"What you dont seem to understand that in reality land its sometimes neccessary to use excessive force." - Yeah, sometimes. But in Dotcom's case he doesn't have any history of violence. He's pirating fucking movies, not cocaine. Now if the guy was a violent criminal or holding hostages or something like that then, sure, bring in the troops.
"And that redneck with no shirt was shown on tv because they got him unprepared which is exactly the point." - No, it's not the point. The point is that the cops were using absurd levels of force against some guy they could have blown over with a feather.
"If you dont do bad things then you will never need even to think about them, thats the real world." - You mean to tell me that cops only go after bad people? That they never make mistakes? That sometimes, under pressure to close a high profile case, innocent people don't get wrongfully convicted? Try telling that to the five people wrongfully convicted in the Central Park Jogger case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Jogger_case) or any number of other instances of this type.
This is how the US authorities go after everything - with massive, overwhelming, completely unnecessary force. Ever see the video of the invasion of Kim's compound? You'd think they were invading a small nation with that army of agents. It's like those cop shows on tv where they burst into some guys house - 10 or 20 or them, armed to the teeth - and all you see is some redneck standing there with no shirt and unarmed.
It's looking more and more to me like the US authorities had a pretty flimsy case with improper search warrants. Now they are trying to get everything they can, thus the "mirror" request. But the Canadian authorities have stuck a finger in the eye of the American justice machine by refusing to just hand over the contents of the entire server, not just what Kim is accused of being involved with.
My prediction is that not only will Kim not get extradited to the US, his lawyers will find a way to get him off the charges. Of course, it will cost him several years of his life and several million dollars. The US government, on the other hand, has virtually unlimited resources (thanks to the taxpayer). Backed up by the greedy Hollywood producers they will continue their campaign of harassment.
It seems to address an issue that just isn't there for most people, in my view. For everyday computing needs 960GB SSD is just way overkill. I'm not a gamer so in my case my needs are even less. I've got a 120GB SSD as my primary boot drive (OS and Apps) with the rest of the data on a separate conventional 500GB drive. On my MacBook Pro it's using about 40GB on the SSD. My Windows laptop is using about the same amount of space.
Now if you're a gamer or doing video production or CAD or running a database server then, sure, the larger SSD is great. Incidentally, moving one of my Virtual Machines to the SSD didn't really give me any performance improvement over the regular HD which was kind of surprising to me. So I just moved it back to the HD. As others have mentioned, the performance increase over a conventional HD for bootup and app launching is simply remarkable. Once you get one you'll never go back.
I wish that more managers shared your view but, sadly, that has not been my experience. A common problem I see is that if a project falls behind schedule management will decide to bring more people in to try and get it back on schedule. I think it's well meaning but it just rarely seems to work. You spend more time training up the newbies and it takes away from your current duties and adds to the confusion.
"But if you spend a lot of time after the release on bug fixing then eyebrows will be raised and your competence as a developer will be questioned." - Spot on. As a developer I feel that my job is to deliver bug free (or as close to it as possible) code. I would rather skip a feature or two and at least deliver stuff that works. Once your client starts to question your competence you're finished.
"Overtime is a clear indicator of management failure." - A little overtime is fine but, as you said, massive overtime means that someone dropped the ball when the project schedule was drawn up. As a consultant what I sometimes see is that a salesperson will make all kinds of outlandish promises to get the contract - typically by underbidding the competition - and then hand that mess over to the PM who has to try to make it work. That leads to the massive overtime and a poor quality product, not to mention a burned out crew.
Personally I think the problem stems from how salespeople are typically compensated. They will often get a percentage of the contract price as a bonus which encourages this type of behavior. It does not take into account profitability at all - only the bottom line contract amount. So if cost overruns occur it's not the salesperson's problem. They still get the same bonus and could care less if the project team has to put in tons of overtime to meet unrealistic project schedules. I think a better way is to pay the salesperson's bonus on the back end, or perhaps at project milestones - based on profitability not revenue. That will discourage the lowball bidding game that so often occurs.
Microsoft has shown throughout their history that they are more than willing to screw any and all competitors, legally or otherwise. And now they are complaining because Google won't play nice? Well boo-frickin-hoo. I'm not trying to suggest that Google is any better. Or Apple. Or Oracle. Or Facebook. They are all just big evil silicon valley companies. None of them seem to be happy unless they are suing someone. It just seems to me that MS wrote the playbook for this type of behavior and now it's coming back to haunt them.
The tablet makers have shown that they want to have a lot of control over how you get stuff on and off it. Amazon, Apple, Google...they are all the same. The iPad is probably the worst in that respect as the only way, AFAIK, to get anyone on there is via iTunes. At least the Google tablets allow you to mount it as a HD to copy stuff on or off. Probably a concession to the greedy film makers to reduce piracy (or so they think).
I think what you're finding is that tablets are good for a short list of tasks - watching a movie on a plane, checking facebook or twitter, scanning your email. I just don't see them as a replacement for a laptop or desktop computer. For some things you just need a good physical keyboard and a mouse.
All three companies are scrambling to find their way in the IT world of today. The momentum has gone from PC's to tablets and smart phones. Guess what - those devices don't need intel chips or Windows. Intel will continue to sell plenty of chips for high end servers and Microsoft will continue to have it's monopoly on office related software so they'll be ok. Dell, in my view, is in the worst spot of all. They are stuck in a commodity PC business and their recent move into the services business via their acquisition of Perot Systems has been by and large a flop.
Yes, Apotheker worked for SAP prior to joining HP. By many accounts he didn't do a terrific job at SAP. When he got to HP he quickly realized that the company was mired in a low margin business and correctly summarized that services was the place to be. Unfortunately they paid way too much for EDS. IBM snagged PWC for about a 1/4 of the price that HP paid for EDS and PWC was a more prestigious firm. Dell then made a similar mistake by buying Perot Systems for a similarly inflated price with the goal of also getting into the consulting business. So I think that Apotheker had good instincts but poor execution.
Hardware and software are very different kinds of businesses and not many can pull off being successful at both. Hardware generally has a low margin but a relatively predictable cash flow. Consulting has long sales cycles and you have to put a lot of money in before you get any out. You have to train your consultants to keep them on top of the new developments. Hardware companies have a lot of EE's, as you noted, but they also have a fair amount of relatively unskilled labor (assembly work). Consulting companies, on the other hand, tend to have a lot of highly skilled people (consultants) that are highly mobile and change jobs frequently. If you don't treat them well they will leave.
Basically the two industries have different mind sets. While the profits of consulting can look juicy you lose more deals than you win.
He reminds me a lot of a guy I used to work for. The guy was very smart and dedicated but given to fits of rage that eventually drove everyone (including me) away. There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with things. Torvalds took the wrong way - publicly calling the guy out for making a mistake. That's just a pure asshole move. What does he expect to accomplish with that kind of maneuver? If someone makes a mistake you take them aside, explain why it was wrong. If it happens again you can fire him but that kind of outburst is just childish and unprofessional. If I was that guy I'd tell Linus to go fuck himself.
The airline industry has operated in a cartel-like fashion for as long as I can remember. The whole hub and spoke system is designed to limit your choices by carving up the market nice and neat among the major carriers. Southwest tried to upend this with competitive pricing and was successful for a while until they got frozen out of landing rights at the major airports (ex. Love Field in Dallas rather than DFW, Midway rather than O'Hare in Chicago).
The airlines are one of the only businesses I can think of where they purposely screw over their best customers. As a business traveller I can almost guarantee that you will pay more if you fly on a Sunday and return on a Thursday - even if you do this every week of the year. Yet the family that flies once a year on vacation gets a lower price on their ticket than the business traveller that flies every week. Go figure. If you shop that much at Nordstram's they are rolling out the red carpet for you. Even the cable companies give price breaks to their better customers.
I've got a VM that I run on Windows 2000. That OS is no longer patched by Microsoft so I don't want to expose it to the internet. I turned off all the networking protocols and shut off all the services that have to do with I/O. If I open a browser the only site it will connect to is a server I have running inside the VM, which requires a password. I turned off the network shares so there's no chance of getting an infected file from the host machine. The only way to write a file to it is via a USB drive and I scan those before I connect it.
The OS runs great and, with all those unnecessary services turned off, quickly as well.
The opportunity to build a tablet with a "free" (i.e. included at no extra cost) operating system has passed Ubuntu by. Google, and Apple for that matter, have already done it. Those two also enjoy a big advantage over Ubuntu - a massive collection of apps optimized for the tablet form factor. If you're a hobbyist then I could see wanting to run Ubuntu on a tablet but otherwise I don't quite see the point of it all.
That's the sticking point for me as well. It seems to me that if someone wants to perform a security breach they are going to go for a big target, not little old me. They are not looking for one credit card number they are looking for millions. So it's only a matter of time before one of these big cloud vendors get violated. Then these big companies are going to get mighty nervous.
I've never seen it implemented properly either. From my experience I've seen document versions disappear and the whole checkin/checkout thing seems to get confused. So people end up doing a save as and giving the new version a different name than the previous one...defeating the purpose of SharePoint. It seems to be quite slow as well. Again, maybe this was just the way it was being managed but I'm still looking for a correctly implemented version.
You have just encountered your first (of many) self serving, conniving, worthless PMs. The first clue was the MBA. I have run up against these types before. This person is there to pad their resume and doesn't give a shit about the success of the project. These types of people don't want to do any actual work they just want to appear to have done actual work. They will take credit for the work of others. He's already got his head up your bosses's ass so forget about going to him about it. Making waves will just backfire on you. Best thing you can do is keep your head low and pretend that you don't hate his guts. If there are a lot of people like that in your organization my advise would be to find another job.
Mainly because HR has wormed it's way into companies via legislation...Sarbanes/Oxley, various harassment type legislation, etc. They seem themselves as some great service and necessary but everyone knows that they are just idiots. If you're lucky the only time you will ever hear from HR is the day you are hired, benefits enrollment and the day you quit.
Remember the fat chick that couldn't get a date for the prom? The dork that got stuffed into a gym locker? Those people now work in an HR department somewhere...and they hate the prom queen and the captain of the football team and anyone else that was successful/smart/popular. Come to think of it they hate pretty much everyone...unless you're a fellow HR drone, then you're ok.
That quote by Rahm Emanuel will go down in infamy. It's probably the most brutally honest thing I've ever heard a politician say. And it's exactly why the TSA exists. Post 9/11 much of the American people were in a state of fear - fear stoked by the US government and the media. They WANT you to be afraid so that they can create agencies like the TSA. The TSA is not about guarding against "terrorism" - it's about gaining further control over the American people. Just like the Patriot Act.
Have you ever taken a good look at any of those TSA agents? I mean really taken a look at them? The one's I've seen have this glazed over look that only Federal Government employees seem to possess. That emotionless, heartless, I-don't-give-a-shit, 1,000 mile stare. Want a local version? Try your DMV office. I'm sure you can find plenty there as well. Must be a training ground for TSA drones.
I suspect that very few people actually want to work for the TSA. Some of them probably think I'll just do this for a while and then I'll get a real job. But they get sucked in and before you know it you've got the 1,000 mile stare too. Getting out of public sector was the best move I ever made.
Well, that's a matter of interpretation. I'm pretty certain that the founding fathers were not referring to automatic military assault rifles when they spoke of a 'well regulated militia'. My guess would be that it's more along the lines of muskets and shotguns. The State possesses nuclear bombs. Does that mean that citizens should be able to as well?
As sure as the sun will shine tomorrow you can count on politicians crawling out of the woodwork. Rockefeller is an idiot and he is wasting taxpayer money debating this. Even if video games did cause teenage boys to run out and shoot people (it doesn't) there is no way to prove it. What's next? Ban violent movies, and music videos? Might as well ban sports too because of all that violence in football and boxing and MMA and hockey and God knows what else.
The problem, as I see it, is that congress is unable to pass meaningful legislation. The republicans are wed to the NRA and Christian Coalition. The democrats are wed to the unions. Back in 2008 congress had the McCain sponsored bill to ban assault weapons and it never passed. If someone wants to have a gun for protection that's fine but I can't think of a single valid reason for any private citizen to possess an automatic weapon. Yet the republicans can't get behind it because of pressure from the NRA.
All you get is grandstanding by the likes of Rockefeller. Blaming video games is simply idiotic.
Sounds simple but that's really all there is to it. Pick a language with a good support community and dive in. Python is a good choice because of it's versatility and support. Perl is still around and is a great scripting language. The important thing is pick something and stick to it. I've seen so many people with bookshelves full of programming books and they never got to the end of any of them. Professional dabblers. It's better to pick one or two languages and really know them well than to dabble in lots of them without any real expertise. Once you do that then picking up new languages will be easier because the core concepts will be familiar to you.
I used to work in the public sector so I'll share something with you. There is a stigma attached to being a public sector employee. I've been told this by more than one recruiter. It's a great training ground but at some point you have to make up your mind whether you want to stay there your whole career or venture into the private sector. The longer you stay the harder it will be to get out. Some recruiters will look at someone with 10-15 years of public sector experience and be reluctant to hire you for a private sector job. I met some smart people in public sector but I also met more than my share of lazy pricks. You sound like one of the former so just make the right choice for you. Good luck:-)
Hahaha...well, ERP is certainly a better place for me:-)
But in all seriousness, I'm not so sure that these issues are as cut and dried as you present them to be. The fact that these laws predate the Internet concerns me. Sometimes they actually have to be challenged in court to see if they still hold up.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed it was the NZ authorities. But they were acting in a way that was decidedly more strong armed than NZ authorities would typically use. No doubt due to the US involvement. Back in January, NZ Judge Helen Winkelmann ruled that the search warrant used against Dotcom was illegal. Here is an article --> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/dotcom-search-warrants-ruled-illegal-20120628-214ps.html
"What you dont seem to understand that in reality land its sometimes neccessary to use excessive force." - Yeah, sometimes. But in Dotcom's case he doesn't have any history of violence. He's pirating fucking movies, not cocaine. Now if the guy was a violent criminal or holding hostages or something like that then, sure, bring in the troops.
"And that redneck with no shirt was shown on tv because they got him unprepared which is exactly the point." - No, it's not the point. The point is that the cops were using absurd levels of force against some guy they could have blown over with a feather.
"If you dont do bad things then you will never need even to think about them, thats the real world." - You mean to tell me that cops only go after bad people? That they never make mistakes? That sometimes, under pressure to close a high profile case, innocent people don't get wrongfully convicted? Try telling that to the five people wrongfully convicted in the Central Park Jogger case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Jogger_case) or any number of other instances of this type.
Maybe you're the one that needs to grow up, son.
This is how the US authorities go after everything - with massive, overwhelming, completely unnecessary force. Ever see the video of the invasion of Kim's compound? You'd think they were invading a small nation with that army of agents. It's like those cop shows on tv where they burst into some guys house - 10 or 20 or them, armed to the teeth - and all you see is some redneck standing there with no shirt and unarmed.
It's looking more and more to me like the US authorities had a pretty flimsy case with improper search warrants. Now they are trying to get everything they can, thus the "mirror" request. But the Canadian authorities have stuck a finger in the eye of the American justice machine by refusing to just hand over the contents of the entire server, not just what Kim is accused of being involved with.
My prediction is that not only will Kim not get extradited to the US, his lawyers will find a way to get him off the charges. Of course, it will cost him several years of his life and several million dollars. The US government, on the other hand, has virtually unlimited resources (thanks to the taxpayer). Backed up by the greedy Hollywood producers they will continue their campaign of harassment.
It seems to address an issue that just isn't there for most people, in my view. For everyday computing needs 960GB SSD is just way overkill. I'm not a gamer so in my case my needs are even less. I've got a 120GB SSD as my primary boot drive (OS and Apps) with the rest of the data on a separate conventional 500GB drive. On my MacBook Pro it's using about 40GB on the SSD. My Windows laptop is using about the same amount of space.
Now if you're a gamer or doing video production or CAD or running a database server then, sure, the larger SSD is great. Incidentally, moving one of my Virtual Machines to the SSD didn't really give me any performance improvement over the regular HD which was kind of surprising to me. So I just moved it back to the HD. As others have mentioned, the performance increase over a conventional HD for bootup and app launching is simply remarkable. Once you get one you'll never go back.
I wish that more managers shared your view but, sadly, that has not been my experience. A common problem I see is that if a project falls behind schedule management will decide to bring more people in to try and get it back on schedule. I think it's well meaning but it just rarely seems to work. You spend more time training up the newbies and it takes away from your current duties and adds to the confusion.
"But if you spend a lot of time after the release on bug fixing then eyebrows will be raised and your competence as a developer will be questioned." - Spot on. As a developer I feel that my job is to deliver bug free (or as close to it as possible) code. I would rather skip a feature or two and at least deliver stuff that works. Once your client starts to question your competence you're finished.
"Overtime is a clear indicator of management failure." - A little overtime is fine but, as you said, massive overtime means that someone dropped the ball when the project schedule was drawn up. As a consultant what I sometimes see is that a salesperson will make all kinds of outlandish promises to get the contract - typically by underbidding the competition - and then hand that mess over to the PM who has to try to make it work. That leads to the massive overtime and a poor quality product, not to mention a burned out crew.
Personally I think the problem stems from how salespeople are typically compensated. They will often get a percentage of the contract price as a bonus which encourages this type of behavior. It does not take into account profitability at all - only the bottom line contract amount. So if cost overruns occur it's not the salesperson's problem. They still get the same bonus and could care less if the project team has to put in tons of overtime to meet unrealistic project schedules. I think a better way is to pay the salesperson's bonus on the back end, or perhaps at project milestones - based on profitability not revenue. That will discourage the lowball bidding game that so often occurs.
Microsoft has shown throughout their history that they are more than willing to screw any and all competitors, legally or otherwise. And now they are complaining because Google won't play nice? Well boo-frickin-hoo. I'm not trying to suggest that Google is any better. Or Apple. Or Oracle. Or Facebook. They are all just big evil silicon valley companies. None of them seem to be happy unless they are suing someone. It just seems to me that MS wrote the playbook for this type of behavior and now it's coming back to haunt them.
Can't we all just...get along?
The tablet makers have shown that they want to have a lot of control over how you get stuff on and off it. Amazon, Apple, Google...they are all the same. The iPad is probably the worst in that respect as the only way, AFAIK, to get anyone on there is via iTunes. At least the Google tablets allow you to mount it as a HD to copy stuff on or off. Probably a concession to the greedy film makers to reduce piracy (or so they think).
I think what you're finding is that tablets are good for a short list of tasks - watching a movie on a plane, checking facebook or twitter, scanning your email. I just don't see them as a replacement for a laptop or desktop computer. For some things you just need a good physical keyboard and a mouse.
All three companies are scrambling to find their way in the IT world of today. The momentum has gone from PC's to tablets and smart phones. Guess what - those devices don't need intel chips or Windows. Intel will continue to sell plenty of chips for high end servers and Microsoft will continue to have it's monopoly on office related software so they'll be ok. Dell, in my view, is in the worst spot of all. They are stuck in a commodity PC business and their recent move into the services business via their acquisition of Perot Systems has been by and large a flop.
Hopefully Intel learned a few lessons with their Ultrabook fiasco. Those things were DOA.
Yes, Apotheker worked for SAP prior to joining HP. By many accounts he didn't do a terrific job at SAP. When he got to HP he quickly realized that the company was mired in a low margin business and correctly summarized that services was the place to be. Unfortunately they paid way too much for EDS. IBM snagged PWC for about a 1/4 of the price that HP paid for EDS and PWC was a more prestigious firm. Dell then made a similar mistake by buying Perot Systems for a similarly inflated price with the goal of also getting into the consulting business. So I think that Apotheker had good instincts but poor execution.
Hardware and software are very different kinds of businesses and not many can pull off being successful at both. Hardware generally has a low margin but a relatively predictable cash flow. Consulting has long sales cycles and you have to put a lot of money in before you get any out. You have to train your consultants to keep them on top of the new developments. Hardware companies have a lot of EE's, as you noted, but they also have a fair amount of relatively unskilled labor (assembly work). Consulting companies, on the other hand, tend to have a lot of highly skilled people (consultants) that are highly mobile and change jobs frequently. If you don't treat them well they will leave.
Basically the two industries have different mind sets. While the profits of consulting can look juicy you lose more deals than you win.
He reminds me a lot of a guy I used to work for. The guy was very smart and dedicated but given to fits of rage that eventually drove everyone (including me) away. There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with things. Torvalds took the wrong way - publicly calling the guy out for making a mistake. That's just a pure asshole move. What does he expect to accomplish with that kind of maneuver? If someone makes a mistake you take them aside, explain why it was wrong. If it happens again you can fire him but that kind of outburst is just childish and unprofessional. If I was that guy I'd tell Linus to go fuck himself.
The airline industry has operated in a cartel-like fashion for as long as I can remember. The whole hub and spoke system is designed to limit your choices by carving up the market nice and neat among the major carriers. Southwest tried to upend this with competitive pricing and was successful for a while until they got frozen out of landing rights at the major airports (ex. Love Field in Dallas rather than DFW, Midway rather than O'Hare in Chicago).
The airlines are one of the only businesses I can think of where they purposely screw over their best customers. As a business traveller I can almost guarantee that you will pay more if you fly on a Sunday and return on a Thursday - even if you do this every week of the year. Yet the family that flies once a year on vacation gets a lower price on their ticket than the business traveller that flies every week. Go figure. If you shop that much at Nordstram's they are rolling out the red carpet for you. Even the cable companies give price breaks to their better customers.
I've got a VM that I run on Windows 2000. That OS is no longer patched by Microsoft so I don't want to expose it to the internet. I turned off all the networking protocols and shut off all the services that have to do with I/O. If I open a browser the only site it will connect to is a server I have running inside the VM, which requires a password. I turned off the network shares so there's no chance of getting an infected file from the host machine. The only way to write a file to it is via a USB drive and I scan those before I connect it.
The OS runs great and, with all those unnecessary services turned off, quickly as well.
The opportunity to build a tablet with a "free" (i.e. included at no extra cost) operating system has passed Ubuntu by. Google, and Apple for that matter, have already done it. Those two also enjoy a big advantage over Ubuntu - a massive collection of apps optimized for the tablet form factor. If you're a hobbyist then I could see wanting to run Ubuntu on a tablet but otherwise I don't quite see the point of it all.
That's the sticking point for me as well. It seems to me that if someone wants to perform a security breach they are going to go for a big target, not little old me. They are not looking for one credit card number they are looking for millions. So it's only a matter of time before one of these big cloud vendors get violated. Then these big companies are going to get mighty nervous.
I've never seen it implemented properly either. From my experience I've seen document versions disappear and the whole checkin/checkout thing seems to get confused. So people end up doing a save as and giving the new version a different name than the previous one...defeating the purpose of SharePoint. It seems to be quite slow as well. Again, maybe this was just the way it was being managed but I'm still looking for a correctly implemented version.
You have just encountered your first (of many) self serving, conniving, worthless PMs. The first clue was the MBA. I have run up against these types before. This person is there to pad their resume and doesn't give a shit about the success of the project. These types of people don't want to do any actual work they just want to appear to have done actual work. They will take credit for the work of others. He's already got his head up your bosses's ass so forget about going to him about it. Making waves will just backfire on you. Best thing you can do is keep your head low and pretend that you don't hate his guts. If there are a lot of people like that in your organization my advise would be to find another job.
Mainly because HR has wormed it's way into companies via legislation...Sarbanes/Oxley, various harassment type legislation, etc. They seem themselves as some great service and necessary but everyone knows that they are just idiots. If you're lucky the only time you will ever hear from HR is the day you are hired, benefits enrollment and the day you quit.
Remember the fat chick that couldn't get a date for the prom? The dork that got stuffed into a gym locker? Those people now work in an HR department somewhere...and they hate the prom queen and the captain of the football team and anyone else that was successful/smart/popular. Come to think of it they hate pretty much everyone...unless you're a fellow HR drone, then you're ok.
That quote by Rahm Emanuel will go down in infamy. It's probably the most brutally honest thing I've ever heard a politician say. And it's exactly why the TSA exists. Post 9/11 much of the American people were in a state of fear - fear stoked by the US government and the media. They WANT you to be afraid so that they can create agencies like the TSA. The TSA is not about guarding against "terrorism" - it's about gaining further control over the American people. Just like the Patriot Act.
Have you ever taken a good look at any of those TSA agents? I mean really taken a look at them? The one's I've seen have this glazed over look that only Federal Government employees seem to possess. That emotionless, heartless, I-don't-give-a-shit, 1,000 mile stare. Want a local version? Try your DMV office. I'm sure you can find plenty there as well. Must be a training ground for TSA drones.
I suspect that very few people actually want to work for the TSA. Some of them probably think I'll just do this for a while and then I'll get a real job. But they get sucked in and before you know it you've got the 1,000 mile stare too. Getting out of public sector was the best move I ever made.
Well, that's a matter of interpretation. I'm pretty certain that the founding fathers were not referring to automatic military assault rifles when they spoke of a 'well regulated militia'. My guess would be that it's more along the lines of muskets and shotguns. The State possesses nuclear bombs. Does that mean that citizens should be able to as well?
As sure as the sun will shine tomorrow you can count on politicians crawling out of the woodwork. Rockefeller is an idiot and he is wasting taxpayer money debating this. Even if video games did cause teenage boys to run out and shoot people (it doesn't) there is no way to prove it. What's next? Ban violent movies, and music videos? Might as well ban sports too because of all that violence in football and boxing and MMA and hockey and God knows what else.
The problem, as I see it, is that congress is unable to pass meaningful legislation. The republicans are wed to the NRA and Christian Coalition. The democrats are wed to the unions. Back in 2008 congress had the McCain sponsored bill to ban assault weapons and it never passed. If someone wants to have a gun for protection that's fine but I can't think of a single valid reason for any private citizen to possess an automatic weapon. Yet the republicans can't get behind it because of pressure from the NRA.
All you get is grandstanding by the likes of Rockefeller. Blaming video games is simply idiotic.
Rockefeller doesn't need much assistance in that regard ;-)
Sounds simple but that's really all there is to it. Pick a language with a good support community and dive in. Python is a good choice because of it's versatility and support. Perl is still around and is a great scripting language. The important thing is pick something and stick to it. I've seen so many people with bookshelves full of programming books and they never got to the end of any of them. Professional dabblers. It's better to pick one or two languages and really know them well than to dabble in lots of them without any real expertise. Once you do that then picking up new languages will be easier because the core concepts will be familiar to you.
I used to work in the public sector so I'll share something with you. There is a stigma attached to being a public sector employee. I've been told this by more than one recruiter. It's a great training ground but at some point you have to make up your mind whether you want to stay there your whole career or venture into the private sector. The longer you stay the harder it will be to get out. Some recruiters will look at someone with 10-15 years of public sector experience and be reluctant to hire you for a private sector job. I met some smart people in public sector but I also met more than my share of lazy pricks. You sound like one of the former so just make the right choice for you. Good luck :-)
Hahaha...well, ERP is certainly a better place for me :-)
But in all seriousness, I'm not so sure that these issues are as cut and dried as you present them to be. The fact that these laws predate the Internet concerns me. Sometimes they actually have to be challenged in court to see if they still hold up.