1) RIM is behind the curve in mobile devices by one or two generations when it comes to mobile web, app development and app distribution.... In terms of development it's more like 3+ generations behind. What they *do* have going for them is some of their core software products, namely the calendar and the contacts on RIM devices. I have yet to find one of those that is notably better on devices 4 years or more younger that come from the android of apple camp. If they'd manage to improve a little and port those apps and maybe a few others, they might have a neat product on their hands for which they could also charge a solid price, since their audience isn't the app-store junk-freemium crowd.
2) If there is anything that really royally sucks compared to *any* quickly self-programmed and hacked solution we had on mobile computers more than 15 years ago it is the 'sync and manage' of calendar, contacts and other such data across mobile devices and desktops in this day and age. Honestly, what is going on in this department - or isn't happening for that matter - has me only this short of switching back to paper & pen based solutions.
Example: My HTC Desire HD is an awesome device, despite it sucking battery like no tomorrow and my blackberry still lasting me a week on one load - alongside with an unusable browser I might add. But the management of contacts and calendar data is a huge pain and reminds me of the mid-90ies era when I used to keep all of that more or less in a single text file.... Which at times appears to me to be a far superior solution that what I've got now.
If RIM jumps on the software horse and actually manages to deliver where all others have failed up to now, they might just actually have a new business on their hands. I'd be glad to shell out some hard cash for viable, privacy protected calendaring, contacts and data sync solutions and such for current mobile devices and platforms and I'm sure quite a few other business customers would too.
It's pretty easy: If you don't have a degree, you need a pretty impressive portfolio to back up your claims about your skill. Not just what you did but also at which positions in how many and how large a team you worked. If you do have a good drupal project portfolio with neat project descriptions and demo installations to show for, then you're top of the line when it comes to joining a drupal shop.
All else is pretty much the same (degree or not) and is covered by the usual advice already given here. Although, as someone who's freelance in IT and has no degree, I might add that I find it considerably easier in getting a job through personal contact than by sending out applications. And I hear it's pretty much the same for every other field-expert today looking for a job, regardless whether they are self-taught or have a degree.
2 cents from a freelance web-and-software-developer.
1) Isn't this plain and simple fraud? We all know it is, but I'm asking if it is this under US law?
2) If so, isn't this something for which a company (or an individual) in the US can be sued into next Wednesday for a bazillion dollars or something like that?... In Germany they'd get a stern look from the judge, a 'No, no! Bad company!' and some laughable sum (like 100 000 Euros or so) as a fine.
I'm just asking out of general curiousity of how USians expect this to play out if someone took this case of fraud to court. Anyone care to indulge in speculation on this?
I was thinking the same thing. I actually looked into HAM just two months ago or so for the very same reason.:-) It's fairly crisis-safe and more or less citizen regulated, very much like the early private computer networks such as Fidonet. The last bastion of citizen-driven communication so to speak. I am still toying with the idea of getting my license.
Why? I'm German, and we live just fine with higher taxes (and free healthcare, truly public education, etc.)
Our healthcare isn't free. It's payed for by the middle-class.... Just like everything else. And the largest part of the german health budget goes to administration and big pharma. I like the general idea of the german healthcare system, but it is one of the big 4-5 areas that need some serious fixing and clearing out.
Honestly: Your wife should use the classic combo of Pen and Paper. If it *must* be electronical, nothing beats the Livescribe System. It's basically the best of both worlds.
The HTC Flyer Android Tablet has a pen system integrated aswell, but that only lasts 5 hrs on one load. And it probalby breaks if you drop it or it gets wet. Not really an alternative, if you ask me.
Throw away all your stuff, shave your head, leave your home and your hometown, and start walking, heading in one direction. Drop your job. Stand and pee on the desk of your Boss. Run away from school. Do whatever you must, but do *not* kill yourself. It's about the stupidest thing you can do.
My Grandpa who dug the whole Nazi-Wehrmacht thing back then and went on to invade and fight on the eastern front in WW2 as a Waffen-SS Officer (Kompanieführer) gave me this advice he took home after the war: If everything you believed in is gone, the 3rd Reich, the Wehrmacht, your hometown and half of your homeland burned and lost to the russians of which a few million are now rightfull super-pissed and heading straight your way, raping and killing their way through whatever is left of the eastern german population, if your entire Kompanie is dead (two assistants aside, which got captured a few days ago) if the beloved Führer is dead (*his* beloved Füher - not mine (emphasis mine!)), Berlin is falling and you're hearing the gunfire, the Stalinorgel and their bombshells crashing in near Zossen just a few Kilometers away, your injured and they are coming to get you and they will tear you to tiny bits and pieces, and the maggots are eating away at the festering wound in your leg, your career and your life and everything you've ever believed in is basically over and out with no stone on another in bombed out Berlin for Kilometers in each direction... if all that has and just is happening before your very eyes right here and now... you might aswell just crawl on a few more meters and see if something interesting happens instead of putting a gun to your head.
He crawled on, found a deserted Wehrmacht horse, crawled on to its back sideways. The horse eventually rode to a gathering-camp. The nurses picked him up and the russians didn't deport him because his injuries were to severe - the lucky bastard.
Long story short, he lives to this very day (age 97) to tell us this advice. Old Type-A nazi or not, that actually *is* a very valuable advice. If *he* in that situation decided *not* to kill himself, so can you.
Bottom line: Don't kill yourself. It's that simple.
My 2 cents.
I'd say InfoWorld failed the test.
on
2011 Geek IQ Test
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· Score: 1
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This is just a simple case of some idiot in some federal bureau with nothing better to do. The Gema konzept isn't all to bad, but with all the DRM laws added in the last decade it falls flat on its face in so many places. For instance, you are allowed to make private copies of your music and there is a basic royalty on copy media such as CDRWs that goes straight to the GEMA - but it is illegal to circumvent copy protection. As usual: Lots and lots of messy and broken laws in this field by people without a clue.
This whole GEMA/GEZ thing is in for a complete redo by people who understand the subject. Until then stuff like this will continue to pop up every now and then.
Big fat hairy deal. Sorry, but other than the iconic Razr this phone looks pretty standard fare.
I actually like the original Razr. It was a super-flat fold phone with a sturdy metal body and a awesome keypad. And am quite sure it would still have a market if they'd continue to produce it. There are quite a few cellphone classics out there that probably would never die out and allways have customers. Motorolas Razr and the Siemens M35 being two of those.
An off-the grid uptime of 9,5 and 16 hrs is pretty impressive. And it looks less shitty than the regular transformer. Andorid tablets are really starting to get interesting. And this device is a serious competitor to the Chromebook market. They weight probably is somewhere nearly the same as Chromebook/MB Air, the price is simular to the Samsung 5 Chromebook and the batterytime is twice as high as both. Plus it's a tablet with all the touch stuff for when you really can use it - like photo presentations and stuff. Very neat. Personally, I'll take a serious look at it as soon as it arives.
Bottom line: Well done, Asus. Nice piece of hardware that appears to be.
This news saddens me. For more than a decade Flash has been *the* ubiquitous end-user rich-client cross-platform environment. Whereever Java initially wanted to go, Flash was already there.
However, the botch-jobs Macromedia and then Adobe delivered when it came to fixing basic issues and bugs in the Flash are beyond comprehension. Font-rendering and compiling has had the same serious bugs and troubles ever since 2001, right to the point were HTML5/CSS3 Font integration hasn't only caught up but superseded Flash-based Font integration. It peaked in what can only be called a flat-out scam by Adobe, when they introduced Flash 8 IDEs 'justify' option for textfields - which would lose it's justified layout as soon as you'd change the default text dynamically. The slowpoking with HW-accelerated 3D - it basically still is a beta, if at all - is beyond any measure. Unity3D has taken the helm in that department, and they aren't letting it up it appears. Flash simply lost out in that area aswell. At last the Flash Pipeline totally missed out the touch-based UI craze which it easily could have jumped ahead of to lead the way into a future of sleek touch-based UIs. Flash is made for this sort of thing, yet it hasn't even entered a beta phase regarding this. Like I said: Nothing but a series of large-type epic fuckups.
Even with modern HTML5/CSS3/Ajax/JavaScript being pretty much cross-platform without to many workaround hacks, it is still a bloated mess of a historically grown stack of intermangled technologies and paradigms that doesn't even come near the capabilities of a Flash/AS3 based enviroment. It's even basically half a decade behind of what pure Browser-based solutions could be simply due to the browserwars back in the early 200x'ses.
Flash could've had it all and even pushed back Java into the most obscure pure-business related stuff - but I guess after the one glimpse of light with the introduction of AS2 it was all downhill from then on.
Sad. Very sad. I hope they finally GPL the whole damn thing. Maybe the FOSS community can save the day with a usable AS3 - VectorGFX VM. But I'm not holding my breath.
It's a tradegy to see Flash go this way, but I guess it's time to move along, bite the bullet and stark messing around with bizar DOM-based rich-client programming. Great. Just great. Just the thought of that gives me the creeps.
Well done, Adobe. I hope your rich-client operations die of allready, you're obviously not competent enought to handle them, no matter how advanced the technology you have at hand is. Not only did Steve Jobs see how well Webkit HTML5 did, he also saw how uninspired your handling of Flash was. The iPad didn't kill Flash, at least not alone, Adobes incompetence had a measurable part in that aswell.
The world is more complex today and it takes longer compared to the old times to adjust yourself and find out what you want to do and focus on in your life. I'm in my early 40ies and it's just in recent years that I'm getting a feeling of me having a relatively solid grip on my life and arranging things for the long term. That does include taking into account that our world today is heading fast-forward into a Type A William Gibson/Neal Stephenson Cyberpunk society with the according personal life adjustment required to cope with that. For instance, I'm living in a 36m^2 room in a flat share apartment, and while I hope to be able to buy myself a small apartment or micro house for my golden years, I don't expect it to be much bigger than my current home. And I've arranged myself with that and the accompanying modern lifestyle that it comes along with.
My last job I made comparatively big bucks as a specialized Flash/AS3 developer with 10 years experience and just this morning that skill-set has finally become full-scale obsolete with Adobes announcement to drop Flash for Mobile entirely after the current version. I'm glad I saw things coming back in '99 and - next to Flash - focused completly on FOSS Unix throughout the years. That's starting to pay off. I spent the better part of my 30ies coping with ever changing technologies and trends in my industry (web development at large) and have finally adjusted to the influx of information and a) gone on a (fairly) low information diet and b) learned enough to be considered an experienced senior developer in my field. If there is any chance of a stroke of genius hitting me during my lifetime, it is only now that the parameters are set for something like that to happen. Although, when it comes to that in terms of myself, I'm now wise enough to not hold my breath in the 'stroke of genius' department.:-)
Bottom line: There are many years wasted/eaten up on coping with information overload - compared to the times of Newton or even Einstein - and I presume it's the same for most other people of my generation and younger.
The Nintendo DSi XL is comparetively cheap, has awsome games that the elderly love (such as the Professor Layton series) and it was built with old-timers in mind. Big screen, modest colors, large pen-like extra stylus and absolut idiot-proof usage. Get her one plus one or two Layton titles and some other slow or non-action puzzle game.... Most likely she'll ask for more sooner than you'll expect.
And who knows, maybe she'll also be kicking your sorry ass at MarioCart in 2 months aswell.:-)
It's 4oclock in the morning and I can't sleep - so I'll post this.:-)
Software Development is still very young, very dynamic and very complex.
I've been programming since 1986 and been in professional web software development since 2000. I've done a solid share of projects of all kinds and right now, once again, on the lookout for jobs and projects. Twice a week I get called up by recruiters asking me if I 'know XML' or can drive down to Munich for free to make a job interview for a project that smells of out-of-time, over budget and clueless gouvernance ten miles against the wind. 10 years ago money was free an nobody cared about wether a project was going to succeed or not. Nowadays money is more scarce, but the people in the pipeline haven't learned a single bit.
It occured to me the other week that our profession is very simular to that of doctors. Everybody knows there are complete hacks in the field that can ruin your health for good and seasoned professionals with the patients best interest in mind and a solid experience and will to do good, but only the pros in the field themselves have the capability to judge wether a given MD is from those 30% that are total screwups or it he belongs to the 30% that can make a difference.
In the last few weeks I've been dismissing companies left right and center just by reading their outlandish fantasy job requirements or just asking a set of questions simular to these and noticing what a crappy shop I'm speaking to.
I get simular stories from my cousin who's passed through 3 jobs in the last 18 months - and he's a *real* engineer - y'know, building Airplanes and shit (Airbus 380 and such).
The truth is, after being in the field for so long, I know for a fact that only a 5th or all software teams out there barely fit the most basic standards of working conditions I can even be productive in. 2 out of 3 of those fall flat in some other basic requirement. I think it's a crying shame, because I'd love to do some good and meaningful work in this field, but it's just so darn difficult to find a proper pipeline and the surroundings to make use of it.
... I could go on and on, but you all get the picture. However, I would like to close with one concrete question to all of you who are reading this:
Are there any seasoned programmers here who think it should be possible to build an international company that has everything online (vhost servers for versioning, building and staging, online project and task management, etc....) and delivers along the lines of a company like this one? I personally do, speak fluent English and German, have solid experience in Organisation (as a scrum master), have technical account management skills alongside my programming stuff and do believe it should be possible to a) deliver good software b) on time c) without crunching d) having fun while doing so and finally e) making a good living at that.
Reply to this post and let us hear your thoughts. I'll leave a mailadress somewhere further down as an reply tomorrow.... errr... later and we can get together online somewhere. I'd rather work with some slashdotter from the other side of the planet I have never seen than with some disponent from the other town who can't tell Java from JavaScript and earns 3x my rates by renting me out to others.
Let's see if we can improve the industry just a little bit and make a dent in the universe.
Earth could easily support 40 Billion people and still have a stable and working eco-system. Earth wouldn't even be very crowded. It was here on slashdot where someone proved that todays entire population would easyly fit into Texas, and even then Texas wouldn't be particularly crowded.
Waste, bad education and crappy management are what put the world in the sorry state it is in now. Bad distribution of food, bizarely huge amounts of resources wasted in aggriculture, huge damages done with pesticides and clearing of rainforrests just because some ignorant doucebags want cheap meat every day, etc. pp. Seriously, just a little common sense applied to worldwide resource management and large amounts of our problems today would simply disappear. That's the problem. Not overpopulation per se.
This is quite on par with what Clifford Stoll noticed: We don't need computers in the classroom. We need good teachers. Although I do agree that access to knowledge in the hand of a smart kid can mean a difference if there are no good teachers available.
Real Waldorf education isn't opposed to technology. On the contrary. Their scientific curriculum is among the best - although it of course, always stands and falls with the individual teachers in the end. I visited quite a few schools whilst moving around in different countries and the last one I went to was a Waldorf School. We learned doing math not with a calculator but with logarithmic tables. "But it isn't accurate" a friend used to allways say. Well guess what? I doesn't need to be. What needs to happen is for us to understand log inside out, and tables are a way better at that then typing in signs on an electronic device. Anybody can learn that in a matter of minutes. And other than most other people our age the ones out of our math class actually understand what happens when you press the 'log' button.
My daughter goes to waldorfschool too. They learn about computers in the upper grades. From a science teacher who teaches them assembly, op-/bytecode and binary stuff on a C64 emulator running on PCs - because that's what he knows best that will teach them the very basics about computers. I don't know about you, folks, but that sounds to me like one of the best methods to learn computing. I know she won't grow up to be a dumb user who couldn't draw the connection between an Icon on the desktop and a file on a drive if her life depended on it. Beyond that, I'll bug her about Python and the Unix command line as soon as she tells me that she wants to do computer stuff for a living. Allthoug I do trust that by then she will be well on her way in teaching herself the basics.
We all know very well, that once you know how a computer works and the principles by which it functions, it's a matter of hours in teaching yourself how to use Excel, Word or whatever. And good Waldorf teachers know that too. That's why a good waldorf teacher (any good teacher for that matter) will go out of his way to teach his pupils how to use a slide-ruler rather than having them punch keys on a calculator, right up to the point where they go into their final exams. Because it's not about what buttons you need to press, it's about understanding math and getting your brain thinking.... Although I do understand that some people in education are interested in preventing exactly that.
This whole German 'Federal Trojan' thing is blowing up in the faces of the conservative right, just as we speak. Just like with the Websperren and IP storaging thing. Wonderfull sight to look at. I'm currently sitting back, watching the fray unravel before me and enjoying my popcorn.
The supreme court will cancel this crapshot (once again) These guys have been doing overtime ever since Schäuble was Minister for Internal Affairs.
The press is having a field day, opposition in parliament will be anal-probing the responible, Schäuble, Von der Leyen and Co. will be backpedaling yet again and the pirate party will get pushed from an allready impressive 8% all the way beyond 10% in the polls nationwide. Well done. The Chaos Computer Club saved the day once again (kudos and thank go out to them) and the professional required-by-law privacy protection experts are all over this like a cheap suit. Gotta love it. Nothing beats a 50ies+ old-school roughneck polititian screwing around with them internets and accompaning laws and falling flat on his face a year or two later. Wonderfull, just wonderfull.
Strange contraption with stuff attached to it for no apparent reason other than maybe to look 'scientific'. Weird guy in sort-of business atire presenting it. Bad lit 'Prototype Powerplant' shed that looks like it's salvaged from a junkyard. Crappy website covering the issue.... It all looks like a scam to me. That's my very first impression anyway,
The common mistake, in my opinion, is that many people allways think that the battle is between science and religions / 'spiritual people'. This is not the case. The fight is between nutcase fanatics and resonable people. Wether they're scientists, believe in a religion / something simular or both, makes no difference and actually is quite a different metric, despite some loonies claiming to speak for religion and their confessions.... Most confessional christians I know do not really believe that the earth was created a mere 4000 years ago or some sort of bullshit.
Isn't high level IT nothing other than CS applied in the real world? I don't have a degree, but I've been doing IT stuff for the better part of my life and I'd put it that way. CS == Theory, Higher Math, Donald Knuth Books and that sort of stuff. IT == The industry you work in. Programming, System Design, Pro-Level DB Admining, Large Scale System Admining, etc.
My advice on this: A little field experience can never hurt. However, I wouldn't pick a one-man-coding-and-admin-army job at some third grade web agency, that could do more damage than good to your academic background. Pick one where you get the chance to do some serious probem solving or maybe even get paid to get yourself familiar with a non-trivial open source project - maybe by means of integrating it into your employers infrastructure. That's allways a good starting point to get some real world experience with the guys who actually get the job done without spoiling your CS grads worth. If you use the chance to rub sholders with the projects core team on the way, even the better. You may end up part of a team that sticks together across jobs throughout your entire career. A friend of mine joined the Nedit crew very early on in his IT career, and while the project is pretty much dormant nowadays, it did help him get firm with core unix software skills which still come in very handy every day at his current high level admin job... and gues what tool he uses for coding to this very day.
I've been doing Rich Client Development for the last 11 years, been in the front line of Flash Development and the development with other rich client solutions including the newest Ajax + HTML5 + CSS3 fray and have worked on and with some of the most ambitions Browsergame Projects on the Planet. And I agree, Rich Client has a lot going for it these days, especially with all the mobile and tablet stuff and them 10 bazillion plattforms all over the place like it's the 80ies all over again.
But predicting the end of Non-Browser Games is just plain non-sense. Even my Nintendo DSi with Professor Layton in it right now - a Game that would be laughably easy to port to a Browser, even for a mobile device - will tell you this is bullshit.
Bottom line: These guys are just dickwaving because they managed to actually finish a neat BG and they now feel like the king of the hill because their signups are up and the micropayments cash is rolling in. Meanwhile Crylabs is building their next release that will come on a disk, cost 50€ and will be yet another big hit.
Yepp. Those sure are some bad composites. Apparently a few professionals actually did notice and rose the stink. His reward is up for review, his site is offline and he's probably out hiding somewhere. This guy is toast.
In my opinion a good Photoshopped picture that looks awesome is worth just as much as a good snapshot someone took. A friend of mine is a Photographer and a fairly decent semi-professional PS guy too, and his Photoshops are at least as neat as his originals. They sometimes take days of hard work to composite. Photoshopping is a skill at least as high up as photographing, and if the guy managed to make some neat wildlife composites - stock material or not - I couldn't care less. I might even hang one up on my wall if it looks cool and I like it.
However, the example they show is a typical, über-shitty I-have-no-clue-what-I'm-doing PS job that takes about 1,5 seconds to be recognised as a bad PS job by a digital imaging expert. Old school photographers who can't handle digital imaging at aren't willing to go back to school to learn it but still think they can reap the benefits of digital imaging deserve all the flak they get. Like this guy. Still to many of those around. I have no pitty for him. That is one crappily PSed image on the level of an intern and people should demand their money back from him.... Then again, if they didn't notice, maybe it's their own fault?...
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, so two things play into this here:
1) RIM is behind the curve in mobile devices by one or two generations when it comes to mobile web, app development and app distribution. ... In terms of development it's more like 3+ generations behind. What they *do* have going for them is some of their core software products, namely the calendar and the contacts on RIM devices. I have yet to find one of those that is notably better on devices 4 years or more younger that come from the android of apple camp.
If they'd manage to improve a little and port those apps and maybe a few others, they might have a neat product on their hands for which they could also charge a solid price, since their audience isn't the app-store junk-freemium crowd.
2) If there is anything that really royally sucks compared to *any* quickly self-programmed and hacked solution we had on mobile computers more than 15 years ago it is the 'sync and manage' of calendar, contacts and other such data across mobile devices and desktops in this day and age. Honestly, what is going on in this department - or isn't happening for that matter - has me only this short of switching back to paper & pen based solutions.
Example: My HTC Desire HD is an awesome device, despite it sucking battery like no tomorrow and my blackberry still lasting me a week on one load - alongside with an unusable browser I might add. But the management of contacts and calendar data is a huge pain and reminds me of the mid-90ies era when I used to keep all of that more or less in a single text file. ... Which at times appears to me to be a far superior solution that what I've got now.
If RIM jumps on the software horse and actually manages to deliver where all others have failed up to now, they might just actually have a new business on their hands. I'd be glad to shell out some hard cash for viable, privacy protected calendaring, contacts and data sync solutions and such for current mobile devices and platforms and I'm sure quite a few other business customers would too.
My 2 cents.
It's pretty easy:
If you don't have a degree, you need a pretty impressive portfolio to back up your claims about your skill. Not just what you did but also at which positions in how many and how large a team you worked. If you do have a good drupal project portfolio with neat project descriptions and demo installations to show for, then you're top of the line when it comes to joining a drupal shop.
All else is pretty much the same (degree or not) and is covered by the usual advice already given here. Although, as someone who's freelance in IT and has no degree, I might add that I find it considerably easier in getting a job through personal contact than by sending out applications. And I hear it's pretty much the same for every other field-expert today looking for a job, regardless whether they are self-taught or have a degree.
2 cents from a freelance web-and-software-developer.
Wie bitte? Könnt ihr mal Deutsch reden, oder was?
1) Isn't this plain and simple fraud? We all know it is, but I'm asking if it is this under US law?
2) If so, isn't this something for which a company (or an individual) in the US can be sued into next Wednesday for a bazillion dollars or something like that? ... In Germany they'd get a stern look from the judge, a 'No, no! Bad company!' and some laughable sum (like 100 000 Euros or so) as a fine.
I'm just asking out of general curiousity of how USians expect this to play out if someone took this case of fraud to court.
Anyone care to indulge in speculation on this?
I was thinking the same thing. I actually looked into HAM just two months ago or so for the very same reason. :-) It's fairly crisis-safe and more or less citizen regulated, very much like the early private computer networks such as Fidonet. The last bastion of citizen-driven communication so to speak. I am still toying with the idea of getting my license.
Why? I'm German, and we live just fine with higher taxes (and free healthcare, truly public education, etc.)
Our healthcare isn't free. It's payed for by the middle-class. ... Just like everything else. And the largest part of the german health budget goes to administration and big pharma.
I like the general idea of the german healthcare system, but it is one of the big 4-5 areas that need some serious fixing and clearing out.
Honestly: Your wife should use the classic combo of Pen and Paper. If it *must* be electronical, nothing beats the Livescribe System. It's basically the best of both worlds.
The HTC Flyer Android Tablet has a pen system integrated aswell, but that only lasts 5 hrs on one load. And it probalby breaks if you drop it or it gets wet. Not really an alternative, if you ask me.
My 2 cents.
Don't kill yourself. Just don't.
Throw away all your stuff, shave your head, leave your home and your hometown, and start walking, heading in one direction. Drop your job. Stand and pee on the desk of your Boss. Run away from school. Do whatever you must, but do *not* kill yourself. It's about the stupidest thing you can do.
My Grandpa who dug the whole Nazi-Wehrmacht thing back then and went on to invade and fight on the eastern front in WW2 as a Waffen-SS Officer (Kompanieführer) gave me this advice he took home after the war: If everything you believed in is gone, the 3rd Reich, the Wehrmacht, your hometown and half of your homeland burned and lost to the russians of which a few million are now rightfull super-pissed and heading straight your way, raping and killing their way through whatever is left of the eastern german population, if your entire Kompanie is dead (two assistants aside, which got captured a few days ago) if the beloved Führer is dead (*his* beloved Füher - not mine (emphasis mine!)), Berlin is falling and you're hearing the gunfire, the Stalinorgel and their bombshells crashing in near Zossen just a few Kilometers away, your injured and they are coming to get you and they will tear you to tiny bits and pieces, and the maggots are eating away at the festering wound in your leg, your career and your life and everything you've ever believed in is basically over and out with no stone on another in bombed out Berlin for Kilometers in each direction ... if all that has and just is happening before your very eyes right here and now ... you might aswell just crawl on a few more meters and see if something interesting happens instead of putting a gun to your head.
He crawled on, found a deserted Wehrmacht horse, crawled on to its back sideways. The horse eventually rode to a gathering-camp. The nurses picked him up and the russians didn't deport him because his injuries were to severe - the lucky bastard.
Long story short, he lives to this very day (age 97) to tell us this advice. Old Type-A nazi or not, that actually *is* a very valuable advice. If *he* in that situation decided *not* to kill himself, so can you.
Bottom line:
Don't kill yourself. It's that simple.
My 2 cents.
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Hehe.
This is just a simple case of some idiot in some federal bureau with nothing better to do. The Gema konzept isn't all to bad, but with all the DRM laws added in the last decade it falls flat on its face in so many places. For instance, you are allowed to make private copies of your music and there is a basic royalty on copy media such as CDRWs that goes straight to the GEMA - but it is illegal to circumvent copy protection. As usual: Lots and lots of messy and broken laws in this field by people without a clue.
This whole GEMA/GEZ thing is in for a complete redo by people who understand the subject. Until then stuff like this will continue to pop up every now and then.
Big fat hairy deal. Sorry, but other than the iconic Razr this phone looks pretty standard fare.
I actually like the original Razr. It was a super-flat fold phone with a sturdy metal body and a awesome keypad. And am quite sure it would still have a market if they'd continue to produce it. There are quite a few cellphone classics out there that probably would never die out and allways have customers. Motorolas Razr and the Siemens M35 being two of those.
An off-the grid uptime of 9,5 and 16 hrs is pretty impressive. And it looks less shitty than the regular transformer. Andorid tablets are really starting to get interesting. And this device is a serious competitor to the Chromebook market. They weight probably is somewhere nearly the same as Chromebook/MB Air, the price is simular to the Samsung 5 Chromebook and the batterytime is twice as high as both. Plus it's a tablet with all the touch stuff for when you really can use it - like photo presentations and stuff. Very neat. Personally, I'll take a serious look at it as soon as it arives.
Bottom line:
Well done, Asus. Nice piece of hardware that appears to be.
This news saddens me. For more than a decade Flash has been *the* ubiquitous end-user rich-client cross-platform environment. Whereever Java initially wanted to go, Flash was already there.
However, the botch-jobs Macromedia and then Adobe delivered when it came to fixing basic issues and bugs in the Flash are beyond comprehension. Font-rendering and compiling has had the same serious bugs and troubles ever since 2001, right to the point were HTML5/CSS3 Font integration hasn't only caught up but superseded Flash-based Font integration. It peaked in what can only be called a flat-out scam by Adobe, when they introduced Flash 8 IDEs 'justify' option for textfields - which would lose it's justified layout as soon as you'd change the default text dynamically. The slowpoking with HW-accelerated 3D - it basically still is a beta, if at all - is beyond any measure. Unity3D has taken the helm in that department, and they aren't letting it up it appears. Flash simply lost out in that area aswell. At last the Flash Pipeline totally missed out the touch-based UI craze which it easily could have jumped ahead of to lead the way into a future of sleek touch-based UIs. Flash is made for this sort of thing, yet it hasn't even entered a beta phase regarding this. Like I said: Nothing but a series of large-type epic fuckups.
Even with modern HTML5/CSS3/Ajax/JavaScript being pretty much cross-platform without to many workaround hacks, it is still a bloated mess of a historically grown stack of intermangled technologies and paradigms that doesn't even come near the capabilities of a Flash/AS3 based enviroment. It's even basically half a decade behind of what pure Browser-based solutions could be simply due to the browserwars back in the early 200x'ses.
Flash could've had it all and even pushed back Java into the most obscure pure-business related stuff - but I guess after the one glimpse of light with the introduction of AS2 it was all downhill from then on.
Sad. Very sad. I hope they finally GPL the whole damn thing. Maybe the FOSS community can save the day with a usable AS3 - VectorGFX VM. But I'm not holding my breath.
It's a tradegy to see Flash go this way, but I guess it's time to move along, bite the bullet and stark messing around with bizar DOM-based rich-client programming. Great. Just great. Just the thought of that gives me the creeps.
Well done, Adobe. I hope your rich-client operations die of allready, you're obviously not competent enought to handle them, no matter how advanced the technology you have at hand is. Not only did Steve Jobs see how well Webkit HTML5 did, he also saw how uninspired your handling of Flash was. The iPad didn't kill Flash, at least not alone, Adobes incompetence had a measurable part in that aswell.
My 2 cents.
That sounds plausible to me.
The world is more complex today and it takes longer compared to the old times to adjust yourself and find out what you want to do and focus on in your life. I'm in my early 40ies and it's just in recent years that I'm getting a feeling of me having a relatively solid grip on my life and arranging things for the long term. That does include taking into account that our world today is heading fast-forward into a Type A William Gibson/Neal Stephenson Cyberpunk society with the according personal life adjustment required to cope with that. For instance, I'm living in a 36m^2 room in a flat share apartment, and while I hope to be able to buy myself a small apartment or micro house for my golden years, I don't expect it to be much bigger than my current home. And I've arranged myself with that and the accompanying modern lifestyle that it comes along with.
My last job I made comparatively big bucks as a specialized Flash/AS3 developer with 10 years experience and just this morning that skill-set has finally become full-scale obsolete with Adobes announcement to drop Flash for Mobile entirely after the current version. I'm glad I saw things coming back in '99 and - next to Flash - focused completly on FOSS Unix throughout the years. That's starting to pay off. I spent the better part of my 30ies coping with ever changing technologies and trends in my industry (web development at large) and have finally adjusted to the influx of information and a) gone on a (fairly) low information diet and b) learned enough to be considered an experienced senior developer in my field. If there is any chance of a stroke of genius hitting me during my lifetime, it is only now that the parameters are set for something like that to happen. Although, when it comes to that in terms of myself, I'm now wise enough to not hold my breath in the 'stroke of genius' department. :-)
Bottom line:
There are many years wasted/eaten up on coping with information overload - compared to the times of Newton or even Einstein - and I presume it's the same for most other people of my generation and younger.
My 2 cents.
The Nintendo DSi XL is comparetively cheap, has awsome games that the elderly love (such as the Professor Layton series) and it was built with old-timers in mind. Big screen, modest colors, large pen-like extra stylus and absolut idiot-proof usage. Get her one plus one or two Layton titles and some other slow or non-action puzzle game. ... Most likely she'll ask for more sooner than you'll expect.
And who knows, maybe she'll also be kicking your sorry ass at MarioCart in 2 months aswell. :-)
It's 4oclock in the morning and I can't sleep - so I'll post this. :-)
Software Development is still very young, very dynamic and very complex.
I've been programming since 1986 and been in professional web software development since 2000. I've done a solid share of projects of all kinds and right now, once again, on the lookout for jobs and projects. Twice a week I get called up by recruiters asking me if I 'know XML' or can drive down to Munich for free to make a job interview for a project that smells of out-of-time, over budget and clueless gouvernance ten miles against the wind. 10 years ago money was free an nobody cared about wether a project was going to succeed or not. Nowadays money is more scarce, but the people in the pipeline haven't learned a single bit.
It occured to me the other week that our profession is very simular to that of doctors. Everybody knows there are complete hacks in the field that can ruin your health for good and seasoned professionals with the patients best interest in mind and a solid experience and will to do good, but only the pros in the field themselves have the capability to judge wether a given MD is from those 30% that are total screwups or it he belongs to the 30% that can make a difference.
In the last few weeks I've been dismissing companies left right and center just by reading their outlandish fantasy job requirements or just asking a set of questions simular to these and noticing what a crappy shop I'm speaking to.
I get simular stories from my cousin who's passed through 3 jobs in the last 18 months - and he's a *real* engineer - y'know, building Airplanes and shit (Airbus 380 and such).
The truth is, after being in the field for so long, I know for a fact that only a 5th or all software teams out there barely fit the most basic standards of working conditions I can even be productive in. 2 out of 3 of those fall flat in some other basic requirement. I think it's a crying shame, because I'd love to do some good and meaningful work in this field, but it's just so darn difficult to find a proper pipeline and the surroundings to make use of it.
Are there any seasoned programmers here who think it should be possible to build an international company that has everything online (vhost servers for versioning, building and staging, online project and task management, etc. ...) and delivers along the lines of a company like this one? I personally do, speak fluent English and German, have solid experience in Organisation (as a scrum master), have technical account management skills alongside my programming stuff and do believe it should be possible to a) deliver good software b) on time c) without crunching d) having fun while doing so and finally e) making a good living at that.
Reply to this post and let us hear your thoughts. I'll leave a mailadress somewhere further down as an reply tomorrow .... errr ... later and we can get together online somewhere. I'd rather work with some slashdotter from the other side of the planet I have never seen than with some disponent from the other town who can't tell Java from JavaScript and earns 3x my rates by renting me out to others.
Let's see if we can improve the industry just a little bit and make a dent in the universe.
My 2 cents.
Earth could easily support 40 Billion people and still have a stable and working eco-system. Earth wouldn't even be very crowded. It was here on slashdot where someone proved that todays entire population would easyly fit into Texas, and even then Texas wouldn't be particularly crowded.
Waste, bad education and crappy management are what put the world in the sorry state it is in now. Bad distribution of food, bizarely huge amounts of resources wasted in aggriculture, huge damages done with pesticides and clearing of rainforrests just because some ignorant doucebags want cheap meat every day, etc. pp. Seriously, just a little common sense applied to worldwide resource management and large amounts of our problems today would simply disappear. That's the problem. Not overpopulation per se.
This is quite on par with what Clifford Stoll noticed: We don't need computers in the classroom. We need good teachers.
Although I do agree that access to knowledge in the hand of a smart kid can mean a difference if there are no good teachers available.
Real Waldorf education isn't opposed to technology. On the contrary. Their scientific curriculum is among the best - although it of course, always stands and falls with the individual teachers in the end. I visited quite a few schools whilst moving around in different countries and the last one I went to was a Waldorf School. We learned doing math not with a calculator but with logarithmic tables. "But it isn't accurate" a friend used to allways say. Well guess what? I doesn't need to be. What needs to happen is for us to understand log inside out, and tables are a way better at that then typing in signs on an electronic device. Anybody can learn that in a matter of minutes. And other than most other people our age the ones out of our math class actually understand what happens when you press the 'log' button.
My daughter goes to waldorfschool too. They learn about computers in the upper grades. From a science teacher who teaches them assembly, op-/bytecode and binary stuff on a C64 emulator running on PCs - because that's what he knows best that will teach them the very basics about computers. I don't know about you, folks, but that sounds to me like one of the best methods to learn computing. I know she won't grow up to be a dumb user who couldn't draw the connection between an Icon on the desktop and a file on a drive if her life depended on it.
Beyond that, I'll bug her about Python and the Unix command line as soon as she tells me that she wants to do computer stuff for a living. Allthoug I do trust that by then she will be well on her way in teaching herself the basics.
We all know very well, that once you know how a computer works and the principles by which it functions, it's a matter of hours in teaching yourself how to use Excel, Word or whatever. And good Waldorf teachers know that too. That's why a good waldorf teacher (any good teacher for that matter) will go out of his way to teach his pupils how to use a slide-ruler rather than having them punch keys on a calculator, right up to the point where they go into their final exams. Because it's not about what buttons you need to press, it's about understanding math and getting your brain thinking. ... Although I do understand that some people in education are interested in preventing exactly that.
My 2 cents.
This whole German 'Federal Trojan' thing is blowing up in the faces of the conservative right, just as we speak. Just like with the Websperren and IP storaging thing. Wonderfull sight to look at. I'm currently sitting back, watching the fray unravel before me and enjoying my popcorn.
The supreme court will cancel this crapshot (once again) These guys have been doing overtime ever since Schäuble was Minister for Internal Affairs.
The press is having a field day, opposition in parliament will be anal-probing the responible, Schäuble, Von der Leyen and Co. will be backpedaling yet again and the pirate party will get pushed from an allready impressive 8% all the way beyond 10% in the polls nationwide. Well done. The Chaos Computer Club saved the day once again (kudos and thank go out to them) and the professional required-by-law privacy protection experts are all over this like a cheap suit.
Gotta love it.
Nothing beats a 50ies+ old-school roughneck polititian screwing around with them internets and accompaning laws and falling flat on his face a year or two later.
Wonderfull, just wonderfull.
My 2 cents.
Strange contraption with stuff attached to it for no apparent reason other than maybe to look 'scientific'. Weird guy in sort-of business atire presenting it. Bad lit 'Prototype Powerplant' shed that looks like it's salvaged from a junkyard. Crappy website covering the issue. ... It all looks like a scam to me. That's my very first impression anyway,
The common mistake, in my opinion, is that many people allways think that the battle is between science and religions / 'spiritual people'. This is not the case. The fight is between nutcase fanatics and resonable people. Wether they're scientists, believe in a religion / something simular or both, makes no difference and actually is quite a different metric, despite some loonies claiming to speak for religion and their confessions. ... Most confessional christians I know do not really believe that the earth was created a mere 4000 years ago or some sort of bullshit.
My 2 cents.
Isn't high level IT nothing other than CS applied in the real world? I don't have a degree, but I've been doing IT stuff for the better part of my life and I'd put it that way.
CS == Theory, Higher Math, Donald Knuth Books and that sort of stuff.
IT == The industry you work in. Programming, System Design, Pro-Level DB Admining, Large Scale System Admining, etc.
My advice on this: ... and gues what tool he uses for coding to this very day.
A little field experience can never hurt. However, I wouldn't pick a one-man-coding-and-admin-army job at some third grade web agency, that could do more damage than good to your academic background. Pick one where you get the chance to do some serious probem solving or maybe even get paid to get yourself familiar with a non-trivial open source project - maybe by means of integrating it into your employers infrastructure. That's allways a good starting point to get some real world experience with the guys who actually get the job done without spoiling your CS grads worth. If you use the chance to rub sholders with the projects core team on the way, even the better. You may end up part of a team that sticks together across jobs throughout your entire career. A friend of mine joined the Nedit crew very early on in his IT career, and while the project is pretty much dormant nowadays, it did help him get firm with core unix software skills which still come in very handy every day at his current high level admin job
My 2 cents.
I've been doing Rich Client Development for the last 11 years, been in the front line of Flash Development and the development with other rich client solutions including the newest Ajax + HTML5 + CSS3 fray and have worked on and with some of the most ambitions Browsergame Projects on the Planet. And I agree, Rich Client has a lot going for it these days, especially with all the mobile and tablet stuff and them 10 bazillion plattforms all over the place like it's the 80ies all over again.
But predicting the end of Non-Browser Games is just plain non-sense. Even my Nintendo DSi with Professor Layton in it right now - a Game that would be laughably easy to port to a Browser, even for a mobile device - will tell you this is bullshit.
Bottom line: These guys are just dickwaving because they managed to actually finish a neat BG and they now feel like the king of the hill because their signups are up and the micropayments cash is rolling in. Meanwhile Crylabs is building their next release that will come on a disk, cost 50€ and will be yet another big hit.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Yepp. Those sure are some bad composites. Apparently a few professionals actually did notice and rose the stink. His reward is up for review, his site is offline and he's probably out hiding somewhere. This guy is toast.
In my opinion a good Photoshopped picture that looks awesome is worth just as much as a good snapshot someone took. A friend of mine is a Photographer and a fairly decent semi-professional PS guy too, and his Photoshops are at least as neat as his originals. They sometimes take days of hard work to composite. Photoshopping is a skill at least as high up as photographing, and if the guy managed to make some neat wildlife composites - stock material or not - I couldn't care less. I might even hang one up on my wall if it looks cool and I like it.
However, the example they show is a typical, über-shitty I-have-no-clue-what-I'm-doing PS job that takes about 1,5 seconds to be recognised as a bad PS job by a digital imaging expert. Old school photographers who can't handle digital imaging at aren't willing to go back to school to learn it but still think they can reap the benefits of digital imaging deserve all the flak they get. Like this guy. Still to many of those around. I have no pitty for him. That is one crappily PSed image on the level of an intern and people should demand their money back from him. ... Then again, if they didn't notice, maybe it's their own fault? ...
My 2 cents.