There are still plenty of FORTRAN shops out there, or at least legacy FORTRAN applications.
There is a ton of COBOL apps that need maintaining
If you are going to learn anything, it should be stuff that makes you more interesting as a FORTRAN and COBOL coder. For example, get comfortable making HTML/CSS pages. A lot of shops are trying to connect COBOL to the web and SOAP.
Find a web site or book to learn what relational databases are. Everything is relational these days. The NoSQL crowd think they're post-relational, but they still talk in the relational language.
That's the other thing you should learn: Oracle PL/SQL and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA these days means SOAP and message busses. At my place of work, we have a legacy COBOL application that needs to connect to the enterprise's Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). We are struggling to find anyone who can do it inside our company.
Your future is being the bridge between the past and the future. Learn how to make those old apps do new tricks, and you'll make lots of money.
Learn Perl. Because Perl is like the swiss-army knife for programmers. You may not write an application with it, but you might use it to make bulk changes to a hundred COBOL or FORTRAN source files.
Related to this is a comment that one correspondent would not let critics' papers be discussed in an upcoming report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), stating that "[we] will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" The RealClimate web site notes that the effort described in this e-mail to exclude specific papers from the IPCC report was unsuccessful or never implemented, but this is beside the point. If scientists attempted to exclude critics' peer-reviewed papers from IPCC reports, this was unethical in my view.
No, I am saying you are engaging in straw man arguments by generating a conspiracy against the truth where there is no conspiracy.
If 18 people out of 20 in a classroom love Green Day and 2 hate them. Were the 2 "ejected" or simply chose not to be part of the consensus?
Your argument is: "OH, why should I believe people who eject non-believers!!"
Except this is science. You either agree with an interpretation of the facts or you don't. There's no political committee to eject you. In fact, they've found tremendous support.
Going back to my example, to say the 2 people who didn't like Green Day were conspired against and excluded is... retarded.
That's last line would be considered ad hominum since you think I'm being pedantic as opposed to demanding rigor and consistency.:-)
Not only do I think they're wrong, but even if it was true that workers are overpaid, it still doesn't justify underpaying them. I mean, if you're earning $50 an hour, and someone comes along and wants to pay everyone $3 an hour - what's your response to that? That $50/hour is way too much?
Yes, for much the same reason you will turn your back on toilet paper prices at $15/12 and pick up the cheaper $8/12 pack and wonder what's wrong with the first guy that he charged so much.
I was in that position where, for a while, my kind of job position was getting ridiculously overpaid, and the company offered us a little bonus pay to keep us on. Then the dot-com bubble burst, and that money went away. I am bringing this up to say I have been in a similar position so I'm not lecturing from the heights, if you will.
The one thing I agree with you is if someone is being paid way less than they should be. For example, $1/day building iPods, or whatever. But since determining the just price boils down to people's subjective judgments, you'll still end up with people complaining. This is why the marketplace is the least objectionable method to determine a fair price. It's not going to always reflect what you think is just, but it'll match more what other people think is just.
But there is a ray of hope: I did end up getting paid at least as much later because I am worth that much to the company. I make them more $$ than it costs to pay me $, so I do reasonably well. A $50/hour designer, if they can do really good work better than other designers, will continue to get $50/hour. It's just the mediocres who've been coasting on lack of competition who get screwed.
But Adidas didn't get a web designer for free -- they still paid the winner.
But if Adidas is going down market like that, they probably don't want to pay the huge bucks for some small (for them) campaign, and would have done a similar private competitive bid process.
Most of the IT your life in the Western world depends on runs on Windows.
Yes, you are right: it is not suited for the purpose. It says so in the EULA.
Again, you are right: they have higher down times, increased maintenance due to weekly patching to prevent security problems.
Uh-huh, I agree. In my experience supporting such systems, they are indeed slower than a good Unix box, harder to administer because you are constantly manually typing things in as opposed to automating them.
Why are they using them you ask? Because it's all the developers/admins know how to use. They hate using the Unix boxes here at my work, and they keep coming to me to hold their hand doing anything on them. They prefer Windows because everyone has Windows at home or on their desks, and it's a lot easier for my co-workers to understand and use. That's why your quality of life is in the hands of Microsoft.
BTW, my co-workers are currently plotting to do-UNIXify one our major systems. *groan* They point out how expensive the AIX box is, and how unreliable it is. Um, the same guys who maintain the AIX box are going to maintain the Windows boxes, and if you remember, they did a terrible job keeping them up! It's not AIX that's unreliable -- it's the quality of our admins.
It's not just another database modelling book. It discusses in depth the object-role modelling (ORM) method of taking human ways of talking about data and turning it into a really well-modelled database.
I stumbled across this book when looking for new data modelling books, and I was deeply impressed with the method.
. I question the validity of any site that thinks gallons and liters are interchangable
Well, liters and gallons are interchangable. I think you mean they aren't directly comparable because one is almost 4x the other. But it's not an order of magnitude (x10) difference, so I think they can be partially forgiven.
For their partial punishment, they will have to pay the $/gallon price for their liters of gasoline.:-)
Long ago, the company spun off the IT department into a separate company. The separate company did 90% of its work for the parent company. Then we got sold to a massive global giant who wanted to get into the outsourcing game. So IT is a separate company under contract to the parent company doing the same things for the same salary + a corporate overhead charge that wasn't there before.
More seriously: a lot of companies put IT under Corporate & Finance division. I.e., the accountants & lawyers.
Re:Cache behavior is hard and not portable
on
Knuth Got It Wrong
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· Score: 1
I suppose, but have all modern OS's finally agreed on a universal LRU algorithm, or do we still have "clever" algorithms that try to figure out if the application is user-centric or server-centric then changes the page expiry accordingly?
Cache behavior is hard and not portable
on
Knuth Got It Wrong
·
· Score: 1
I am sympathetic with his argument, but trying to figure out the best algorithm for a given OS and hardware combo is very difficult and usually not portable.
Diehard AmigaOS advocates much more deserve "cult" status.
I agree! We Amigans are definitely a cult. I LOL'd when I read this: "These are people who worship the Commodore Amiga operating system and expect that one day its superiority will cause it to rise again. Some of them are really annoyingly crazy."
That should be our new motto: It's superiority will cause it to rise again!
... or maybe: The Once and Future Operating System?
Governments in the area have been reacting to this news for a couple decades. In BC, we're spending over a billion dollars seismically upgrading critical bridges and making sure the older schools and hospitals don't colapse on their occupants. They've begun emergency preparedness drills, etc.
The problem is: at 8+ magintude, all plans go to crap...
I think the problem is that companies wanted interchangeable people that they could hire & fire at will. In the "good old days" (with overt racism, sexism and red meat), you went to work at a company, they taught you what you needed to know, you worked for the company until you retired.
Now, it's we need someone who can do X right now! then drop them 8 months from now. The time spent training the worker is now wasted money from the employer's point of view. And you know, 2-year vocational/business schools are nice, but really, most corporations have very unique skills that no formal school could ever teach.
My solution: every job is on-the-job training. Then, if the employee leaves early or is let go early, the lost hours can be returned as a non-refundable tax credit. The non-refundable part discourages companies from just hiring someone, claim to train them for 6 months then fire them for quick cash.
For more complex jobs, university/college prepares you with basic knowledge for the first 2 years then you can go work with on-the-job training then take the remainder of the courses you want to finish your degree if that's what you want.
It is interesting you bring up creating a "shell" account. It's what I've basically done. The only things on Facebook are the things I don't mind people knowing about me or is available elsewhere. I use it then just to keep in contact with friends who don't feel so invaded. Sort of like a more private Twitter.:-)
The three basic Helvetica fonts you'd actually be likely to want for amateur work -- regular, bold, and italic -- would set you back about $90 CDN, not $1300.
Still quite a bit.
That's like saying "Why are Apple charging so much for OS X when UNIX has been around for 50 years?"
*confused* I was refuting the original poster's point!! He was arguing it was the cost of labor. I was pointing out it was charged that high to make the most profit from their target audience which makes even more money from the fonts than they pay for them. You have misrepresented my point entirely.
That does not represent a trivial amount of work. Do they charge too much? Hard to say. It's a pretty low-volume industry -- you don't get ordinary people impulse-buying Helvetica. And the licenses are pretty generous, permitting unlimited use of the font instead of trying to force designers to pay by the page or whatever -- it's probably preferable that way, don't you think?
Back to the labour theory. Fonts are no longer a low-volume industry. Did you forget that Adobe licenses Helvetica, as does almost every Postscript printer? Your argument of "it takes so much work" is bupkiss. There are fonts out there that take just as much work, if not more, like the script and fantasy fonts, and they sell for less. And no, even though electronic Helvetica is young, it has probably been sold and installed more times than it ever did as a physical font.
As I explained in my original post, and then again in a secondary post: Fonts cost so much because they are worth so much to the end user. Graphic design houses, ad companies, book companies, and even just general corporations all depend on these fonts and make thousands, if not millions of dollars. The relatively small amount they fork out for the font is justified by the return. But for us ordinary people, even at $90, I don't think us normal people get $90 of value out of using Helvetica, especially compared to just using Arial which was a trivial fraction of the whole purchase price of Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Was thinking about teledildonics.
Or the Major from Ghost in the Shell.
But that's not really mutually exclusive. ;-)
Thank you for pointing out Java EE -- forgot that.
P.S. Could I hire you under the table to write this @$! component at work?? :-D
(I can't believe no one on their [the COBOL app side] knows how to do this...)
There are still plenty of FORTRAN shops out there, or at least legacy FORTRAN applications.
There is a ton of COBOL apps that need maintaining
If you are going to learn anything, it should be stuff that makes you more interesting as a FORTRAN and COBOL coder. For example, get comfortable making HTML/CSS pages. A lot of shops are trying to connect COBOL to the web and SOAP.
Find a web site or book to learn what relational databases are. Everything is relational these days. The NoSQL crowd think they're post-relational, but they still talk in the relational language.
That's the other thing you should learn: Oracle PL/SQL and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA these days means SOAP and message busses. At my place of work, we have a legacy COBOL application that needs to connect to the enterprise's Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). We are struggling to find anyone who can do it inside our company.
Your future is being the bridge between the past and the future. Learn how to make those old apps do new tricks, and you'll make lots of money.
Learn Perl. Because Perl is like the swiss-army knife for programmers. You may not write an application with it, but you might use it to make bulk changes to a hundred COBOL or FORTRAN source files.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/climate-change/4338343
No, I am saying you are engaging in straw man arguments by generating a conspiracy against the truth where there is no conspiracy.
If 18 people out of 20 in a classroom love Green Day and 2 hate them. Were the 2 "ejected" or simply chose not to be part of the consensus?
Your argument is: "OH, why should I believe people who eject non-believers!!"
Except this is science. You either agree with an interpretation of the facts or you don't. There's no political committee to eject you. In fact, they've found tremendous support.
Going back to my example, to say the 2 people who didn't like Green Day were conspired against and excluded is... retarded.
That's last line would be considered ad hominum since you think I'm being pedantic as opposed to demanding rigor and consistency. :-)
Can you name these heretics and from what exactly were they ejected?
A consensus is not something you are "ejected" from -- it's something you chose to leave.
Yes, for much the same reason you will turn your back on toilet paper prices at $15/12 and pick up the cheaper $8/12 pack and wonder what's wrong with the first guy that he charged so much.
I was in that position where, for a while, my kind of job position was getting ridiculously overpaid, and the company offered us a little bonus pay to keep us on. Then the dot-com bubble burst, and that money went away. I am bringing this up to say I have been in a similar position so I'm not lecturing from the heights, if you will.
The one thing I agree with you is if someone is being paid way less than they should be. For example, $1/day building iPods, or whatever. But since determining the just price boils down to people's subjective judgments, you'll still end up with people complaining. This is why the marketplace is the least objectionable method to determine a fair price. It's not going to always reflect what you think is just, but it'll match more what other people think is just.
But there is a ray of hope: I did end up getting paid at least as much later because I am worth that much to the company. I make them more $$ than it costs to pay me $, so I do reasonably well. A $50/hour designer, if they can do really good work better than other designers, will continue to get $50/hour. It's just the mediocres who've been coasting on lack of competition who get screwed.
But Adidas didn't get a web designer for free -- they still paid the winner.
But if Adidas is going down market like that, they probably don't want to pay the huge bucks for some small (for them) campaign, and would have done a similar private competitive bid process.
Most of the IT your life in the Western world depends on runs on Windows.
Yes, you are right: it is not suited for the purpose. It says so in the EULA.
Again, you are right: they have higher down times, increased maintenance due to weekly patching to prevent security problems.
Uh-huh, I agree. In my experience supporting such systems, they are indeed slower than a good Unix box, harder to administer because you are constantly manually typing things in as opposed to automating them.
Why are they using them you ask? Because it's all the developers/admins know how to use. They hate using the Unix boxes here at my work, and they keep coming to me to hold their hand doing anything on them. They prefer Windows because everyone has Windows at home or on their desks, and it's a lot easier for my co-workers to understand and use. That's why your quality of life is in the hands of Microsoft.
BTW, my co-workers are currently plotting to do-UNIXify one our major systems. *groan* They point out how expensive the AIX box is, and how unreliable it is. Um, the same guys who maintain the AIX box are going to maintain the Windows boxes, and if you remember, they did a terrible job keeping them up! It's not AIX that's unreliable -- it's the quality of our admins.
Information Modeling and Relational Databases
It's not just another database modelling book. It discusses in depth the object-role modelling (ORM) method of taking human ways of talking about data and turning it into a really well-modelled database.
I stumbled across this book when looking for new data modelling books, and I was deeply impressed with the method.
Well, liters and gallons are interchangable. I think you mean they aren't directly comparable because one is almost 4x the other. But it's not an order of magnitude (x10) difference, so I think they can be partially forgiven.
For their partial punishment, they will have to pay the $/gallon price for their liters of gasoline. :-)
Um, the "lead poisoining" hypothesis is bunk, FYI.
But the rest of your post I agree with. If there is only one reason to oppose GM crops, it's the terminator crops feature.
Um... Am I the only one on /. who thought Sunshine was a lot of [feces]?
For a professional crew sent to save the world, they behaved more like a bunch of college friends on a poorly organized camping trip.
Long ago, the company spun off the IT department into a separate company. The separate company did 90% of its work for the parent company. Then we got sold to a massive global giant who wanted to get into the outsourcing game. So IT is a separate company under contract to the parent company doing the same things for the same salary + a corporate overhead charge that wasn't there before.
More seriously: a lot of companies put IT under Corporate & Finance division. I.e., the accountants & lawyers.
Holy crap! I had no idea this magazine existed! It's like my beloved Transactor on crack!
I (heart) you, Anonymous Coward!
But yet only has a 7-digit user ID. :-)
I suppose, but have all modern OS's finally agreed on a universal LRU algorithm, or do we still have "clever" algorithms that try to figure out if the application is user-centric or server-centric then changes the page expiry accordingly?
I am sympathetic with his argument, but trying to figure out the best algorithm for a given OS and hardware combo is very difficult and usually not portable.
I agree! We Amigans are definitely a cult. I LOL'd when I read this: "These are people who worship the Commodore Amiga operating system and expect that one day its superiority will cause it to rise again. Some of them are really annoyingly crazy."
That should be our new motto: It's superiority will cause it to rise again!
... or maybe: The Once and Future Operating System?
Governments in the area have been reacting to this news for a couple decades. In BC, we're spending over a billion dollars seismically upgrading critical bridges and making sure the older schools and hospitals don't colapse on their occupants. They've begun emergency preparedness drills, etc.
The problem is: at 8+ magintude, all plans go to crap...
Please post your privacy concerns in the form of an outraged screed. :-)
Sorry, couldn't resist. :-P
I think the problem is that companies wanted interchangeable people that they could hire & fire at will. In the "good old days" (with overt racism, sexism and red meat), you went to work at a company, they taught you what you needed to know, you worked for the company until you retired.
Now, it's we need someone who can do X right now! then drop them 8 months from now. The time spent training the worker is now wasted money from the employer's point of view. And you know, 2-year vocational/business schools are nice, but really, most corporations have very unique skills that no formal school could ever teach.
My solution: every job is on-the-job training. Then, if the employee leaves early or is let go early, the lost hours can be returned as a non-refundable tax credit. The non-refundable part discourages companies from just hiring someone, claim to train them for 6 months then fire them for quick cash.
For more complex jobs, university/college prepares you with basic knowledge for the first 2 years then you can go work with on-the-job training then take the remainder of the courses you want to finish your degree if that's what you want.
It is interesting you bring up creating a "shell" account. It's what I've basically done. The only things on Facebook are the things I don't mind people knowing about me or is available elsewhere. I use it then just to keep in contact with friends who don't feel so invaded. Sort of like a more private Twitter. :-)
Still quite a bit.
*confused* I was refuting the original poster's point!! He was arguing it was the cost of labor. I was pointing out it was charged that high to make the most profit from their target audience which makes even more money from the fonts than they pay for them. You have misrepresented my point entirely.
Back to the labour theory. Fonts are no longer a low-volume industry. Did you forget that Adobe licenses Helvetica, as does almost every Postscript printer? Your argument of "it takes so much work" is bupkiss. There are fonts out there that take just as much work, if not more, like the script and fantasy fonts, and they sell for less. And no, even though electronic Helvetica is young, it has probably been sold and installed more times than it ever did as a physical font.
As I explained in my original post, and then again in a secondary post: Fonts cost so much because they are worth so much to the end user. Graphic design houses, ad companies, book companies, and even just general corporations all depend on these fonts and make thousands, if not millions of dollars. The relatively small amount they fork out for the font is justified by the return. But for us ordinary people, even at $90, I don't think us normal people get $90 of value out of using Helvetica, especially compared to just using Arial which was a trivial fraction of the whole purchase price of Windows.