'm one of those arrogant assholes who thinks that the rules don't apply to him. I admit it. I'm a geek, I'm a hacker, I'm a different breed than every employee you've had for the past 20 years, so don't push your dress codes and your administrative rules down my throat, because they'll stifle what I can do for you. White shirt and tie everyday? No thank you. No food in my cube? Forget it. I will do my 80+ hour workweeks for you, you don't even have to pay me hourly or overtime, but as a result of that I will take off my shoes and walk around in my socks, I will have my radio in my cube, and a box of Poptarts in my desk. If some manager somewhere thinks that the tradeoff isn't adequate, that's his choice, but he's an idiot.
For the record, I left job#1 because of item#1 (they killed my project and told me no more Java). I left job#2 because of #2 (a brief consulting stint where I was a hired whore), and I'm currently at job#3 where they just put me on their "emerging technologies team" (covering #1) boosted my salary and let me publish some articles (covering #2), and I'm sitting here in my socks listening to MP3's munching on a poptart (covering #3).:)!
This might be offtopic or even flamebait, but it's been on my mind, so I'll say it. Worst that happens is I get moderated:).
It's easy to say anything you want after somebody dies. Just a few weeks ago, some kid walked through a school in Georgia and shot a bunch of people. Nobody died - the kid didn't kill himself. Where's the outrage, where's the compassion? Where are the millions of people rushing to the aid of this kid, somebody that you could actually help?? I gotta feel something for him moreso than those at Littleton, because here's a kid who was so emotionally tortured that it drove him to try doing something similar, but at least he still had a spark of humanity left in him that wouldn't let him do it.
When people ask "Oh my god, what went wrong? What could we have done?" I don't think they really want to know. That's why they ask it of dead people, because they won't get an answer. They like to beat themselves up and feel guilty, but not *that* guilty. Not so guilty that they'll actually have to do anything about the problem.
Regarding the midwife quote, I wonder if it was really the best way to describe it? After all, two parents create a baby and bring it 90% of the way. All the midwife does it get you over the last hurdle to introduce it to the world. Then it goes back to being the parents' responsibility.
In Stallman's eyes, wouldn't the "GNU System" be the baby ready to be born, and Linux is the midwife? Doesn't that make it sound like Linux is just the GNU delivery mechanism?
I'm definitely impressed by the book deal, and my congratulations go out to him. Does anybody know if there'll be new stuff in the book, though? I mean, haven't we all read through all of the archives? What fun would that be? I know that, in the old days when I would buy the Calvin & Hobbes books, the worst thing in the world to see was "Some strips previously published." Oh boy, I bought it once now I can buy it again:).
I realize that this is the first print book for UF and there'll be zillions of people that haven't seen any of them yet, but to those of us who have read the archive, it is like reprinting previously released stuff.
I hate to be a cynic, but I am honestly expecting all of these counselling centers and offers of help and assistance to slowly fade out over the months. People want to help in the immediate wake of the crisis, but how many are truly in it for the long haul?
I point to the case on Slashdot of the guy who was challenging MS because he owned the term "Internet Explorer." When we found out his kid was sick, everybody wanted to send money. People offered to set up accounts. Then within days, when people found out he'd settled, all offers were taken off the table.
This is NOT the first time a school shooting has taken place. Why are people offering to start things now? Why didn't they start them last time it happened, so it wouldn't happen this time?
He likened his actions to making a speech in a public park near Intel? Not even close, methinks. He used Intel's resources (mail servers, etc), which means they should be allowed to determine who gets to use them. It wouldn't cost Intel anything for him to have a speech in the park.
He still has the right to send every one of those employees a good old fashioned US Postal letter. That really *is* a public service. And he'd have to use his own money. I don't think he would have gotten the EFF on his side if he'd said "Hey, I want to spam these folks, but I can't afford the postage. Can you turn this into a free speech issue?" The founding fathers never said you specifically have a right to email.
There is a valid issue hiding in there, that there's a *potential* precedent for a company to single out somebody and say "Ok, you there - we don't like you, you can't use our service." I'm pretty sure a similar case happened many years ago when Compuserve got into a fight with a customer (over some shareware he'd written), so they stopped his service. He sued on the grounds that he had a right to that service (back when CServe was one of the few ways you could get service). I can't remember the outcome of that one, though. I think I remember the guy winning, with the courts agreeing that, like phone service, you can't cut the person off because you don't like what they're saying (just like if you call your mom and say "Bell Atlantic sucks", they can't decide to stop selling you service).
I have a problem with someone trying to limit my ability to communicate over the net, yes - just like I have a problem with non-secretaries who say "Can I ask what this is about?" before deciding whether to put my call through. I don't have a problem with a company instituting solutions on the order of "If you send 30,000 emails through our server in 10 minutes, we'll bar you for life."
...which is why Engineers won't let you use their title. Let's face it, programmers aren't going to get any respect until they start taking responsibility for their coded constructions.
Hey, I'm all for it. I've got my degree(s), got them almost 10 years ago in fact. I worked hard for them, and I think I learned something. If a certification shows up tomorrow, I'd take it. That is, provided my company will pay for it. Those things often cost big bucks! Proving a point is one thing, but I don't have money to burn (I guess I should go do some contracting:))
Unfortunately, the short term equation is easy - you don't need a hightech degree to make lots of money in a hightech field. Companies will hire anybody.
The shame of it is, this implies that making money is all that it's about. If that's your sole motivation, well then I wish you well. I'd rather i didn't have to compete with you for a job, but that's just par for the course.
Think about it for a second - you quit school, and get a job in a field where anybody can get a job. What exactly does that prove? Does that tell me anything about the quality of your work? Nope. The bar is set incredibly low right now, so of course most people aren't going to exert any extra effort going over it. I spend a good part of my week turning down recruiters who don't even know (or care) what I can do - they see buzzwords and they smell blood. The sad part is it doesn't even matter to them. They're not searching on buzzwords so that they can interview me later, they're searching on buzzwords because that's all they need.
Man, a few JavaOne's ago (i've forgotten how many!) they were talking about Hotspot would deliver 10-50x increase! I mean, I'll take what performance boost I can get...but *damn*.
Now the big question is going to be how much will they charge for the real deal. Given how poor and late it is compared to what they promised, they should give us all copies of it with a check for $2.50. But it's far more likely that they'll try to recoup development costs by charging an arm and a leg for the "real" version. Oooo, maybe if I pay double, I can get a 2.5x increase.
Slashdot Mirror
I know superhackers that got degrees of varying levels, and those that never went to college. Similarly I know jackasses that got degrees of varying levels, and those that never went to college. Their quality as programmers varies over the spectrum. There is no pattern. It's a religious war to argue the merits of educational approaches.
I work with "programmers" who I have to explain things to many times a day, for many days, and weeks later they still tell me "I'm changing random things and hoping it works", in other words, "I still don't fully understand what you told me." Then recently there was a new guy who had spent about 2 days getting up to speed on our app server software, and he asked me a questin. I explained it. He looked confused. I said "Go home and sleep on it." The next morning he met me at my cube, a "Eureka!" gleem in his eye, and said "I get it!" Haven't heard a question from him since.
He got it. The other guy still doesn't get it.
This looks to be the ultimate catering to the "I only want to learn what I think I need when I'm a kid" mentality, which is about as useful as "I don't like carrots therefore they're not good for me." We tend to forget that many kids are stupid, and can't make decisions for themselves. Many make it most of the way through college before deciding "Hey, I don't want to do this." Matter of fact, lots of them get all the way through and then out into the world before realizing they made the wrong choice. Giving them the candy of "Want a degree in game programming?" is a stupid, stupid idea. I used to hang out on rec.games.programmer, and every time a new language came into vogue, two questions would become frequently asked: "I'm writing a 3D shooter in language xxx, who wants to help!" and "I'm in school and I want to be a programmer. Does anybody know schools where I can get a degree in language xxx?" You can lead a kid to college, but you can't make him learn.
My undergrad thesis was on computers in education, my first two jobs were in writing software for medical devices, and my last 3 have been eCommerce web sites. Why in the world would I have wanted to deliberately limit my choices by only learning about one of those things?
Are our brains getting smaller?
I agree completely that there is too much information to be expert at everything. I don't claim to be. But I think that I could learn to be pretty darned good at just about anything you hand me. That's what education is supposed to be about, as far as I'm concerned -- not specific knowledge, but rather training your brain to learn how to learn. I have more confidence that I'd be able to pick up game programming, then in one of these newly trained game kiddies being able to write some embedded medical software.
d
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm as pro-choice as the next guy when it comes to putting an OS on your machine (running RH5.1 at home, m'self). But a question - who exactly is the audience for this thing? No external drive, so you can't buy software off the shelf. And this thing comes with a 56k modem....meaning I have to tell my dad that if he wants WordPerfect, he needs to download it, please come back in 6 hours? And how clearly does their advertising explain that there's no monitor on the thing? Not to mention it's a sealed box. I mean, my dad might not be the biggest computer user in the world, but he knows enough to ask me how to help him upgrade his memory and his disk capacity. If I told him he can get a machine for $199 that he can't ever upgrade, he'd tell me to forget it. Just trying to figure out the point of this machine, and I hope it's not to dupe a whole bunch of paranoid customers into offering the cheapest machine they can get away with. This seems to be the antithesis to the Gateway leasing argument of "If you're afraid the machine will become obsolete, you can join this program and we'll upgrade it for you." The Microworkz spin seems to be "The machine will get obsolete fast, but you didn't pay much for it, so just throw it away and get a new one." Duane P.S. - I love that "I don't care what Microsoft thinks" line. Where was this guy 3 years ago when MS was buildings its monopoly in the first place?
"So, are you looking?"
"No, thank you, I'm quite happy here."
"Oh, well, do you know anybody that's looking?"
"Nope, as a matter of fact if I did, I'd hire them, we've got openings."
"Oh, really??? What kind of openings do you have?
Instantly they go from wanting to place you somewhere else, to wanting to place someone else where you are. They've all got two faces.
Favorite recruiter story : After telling her no thank you and goodbye on the phone three times and her ignoring me, I hung up on her. I then got an email from her (turns out someone really *had* referred me) saying "I've never been hung up on before!" I told her she must not have been in the business long. Ironically, 3 months later I was looking, so I told my colleagues "Watch this. I could go over to her house and kick her dog, and she'd still love me and want to place me." Sure enough I called her and told her I was looking, and all bad feelings were forgotten.
I've had my resume online since I had web space (about 3-4 years). Only recently I had to take it offline because I was getting too damned many calls (about 2 a day). However, when a friend of mine exhausted her real-world resources, I put her resume on my page, and within 2 days Microsoft called her (she didn't go, of course :)).
Ok, my team just lost one of its senior guys to a startup opportunity. Despite the fact that we expect him to return in 3 months :), we need a new body. Hey, JavaONE was last week, and we need a java programmer!
So the problem exists from both sides. Yes, we use recruiters, but we much prefer to hear from individuals. The few times we get good old fashioned cover letters, they get shown around the team - "Hey, look! A cover letter! Let's get this person in here!" We run ads in the local paper -- yes, it's the old fashioned way, but it still works strangely enough.
I'm torn over whether I should do this...oh, what the heck, I'll just use hotmail. If you're a fairly senior geek (5+ years experience in the biz preferably), and have some project experience with server-side Java, preferably with an e-commerce slant, and are in the Boston area and looking for a job (and don't mind working with people who speak in run on sentences :)), let me know. duane_morin@hotmail.com. A degree is not required, but it certainly helps. My boss actually prefers people who've got a degree in something other than CS (he likes em well rounded). We don't pay relocation (that I know of), so please don't write me from Florida if you don't plan on moving anyway. We do lots of Sybase here, so if you've got some of that, tell us. None of the above is written in stone (is it ever?) so if you're close, it can't hurt to write. But I'll tell ya, if you think you're good, but have got absolutely nothing to prove it, you can't really expect us to hire you.
Disclaimer: This ain't no startup, and I ain't even close to CTO, so I don't do the hiring. I just bring in the bodies.
d
mpg123 would give him the clicks and underwater sounds. Sorry for the offtopic, but what the hell is this? I've tried ripping my own MP3s at home and I always end up with this. I tried several different players, several different cds, on Linux, Windows and my Rio. The only reason I could come up with is that the speed of my machine had something to do with it? It's a P166. Somebody want to suggest the combination of software I can use to rip MP3s on my Redhat5.1 box?
Second, if I can't be bothered to order it online? How dare thee, sir. I don't know about everybody else, but I'm tired of Linux being a geeks OS. I'm tired of explaining to people "Oh, the best stuff is 'out there', but you have to go find it, you can't buy it on the shelf." For months now we've said that one of the inroads to making Linux a desktop OS is the availability of games. To me, that doesn't imply games that you can order online, it implies games that you can go to the store and buy. If we all go off and be geeks and order our game online, CompUSA will have that many fewer sales of the retail game, and how will that look to them? Will they bother to carry the next one that comes out? I would love to be playing Civ:CTP right now. Hell, I already had Quake and QuakeII, but I went out and bought them when they hit the shelf. I am attempting to wait patiently for Civ to hit the shelves, so that I can "vote with my dollars" and do my part to let the retail world know that there is a market for Linux games.
Can't be bothered indeed. Sheeesh!
I'm highly disappointed in Loki that I still can't get Civ:CTP on the shelf. I don't want to hear the excuses. Quake for Linux is on the shelf right now. Loki is getting into the bad habit of announcing things way too early so that they get the press, and then when they end up having problems releasing, we're expected to say "Oh, hey, we understand, you were rushed." You rushed it yourselves, Loki. Don't, next time.
I did. I did the contracting thing for 6 months, which basically doubled my money. Hated it, gave it up.
Money may not buy you happiness, but I don't think poverty does either. Call me crazy.
Why does everybody think that because I said I'm not in it for the money, I must be poverty stricken?
It's not business, it's philosophy. I'm happy where I'm at, so why should I go around asking, "Can I be happier? Will someone give me even more money?" Because if I do that, and then I find out that somebody will, then I won't be as happy as I was. I'll spend my life in that loop. No thanks.
I know people who change jobs every 6 months just for the salary bump. They don't seem to count the stress of a different work commute, change of social life, paperwork to be filled out, blah blah blah...they're only chasing the almighty buck. They never have a chance to decide if they even like their work, because they're just there to pick up a paycheck. Want to retire early, they say. Want to drop dead early, more like it.
My former boss called me just today and asked what it would take to get me to come to his new place. I'm sure many people here would have quoted a number. I said no thank you. Maybe my bliss is just ignorance, but all my debts are paid, and I'm not going hungry.
Personally I'd count this under "cool stuff to do", but it's not a dealbreaker for me. I'm lucky here, the boss is a hacker, so we all get Solaris boxes (Linux is a bad word, the boss's boss's boss still calls it "shareware"). But my other gigs gave me Winboxen. I just put as many unix tools on them as I could. :)
It's not uncommon for the true geeks and hackers to turn down mega-paying jobs in their quest for something more interesting. I've had my calls from Microsoft and IBM, and I'm sure many of the people here have, too. I consulted at a place for what was basically double what I'd been making as a fulltimer - and dropped it after 6 months.
No, it's definitely not simply about paying more.
The premise of this movie was good. The special effects and fight scenes were good. But it was a bad movie - bad plot, bad ending, bad acting. In all your talk about "geek profiling", dear Mr. Katz, have you possibly forgotten that geeks can have interests and opinions on things other than technology? Shame on you. How much different is "all geeks will love a movie with virtual reality in it" from "all geeks in trenchcoats are anti-social psychopaths"?
(1) Doesn't mean that I want to write videogames for a living. It just means I want something that I find challenging. Job#1 I was doing digital certificates, Job#2 was XML/Swing, Job#3 is natural language. Fun fun!
(2) Could mean money, but not at the expense of #1. More often it means ego strokes. I recently got a magazine article published, and my boss sent copies to all the higher-ups in the company, something I didn't expect. Back at company#1 I was surprised when the president mentioned me by name in his yearly state-of-the-company address. Stuff like that, combined with cool stuff to work on, will keep me alot happier than paying me double and telling me to work on boring shit.
(3) means I'm one of those arrogant assholes who thinks that the rules don't apply to him. I admit it. I'm a geek, I'm a hacker, I'm a different breed than every employee you've had for the past 20 years, so don't push your dress codes and your administrative rules down my throat, because they'll stifle what I can do for you. White shirt and tie everyday? No thank you. No food in my cube? Forget it. I will do my 80+ hour workweeks for you, you don't even have to pay me hourly or overtime, but as a result of that I will take off my shoes and walk around in my socks, I will have my radio in my cube, and a box of Poptarts in my desk. If some manager somewhere thinks that the tradeoff isn't adequate, that's his choice, but he's an idiot.
For the record, I left job#1 because of item#1 (they killed my project and told me no more Java). I left job#2 because of #2 (a brief consulting stint where I was a hired whore), and I'm currently at job#3 where they just put me on their "emerging technologies team" (covering #1) boosted my salary and let me publish some articles (covering #2), and I'm sitting here in my socks listening to MP3's munching on a poptart (covering #3). :)!
This might be offtopic or even flamebait, but it's been on my mind, so I'll say it. Worst that happens is I get moderated :).
It's easy to say anything you want after somebody dies. Just a few weeks ago, some kid walked through a school in Georgia and shot a bunch of people. Nobody died - the kid didn't kill himself. Where's the outrage, where's the compassion? Where are the millions of people rushing to the aid of this kid, somebody that you could actually help?? I gotta feel something for him moreso than those at Littleton, because here's a kid who was so emotionally tortured that it drove him to try doing something similar, but at least he still had a spark of humanity left in him that wouldn't let him do it.
When people ask "Oh my god, what went wrong? What could we have done?" I don't think they really want to know. That's why they ask it of dead people, because they won't get an answer. They like to beat themselves up and feel guilty, but not *that* guilty. Not so guilty that they'll actually have to do anything about the problem.
Regarding the midwife quote, I wonder if it was really the best way to describe it? After all,
two parents create a baby and bring it 90% of the way. All the midwife does it get you over the last hurdle to introduce it to the world. Then it goes back to being the parents' responsibility.
In Stallman's eyes, wouldn't the "GNU System" be the baby ready to be born, and Linux is the midwife? Doesn't that make it sound like Linux is just the GNU delivery mechanism?
I'm definitely impressed by the book deal, and my congratulations go out to him. Does anybody know if there'll be new stuff in the book, though? I mean, haven't we all read through all of the archives? What fun would that be? I know that, in the old days when I would buy the Calvin & Hobbes books, the worst thing in the world to see was "Some strips previously published." Oh boy, I bought it once now I can buy it again :).
I realize that this is the first print book for UF and there'll be zillions of people that haven't seen any of them yet, but to those of us who have read the archive, it is like reprinting previously released stuff.
I hate to be a cynic, but I am honestly expecting all of these counselling centers and offers of help and assistance to slowly fade out over the months. People want to help in the immediate wake of the crisis, but how many are truly in it for the long haul?
I point to the case on Slashdot of the guy who was challenging MS because he owned the term "Internet Explorer." When we found out his kid was sick, everybody wanted to send money. People offered to set up accounts. Then within days, when people found out he'd settled, all offers were taken off the table.
This is NOT the first time a school shooting has taken place. Why are people offering to start things now? Why didn't they start them last time it happened, so it wouldn't happen this time?
- Seated, at a desk, I can take notes.
Reasons I don't like it:A new graffiti system would be nice because I could use it while standing on the train.
He likened his actions to making a speech in a public park near Intel? Not even close, methinks. He used Intel's resources (mail servers, etc), which means they should be allowed to determine who gets to use them. It wouldn't cost Intel anything for him to have a speech in the park.
He still has the right to send every one of those employees a good old fashioned US Postal letter. That really *is* a public service. And he'd have to use his own money. I don't think he would have gotten the EFF on his side if he'd said "Hey, I want to spam these folks, but I can't afford the postage. Can you turn this into a free speech issue?" The founding fathers never said you specifically have a right to email.
There is a valid issue hiding in there, that there's a *potential* precedent for a company to single out somebody and say "Ok, you there - we don't like you, you can't use our service." I'm pretty sure a similar case happened many years ago when Compuserve got into a fight with a customer (over some shareware he'd written), so they stopped his service. He sued on the grounds that he had a right to that service (back when CServe was one of the few ways you could get service). I can't remember the outcome of that one, though.
I think I remember the guy winning, with the courts agreeing that, like phone service, you can't cut the person off because you don't like what they're saying (just like if you call your mom and say "Bell Atlantic sucks", they can't decide to stop selling you service).
I have a problem with someone trying to limit my ability to communicate over the net, yes - just like I have a problem with non-secretaries who say "Can I ask what this is about?" before deciding whether to put my call through. I don't have a problem with a company instituting solutions on the order of "If you send 30,000 emails through our server in 10 minutes, we'll bar you for life."
SecuMax? Wazzat? I worry when someone tries to decide for me what constitutes "unauthorized".
Hey, I'm all for it. I've got my degree(s), got them almost 10 years ago in fact. I worked hard for them, and I think I learned something. If a certification shows up tomorrow, I'd take it. That is, provided my company will pay for it. Those things often cost big bucks! Proving a point is one thing, but I don't have money to burn (I guess I should go do some contracting :))
The shame of it is, this implies that making money is all that it's about. If that's your sole motivation, well then I wish you well. I'd rather i didn't have to compete with you for a job, but that's just par for the course.
Think about it for a second - you quit school, and get a job in a field where anybody can get a job. What exactly does that prove? Does that tell me anything about the quality of your work? Nope. The bar is set incredibly low right now, so of course most people aren't going to exert any extra effort going over it. I spend a good part of my week turning down recruiters who don't even know (or care) what I can do - they see buzzwords and they smell blood. The sad part is it doesn't even matter to them. They're not searching on buzzwords so that they can interview me later, they're searching on buzzwords because that's all they need.
Now the big question is going to be how much will they charge for the real deal. Given how poor and late it is compared to what they promised, they should give us all copies of it with a check for $2.50. But it's far more likely that they'll try to recoup development costs by charging an arm and a leg for the "real" version. Oooo, maybe if I pay double, I can get a 2.5x increase.